By Kristance Harlow
Inspired by Peggy Shumaker's Moving Water, Tuscon
Thunderclouds gathered on lazy Sunday evenings in the summer. Heavy rain sounded peaceful on roofs braving the storm. The linoleum was green, the plastic felt good on bare feet. We played in the kitchen, waiting for the rolling thunder to come to rest. We savored the first storm of the summer and the first chance to play Garth Brook’s The Thunder Rolls.
The dining chairs beckoned us with possibilities. We ran to see what they offered. Stones to protect us from the green linoleum that had morphed into lava. We stood on the stones and listened to the cracking of the thunder, making the lava jump up and bite our feet as we hopped to the next rock.
After the thunder we moved outside and dressed in mud, playing in the holes the sky dropped for us. We splashed as the sky cleared and our digits turned to prunes. The yard slowly emptied of banana slugs that drank in the wet grass. We screamed and watched to see where they would go. They left trails of slime as they moved along with curious turns of the antennas. Hiding under pieces of plywood before we could melt them with salt.
We stood knee high in the brown cavity. Cars splashed through puddles on the other side of the house. We opened the gate and explored the front yard with the same curiosity as we did the kitchen. The sky was blue and the clouds offered hundreds of unique stories for us to paint. The phone rang and my mother ran inside to grab it, leaving me in charge of my two year old brother. The clouds were too tempting and I looked up instead of at him.
Moments later I realized he was gone and I jumped up. I ventured to the street where he was sitting, cross-legged, on the double yellow lines. He clapped his hands and laughed and that’s when I heard it, a car splashing through a puddle around the corner. In a flash the white car came into view, skidding on the slick pavement.
My brother was waiting for his first adventure. He sat, his hands together not seeing the car and not seeing me. Thunder rumbled in my feet and pushed me into the road so quickly that I still can’t remember how I picked him up and ran back to the yard before my mother opened the front door. The storm moved us there, rumbling on.
