Read Online Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake - Free Book Online
Authors: Ann Pancake
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the water rush, and he could smell the odor of urine and shit on his arms, and he thought of Mom and Corey and Tommy up at the head of the hollow where the waters had to have hit first, and a big chunk of something rose in Dane’s stomach and slammed into the bottom of his chest. But Dane didn’t cry.
Ever since then, day after day in the darkened house, while Dane cleans or between chores, Mrs. Taylor tells the horrors of Buffalo Creek, February 26, 1972. And she doesn’t tell them as history or legend. She tells them as prophecy, as threat. The twin lights in her twin lenses flash, a signal, a flare, and Dane, trapped, listens, Dane gulps what she tells him. The stories filling his already crowded guts, them full of nerves, and of logs and fish, and now of stories, scrawled all over his insides, but Dane listens. She doesn’t do it to scare him, it’s not mean like the kids on the bus, it’s simply what Mrs. Taylor has to do, and it’s what Dane does, too. Dane is the listener. So he listens, wondering when he’ll finally get so full he’ll bust, have to bust, and day after day after day he strains, braces, he prays, just to keep from busting. Flood inside.
Dane is the darkest of his family. He has fine black hair and skin that darkens fastest of the four kids even though this summer he is the least out in the sun. He’s the darkest, and, at twelve, the shortest for his age, and, he knows, the weakest. Sometimes, when Lace is at the Dairy Queen and the five of them are eating supper, Dane will study everybody’s arms. His arms are shorter than the others, pudgy and stumped, puffing down along their bones to end in even puffier hands. When Dane looks at his arms, he shrinks another ounce in his chest. Beside his own arms lie Tommy’s. Who is made to wash his hands before the meal, so Tommy is clean to his wrists, while above, the arms are grimed in rings and the elbows chuffy, but even at six years old, Tommy’s arms are stronger, more solid, than Dane’s arms
are.Then Bant. Nothing but a girl. Her arms peppered with blue paint and odored, mildly, of gasoline, board-shaped and hard-boned, sharp-angled in the elbows and wrists, steady and broad. Those are Bant’s arms. Next there is Jimmy Make, at the table head, his arms dark-skinned like Dane’s, but with none of Dane’s fragility. Jimmy’s arms are blocky and tooled with scars, cut scars, burn scars, the muscles having collapsed under the skin like they grew too big too fast and fell, yet still visible. Sleeping lumps, lazy flesh that can flash into hardness when Jimmy wills it. And last, Dane studies the arms of Corey. Two years younger than Dane’s.They are blunt and thick and already swept with hairs, already making muscle, bulges that Corey gloats over, flexes, draws attention to in any way he can. Steel-made Corey. Little man. And all those arms, and the bodies and heads they are attached to, are sounder and stronger and better matched than Dane’s, Dane knows this.Yet it is Dane who must take and carry the stories.
Somehow that makes a scary kind of sense.
Mrs. Taylor is saying, “And Avery’s going to pester me the whole time he’s here. And what can I say back? I’d rather sit in this hollow and drown than live in Cleveland?” Her emphysema rises, Dane can hear it over top the spigot running in his dishwater. “But you see, Dane. That’s exactly what Lyon wants.” The wheezing. “Scare us to death and make everybody miserable to where we all just move out, then they can go on and do whatever they want. And you know what I say to that?” Dane knows. “This is my house!” She slams her palms on the kitchen table, jumping the salt shaker, her canisters of pills. “There have always been Ratliffs in this hollow! My father bought these two lots in 1928, and we worked for what we have!” She pauses, her throat straining after breath. “I won’t be run out,” she murmurs now.
Dane wipes his dishes. Cleveland. Just to taste the
Ever since then, day after day in the darkened house, while Dane cleans or between chores, Mrs. Taylor tells the horrors of Buffalo Creek, February 26, 1972. And she doesn’t tell them as history or legend. She tells them as prophecy, as threat. The twin lights in her twin lenses flash, a signal, a flare, and Dane, trapped, listens, Dane gulps what she tells him. The stories filling his already crowded guts, them full of nerves, and of logs and fish, and now of stories, scrawled all over his insides, but Dane listens. She doesn’t do it to scare him, it’s not mean like the kids on the bus, it’s simply what Mrs. Taylor has to do, and it’s what Dane does, too. Dane is the listener. So he listens, wondering when he’ll finally get so full he’ll bust, have to bust, and day after day after day he strains, braces, he prays, just to keep from busting. Flood inside.
Dane is the darkest of his family. He has fine black hair and skin that darkens fastest of the four kids even though this summer he is the least out in the sun. He’s the darkest, and, at twelve, the shortest for his age, and, he knows, the weakest. Sometimes, when Lace is at the Dairy Queen and the five of them are eating supper, Dane will study everybody’s arms. His arms are shorter than the others, pudgy and stumped, puffing down along their bones to end in even puffier hands. When Dane looks at his arms, he shrinks another ounce in his chest. Beside his own arms lie Tommy’s. Who is made to wash his hands before the meal, so Tommy is clean to his wrists, while above, the arms are grimed in rings and the elbows chuffy, but even at six years old, Tommy’s arms are stronger, more solid, than Dane’s arms
are.Then Bant. Nothing but a girl. Her arms peppered with blue paint and odored, mildly, of gasoline, board-shaped and hard-boned, sharp-angled in the elbows and wrists, steady and broad. Those are Bant’s arms. Next there is Jimmy Make, at the table head, his arms dark-skinned like Dane’s, but with none of Dane’s fragility. Jimmy’s arms are blocky and tooled with scars, cut scars, burn scars, the muscles having collapsed under the skin like they grew too big too fast and fell, yet still visible. Sleeping lumps, lazy flesh that can flash into hardness when Jimmy wills it. And last, Dane studies the arms of Corey. Two years younger than Dane’s.They are blunt and thick and already swept with hairs, already making muscle, bulges that Corey gloats over, flexes, draws attention to in any way he can. Steel-made Corey. Little man. And all those arms, and the bodies and heads they are attached to, are sounder and stronger and better matched than Dane’s, Dane knows this.Yet it is Dane who must take and carry the stories.
Somehow that makes a scary kind of sense.
Mrs. Taylor is saying, “And Avery’s going to pester me the whole time he’s here. And what can I say back? I’d rather sit in this hollow and drown than live in Cleveland?” Her emphysema rises, Dane can hear it over top the spigot running in his dishwater. “But you see, Dane. That’s exactly what Lyon wants.” The wheezing. “Scare us to death and make everybody miserable to where we all just move out, then they can go on and do whatever they want. And you know what I say to that?” Dane knows. “This is my house!” She slams her palms on the kitchen table, jumping the salt shaker, her canisters of pills. “There have always been Ratliffs in this hollow! My father bought these two lots in 1928, and we worked for what we have!” She pauses, her throat straining after breath. “I won’t be run out,” she murmurs now.
Dane wipes his dishes. Cleveland. Just to taste the
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