Falling for Rain (4 page)

She wished she had not dwelt on the photographs. She had meant to put them away without looking at them, but it was too late now, and the dusty images kept intruding on her thoughts. She pushed on with her work, stuffing the hamper-load of shirts into the washing machine downstairs.

She then dragged the heavy feather mattress from her parents' bed and pulled it down the hall into her old room. After hoisting it onto the bed and wrestling it into the frame, she sat on the edge for a few minutes to regain her breath.

Her suit was a mess. There would be no wearing it again until it was dry-cleaned and the tear in the sleeve repaired. Hell, she might as well toss it in with the rest of the stuff going to the Salvation Army. She looked at her old dresser with contempt but forced herself to open the drawers and search through the rather musty contents for something suitable for doing barn chores. She settled on a pair of jeans and a fleece sweater. The jeans were rather baggy now, any traces of baby fat having been worked away at her fitness club.

Those drawers contained more than just clothes. Keepsakes, like those an adolescent girl would collect, were tucked here and there: a four leaf clover in a matchbox under her socks, a one eyed teddy bear in the sweaters, and her high school yearbook between two pairs of jeans.

The teddy bear she placed on the pillow on the bed and, unable to stop herself, she pulled out the book and flipped through the pages until she found her own picture among those of the graduating class. The eyes in the picture were already
hardedged
and cynical – no wide eyed sense of wonder in this eighteen-year old. She remembered what the caption under the picture said, but she read it again, feeling fresh the rage she had felt on first reading it:

Emily Alexander – 1st Class Honours – is off to Toronto University in the fall for architecture and business. She swears she's never returning to our “gosh darn” little village again. But everybody knows that in every life a little RAIN must fall. Emily's classmates are taking bets that Emily will be back home by Christmas. After all, home is a shelter “with” a STORM.

Emily put the book back under her sweaters. She'd shown them, she thought. Here was one farm girl who had managed to make more of
herself
than marrying the first farmhand who came along.

Not like my mother,
she thought bitterly as she closed the drawer. If her mother hadn’t given up her career to marry a farmer, she’d be alive today.

The sky outside was beginning to darken - the dreary, cloudy day descending into a dreary, starless night. Emily was tired and hungry, but she couldn't sink into the feather mattress yet. She had barn chores to do.

Some canned goods still remained in the kitchen cupboards. She opened a tin of Irish beef stew and heated it on the stove. She ate it hungrily while standing at the kitchen sink, washing the bowl under the tap when she was finished. The water was hot, and she felt as pleased with herself as if she had invented hot water.

Her old rubber boots were still on the mat by the back door. She felt a twang of guilt as she thought of her father hanging on to them for her, expecting her to come home and fill them.  Mentally chastising herself for this sentimental moment, she stepped into them and went out to the barn.

Rain had tacked the instructions to the inside of the barn door. They had been printed out on a computer. What was Rain doing with a computer?
Video games?
She shrugged and began to tackle the list in order.

     1. Grain: 1 measuring can each.
(That was easy.)

     2. Turn on gutter cleaner. Switch to right of door.
(This was a new feature and a pleasant surprise. Flick the switch, and a conveyer belt-like apparatus carried the mess out the back door.)

     3. Hay: 1/4
bale
each.
(Heavy but still pretty easy.)

     4. Water: Make sure automatic bowls aren't clogged with hay. Cows and the horse in the box stalls need their water carried to them.
(No problem.)

      5. Keep an eye on cow in last stall on the south side of barn. She's due today.

Due today?
This was definitely beyond her capabilities. She ran the length of the barn and peered over the stall wall. The cow was definitely in labour; already the calf was beginning to protrude. But something was wrong. She had watched enough calves being born to know she should be looking at the calf's nose, not its tail. This was a breach birth, and it was dangerous for both mother and baby. The cow looked at Emily with her big, dark eyes and mooed softly. It seemed to Emily that the cow was pleading with her to do something to help her.

There was only one thing to do: swallow her pride and find Rain. She almost flew out the barn door and down the path that led to the old cabin. Built out of logs by her ancestor (Emily didn’t know how many
greats
there were before this grandfather) the year he moved his wife from England, it had been the original farmhouse. Emily knew it well. She had played house here with her dolls when she was little, and, on that terrible day her mother had died, she had come here to hide. Eventually, Rain had found her and tried to comfort her, but she had been inconsolable.

It had been rundown then. Light had filtered through the cracks between the logs, the glassless windows, and the holes in the roof. But now it looked snug and tight. Fragrant wood smoke curled from the chimney, and a cozy glow emanated from the windows. She hesitated for only a moment then leapt onto the porch and banged on the heavy, rough door.

“What the hell?” Rain said, opening the door to her. She was
wildeyed
and panting heavily from the run. She was hardly recognizable as the controlled woman who had walked into the barn the day before and coldly dismissed him. Her hair was springing in all directions. Her clothes were baggy and out of style, the makeup was gone, and the cold, tight voice was edged with hysteria.

“It's the cow,” she panted. “The calf...
it's
coming breach.”     

“Damn! How long has she been in labour?”

“I don't know. I just found out.”

He glanced at his watch. “I looked in on her at four. She was okay then.”  He had his boots on, and, pushing his arms into his jacket sleeves, he was out the door, black veterinary bag in hand. She ran up the path behind him, stumbling once in the darkness on a tree root.   He didn't wait for her but kept running. He seemed to forget she was even there, closing the barn door between them even though she was only a few feet behind.

She stopped and walked the last few steps. There was nothing she could do. Rain would look after it. She closed the barn door behind her, resting against it for a moment before going to the stall where Rain fought to save mother's and baby's lives. He had the cow’s head restrained in a stanchion and was working to free the calf before it suffocated.

Watching Rain now brought back an earlier time. She was fourteen years old and small for her age. It was later that spring that she grew almost six inches in a matter of months. But although she had still lacked height, she registered the changes in her body and knew that childhood would soon be behind her.  She was standing at this same stall, looking through the gap between the top board and the one below it at the scene unfolding before her. She had watched this a dozen times
before,
Rain at her side, explaining the miracle of yet another farm birth to her. But this time it was different. She knew now that this was part of the adult world of sex, and suddenly she was embarrassed watching it with Rain beside her.

Emily remembered this, observing Rain now. Because it was also the first time she had begun to think of Rain as something other than a playmate or older brother. He had lived with her family since before she was born. Emily's mother had been a friend of Rain's mother, and when Rain was born out of wedlock, she,
herself
childless but respectfully married, had stepped in to help raise the child. As time went by, Rain spent more and more time with the
Alexanders
, until Rain's natural mother simply faded from the picture, moving on to another part of the country and a new life.  That a fatherless child could bring such disgrace seemed odd these days, but, in rural Ontario thirty-some years earlier, it was far from respectable.         

Emily was born when Rain was six.  They called each other brother and sister and had almost come to believe they were until that day when Emily was fourteen and she watched the calf being born. She had looked at Rain sideways and felt something stir in her that was anything but sisterly. She stopped calling him brother, and, very shortly thereafter, he stopped calling her sister.

And when she was seventeen and he twenty three, he had kissed her. They had been swimming at the lake. A swing hung from a branch that reached out over the water, and they were taking turns swinging as high as they could before leaping into space over the cool waters. She had sliced the water cleanly, going down deep into its shady depths before returning to the surface with swift strokes. Her head broke the surface only a few feet from Rain, and she laughed with the absolute joy of being alive, reaching out to him instinctively as a soul mate who shared this moment with her. He took her hand and pulled her toward him until her body had brushed his and his lips found hers in the wonder of their first kiss.

All that had happened before her mother died.

She watched him now, the strain showing on his face as he wrestled death with grim determination. She felt suddenly confident he would be successful. If anyone could save this animal, it would be Rain. Her faith in him came unbidden, revived by this crisis. It seemed so natural, she wasn't aware of it happening. All the years dropped away, and at least briefly she forgot to despise Rain for what he was.

Finally, the calf was free. Rain gently lowered the animal to the pen floor; it wasn't moving, but it was breathing.  Rain spoke gently to the exhausted creature and dried its wet coat with a burlap sack. He freed the mother and immediately she started to lick her new baby and nudge it to its feet with her nose. Rain assisted her, and before long the calf was up on its wobbly legs drinking deeply of its mother’s warm, sweet milk.

Rain stroked the mother's neck. “Congratulations, it's a girl. What do you say we name her Emily? That is, if there are no objections.” He looked at Emily and smiled. It was a challenge. Emily didn't rise to it; she just shrugged as if to show she didn't care. She thought of Jonathon and what he would say if she told him that Rain had named a farm animal after her. She could almost hear the disdain in his voice. Twenty four hours earlier she would have felt the same way, but right now she didn't want to think of Jonathon at all.

Rain took a large needle from the black bag and filled it from a small glass vial. “Penicillin,” he explained, bringing her back to the present. “In case Mom gets an infection.”  He gave the injection expertly; the cow didn’t flinch. “There's a barrel of molasses near the loft steps. Put a spoonful in a bucket of warm water and bring it here.”

Wordlessly, she obeyed him, so relieved that mother and baby were fine. That little calf, struggling for life, and its mother struggling for the sake of its baby had found a crack in the armour she had been welding together plate by plate since she was eighteen years old. And toward Rain, without whom both mother and baby might have died, well, she could only feel gratitude.

She carried the bucket back to the pen. She remembered this part; this had always been her job. She let herself into the
pen,
and, ignoring Rain's offer to take the pail, placed it before the tired happy mother and watched her drink deeply. She even went so far as to stroke the animal's neck. Rain went to wash up, and Emily, absorbed completely in this new little life, didn't hear him return. A sense of being watched finally made her look up.

Her eyes immediately locked on Rain's. They were amazing eyes, and she knew they were dangerous to dwell on. She couldn't read what was in their blue depths, but she had the sense he could see through hers to whatever was in her heart.

What could he see?
she
wondered, unable to break eye contact. What was it she felt at this moment? Confusion, relief, a strange happiness, tiredness – all
were
feelings that swirled through her body. But the one that overwhelmed them all was desire. She imagined closing the distance between them, imagined leaning against his strong, hard body, and surrendering herself in his kiss....      

She turned back to the calf quickly, pushing the image from her mind. But she would at least apologize for her rash behaviour earlier that day.

“You win,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and even managing a tired laugh.  She didn't dare look up into those penetrating eyes. “Be back on the job, tomorrow morning. I admit to speaking before thinking.”