The Drought Doctor
It was so dry the tips of our fingers cracked open, and we got blood in the cornbread. Then we ran out of corn, and we got blood in the potatoes. The dust kicked up so bad that the men came in from the fields the color of putty — when they kissed us, they left dry dust on our lips. Ruth lost her baby at four months. She couldn’t even cry; her tear ducts were all parched out.
Then the man said he could bring us rain. He had kind of a funny look to him, over-tall, like someone was pulling him towards the sky. Of course we were skeptical. We’d heard all the same stories you have. But our cows were keeling over in their stalls, our men were coughing gray dust into the sheets. We scraped together what little money we had, but he said he didn’t do it for money. We said fair enough, and he went and sat in the pasture.
Two weeks went by and still no rain. Little Johnny Nilsson took ill and died, just withered right up in his bed. Finally we ran out of apples, the only thing left with any water in them. We went out to the pasture.
He was still sitting there cross-legged, staring straight ahead.
“Still no rain,” Ruth said, “Looks like whatever you’re doing isn’t working.”
He squinted up at her.
“Just give it time,” he said.
“Mister,” said Jonas, “Our kids are dying. We got no more time.”
He just shook his head in a funny way and turned away from us. Jonas grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look up.
“We’re talking to you! This is serious!”
The man rolled his eyes, almost like he was mocking us. And the truth was, we couldn’t handle it. This interloper, sitting in our field, treating us like we were stupid — we just fell on him. All this time we’d been kind and decent to one another, sharing our apples, trying to scrape together a life, and we took out all our stored-up evil on him. When we were finished he lay face-down in the dirt. Dark blood trickled from his ear. I bent low and put my head against his back — no heartbeat. We stood empty in the dry field. Then the rain poured down on all of us.