Wind and Rain - John Henry Fleming (ap literature book list .txt) 📗
- Author: John Henry Fleming
Book online «Wind and Rain - John Henry Fleming (ap literature book list .txt) 📗». Author John Henry Fleming
out, making the blood roll down into his eyes so he can’t get up and do the same to you. So the rock gets thrown and everything’s looking good. But when things are in the air they belong to the wind, and the wind doesn’t work on calculations. The wind likes to blow things around, mess things up, throw off your calculations. It sees a tree full of leaves and decides the leaves are in its way so it blows them all off the tree. Then it sees somebody’s piled up the leaves and it decides to mess up the pile. It sees a quarterback put the football up and decides to blow it over to the defensive back. The wind can stop people from hurting each other, too. The wind might see the rock heading for the guy’s forehead and decide to blow it off course. Then it just glances off the side of the guy’s head. The guy gets mad and throws a rock back at you, but that rock misses completely. Because of the wind. You end up shaking hands with the guy, and you both say, Forget it, we aren’t good enough rock throwers to make it worth our time. But really it’s the wind. It’s not that the wind is trying to teach anybody a lesson. The wind doesn’t care about that. It doesn’t care about anything. It just likes to push things around. And that’s a good thing for us. If there weren’t any wind, there’d be a lot more people hurting each other every day. There’d be nothing to throw off their calculations. Golf balls would never miss. Bullets would never miss.
These are the things I’ve learned about the wind. It changes the direction a bird flies. It changes the look of the sky by blowing the clouds around. It changes the look of the earth, too--sometimes it carries leaves off of plants, and sometimes it carries their seeds and makes them grow somewhere else. And the wind changes people, too. It carries smells to them and makes them think about things. It talks to people that way. It reminds them that things can change, that things will always change.
That’s why I’m here, Louis.
Before I came in here, I asked the doctor, Can he smell anything? He didn’t know who I was talking about at first. He’d forgotten about you. I reminded him, and I asked him again. Can he smell anything? He said he wasn’t sure. He said maybe. I said thank you.
Then I came here to tell you all this. Maybe you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Maybe you can only hear the sound of the rain and the sound of the gun. But the doctor said maybe you can smell, and if you can smell then the wind can talk to you even if I can’t. The wind changes things. The wind can stop the rain. It can blow it away. Then people will come out of their houses again and pick up where they left off. And you can smell the people and what’s in their houses, and the trees and plants around their houses, and even the garbage they put out in front of their houses and the garbagemen who come to pick it up.
I’m going to try to show you what I mean. I’m going over to the window and I’m going to open it up. I never opened it before because I didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t think it could change anything. But there are trees out there, Louis. Oak trees and pine trees. There are birds flying between the trees. Blue jays and sparrows. There are squirrels, too, and the squirrels are running in the grass. There are mushrooms in the grass. And blue and yellow wildflowers. There’s a parking lot next to the grass, and there are cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. There are people walking to and from their cars, and those people have all sorts of smells--their skin and their clothes and their sweat and their deodorant and shampoo and everything they’ve had for breakfast and lunch today. I’m going to open the window and you’re going to smell them all. The wind is going to bring them to you. Then maybe the rain is going to stop for both of us. Then maybe things will change.
These are the things I’ve learned about the wind. It changes the direction a bird flies. It changes the look of the sky by blowing the clouds around. It changes the look of the earth, too--sometimes it carries leaves off of plants, and sometimes it carries their seeds and makes them grow somewhere else. And the wind changes people, too. It carries smells to them and makes them think about things. It talks to people that way. It reminds them that things can change, that things will always change.
That’s why I’m here, Louis.
Before I came in here, I asked the doctor, Can he smell anything? He didn’t know who I was talking about at first. He’d forgotten about you. I reminded him, and I asked him again. Can he smell anything? He said he wasn’t sure. He said maybe. I said thank you.
Then I came here to tell you all this. Maybe you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Maybe you can only hear the sound of the rain and the sound of the gun. But the doctor said maybe you can smell, and if you can smell then the wind can talk to you even if I can’t. The wind changes things. The wind can stop the rain. It can blow it away. Then people will come out of their houses again and pick up where they left off. And you can smell the people and what’s in their houses, and the trees and plants around their houses, and even the garbage they put out in front of their houses and the garbagemen who come to pick it up.
I’m going to try to show you what I mean. I’m going over to the window and I’m going to open it up. I never opened it before because I didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t think it could change anything. But there are trees out there, Louis. Oak trees and pine trees. There are birds flying between the trees. Blue jays and sparrows. There are squirrels, too, and the squirrels are running in the grass. There are mushrooms in the grass. And blue and yellow wildflowers. There’s a parking lot next to the grass, and there are cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. There are people walking to and from their cars, and those people have all sorts of smells--their skin and their clothes and their sweat and their deodorant and shampoo and everything they’ve had for breakfast and lunch today. I’m going to open the window and you’re going to smell them all. The wind is going to bring them to you. Then maybe the rain is going to stop for both of us. Then maybe things will change.
Publication Date: 10-04-2009
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