Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Three Days of Rain

The storm front arced across the sky, covering every horizon in a bilious grey. It seemed unmoving and immovable. Everyone looked to the sky in anticipation after a dry winter and a dry and windy spring, dust kicking up everywhere. The forecast called for three days of rain. 100ml. 200 in the foothills and mountains in the west. The rivers would fatten and creeks would run, some for the first time in years. The grass would turn an unfamiliar, vibrant green and the crops would grow. The cattle could stay on the summer grazing until August and there would be hay to cut. All things seemed possible. 

They hurried to get whatever work done they could before the clouds unleashed their bounty and kept them from the fields. It began early in the afternoon with a few passing showers, enough to wet the ground and keep the dust down but little more. Just enough rain to make working miserable, but not enough to stop. There were dark mutterings of another damp fart and little more, of how forecasters were like sorcerers – not to be trusted under any circumstances. Late in the afternoon the wind began to snarl and they understood that the true storm had arrived. The rain began to fall, steady, stinging and fierce. Every rut in the road soon had a puddle and those still out in the fields and pastures had to go slow on slick gravel when they returned home.  

It continued through the night and into the next morning, steady at times, a deluge at others. Everyone slept in and lingered over their coffees. Someone was sent out to look at the rain gauge and phone calls and marvelling texts were exchanged. By and by everyone left their houses. Children were sent to school and wives headed out to their jobs in town. The fastidious and the Christians headed for the shop or quonset, where the drumming of the rain was satisfyingly loud, and used the time granted them to take care of repairs and maintenance to machinery.  

The rest headed to shops and sheds as well, gathering in groups of four or six. A bottle of whisky was unfurled and chairs and overturned five gallon pails were sat upon around a makeshift table of plywood set across two sawhorses. They played cards until the bottle was drained sometime between that evening and the next morning. The rain accompanied them as their wives came to collect them for breakfast, cursing them for fools to do such things at their age, and lulled them through the throes of their hangovers where they swore never to do such things again.  

They wouldn’t – until the next deluge. The next day, late in the morning, the rain ceased as if by general accord. Everyone emerged from their homes, most none the worse for wear, to witness the world transformed.