This Month's Story
“We never had any trouble like this with the weather
before we gave the women the right to vote.”
Willey Murke, 1928
I was sitting on the porch the other day staring moodily at the lawn sprinkler. It was time to move it again and I just didn’t feel like getting up. From where I sat I could see lightning flicker among the rain clouds out in the Sound. I heard a noise and turned to see Twist M. Good climb up the porch’s side steps.
“Hey, Twist! Come on over and sit. Maybe you can explain something to me.”
Twist was one of those people you are forced to meet in your life who claim to know absolutely everything about anything you can think of and a lot of things you don’t want to. He’s a distant relative by marriage to my wife, Stella and he visits us on occasion, “just when the mullet are running good,” he says.
“What is it you need to know,” he asked popping open a can of sarsaparilla. I never have been able to figure out where he gets those cans; in fact I don’t even think that there is anyone under forty alive today that can spell sarsaparilla.
“How come” I said pointing, “it’s raining out there in the Sound when we need the water right here in Waveland?” I leaned back. I figured this would stump him and this might be a quiet visit after all.
I was wrong.
“Well,” he said burping quietly after taking a swig of his sarsaparilla. “What you see there is a good case of them extremist conservationists getting in cahoots with them ultra liberal Washington politicians.”
Startled, I pulled my eyes away from looking at the Sound and turned toward him, “What was that?”
“You know them crazies have them right wing political morons doing whatever they want. It’s a crime. Why I remember when I was a boy back in …’
“Twist, what does being a conservationist or for that matter a politician have to do with it raining in the Mississippi Sound?”
“It’s that government factory over in Metairie (he pronounced it Met-arry), Louisiana where they make them clouds. They just don’t let them clouds just go anywhere; they have control. They’ve been sending them over the water like that ‘cause them loonies think we’re running out of water. Heck, there ain’t no water shortage. I let the water run in your bathtub the all day long yesterday and there was as much water coming out when I went to turn it off this morning as when I turned it on. ‘course it weren’t warm any more, but heck that were a lot of water. Water shortage! Shows you how stupid some people can be.”
I stared flabbergasted at Twist; I didn’t know which part of his incredible dialogue to question. Finally, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “I didn’t know you had ever been to Metairie.”
“I haven’t. No sense in going there, there’s nothing there to see. But my dad were and he told me he saw them making them clouds. Big government place, tall chimneys with the clouds coming out their ends. Top secret stuff, wouldn’t let him in, but daddy were no fool, he knew what they was doing. That’s were them clouds come from. Look over there to the west. See, they’re all heading from Louisiana.”
I was fascinated, “Why are they flat on the bottom?”
“I noticed that. The way I figure is that they come out the chimney all fluffy and they got this big hot wire at the top of the chimney cuts them right plumb in two as they come out. Sort of like a big butter slicer. That way they get two clouds for the price of one. Them government people ain’t too bright but they ain’t stupid neither. Now you take Texas, there ain’t a…”
I decided not to take Texas and letting his long monologue blend into the background noise of the morning, I leaned back and enjoyed the view of the Sound and the dark clouds releasing their loads of rain, filling a Sound that to me was already full.
“Look over there, Twist.” I said lazily after a while. “Doesn’t that cloud look like a camel?”
“You’re right,” Twist said taking in stride my interruption of his dialogue that had somehow drifted to how ketchup is really made from surplus artichokes. “Tourist Bureau does that. Get a little pay back from the Casino people. Makes the tourist happy so they don’t notice the money they lose.”
I gave up. I didn’t say anything but just leaned back and watched the water.
It became incredibly quiet for almost ten minutes. I sneaked a peek at Twist. He also was leaned back and looking out over the water. Finally, he spoke again. However, his voice now didn’t have its loud authoritative tone that normally drives me wild, but was soft, almost wistful.
“Look at that cloud there. Don’t it look like a fat pig and look, see them little clouds following right after it? They’re a bunch of little piggies following after their Ma.”
I propped myself up looked to where he pointed. To me they looked like a fat chicken and her chicks, but what the heck, it may be that there is a little soul in ole Twist after all.
I leaned back and the two of us watched the water.
