That Night

That night, the sky rumbled and crackled like tornado season in the Midwest, and the rainy season broke open with a whoosh of torrential rainfall. The thunderclouds and noise dissolved into a foggy gray roar outside. After an hour, the dirt chicken yard outside his room flooded and spilled muddy paste across his concrete floor.

He used his bucket to catch rain leaking through the flimsy roof. The rain pounded the roof all night, and he buried himself underneath four blankets to stay warm. Inside that blanket cocoon, the rain sounded like an ocean splashing at the bottom of his mountain.

He stared at the bookshelf, trying to listen to rain on top of rain, and he thought of her back home. She had sandy hair that she dyed blazing red most of the time, she use to kiss on his cheek before leaving, she stood tall enough to wrap up the whole skinny body when she hugged him. They met as editors at a college journal, both of them carrying around the same robin-egg blue copy of T.S. Elliot poems. They matched each other, the perfect way, both of them disheveled and anxious from being stuck in books for too many years.

He knew her five years, but they spent what amounted to months of time in smoky coffee shops telling stories and trading books. Years before, they had promised each other that they would read James Joyce’s book, Finnegans Wake. That book stood between them, the ultimate literature-major’s dream that they could unravel like compulsive kids.

The last time they spoke on the phone, she had been sick for months. Her doctor diagnosed pneumonia, but never noticed the two blood clots stuck in her lungs like sputtering firecrackers. She lay in bed with her mysterious illness while they talked long distance. “Oh, by the way,” she said, “I had some free time, so I read the Wake.” …… “You heartless bitch!” he yelled, and she giggled back. “Read it yourself,” she said. Tears rolled down his eyes. She went silent. ‘There ?’, he mumbled. ‘yes, always even after I won’t’ , she said. She knew it was ending, her life was dissolving in. He knew she was leaving. But they were happy then. They talked for hours THAT NIGHT.