Promises

Mostly cloudy overnight with rain likely.

   We had heard the thunder from distant storms all night long.  Dry and tinny the sound, bang, not boom, refusing to roll.  When dawn came we could see that the storms were moving away from us. Drought-weary and longing to feel the rain in our faces, we ran to the truck, the spent grass crackling like fire beneath our feet, and raced westward.  The storms were swifter however, and had passed well beyond us by the time we arrived where they had been. The roadway was barely damp.  Dolores, my sweet, sorrowful other, cried and railed against those "liars" from the city who had promised us rain. "I'm sick and tired of it," she said. "Let's just keep on going.  Let's just keep on going and never come back."

   "Ah, Dolores, you mustn't trust too much in what men say," I said.  You know that city folk don't amount to much when it comes to calling the weather.  Listen, I promise you that it will rain again soon.  The signs are everywhere.  The rain crow calls again and again from the thicket, for instance, while the burnt-land bird flies low to the ground.  And if you'd been down to the county road around midnight, you could have heard ol' Annabeth's rooster crowing.  But even if all the signs fail and the rains don't come, don't you worry.  I know a rainmaker out of Wichita who says he can drum us up a doozy anytime.

"Promise?" she sniffled.

"Promise," I said.

"Pinkie promise?" she asked.

"Oh, absolutely!'" I said.

"Alright'" she said.  "Then let's just go on home."
                                                                                             glwarren 2009,2014







Notes

   Thirty five years ago my father-in-law and I were visiting in his garden when a cuckoo's call, a "kuk, kuk, kuk, kow, kow, kow," interrupted our conversation. "Rain crow," said my father-in-law. "Rain by tomorrow." I nodded, but said nothing.  When I got home I searched my library for reference to "rain crow" and found one in Henry Hill Collins Jr.'s Complete Field Guide To American Wildlife: East, Central and North, 1959. According to Collins, the black- and yellow-billed cuckoos "are often called 'rain crows' by persons who have learned their birds on the farm and not from bird books." And this in Bird Notes by Harry L. Rhodes, 1932: "Because he is frequently heard when the atmosphere is moist and warm, he is called the 'rain crow'." I have since also seen "storm crow" in the literature somewhere.

   The burnt-land bird is the common nighthawk, so called due to its habit of resting/nesting on barren ground with a predilection for burned areas: "Its love for conifer country laid open by forest fires has given it the name, 'burnt-land bird'." I believe this is especially true for the southern pine forests of the southeast where there is frequent prescribed burning of undergrowth. The common wisdom in my area, the southern plains, is "Swallows fly low, rain to follow." With some artistic license I have applied it to the nighthawk since both birds rely heavily on flying insects caught on the wing for their meal. When approaching storm fronts with their winds and high humidities force insects to fly closer to the ground, the birds follow.

   And everyone knows that when the rooster crows at midnight there will be rain before morning!!

Gerald