Wind and Rain - John Henry Fleming (ap literature book list .txt) 📗

all the times I’ve come here, I’ve never talked to you about it. Not once. And when I looked out at the rain last night with the Old Crow warming inside me, I thought maybe you’d like to know that I see it too. Part of the time I’m out here seeing other things, but most of the time I’ve been in the rain with you, and I thought you might want to know that.
The rain is why you’re here, Louis. It’s why I’ve been coming here up till now, even when everyone else began to fall away into their old lives. They went back in their homes to wait it out. We stayed out in the rain. For you it never stops. But I’ve been thinking about other things, too, and last night I started to put them together. I thought you’d want to know what I’ve been thinking. It’s been so long since I said anything to you, Louis. I didn’t think it would change anything. But now I’m going to tell you everything I know. It’s not much, but it’s something. You already know about the rain. Now I’m going to tell you about the wind.
A week after the shooting, I was back to work on the golf course. The superintendent said he was going to give me busy work for a while, stuff to take my mind off it. The irrigation man would fill in as his assistant. Any paperwork could wait. This went on for a few weeks, and I was beginning to think I’d lost my position. I didn’t say anything, though.
One day I was out raking leaves. There was no wind that day, but there had been the night before, and the wind had blown pine needles and avocado leaves all over the greens. I was working ahead of the greens-mower, Enrique, clearing the leaves off so he could mow the greens evenly. Three-sixteenths of an inch all over. It was mid-afternoon, hot and still. I had to rake because the blower wasn’t working.
The sweat rolled down my neck and got soaked up by my work shirt. There were only a few golfers around. Quiet day. Only the sound of Enrique’s mower one or two holes back, the sound of my rake.
I’d been raking all day, not even stopping for lunch, so I could keep ahead of Enrique. I was doing the same kind of work I started doing there six years ago, and that was getting me worried. That irrigation guy was good friends with the superintendent. They both had agronomist’s degrees from Gainesville. Here I was doing the work of a high school kid. No offense, Louis, but I’d already been through it. I didn’t want to do it again. I’m older. I got experience.
My arms and back ached from the raking. I was thinking about my job. I was thinking about you. I didn’t bring a flask to work then, but I’d had plenty the night before and plenty in the morning. It was still with me. My head wasn’t right.
It was quiet and hot and then something came out of the clear sky and knocked me in the head. I remember the sound of it, like the crack of a baseball bat. And the echoes in my blood that made it seem for a second all my veins would explode at once. All I could hear was the crack and it was everywhere, and then it was only in one small spot on my head. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes and saw I’d dropped the rake. I reached up and felt my head. It seemed to swell under my hand. It throbbed, and the blood warmed my fingertips.
My eyes still closed, I heard an electric cart whir up beside me, right next to the collar of the green. Someone clicked on the brake lock. I blinked a few times and looked up. There were two old men there, and they were staring at me like I was something in the way of their golf game. Something they had to check the rule book about. A divot that hadn’t been repaired or a tree limb in the way of their backswing.
Then the man stood up next to the cart and turned toward his friend behind the wheel. You ought to thank him, he said. His head kept your ball from slicing into the trees.
They both laughed.
That’s when I first started to think about the wind.
Do you remember when I started work on the golf course? You were only a kid. You said, How do you play that game? I tried to explain it then, but I didn’t know all that much about it myself. Now I do.
It’s a stupid game, Louis, and here’s how you play it. First you go into the woods and yank out most of the trees. Then you bring in truckloads of grass from Kentucky or Bermuda or somewhere else and you carpet over the space you cleared. Next you get your mowers out and you mow the grass again and again until it’s so short you can’t even call it grass anymore. You call it green, because you can’t tell it’s anything else. Some of it you call fairway, which sounds a lot like freeway, which is what they ought to call it, because it’s smooth and wide and the golfers drive up and down it in their little cars, weaving side to side like they own the road. Once you’ve got all the grass in and you’ve mowed it down to its color, then you build a few little mounds and you fill them in with sand, and they’re like little deserts that get in your way, except you rake them real smooth, so they’re more like the beach in front of the Breakers Hotel. Once everything’s been torn out and sodded and raked and mowed, then you finally get to knock a little white ball around until it falls into a cup. And if it takes you a long time to do it, it’s nobody’s fault but your own, because everything’s been cleared out and mowed down for you. Everything’s exact. Only the wind can change where your ball goes. If there’s no wind, then you’ve got no excuse. If you hit the ball and it curves, it’s only because you didn’t hit it right, and if you hit the ball and it lands on somebody’s head, it’s because that’s where you aimed it.
This is what I figured out with those two old golfers standing right in front of me, my head throbbing, and blood on my fingertips. I thought, Any excuse they’ve got has been cleared out and raked up and mowed away. The grass is exact and the fairways are wide open. The only thing left is the wind, and there was no wind. If there’d been wind and the guy had taken the same shot, the ball would have sailed over my head or maybe a little to the right and I wouldn’t have thought any more about it. If the guy had taken a different shot and the wind had pushed it into my head, the guy would have that excuse. But there was no wind. The guy had aimed the shot exactly at my head, and once he’d struck the ball, there was nothing to make it change its course.
It was all clear to me as I watched them smile at each other. The ball was sitting on the collar of the green between me and them. My head was bleeding. I took a step and picked up the ball, then walked over to the man who’d spoken, grabbed him by the back of his white hair, and jammed the ball through his teeth. When the ball fell to the grass, it was spotted with blood.
The board of directors couldn’t understand it. I hadn’t even hit the man who’d swung the club. I’d hit his friend. I don’t know why I hit his friend; it didn’t seem to matter. It still doesn’t.
The board called in the superintendent and asked him about it and the superintendent told me he couldn’t answer them. He told me he explained my situation to them. They said they understood, but that they couldn’t keep an employee who endangers the golfers, especially ones who’ve done nothing wrong.
I said, So if I’d hit the other guy, I could’ve kept my job?
The superintendent shook his head.
Because I can still go hit him.
The superintendent just stared.
When I walked out of there for the last time, I thought, If there’d been a breeze everything would be different. None of this would have happened.
Bad things happen where there’s no wind, Louis. I know that now. You know something? There was no breeze that night in the rain. Can you see that? There’s lots of rain and I guess you can call it a storm. But there’s no wind at all. I know that because I see how the rain comes straight down. It bounces off the top of the cop’s slicker, off the top of his flashlight, off the top of his gun. Exactly off the top.
I left my job knowing something about the wind. I was going to learn more.
I never told you any of this before. I never thought it would matter. Now I have to. I have to tell you everything.
After I left the golf course, I looked around for a while, but I had to take something quick. This room you’ve got isn’t cheap, and Mother doesn’t make nearly enough cleaning offices. I had to have something. There was this man down at the City Sanitation who remembered Father. Father was the first man he’d hired, he said. And somehow he’d heard about what happened to you. Newspapers, maybe. He sent a note to Mother, and Mother told me about him. It was nice of him to remember, she said.
I didn’t want to talk to him, but I had to, and he offered me a job loading garbage. I know you’ve done better, he said. But your father managed on it for a long time and he never complained. He was a good man, he said.
I remember the first time I smelled Father. You were just a baby, and I’d been