Unfurling

I’m sitting on the porch in a heat so still it chokes. I’m only out here because I ran out of cool spots on the kitchen tile to sprawl on and wandered out in a daze. The kitchen faucet spews lukewarm. We don’t have air conditioning. I’m sitting with one leg over the side of the porch rocking chair, unfurling myself like a sail made of overalls and unlaced boots.

Dani thinks I’m melodramatic about heat, but then, she grew up here in the land of bird-sized mosquitoes and humidity so thick the walls weep in July. She drinks the tepid water out of a plastic gallon jug that she carries with her all day and sweats through at least two bandanas before lunch, but she never complains. I guess it’s the upside of being a Taurus - a total refusal to admit defeat of any kind, a bullheaded optimist with a Lutheran streak.

Her intractable belief in things turning out all right is what got me here in the first place. She brought me out for a month last May, which I didn’t realize was the five minutes of good weather in Minnesota’s annual allotment. She taught me how to drive stick the way she’d learned, in a pickup she borrowed from her parents’ neighbors who had an expanse of mowed field that was perfect for learning to handle a clutch. She held my hand in the grocery store and beamed at all the people who stopped to congratulate her on her veterinary degree. She leaned in to whisper that the forty-something checkout clerk in the next aisle over had been her first crush, when said clerk was in her twenties and her church youth group leader. We didn’t go to church, but we sure did run into the pastor in the parking lot, and when she introduced me as her girlfriend, I had to hide a grin of my own as the man turned a beautiful shade of pink and stumbled over his own tongue trying to say hi.

We visited her father in the veteran’s home, and spent a night at her sister’s house, where her mother now lives. She watched me play with her two nephews and told me it gave her a vision of our future: her parents’ house, now empty, the vegetable garden. A kid or two.

I loved her. I hated rural Minnesota. Even a few weeks had me itching for Ethiopian food, large bodies of water, and public transit. A vegetable garden had never figured into my plans, such as I had any. The only boots I owned were the anti-slip steel-toed warehouse boots my job bought me every other year. They had no insulation, which I discovered the March we moved out.

But once Dani had a vision, there was no dissuading her. Her sister had warned me about that. She’d charm, debate, and harangue anyone in the way of her plan. And so here I am, making the best of July in a house that hadn’t seen a renovation since the development of shag rugs and avocado-colored refrigerators, sprawling on the wicker rocking chair in search of a breeze. At least life is simple, if not pleasant.

I never listened to the radio before I moved, but here, the most reliable reports belong to a guy named Norman who has been a hobby meterologist for decades and develops local weather predictions so dead-on accurate the local radio station gave him a spot on the morning show. Norman’s got a voice like a buzzing fly and no performance instincts to speak of - he’ll announce a hundred-year blizzard in exactly the same tone and cadence he’ll use to predict a morning drizzle. I’ve become a follower, though, because this morning, Norman promised me the heat was going to break. He promised me a thunderstorm.

That’s one thing I love about this place. Seattle doesn’t get thunderstorms, not like rural Minnesota does. I was in my teens before I saw lightning for the first time. The rain in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t so much fall as gently descend in a cloud of heavy mist. Minnesota weather likes to rough you up a little, and I have respect for that.

So I’m here on the porch, waiting for Norm’s prediction to come through, waiting for the clouds to gather, when Dani’s truck pulls up. The call had come early - three in the morning, maybe four - and she’ll be wanting to shower, maybe even hose off first, if things got ugly.

I give her ten seconds after I hear the truck door slam before calling out to her. “How was it?”

She waits until she hits the porch to answer with a sigh. “Long. Tricky. Calf’s okay. It’s a bull, though.” Her voice straddles a ragged line between exhaustion and worry. Bull calves are a small curse to the dairy farmers around here. The ranchers willing to buy and raise them for meat are winnowing down. The market for veal’s all but dead - “vegetarian” is practically profanity around here, and “animal rights” as unheard of as swearing in church. Dani grew up among these ranches and dairies and considers most of them family. She’ll take their bad news like it’s her own.

It’s one of the things I love about her most.

“I got about two rows of weeding done,” I tell her. “Tomatoes and cukes. Then the sun got insulting.”

“Seriously,” she mutters in agreement. “I’ll water this evening.”

“No need.” I can hear the hope in my voice. “Norm says a storm’s coming.”

“That’d be nice,” she sighs.

We stay on the porch in silence for a few more minutes. It took me mhonths to get used to the pace of life and conversation out here, but I’m starting to slow down to match it. I know Dani’s gathering what’s left of her strength to get herself into the shower. I peel myself out of the rocking chair and head over to her. Her shirt’s soaked through. There’s dirt on her arms and face. Half her ponytail has fallen out of its holder. I love her like this, though. She’s been so much happier since she came home.

She opens her eyes when my shadow falls across her face and blocks the sun, smiling up at me like I’m the only thing she wants to see. She lets me pull her to her feet, and I kneel to unlace her boots while she strips off her shirt and work pants, heading into the house in just her underwear. I’ll take that shower with her, let her rest her face on my shoulder while I wash the dust and sweat out of her hair. We’ll crawl into bed with damp towels and aim the fan directly at us, sleep through the hottest part of the day, and wake with the coming thunder.