Don’t you wish we’d just quit talking about it? Politics, religion, sex are all off the table, weather should be too.
It rained in Texas at the funeral of the drowned child, it was all anyone could talk about. Winter’s getting warmer every year, they say, at the reception following the suicide’s memorial.
It’s the only safe topic, my wife says.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, all impending, but first we have to get through hurricane season.
*
In everyone’s family, there’s one: watches the Doppler daily, calls you to let you know when there’s weather in your area. Isn’t there always weather in the area?
Better take the kids to the basement, she says.
We don’t have a basement.
Maybe it’ll pass over.
I’ll paint the blood of a lamb on the door.
What?
We’ll go into the bathroom if the rain picks up anymore.
Good, good.
*
Saturday, it’s clear and warm, hot for the end of September. I walk to the store. Inside, the old man ahead of me doesn’t make eye contact with the cashier as he’s buying a pack of Camels. He wears the brim of his cap low on his forehead.
As I’m leaving, I pause, start as the door closes and he’s just on the other side.
This heat, he says, but doesn’t finish. Instead, he pulls his cap up, wipes his forehead with his sleeve, eyes cast down.
I know it, I tell him.
Don’t remember September being this hot before, not in my life time.
I nod, but he’s not looking. I open my mouth, like there was something I was going to say.
For the life of me, I can’t think of it.