I wrote this little piece on August 14, 2000, when I lived in Roanoke, Virginia. I didn’t put it online then because I never finished it. But after ten years, I know it’s as finished as it’s ever going to get, so I’m posting it. It is what it is: a fragment of writing inspired by a storm.
August 14, 2000
The moon is full tonight. Very full. Completely full. Round as a perfect circle, and so ruddy that it's almost red. Easy to imagine it's filled with blood. A big, fat tick-moon hanging in the sky. And tonight, there is even a man in the moon. I haven't seen him in a very long time. Usually the moon, if I notice it at all, seems merely a yellow-white asteroid of a sky-planet: mountainous and cratered highlands, ancient valleys, and dark, desolate plains. But tonight's ruddy moon has a man in it, and his face looks at me curiously.
Why does this blood-moon hang in my sky tonight? Why does it visit me in such vivid color?
Two weeks earlier: I take the first week of vacation I've taken in a long time. It rains every day. It rains hard every day. Very hard. The word "torrential" springs to mind. But I don't care. Let it rain, bring it on. Nowadays, I prefer the rain to the sun. The sun is too warm, too sunny, too happy. The sun is a feel-good thing, and I am not in a feel-good mood. I rejoice to see the clouds, and I want them to be dark, and heavy, and very full of water. I want the rain to come down in buckets as though it means to seal me in my little abode. Tonight, the sky obliges me.
I drive to my favorite bar. I steer into a parking space and sit in my Jeep with the engine ticking over, air conditioner running, while the rain comes down in torrents. Stepping outside would be more or less like jumping into a lake fully dressed. Ever done that? Ever jumped into a lake fully clothed, just for the hell of it? I've done that. But I don't want to do it tonight. I want to sit in an air-conditioned bar and sip a beer — in comfort, not with my clothes dripping onto the floor and with my hair matted wetly to my head.
So I sit in the Jeep with the engine running and watch the rain pour down. "It can't keep this up," I think. Brilliant white electric bolts strike the ground in every direction. Trees bend in the wind and the rain sweeps the parking lot in curtains of driving water. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes pass. I haven't seen a storm like this in a long time.
"Screw this. I'm going home." I pull the Jeep back onto Electric Road. The rain comes harder, and I see that the road ahead is too dark. The street lights are out. Power outage, not a good omen. The rain is like a fire hose trained on my windshield. The wipers make no impact at all. Water floods across my windshield in an unrelenting torrent. I drive at one mile per hour, inching along the road. I can no longer see the road. Hell, I can't even see the hood of my Jeep. I inch the vehicle gingerly to the right, hoping to park it for a while. I feel the right front wheel climb an unseen curb, invisible under a river of brown water flooding the street.
After a while the deluge relents and I decide to continue my trip home. At one point the road is blocked by a fallen tree. Suddenly the bar seems like a more reasonable place to be, and I swing the Jeep through a U-turn. The road is flooded, and even at slow speed the Jeep throws up a rooster tail of water on each side. Water noisily scours the underside of the Jeep, and I wonder how the engine keeps running. Nevertheless it does, and I arrive back at the restaurant parking lot. The rain abates somewhat, and I dash into the restaurant.
I sit at the bar for a while and listen to mundane conversations between the patrons. All the bar lights are on, even the cleanup lights, and the dimmers are turned up full. There is no ambiance tonight, and the customers seem blissfully unaware that the storm of the decade passed by them minutes earlier. There are times when mundane is ok, but mundane isn’t working for me tonight. I pay my tab and I go back out into the night.
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