Spring and Fall

Spring and Fall

(7-2-08)

Outside is the low growl of thunder, and just like that, the weather breaks and there is a storm moving in. The temperature drops about fifteen degrees in two seconds, and a sloppy wind that reeks of damp dirt and verdant rustling sweeps across the porch. All around us you can hear those big sharp drops of rain crash down onto the old flat earth a hundred yards off in every direction. The desperate, eerie murmurings from the wind chimes croon songs from the front yard, and as lightning bullets in the distance, a frenzied barking erupts from the back of the house.

This is all in maybe ten seconds time. Then that loping wind pushes a little faster across the porch, and smacks into the screen door hard enough to make it bounce out on its hinges. All the while here are Lizzie and I just sitting back on her porch, calm as any cats in the world. I’m watching Lizzie watching the storm, while she works her way through an orange.

There’s a funny thing about fruit that people never think of while they’re eating it. Fruits are full of seeds, right? And seeds are where baby plants come from. So really when you’re eating fruit, you’re kind of chomping all over something genitals, aren’t you?

There’s a guy at my school got caught doing some very odd things with a warmed-up grapefruit once. It always made me wonder if that counted as an interspecies relationship. I don’t know, maybe there’s just something about fruit that can be a little too human to a guy…

And besides that, nobody eats an orange quite like Lizzie, I swear to you. She can’t just peel the thing and eat it, like any normal person. She has to cut it into slices, and then pucker her lips around the soft meat part of each one, and pull the juicy bits into her mouth. Lizzie’s never in any hurry about doing anything, and watching her work over that orange is just about driving me nuts.

Around us, the storm’s picking up spunk, and by now the wind is smacking the screen door around like an old dog on a short leash. At the back of the house, Lizzie’s mutt is still barking his head up at the sky, whining his head off because no one’s doing anything about it. Even I’m getting my ears ready for the sirens to start up. You see, we Kansas kids are raised so that we don’t take a tornado warning seriously until we see one rolling down the street right at us. There are guys a town over who chase the things for fun. But even the rest of us who aren’t that crazy are too immune to do much more than keep our eyes and ears open a little wider just in case.

Lizzie, on the other hand, doesn’t even pretend to take interest. Ever since she was a tyke she and her pop have spent every summer down in Florida with her grandma. I’ve seen Lizzie look at a twister no more than a couple of miles away and say, no joke, “That’s all you’ve got? Hah, try one of those but twice as big and full of seawater!”

So even now, as the sirens do catch, Lizzie just keeps sucking away at that orange, looking as if she hasn’t a care in the world. Me, I’m getting just a little nervous watching the way the sycamore branches are swinging hard like a hundred pound weight is sitting on them, and listening to the huge racket building all around us. So I say, “Lizzie, don’t you think we ought to maybe go downstairs?”

Lizzie looks up at me surprised, with her lips still wrapped around that last slice of orange. She finishes it and puts her plate aside and tells me, “Sure Jake, if you want.”

Something in her blue eyes sparks just a little brighter, like laughter, and I feel god-awful embarrassed as I follow behind her into the house. Whether she’s mocking me for being skittish about the storm, or she’s noticed me watching her, I don’t know. Either way I’m a class A idiot, and I can feel the back of my neck getting hot.

It’s not like I act like this all the time; don’t get the wrong impression. It’s just lately I’ve felt really kind of…different around Lizzie. We’ve known each other damn near forever, and Lizzie has always been one of my best friends. I remember us riding bikes and catching bugs as little kids. We spent all our springs and winters and autumns together, because we’ve always lived only a few houses apart. And at the end of every summer she’d come back from her grandma’s and we’d compare adventures and share stories.

But it’s like last summer, Lizzie came back different or something. All of a sudden I felt like Lizzie was a new person. She didn’t really act any different, I told myself, it’s just that I was noticing all these things about her that I hadn’t seen before. Like, the way her jeans fit around her hips or the little smooth lines of muscle in her legs. Or, how when she laughed her cheeks would dimple up just so, and her blonde curls would shimmer all over. I’d be bugged out over little things like the freckles splattered across her cheeks or how soft her hands seemed. I kept telling myself to cool it, because this was just Lizzie how she’d always been. Part of me still hasn’t taken to listening, and I’m sure you can guess which part.

It’s like somewhere between fifteen and sixteen my good pal Lizzie turned into a total babe, and I turned into a bumbling idiot. Lizzie is a year older than me, and almost as tall, and all of a sudden I felt like this little kid next to her.

And that’s why now I’m standing here in the doorway of Lizzie’s kitchen, trying not to notice how short her shorts are or how maybe she’s left one too many buttons open on her top. Here’s this wallop of a storm outside, and Lizzie leaned over trying to pacify old Baron and get him downstairs. And then there’s me just standing here with my tongue hanging out, hoping that Lizzie doesn’t turn around right this second and look at me.

“Hey Jake?” she calls, without (thank God) turning around, “Would you go downstairs and call Baron? He’s just not cooperating with me.”

I’ve got just enough time to get a handle on myself before she spins around to face me and goes on, “Just tie him up by the washer, and I’ll be down in a minute. I guess you were right; this storm’s looking pretty bad.”

“Sure thing,” I say brightly, then goad the dog into following me down into the basement.

Down here it’s mostly just crates and boxes. With the exception of the one finished corner that serves as a laundry room, Lizzie’s basement even has a dirt floor. I tie Baron up and pet him til he’s calmed down and half-asleep, and listen to the wind and rain beating the house. You can tell how the rain is starting to hit the old paneling sideways now, and I bet ten to one that if Lizzie’s basement had a window to peek out of, you’d see the sky getting greener by the second. Upstairs, I can still pick out the noise from the screen door flapping, and then a second later, there’s a huge thunk! and a scream.

Baron falls back at barking, and I cry “Lizzie!” and rush up the stairs two at a time. Coming around the corner, I can see where pots and pans have fallen, and there’s rain puddled in around some of the open windows. The lights are starting to flicker by now, and in the living room, I spot Lizzie underneath them, looking scared out of her wits. Right in front of her, not inches away, the entire TV setup has fallen on its face. This is hundreds of pounds of shelves and electronics, some of them still tethered to the walls by their cords, others wet and sparking, crashed to pieces at Lizzie’s feet. At the front of the house, just a few more feet away, the big picture windows that look out onto the porch are closed, and they look like they’re about to give.

This is where I stop thinking for a minute and act completely on adrenaline. I grab Lizzie, just pick her up, and hold her to my chest, running to the kitchen as fast as I can. As we’re slipping through the door to the basement, there’s an enormous violent crashing sound, as if a tiny planet just exploded, and I can picture a million little daggers of glass showering down where we’d been standing just seconds ago.

At the bottom of the stairs, I set Lizzie down and run back up to yank the door shut before the entire contents of the kitchen tumble down to join us. I have just enough time to bound back down the stairs and see Lizzie standing there staring wide-eyed an fixedly at me, before the wind takes over and the lights go out for good.