Frank was born in the valley. It’s like an inheritance. Well, birthright is a better word. It’s his. It’s all he’s ever known. Not that he doesn’t know that there is more out there. The world is wide, so we’re told. The family isn’t far, just over the ridge, or that one over there, or a little farther yet. They stay close. Frank is fond of the nearness. It’s not so lonesome a valley as it could be.
A wisdom older than Frank reminds him that one oughtn’t feel alone in a such a vibrant place. The valley is long, if not broad, and the young man still has much to explore. He has tended the familiar places, but there is a lot that belongs to him that he’s hardly caught a glimpse of from a high hill. There’s plenty more yet that he hasn’t seen at all. A little exploration will do, pushing the boundaries of Frank’s life a little further and a little further and a little further year after year.
Younger years were spent doing the real exploring. Everything was new. You can’t take a step without broadening your horizons when you’re still a child. Only with age does one come to forget how many shades of green there are in the forest. Children are aware of those types of facts without knowing that they know so much. Adults lose things, like how you can spend an entire day hearing the babble of a stream. You just have to be patient enough to spend a whole day within earshot of a stream. It doesn’t always look like patience, but that’s probably what it is. Frank had that once. He is a little too old to know those things anymore. He’s been working too intently to allow for much vision to sneak around the blinders. There’s a goal, and the rest falls away. That’s what maturely tending a valley is all about.
Trouble is… well the trouble is there’s trouble. Can’t be as simple as those young days when a skinned knee was the worst that could happen. It’s never very simple anymore. Not when you can’t hear any more babbling.
It’s hard to feel life recede into the hills when it disappears so slowly. Frank hopes the life is just hiding there, for it’s not cracking and crumbling and shifting the surface of the valley anymore. The ground is hard and impliable and the life that’s hiding, if it’s hiding (God, please let it just be hiding), won’t sneak through with any fledgling sprouts. The life is going to have to burst back, with a vengeance, with a vicious will to live. The life is going to have to storm back if Frank might share this valley with some friends and family some day. That’s been the idea all along. But the life’s got to come back.
He couldn’t have seen it at the time, but looking back Frank thinks he can imagine how there was a little less rain that year. What, five or six years back? You’d have to imagine a thing like that if you can’t even remember what year it might have happened. Regardless, some time ago it rained a little less in the spring, and the fall rains just moistened the fall death. Frank supposes the next year it rained a little less yet. Who’s to say when and how much? But this year it isn’t so hard to notice that a shift happened. The rain rushed from the sky in a single night last spring, and there hasn’t been a drop since.
Frank can see farther down the valley now than he ever has. It isn’t so transcendent as he might have liked. Far down the valley, years down the valley, it’s as dry as it is where he stands. No use rushing off to explore when you know what’s coming. No use doing much without a little rain.
Is that thunder just now? Like yesterday. And the day before. Frank has figured for a while now that the rain must come again. These things happen in cycles. A single life might die off completely, but not life. Life goes on. In cycles. It’s coming back. Or so he supposes.
It could just be some dehydrated delirium, but for a few days Frank has been hearing thunder. Far over the western ridge. It could just be that dry and shriveled thing up in his skull rattling around. There’s enough room to shake a little and plenty more room for some echoes. Frank’s losing his head from the inside. Won’t take long now. Might as well just start walking down the valley floor out to sea. It’s somewhere out there, if they haven’t been lying all along.
No no no. Frank has been preparing for the rain. He’s built cisterns, reservoirs, aqueducts. There’s no fleeing now. We’ve gotta see this through. Just to find out, if for no other reason. Besides, the rain is coming. There’s the thunder again.
That was thunder. Definitely. No denying the bare facts. Here comes the rain.
Frank furiously continues to work on the infrastructure he’s built. Even a little rain can be caught and conserved and used well. Life will come again, if only in a little pocket in what was once a vast wilderness. Use what you have wisely, and maybe you can make it to the next rain. Collect and save and maybe that will be enough.
But how much is too much, right? For goodness sake, Frank never needed to save any water before. Not a drop. There was plenty all year in the pools and in the streams and in the trees and in those tiny little drops that make the leaves shine in the morning. Why is it necessary to save at all?
Days turn into weeks. The thunder is still just over the ridge. Why doesn’t the storm move? Why hasn’t it come?
Weeks turn into months, and the thunder continues to thunder, and it has to just be something in Frank’s head. He’s lost it. These past years have done too much damage to his valley. Each brown, fallen leaf is damage done to him. Frank is broken, and the thunder thunders on.
He keeps preparing. What else is there to do? Even if he dies a lonely, crazed man, at least he’ll die with a shovel in his hand. At least that damn thunder never let him give up. Push forward. Gotta keep pushing. What else is there to do? Work and keep working and die working with this valley.
BOOOOOOOOOM!!!
WOAH! That was close. Clouds have pushed over the ridge. It’s coming. It’s really coming. Too close. Find shelter. Find shelter. Where do you find shelter in a desert? RUN!
It isn’t so easy to run when you’re shriveled with age before your time. Dehydrated. Exhausted. Overworked. Dying. Can’t run. BOOOOM! RUN!
Run, run, run. When did he see the clouds first? A couple hours maybe. They haven’t moved much. No, it’s been a week at least. At least. Maybe a month. Rain should be here within the hour. Should have been here last Tuesday. Should have been here last June. Rain will be here soon. Won’t take long now. BOOM! RUN! Don’t die in a storm, Frankie. Not now. Not now. Come too far. RUN!
The rain holds off and a man who would have collapsed days ago pushes on with supernatural endurance, death already in the bones and the skin and the eyes. Keep hearing the thunder, though. Clear as day. The day is still clear. Not more than a little darkness over the ridge in the west, and the rest is still clear. Clear with noon heat.
BOOOOM!
Frank doesn’t believe it and doesn’t care and can’t do much more the prepare even if he could move. Stay here a while. Nice little overhang with these roots and what’s left of the branches. Almost dark. Almost cool. Stay here.
Frank dreams of rain. The thunder still booms, but is softened by the incessant curtain of water falling from the sky. The thunder still booms, but there is a din underneath. A din. White noise. Discordant noise. Discord. Tunes. Tuning. Tuning strings. The woods. The winds. BOOM! Across the valley. There’s an orchestra in the air. A symphony in a gale.
Frank wakes punching hard the bark in front of him and doubles over with gut-wrenching pain. The symphony came to him through the air, through the mists, in a view of the joy that he had as a child. The beauty came to him in a dream. Only dreams anymore. It’s a tease, unreal, and the joy is seeping out of torn knuckles. The pain doubles in his stomach when he wakes in his dead valley, when he realizes where he is and where he is not and what he lost somewhere along the way.
On his knees out of a dream, he hasn’t looked to see if the clouds have come farther. Why would they? They haven’t for months. But then again, there’s a coolness, maybe. There’s a hum to the west, he thinks. There might be thunder directly over him. The rain may come at last. Frank might have felt just one cool drop on his back.
It’s hard to tell in this state. Who can tell in a state like this?
But what more do you need than a promise? Frank was promised rain. Regardless of today’s delusion, the rain is coming because it was promised.