CRACK…then BOOOOM!!!!
A short story and fantasy
by Lisa Spray
The five of us stood huddled on our front porch in front of the old mud adobe home, just one house over from the riverbank. I stood with my two sisters, me in the middle both in the physical lineup and in age placement among “Rob and Nan’s three girls”. My dad or “Daddy”, as we all called him, was greying just a tiny bit and beginning to look very distinguished — always handsome and usually dapper. “Mama”, as we addressed her, had begun greying in her thirties and was now a beautiful silver haired lady, with all the true meaning that the word entails.
I was pretty scraggly at that point, and Clara, the baby, was rapidly losing her babyness. Trudy, being the oldest, was beginning to show definite signs of the great beauty she would grow into. Clara would later follow her in her footsteps, while I was always the ugly duckling that never quite turned into a swan.
It was pouring down rain, as if the whole ocean had teleported into the sky above us and was now descending in a flood. It dripped off all the trees and Mama’s Moon-vine, which covered the trellis on one half of the porch. Mama had opened up both the front and back doors to draw cool air into the house. And you could just barely hear water dripping into the pans placed under spots where old tarpaper had given way on the roof over the living room. But the waterfall off the porch roof and the sounds of the storm almost covered the little plinking of those living room drips.
The rain was so heavy that we could barely make out the old Mormon grain silo in the neighbor’s yard directly across from our porch. It appeared to be a strange kind of creature with its five window-like eyes lining up vertically along its grey cement body. White-winged Doves made their homes in it and could often be seen roosting on remaining bits of the darkened board skeleton of what was once a peaked wooden roof, their mournful cooings echoing off the cement walls, which were dark and mottled inside by the aging of the long gone grain they once had held in their firm grip.
The desert air was damp and charged with that peculiar and excitement-filled smell of an impending flash flood racing its mud-filled way down the banks of the nearby riverbed. Any minute the chocolate-mousse-like water would foam and hiss and growl at the banks that entrapped it. It would leap and throw itself into the air attempting to breach its cage… and occasionally it would succeed, flooding the lower half of the neighbor’s yard and part of our acre too.
I was beginning to shiver, with little goose bumps coming up on my arms and legs. It was cold enough that I was thinking of going in when suddenly the old silo was lit up like a megawatt spotlight had been aimed at it.
A tremendous “CRACK!” split the air, followed almost immediately by a thunderous, almost deafening “BOOOOM!!!!”
The rain slowed and clouds thinned enough that we were able to make out the outline of the silo, now bereft of it’s peaked roof skeleton. Slowly circling it were the stunned dark forms of now roost-less doves.
Thinking on it today, I wonder if any souls of those doves flew back into the presence of their Creator on that night, so long ago now.
If we spoke dove could we perhaps have overheard something like the following fantasy?
As Palomita slowly circled her former roost she felt dazed and more than slightly off kilter. The lightning strike had taken not only her home, but also her mate… her beautiful Greyling.
They had grown up together, as cousins she thought, though it was hard to keep track of the relationships as each nest of baby birds grew into maturity. As she mused over what had so recently been their life together, Fluteflier caught up with her, each wing making the soft flute-like note that engendered her name.
“Oh, Palomita, I am so sorry for your loss. Though I know we do not need to grieve as those foolish two-leggeds do, for we know dear Greyling has just gone back to the One, but still we will miss him and his kind and gentle ways.
“Will you need help with this nest’s crop?”
“Fluteflier, dear Fluteflier, you have always been such a good friend to me!” Palomita replied. “Thank you my dear sister, it would be a great help. For though the One always provides somehow, I really don’t know how I will keep those dear little beaks, that are always wanting more, filled by myself.”
“Think nothing of it, dear. You know how I have been missing my own brood since they flew off earlier this week. And I am really not quite ready to start a new hatching yet anyway.” She paused and then went on.
“I never have understood how those two-leggeds can waste so much time on their young! Why don’t they just push them out of the nest? What do you think, Palomita?”
“Actually, Fluteflier, they waste far more than that! Why I’ve heard from the Great Blue Herons that they leave their garbage everywhere and much of it is perfectly good food. But not all of their garbage is so good. It is also full of weird hard stuff they call plastic and it takes years and years to break down. The herons said they had heard from sea gulls and petrels that the oceans are filling up with that plastic stuff, and almost all sea mammals have it in their bellies now. That has got to be terrible, having other creatures’ garbage living in your own body!”
“Palomita,” her sister-friend replied, “sometimes I don’t understand why the One doesn’t just get rid of all of them. Any more, most of them don’t seem to really believe in any form of the Divinity, or at least they don’t act like it. And they certainly are making a mess of our worldly Nest.
“Why only yesterday, I met one of those flighty little Yellow Warblers. He said that he’s having to start his nest building earlier and earlier so his nestlings don’t bake in the hot sun. He said he thinks it has something to do with what he overheard sitting by a window… something the two-leggeds call ‘Global Swarming’, I think. Or maybe it was ‘Global Warming’. I don’t really know what all that means, but it is a real puzzle as to why the One doesn’t just put a stop to it all.”
“I don’t understand either,” was the reply. “But I know that there must be some reason, or the One would take care of the problem. The Divine Wisdom is far greater than I can even begin to understand; and I’m glad of that. I don’t want to worry about these things! I’ve got more than enough with my own little nest full of worriers.”
As the night wore on both birds became silent and their circles around the old silo became slower and calmer. Eventually they settled, Palomita on her nest and Fluteflier just to the side of it, each taking comfort in the closeness of her best friend and sister.
In the morning the sun would come up again on a newly washed world. The raindrops on leaves would glisten in the early morning light before beginning to evaporate back into the air, only to slowly build up later into afternoon clouds, and perhaps rain down again in the evening.
The doves would awaken and begin their day’s work of keeping the little nestlings fed.
Our parents, the grown up “two-leggeds”, would awaken too, and also begin their day’s work of keeping us three “nestlings” fed.
Life would move on for us all.
