Intothestorm

Driving north to a meeting where I’ve got to get my point

across

without coming on like the tsunami peoplehave likened me to

I notice the rapidly bruising sky up ahead,

the headlights

snapping on

And through the rearview mirror the sun glows green and sickly

The long snake of traffic has me wondering if I’ll make itto the meeting before the storm strikes.

I didn’t bring a raincoat

Or an umbrella

I hope the power doesn’t go off-

I need the power at this meeting.

When the wind rises, slanting hard across the car, I half-expect a figment of Jim Morrison’s imagination

to slide over the windshield

But it’s just hard slaps of rain that send me

Cranking the old wipers fast, but not fast enough. Water comes down so hard that it billows up from the road,shoots out from the wheels of oncoming traffic --thunder

cannonballing off the roof

lightning x-raying the roadside farms

in an insane deluge that take me out of every thoughtbut this.

I barely breathe.

Finally I find sense enough to pull over into the small lake of a convenience store parking lot,hoping it doesn’t get any worse because--of course--I’m driving the car that stalled in a flash flood on the mountain this spring, and it hasn’t been the same since.

I don’t want to be late.

As I switch off the engine, I am cocooned by a worldof water

I think of the people of Texas coping with theirseason of water,of New OrleansThailand IndonesiaThoughts drip-drip one to the next

The store looks like a boat with twinkly lights

I decide to go in, and the rain stops

Just like that. But the water

doesn’t.

Panicky, it races for the dips, the channels, the ditches--

I go in anyway.

The store, it turns out, is one of those channels--water flowingdown the far aisle, and there’s just one kid, at the counter, on the phone with his mom asking if she can quick come bring a squeegie mop to the store and should he close up?

I grab a soda. I’m clearly the first person he’s seensince the cloudburst, so he tells me how the water

just kept flowing--his arm making gestures to the back of the store, and how the rain came down so hardhe thought it would drill through the roof.

“Yeah,” I say, “it must have been scary,”

And he looks right at me for a moment and nods and nods and nods again as he hands me the change.

We both turn to stare at the stream thinning betweenthe beer and the chips.

I wonder who this kid is and how hard it must beto be 18, working here alone, and who his mother is and how he’s going to cope,and I don’t want to leave him alone like this, watersliding across the floor, but my watch tellsme I’ve got no time to spare,

so I leave.

Outside, the car starts right up, the cellphone rings, and I ease right back into the traffic.

But later, in my meeting and even beyond that--now--I catch myself thinking about the kid and what it says about me that I left him there to fend, alone, until hismother arrived with the squeegie.