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At dusk, on the hollow roof a faint pattering sounded.
Mr Fremley’s voice sang out mournfully, from his bed.
‘Mr Terle, that ain’t rain! That’s you with the garden hose sprinklin’ well-water on the roof! Thanks for tryin’, but cut it out, now.’
The pattering sound stopped. There was a sigh from the yard below.
Coming around the side of the hotel a moment later, Air Terle saw the calendar fly out and down in the dust.
‘Damn January 29th!’ cried a voice. ‘Twelve more months! Have to wait twelve more months, now!’
Mr Smith was standing there in the doorway. He stepped inside and brought out two dilapidated suitcases and thumped them on the porch.
‘Mr Smith!’ cried Mr Terle. ‘You can’t leave after thirty years!’
‘They say it rains twenty days a month in Ireland,’ said Mr Smith. ‘I’ll get a job there and run around with my hat off and my mouth open.’
‘You can’t go!’ Mr Terle tried frantic
ally to think of something; he snapped his fingers. ‘You owe me nine thousand dollars rent!’
Mr Smith recoiled; his eyes got a look of tender and unexpected hurt in them.
‘I’m sorry.’ Mr Terle looked away. ‘I didn’t mean that. Look now – you just head for Seattle. Pours two inches a week there. Pay me when you can, or never. But do me a favour: wait till midnight. It’s cooler then, anyhow. Get you a good night’s walk towards the city.’
‘Nothin’ll happen between now and midnight.’
‘You got to have faith. When everything else is gone, you got to believe a thing’ll happen. Just stand here, with me, you don’t have to sit, just stand here and think of rain. That’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.’
On the desert, sudden little whirlwinds of dust twisted up, sifted down. Mr Smith’s eye scanned the sunset horizon.
‘What do I think? Rain, oh you rain, come along here? Stuff like that?’
‘Anything. Anything at all!’
Mr Smith stood for a long time between his two mangy suitcases and did not move. Five, six minutes ticked by. There was no sound, save the two men’s breathing in the dusk.
Then at last, very firmly, Mr Smith stooped to grasp the luggage handles.
Just then, Mr Terle blinked. He leaned forward, cupping his hand to his ear.
Mr Smith froze, his hands still on the luggage.
From away among the hills, a murmur, a soft and tremulous rumble.
‘Storm coming!’ hissed Mr Terle.
The sound grew louder; a kind of whitish cloud rose up from the hills.
Mr Smith stood tall on tiptoe.
Upstairs, Mr Fremley sat up like Lazarus.
Mr Terle’s eyes grew wider and yet wider to take hold of what was coming. He held to the porch rail like the captain of a long-becalmed vessel feeling the first stir of some tropic breeze that smelled of lime and the ice-cool white meat of coconut. The smallest wind stroked over his aching nostrils as over the flues of a white-hot chimney.
‘There!’ cried Mr Terle. ‘There!’
And over the last hill, shaking out feathers of fiery dust, came the cloud, the thunder, the racketing storm.
