Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

Shade Raine

"It ain't whut it used 'ta be. Naw suh. It shorely ain't," Shade Raine muttered to himself.

For all his worry, effort, and labor to try and "set it awl tah rights," Shade Raine had to admit that he'd come up short.

And like sweet bread with no sugar, it left a bitter taste on his tongue. Even though he knew, when he looked back over the last few months, that there was nothing more that he could have done to change the way things turned out.

He had pushed his body until he had worn it out. He had prayed until he was all prayed out. Desperate pleas, cries for mercy, day in and day out, he prayed.

But not for himself. Oh no. All his sweat and toil, his incessant supplications, his long days of backbreaking field work, it was all for Dessie.

Anyone who knew Shade Raine, knew that the tall, gangly black boy had been smitten with the mocha beauty the instant he'd laid eyes on her. Within that first year, he had convinced her to jump over the broomstick with him.

They had lived as man and wife for many years now. Except for a few rough patches, theirs had been a good life. With no regrets, he would have sold his soul to make her happy, to see the smiling light return in her coal black eyes, to have his Dessie singing again.

Like she used to, before the dark days of trouble.

It started at the first of summer, when the rains refused to fall.

Day after heat-oppressed day, Shade Raine looked up into the sky and whispered his plea for water.

"Cry fah me. 'Moan Big Sky. Cry fah ole' Shade. Jus' a lil," he would say as the plow kicked up a mushroom cloud of dust, and the steel blade sparked upon a rock unearthed from its tomb of parched soil.

But Big Sky ignored his petitions, turning its big azure back on him with the finality of a woman scorned.

Every morning he looked into the glare of the white hot sun until his eyes were blinded, but the clouds refused to gather and cry.

Not even a whimper.

The grasses in his field turned brown, withering in a dead faint against the cracked earth. The seeds in their long straight rows lay in their dusty cradle, mummified hulls that refused to sprout. The few brave souls among them that dared to break the thickened crust lay blistered and scorched, mortally wounded by the unrelenting heat and drought.

The rippling stream on his land was now a tiny thread that slowly trudged across its arid bed. The well dried up.

Shade Raine surveyed his few remaining head of livestock and counted the days until their slaughter. He would kill them before he'd let them die of thirst.

The preacher riding through a fortnight before had warned of dire consequences if they all did not repent. Shade Raine and Dessie had attended the brush meeting, standing in the shadowy fringes, alone and unnoticed.

The holy man's eyes were brooding, menacing, and he ranted to the ragged crowd, threatening with angry wrath and fury that seemed to bring the horrible vengeance of the Almighty down upon the small circle of worshippers.

But Shade Raine was not fooled. He did not blame God. He did not blame man. This dry spell was like any other that had come before. More intense than most, but a cycle of Nature, nonetheless.

And if Nature decided to close her legs and withhold her bountiful blessings, then no amount of spit-slingin' stompin' sermons and no amount of righteous repentin' was gonna make her open them.

Not till she was good and ready.

Nature would not be intimidated nor dissuaded, not when she'd made up her mind about a matter.