~~~
Dan clicked on a smallish, and old, tube-type television and the news played, broadcast from the larger city nearly 100 miles away. The anchors predicted more rain in the intermountain area, though much of the rest of the country would remain dryer than usual. While nothing directly quotable was said, both Daniel and Rachel got the feeling the weatherman didn’t have a very good explanation for the sharp distinction between what seemed to be an everlasting low pressure cold front in the west, but he did express gratitude for all the water and a hope that more snow would be collecting at the higher elevations as December wore on.
Rachel stood from the table, preparing to put away the cups and head down to the room Daniel had given her, when an ambulance followed by a fire truck could be heard coming through the main road in Woodland hills starting down by the city hall and volunteer fire station. Both remained still while they heard the fire truck blare its large air horn as it turned the corner off the main road and onto the crossroad to Daniel’s street. A few seconds later it did the same as it turned onto Millridge Lane towards Dan’s home. Bright red lights flashed about the room even though they were a good four houses away from the corner. The open lots permitted a lot of the light to fill the neighborhood, while the many trees cast dark and flickering shadows in the moving light. For a moment they thought the vehicles were making straight for their house, but they roared by, sirens blaring on the ambulance.
While he stepped out on the porch to see just what the problem could be, having still a hesitant feeling about whatever it was they saw moving through his backyard, he noted that a few other neighbors also had been alerted. Janice from a few houses down had also stepped onto her porch in a robe, but seemed to just stare blankly at the trucks as they rolled up the street. Lights were on in a few other houses with people peeking out, but their expressions were blank. They seemed to be playing the curious cat just for the sake of an ancient duty in the sleepy town rather than any real interest this time.
Then Rachel grabbed his right arm and pointed. At the end of the street and just around the corner the homes and trees were also glowing and flickering but not with the red lights of the fire truck. An amber glow illuminated the bottom of a column of smoke rising up into the drizzly clouds and night air. The effect made it seem the fire smoke was bumping against a great ceiling and fanning out along it to make a canopy over the end of the street.
“Crap!” muttered Daniel and he shoved around Rachel to grab some boots and his coat and then started towards the fire.
Rachel didn’t move. She knew it best to stay out of the way of an emergency crew of which she was not a part, and she had the same feeling about Daniel at the moment. It would be better if someone was going to tell him to stay out of it that it would be better if someone else functioned as the irritant. They were both too high-strung at the moment still to begin an argument.
At the end of the block it was the McCarren’s home that was ablaze. There were only five or so people with the two vehicles, rushing to connect a hose to the fire hydrant across the street and to set up a perimeter. Daniel could see Mrs. McCarren standing on their front lawn, her face held a cold, stone expression, as though she herself didn’t have any personal investment in the home going up in smoke. Eventually, one of the hastily-clad firemen wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and started walking her away from the work at hand. He caught Daniel’s eye, and not seeing anyone else in attendance from the neighborhood he led her in his direction.
Where is everyone? Daniel thought. The one other time a fire broke out in someone’s garage over the last year it seemed like the entire town arrived to fill the streets and watch the action. For this one there were barely a few glances out of the neighboring windows whenever there was a particularly loud crack as the fire or the emergency workers yelled instructions.
“Keep her here!” said the fireman.
Daniel thought he recognized him as one of the younger volunteers with the city FD. That was good in a way. It meant at least that the locals in the organization behind emergency services in town were not so mesmerized by the rains that they would ignore their pagers. He expected that a truck from Springton down below would be arriving shortly, but he could not see it coming from that particular location. The road up the hill was not in view even with no smoke or fire.
His arm around Mrs. McCarren to prevent her from leaving didn’t seem to have much effect. No motion was made whatsoever. In fact, McCarren didn’t even lean into Dan to seek a little comfort or shed a tear at all. She was just as much a zombie as her neighbors around them. Suddenly he thought of her husband as three fire fighters began spraying across the top of the garage and second floor to start abating the blaze.
“Where is your Husband?” Daniel asked.
She just shook her head slowly, arms crossed before her.
“Mrs. McCarren! Where is your husband? Was he at home?”
Her gaze at the home continued while she finally answered, “I’m not sure. The last thing I remember was Jonathan saying he had a way to stop the rain. He was going on and on about the rain and how he was going to scare it away or something.”
“Scare it away?!” A sense of dread came upon Dan then.
Taking her by the shoulders to face him, Daniel lifted Mrs. McCarren’s chin to get her to look at his face. At that her eyes seemed out of focus and dazed.
“Where is he, Mrs. McCarren? Where is Jonathan?”
“He went out to the garage…he said he had a plan and he went out to the garage,” she was nodding her head slightly as though she were confirming for herself what had happened. “He went out and the next thing I knew those men were telling me to come outside.”
The men she spoke of seemed to be the man dressed loosely in a fireman’s coat and the EMT wearing mostly casual clothes with his emblazoned coat that arrived in the Ambulance. They must have been first into the house. That probably didn’t go very well with the chief and the firemen on the main truck, but the main portion of the house really hadn’t been in flame when they arrived. It was a breach of procedure that the ambulance workers were likely to be forgiven by default during the rest of the crew since they immediately went to work setting up the hoses.
“You’re saying he’s in there, where the fire is?”
Both Daniel and Mrs. McCarren turned to look at the home and the front of the garage had been completely engulfed. The one window on the side of the garage had broken out and there were flames shooting up to the height of the peaked eve above it, perpetuating the flames as the firemen tried to dowse the roof first and then aim at the structure. Finally, the elderly woman seemed to come out of her comma. Her jaw dropped and quivered and tears starting forming quickly behind her thick glasses.
“Jonathan!” she moaned and started to move to the home. Daniel’s grip easily prevented it, but then her knees seemed to give way and he found himself holding her up.
Another truck with the Springton logo emblazoned on the side in gold and an ambulance with a private company name arrived. The firemen bounced out and started giving instructions to both their own team members and those volunteers already working the fire. Already, the volunteers were taking heat for not getting some water into the broken window nor checking the back side, and in fine, generally doing a poor job of putting the fire out. Daniel felt bad for them, even while he himself stumbled at what to do for Mrs. McCarren now sobbing heavily against his coat.
“Is she alright?” asked one of the contracted ambulatory workers as two of them rushed to him and a third removed a stretcher from the back of their vehicle.
“I think she may be suffering from shock or something now,” Daniel replied, and they took her from him and quickly sat her on the stretcher.
The female ambulance worker arrived with the stretcher, then began wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Mrs. McCarren’s arm and took control of the situation, as Daniel turned to watch the fire. He stood for a few
moments more and realized he really had nothing further he could do and started backing away, half side-stepping, and half walking backwards as he continued to watch the efforts. If Jonathan McCarren had entered the garage, with whatever idea he had about ceasing the rain, he must no longer be. The fire was intense and hot and with all walls of the garage blackened and issuing flame no one would have lived through it.
What could he have been thinking, was the last thought playing in Daniel’s mind when his awkward retreat from the scene bumped him into Rachel. He was startled but she quickly took him by the arm and continued walking him back to his home.
“Did you learn anything?” she asked.
Now it was Daniel’s turn to give blank expressions. He was still trying to turn over the few words he’d had from Mrs. McCarren and resolve in his own mind what might have happened in her garage. It was beginning to seem as though the whole town was going insane and the only driver of it was the rain. Yet, when they needed the rain to, say, put out a fire, it sprinkled or withheld.
“Wait a minute!” Daniel said, addressing Rachel but putting his energy into turning back to the fire.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
Daniel took four or five steps back from her and stood. After a second or two she watched as he clasped his hands before him and became very quiet.
Again she inquired, “What are you doing, Daniel?”
His voice was gruff when he replied. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or crying. The explanation may not have been entirely clear as she tried to listen over the noise of the fire and of the people working to put it out.
“I’m trying something.”
“What?” she cried loudly. “What are you doing? Just tell me.”
Then, with a great crashing sound of heavy drops on the streets and roofs behind them, a wall of rain rushed toward the fire poured down upon them. It instantly drenched the two of them standing in the street and began running into their collars turning everything wet. It reminded Daniel of the super, intense storm cells he had seen in the Midwest when he was young. He raised his head and smiled. The rain was so intense he could see the fire crew exhibit difficulty even seeing what they were trying to hose down. After about forty-five seconds of the flood the fire hoses were shut off. Daniel raised his head as best as he could against the torrent and smiled.
Rachel could not understand why Daniel continued to stand in the near midnight, rain pouring so hard it would likely flood the road in a moment, watching flames die on a garage a hundred yards away. But her perception changed somewhat.
“What have you done?” she asked this time.
Daniel turned slowly and smiled at her as he did. “I haven’t really explained why I came down to the park yet.”
She held herself with arms wrapped tightly. Her hair had flattened entirely to the side of her head. As water freely flowed as in a stream across from the terraced yard to her right, over the top of the road in inches depth and then into the declining yards below them to the left, Rachel shook her head.
“No…I guess you haven’t. …I mean you told me a little. But why did you come down? Was it because of the rain?”
He walked up to her and put his arm around her as he said, “I think it’s time I told you.”