In the Rain

Much better.  Rain's gone and sky's clear again, air's warm.  Rained last night.  Reminds me about rain on another day when I was 18.

I shared an apartment with my brother back then, here in PG.  He had a Ford Falcon beater and I had no car at all, so I rode the bus a lot and bummed rides off Joe.  He was accomodating most of the time and we did okay, didn't usually fight or get in each other's way.

In the late fall that year, his Falcon died and wouldn't start up again.  Joe cursed and bitched about it for a while, but he finally got it to a repair shop where it underwent some sort of repair that would take a few days.  He might have crashed it or been crashed into; I don't remember.  It was broken and was replaced temporarily by a Pinto rental car, pea green, a much more damnable vehicle in my brother's eyes than his Falcon was.  "Gutless," he growled.  We had wheels though and that was what mattered to me.  Pintos were a very early version of American economy cars.  They were poorly made, badly designed and rapidly deteriorated to scrap once they'd been driven off a dealer's lot.

At that time in my life, I was taking a lot of photographs with my Canon FTB SLR camera and took a class at the local community college, MPC.  It was an evening class, so, of course, I needed rides to and from the class and begged often and pitilessly to Joe for a lift.  He often relented, and I tried not look too obviously like I was his sister when I was with him so he could keep his mojo going, single guy that he was.  It was an unspoken deal we'd made and it worked for us to be our version of "cool."

The coolness by brother employed as he went through his day was attractive to girls, he hoped.  Kind of a no-brainer he needed to look cool, have it together.  My friends thought he was good looking, but I just saw him as my brother, not cool at all and definitely not handsome, not to me his little annoying sister.  We did okay though. 

His coolness extended to his Falcon, a 50s-model two-door sedan that was baby blue and white with a push-button radio and two-tone seats, column shift.  Of course, the seats were buried in trash most of the time, but the car had a bit of coolness to it.  The cool image was shot to hell by having to use the Gutless Wonder (Pinto).  Cool was all gone then.  I think Joe just drove it at night so he wouldn't be recognized in it.

One night, I asked/bargained/begged for a ride to my photography class.  He said okay pretty easily, so we grabbed our stuff and got ready to go.  Immediately, a torrent of rain came slashing down and didn't let up all the way across town to the college.  Part way there, I remembered I needed a couple of rolls of film, so we had to go to a camera store at the mall to get them.  The rain was coming down in bibilical proportions, it was dark, and Joe was cursing the Pinto as a matter of course, mainly to keep a psychological distance from it.  "Goddam piece of shit! Look! I'm flooring it and nothing's happening! Piece of crap!"  Like that, nonstop, all across town.  He hated the car, every bit of it. 

We got to the shopping mall and parked, rain still pouring down everywhere, sheets of water flowing across the asphalt.  I got set, opened my door, dashed to the store, rushing to buy the film, thinking class was going to start soon.  Joe stayed back in the car waiting for me.  It was no use for us both to get wet.

I bought the film, stowed it away in my jacket pocket, stepped outside the store opening and looked around for the Pinto.  The rain was still coming down in sheets and the night was pitch black.  I spotted the ugly green subcompact and lined up for it, pulled up my hood over my head and ran like mad for the car, about 25 yards.  I yanked open the door, began to swing my leg in, and shouted, "Okay, I'm back!"

A little boy fell out onto the ground, making a burbling noise.

I stared at him down there in the puddles and sheets of water.  Why was this kid in Joe's car? I scooped the kid up by his right arm and pushed him back into the car and stooped lower to ask my brother what the joke was and saw the obvious:  The man sitting in the driver's seat was a stranger.  His eyes were huge and he couldn't speak.  With the boy back inside the car, I shouted, "Sorry!" and slammed the door closed.  In a matter of 10 seconds I had dumped a stranger's kid on the ground in the drenching rain and thrown him back inside his car and disappeared from their lives. 

I looked left and right, saw another ugly green Pinto ten feet away and ran for it.  I grabbed the door handle, wrenched open the door, stooped to look at the driver first, saw my brother where he was supposed to be and jumped in, soaking wet.  "You'll never believe what just happened," I laughed.  "Let's get out of here!" 

"Nice one, Christine," he said, shaking his head.  The rain pounded down on the ugly little Ford and we drove off into the night.  Hey, ugly cars look alike in the dark, you know?