Storm Cover

“Arrgh! No signal!”

The storm in her mind is more severe than the rain pummeling my rooftop.

I’ve endured many storms over the century. Up until twenty years ago the Coles took care of any damage Mother Nature inflicted upon me. Now I stand alone, weathered by time but still able to shelter any life that ventures within, as is my purpose.

"I hate these enforced family weekends at the farm!”

She isn’t much younger than her great grandmother Beth was when she sat alone here, in nearly the exact same spot, with more tears running down her cheeks than any rain my worn exterior has endured. That was the day Beth learned that Robert wouldn’t be coming back from the war. Left alone with three young daughters, an infant son and this farm to manage, her heart was ravaged beyond repair. She never remarried, her love for Robert was everlasting.

Beth was a strong woman. The Coles still farm this land today thanks to her fierce determination to honour Robert’s wish to “till the land and harvest God’s bounty” when he asked her, the eldest daughter of the town’s only physician, to be his wife. Townsfolk supported her through the dirty thirties, especially the men who built me at the Cole’s Barn Raising in 1927. Beth’s meals that weekend quickly won her a spot in each of their hearts. Her peach cobbler and limitless supply of freshly squeezed lemonade was remembered for months after I claimed this spot in the pasture. Beth was so grateful for each who took time away from their own farms and families to help hers. Feeding them well was the least she felt she could do to show her appreciation.

“If my cousins weren’t such annoying little brats I wouldn’t be out here, stuck in this smelly, rotting barn. I just wanted a little screen privacy. Now I can’t even get back to the house to get a signal! How will I know what Nicco is up to!”

Beth’s oldest girl, Laura, married the neighbour’s son when she was nineteen and they built their home on adjoining land to stay close to Beth and help her with the farm. Beth’s second and third daughters moved to the city and married “professionals”. Her only son, Bob Junior, went off to university to study Agriculture. When he came back to the farm with his new bride, Beth moved into town. With her blessing, BJ transformed the family farm into a thriving grain enterprise. BJ’s oldest son, Mark, runs the business now. Mark had the new silos erected and sold all the livestock. That’s when I became a historical relic in the pasture. The young woman who has taken refuge here this afternoon is Mark’s niece from the city, Beth’s sixth great granddaughter. All three generations of Coles, soon to be four, gather here at least once during the summer to reconnect and reminisce. Beth would be so proud. Robert too. A true family legacy.

I’m glad this city girl is oblivious to the pair of mice watching her, unsure if it’s safe to venture far from their nest. Her inevitable screams if she took a moment to experience her surroundings would terrify them. They’re cautious as it is, never having seen a creature like her before; brightly coloured, loud, never still. Their bright eyes stare above twitching noses, curiously watching her head dart from one window to another, searching for a sign that the sudden downpour that brought her inside, near their home, will end.

“Fuuuck!”

The clouds are getting darker and erupt suddenly, spewing hailstones in torrents against my walls like the roaring boom of timpani in a Mahler symphony. The mice burrow deep into their nest, more afraid of the human’s mounting fury than the relentless percussive solo beating against the earth.

“I caaaan’t staaaand thiiiis!”

The mice and I know hailstorms never last long. We’re content to listen to the melodic rise and fall of cascading ice pellets which, on this occasion, are punctuated by a nearly hysterical young woman’s anguished cries bemoaning imagined scenes of her beloved Nicco, left alone in the city. She can’t hear nature’s exhilarating symphony that she’s immersed in because the epic story unfolding in her imagination is much louder and more engaging.

“That bitch Rachel is going to sink her acrylic claws into him while I’m stuck out here in Nowheresville. I hate this!”

She plays her coloratura role with all the torment of The Queen of the Night in Act 2 of Mozart’s Magic Flute - “Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart”. Her tormented aria, meant to be executed with a flurry of fingers and thumbs stabbing a smudged black screen will be sorely missed by the beloved virtual friends who had been keeping her apprised of the weekend’s clubbing adventures back home.

“Ding!” “He kept buying Rachel drinks.”

“Ding!” “She was all over him on the dance floor.”

“Ding!... Ding!” Nicco wasn’t answering her texts. She had nothing to cling to but gossipy texts and her unleashed imagination.

It’s a long twenty minutes past the hailstorm’s fury when she rouses from the darkness of her self-inflicted suffering and realizes she can walk back to the farmhouse in dry comfort. The sun is shining deceptively in a nearly cloudless sky. Anyone who lives here knows how quickly the weather can change. She’s disoriented, tired and has already decided that she does not want to talk to anyone when she returns to the farmhouse.

No one has even noticed that she been absent from a harmonious afternoon of children playing outdoors while adults pitch horseshoes or gather produce from the garden for dinner. Their smiles and laughter reveal a scene unscathed by the pocket of hail and rain that came down east of the poplar grove, a storm she would also have missed had she stayed on the porch swing and left her phone up in the room where she’d slept last night.

Her great aunt Laura sees her emerging from the poplar grove and walks toward her. “I used to walk this path a lot when I was dating your Uncle Norman. We used to meet at the barn and, well, that was a long time ago. Are you enjoying yourself, Brook, dear?”

Brook nods silently, too weary and self-absorbed to process what her aunt is saying. “I think I’ll have a little nap before dinner,” she manages and slips into the farmhouse, eager to recharge her phone while she wallows in her self-imposed solitude a little longer.