November 24, 2014

PodCastle Miniature 80: Days of Rain

* Author : Rachael K. Jones

* Narrator : Cat Rambo

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

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PodCastle Miniature 80: Days of Rain is a PodCastle original.

Rated G

Days of Rain

by Rachael K. Jones

When the wind smelled savory and the clouds looked like burnished

gold, Mom would round up all the pots, pans, buckets, and basins in

the house and send us outside to tuck them beneath the rain gutters

ahead of the chicken soup rain. The summer draft only fell once a

year, and you had to know how to read the signs, but with Mom on the

watch, we never missed a storm.

If we were extra quick about it, Mom would open the special freezer

where she kept the remains of the winter draught and scoop out a

cupful of peppermint snow for each of us: one for me, and one for

Marie. We’d sit side by side in the heavy summer’s heat while the

clouds piled up and up, layer upon layer of gold with pulsing light in

their dark hearts. Marie liked to lick at the mound of snow in her mug

as if it were ice cream, while I preferred to let the heat melt it to

a shimmering slush before I sipped, sending a peppermint-sweet

coolness running through my whole body, the essence of winter to

banish summer’s weight.

We’d barely sleep from anticipation, the rumbles above echoed in our

tummies. In the middle of the night, Marie shook me awake to watch

faerie fire skip between the thunderheads. Then the downpour

started–first just a drop or two tapping the glass, and then quicker,

faster, a rising tempo, a thundering heartbeat, a deluge of chicken

soup, the essence of summer raining from the sky.

At dawn, if school was out, Mom would let us play in the soup as it

poured down in warm sheets. Marie and I would put on red galoshes and

raincoats and charge out the door, with a shouted promise to be back

by dinner.

For hours we’d splash in fragrant puddles swirling with noodles like

earthworms. Or we would throw back our hoods and stand with our mouths

wide open, taking summer into every fiber of our being. It made you

feel warm through and through, like a heavy blanket, or a sister’s

hug.

Once, an old beater of a blue truck rumbled by too quickly and kicked

up a wave of soup from a pothole, soaking Marie’s leggings above her

galoshes. Her eyes filled up, and I thought she might cry, so I

stripped off my own raincoat and let the storm soak me until she

laughed and didn’t mind anymore.

We decided to go home a little early to change into dry clothes. When

we rounded the corner into our cul-de-sac, we were surprised to find

Mom in the street barefoot and coatless, stomping in a puddle, her

skirt hitched to her knees, shrieking like a child. For the first

time, it occurred to me she might have been a little girl once, too.

“Mom, you look silly!” said Marie, giggling. “What are you doing?” Mom

dropped her arms, looking a bit sheepish as she shooed us inside for

some lemonade and a shower. “Every year goes by faster,” she said.

“Sometimes you have to make it stand still.” And that was all the

explanation we got. I watched Mom closely the rest of that day, but I

couldn’t detect anything else strange about her. I thought she

lingered at the window, but I could be misremembering that.

Once Dad got home, we’d circle the house together collecting the

buckets and bowls of summer draught, which Mom and Dad would pour into

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