Robert Brock - Rainy Morning

Robert Brock stayed in his bed this sunday morning. Usually up with the day break .. today he would lie in repose as the lightning flickered through the dawns twilight ..the thunder marched around in the sky above the pavilion .. the white lighting pulsed and Robert Silently counted to himself .. one … two . Three. .. Fo....CRRRAAAACK! The thunder would pronounce. The storm was growing closer .. he remembered his grandfather counting just so when the storms of his childhood rolled though Tunica County .. Pap would cut his eyes to toward the heavens and count from the flash to the thunder and then declare ..”Its five miles now” ..Five miles away at the count of Five .. Four miles away at the count of four , .. three to three two to two until like on this morning the lighting and the thunder would synchronize when they had each arrived together at the Pavilion Doorstep .. like a pair of familiar visitors one wrapping upon the door with a sledge hammer the other waving a welding torch each refusing to be ignored or turned away. Robert thought of pulling the string to the light bulb suspended from the ceiling above his head. He needn't get up since he had tied the length of hay bale rope to the end of the chain some time ago .. getting more difficult to get around makes one become inventive with respect to ones surroundings ..why just next to his bed was one of his better ideas he thought .. it was the wide mouth Gatorade bottle that he'd found on the side of the road while Canning .. He had never tasted the orange beverage that came in that Bottle but he sure did appreciate the maker of the product making it with such a wide mouth . .. the wide mouth made it all the more easier for him to roll to his side in the darkest hours of the night and relieve himself into it without pissing all over his blanket. Yep the aches and pains of arthritis and old age called for invention.

He wondered how Willie was riding out the storm over on his ridge. Being the older brother he thought Willie should be the one that worried after him …. but time has a not so funny trick that causes the young to have to look after the old … the roles flipped …. reversed ..Nope no longer did big brother pick on and watch over little brother .. now little brother had to remind older brother to pour the contents of his piss jugs and his chamber pots out as they would begin to stink to high heaven when Willie left them unattended ..especially in the July heat ..

Maybe later if the rain let up he would hike the mile and a half through the woods to see Willie and to make him pour his feces out.

The morning continued to creep in. Now the sound of the thunder became distant and the welding torch was not so insistent ...now Robert could hear the rhythmic popping of the water hitting his collection of catch cans. There were only five of them .. Two .. one quart pork and bean cans .. one plastic half gallon vanilla ice cream container and two 14oz green bean cans .. As the sounds of the storms receded the chorus of the variable plopping was getting into full swing ..like an orchestra that was just warming up . Each instrument playing its own random notes each catch can beneath the leak in the rusty tim roof having its own distinct cadence and timbre ...all out of whack but somehow beautiful to Roberts ear. Just another example of the randomness of existence he thought.

But Randomness couldn't just be tied to existence ..there were lots of different kinds of randomness that Robert Brock knew of ..like when he was a child and the randomness of death struck dogs, neighbors, grandparents , and even Indians.....

...the kind of randomness that happened when some one or some thing died... Indian Bones … teeth .. fragments of skull .. femur.. finger ..they would roll in the dirt wave that the chisel plow conjured from the corn field like fish in a muddy water feeding frenzy. Running behind the plow the siblings would fight over the scraps. What once was a human being was now a commodity to be sold to the man in the big white automobile that came though every couple of months. Bags of bones and teeth fetching a couple of dollars per ...quickly turning from human remains to money to the candy and belly washer sodas that their daddy was too poor to buy for them.. .The Indians surely never imagined that one day their eye tooth might be traded as wampum for a 16oz bottle of Coca Cola bottled in Atlanta G. A.