Only the mayor, a heavy sleeper, slept through both the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was Cheri, rosy and flushed, who shook him awake three hours later to tell him the fireman wanted his permission to ring the church bells as the outraged preacher had barricaded himself in.
Chad, although drowsy, still noticed the strange new aura surrounding his wife. Others might describe it as happiness, but he put it down to her exhilaration at the breaking of the drought. Again he congratulated himself on having had the sense to pick a woman who excelled in her duties as the First Lady of a god-fearing farming community. Chuckling to himself, he dusted off his raincoat and pulled it on over his pajamas.
“I wonder who the woman was?” he remarked to Cheri as the Lexus pulled out of the slippery driveway. Cheri blushed, but as usual Chad was too preoccupied with himself to notice.
The preacher had been awoken not by the thunder but by a sudden chorus of nightingales. When the beautiful but piercing cries filled his bedroom he leaped to his feet and, dragging a great flannel robe over his shrunken frame, flung open the window and peered out. He didn’t notice the trembling raindrops bursting over his bald pate; the sight before him was so frightening and so lovely that his heart jolted against his chest. He wondered for one brief moment whether he had been blessed with a visitation, but then as he looked closer he recognized Miranda.
She was dancing nude in the rain, her body contorting like a snake to its own music. At first he thought that she was being attacked by a flock of birds, but as he looked closer he saw that the nightingales hovered around her, each holding a strand of her long black hair in its beak, each whirling madly like a demented dervish. A lone owl sat on a branch above, as if it were conducting the whole event.
“Witchcraft!” the preacher cried out and rushed outside, throwing his coat over her and bundling her back into the house. After pushing her into the dingy bedroom and bolting the door, he sat at his desk, shaking with rage and terror. It was then that he heard the fireman banging on the door, demanding that the church bells be rung.
Chad stood on the back of a fire truck in front of the church, heedles of the pouring rain. He held a megaphone in one hand while his other arm lay draped around Cheri. It was a posture he felt conveyed family values and leadership. The mayor cleared his throat, the wet, elated crowd hushed into silence, and Chad began. “This is incredible! It is truly a miracle! God has blessed Sandridge!”
A great cheer went up. Overwhelmed, Chad squeezed Cheri’s arm for effect; he was a strong believ
er in exploiting the moment.
“I don’t know who we should thank,” he said, gesturing toward Jacob’s trailer, “the rainmaker, or the woman who chose to make the greatest sacrifice of all!”
At this Cheri blushed again. Her flushed cheeks went unnoticed by the men, but several women looked knowingly at each other. Rebecca leaned over to whisper into the ear of the beautician.
Chad continued, oblivious to the flame of gossip that was spreading like wildfire through the women in the crowd.
“Instead, I suggest we give thanks to the Almighty Himself!”
Obediently the townsfolk followed Cheri Winchester’s example as she bent her head to pray.
The second night Jacob was visited by the fireman’s wife; the third night the beautician practically pounded down the door; the fourth night he was frightened the van might actually tip over as the schoolmistress vigorously rode him. On the fifth night Rebecca drank the miniature bottle of whiskey she’d been saving for Thanksgiving and marched over to the trailer park. The rain did not stop. Exhausted, Jacob stayed in his trailer.
He was thinking of one woman only. With each new conquest his desire for Miranda became more urgent. Between the sessions of lovemaking he started taking long walks around the church, marking the time the preacher locked the iron gates, where the wall was lowest, and any other information that he might be able to use. On his second trek around the perimeter he noticed the owl following, flying from tree to tree.
“You’re with her?” he asked. The owl, as if in response, flew nearer and perched on the handle of an abandoned plow.
“Tell her it will be soon. I will send her a signal.”
The owl cocked its head then flew off to the belfry. As Jacob watched, slowly a plan manifested.
Miranda leaned against the bars of the diamond-shaped window. The owl was just visible as it zigzagged toward her through the pelting rain. It landed on the windowsill then squeezed itself through the bars. Hooting softly it shook the rain from its feathers.
Miranda held out her hand. The owl leaped onto her arm and walked up to her shoulder. Tenderly it rubbed its head against her cheek.
Have you brought me a message? she asked. The owl, clicking with its tongue and hooting, told her that the rainmaker would come for her before the next full moon.
Are you sure? What about the other women? she ventured, wanting the reassurance she already sensed.
Don’t waste my time, replied the owl crossly. You know it is you and only you he makes love to. He has a plan and they are part of it. Then, upon seeing a scurry on the other side of the room, the owl swooped down to catch a mouse.
The heavens had been opened and the rainmaker was paid a thousandfold for his moisture-inducing efforts. The women couldn’t get enough of him. Their nocturnal visits to his caravan became so frequent that they started to pass each other in the now muddy field that was the trailer park. Each woman discreetly ignored the other as they crossed paths, hair concealed by headscarves, ludicrous sunglasses wrapped around elated faces. Some even wore false eyebrows, false mustaches, and wigs.
Their cries of pleasure pooled in the crevices and corners of the trailer, eventually gushing out the windows and straight up into the overcast sky, triggering a new downpour every time. It was perfect alchemy. Soon Jacob was rendezvousing with every female over the age of sixteen and under the age of seventy-two and the pharmacy had run out of every known method of contraception.
But with every seduction Jacob felt his heart become a little more hollow. For the first time in his life he craved one woman and one woman only. Although he was able to envisage her image with each new caress, and although he knew that she was trembling in unison with him, it wasn’t enough. “One more week. When the water rises another four inches I will make my move,” he calculated, trying desperately to stem the gnawing void he felt inside.
His only comfort was her ambassador. He started giving the owl gifts to take to her: a pale green glass marble he’d won as a child; a locket containing a crystallized droplet rumored to be the last tear shed by Marie Antoinette before she was beheaded; and a fragile shell from the North Sea whose echoes had a mysterious Irish lilt that rang out from its spiral depths.
Early each morning the bird arrived at the belfry where Miranda was incarcerated. It would drop the gift at her feet, perch on the end of the rusty brass bed and, in low hoots, give her Jacob’s messages—descriptions of where they would flee to, where they would live once he’d freed her. He told her about a beautiful island down in the Mississippi Delta where he had grown up. There they would build a house, grow fruit trees and, most of all, be safe. He even told her that he wanted to have a child with her. “The loveliest child in the world, who will be able to make rain and talk to the birds; a child made from a rainbow,” he said. As the owl talked, Miranda’s eyes would widen with Jacob’s dreams. Soon, she thought, soon he will come for me.
From her window high above the town she could see the silver trailer. She imagined it lifting up into the sky and flying away, leaving only a glittering arc. Then they would be on his island, where she would have a voice as exquisite as the nightingale’s.