RainGods

‘I don’t know’    she whispered slowly, enunciating each syllable with great care that the words sounded longer than they were supposed to.

 I placed the paper bag on the floor and walked towards her and rested my hands on the tiled counter.

‘It was you who said that’    I told her matter-of-factly. She just stared at me.

‘You’re the only woman here, and I’m pretty sure that It was your voice’     I said again.

‘What was it that you thought I said?’    she asked me with a puzzled look.

‘you said something about an old man from a dream’     I answered.

‘I honestly don’t remember’ she said, cheeks flushed, she cleared her throat and continued:

‘I sometimes just don’t remember things’

She turned her eyes towards the display window and I followed. I saw that everyone’s eyes were also fixed there. There, on the far side of the street was an old man wearing a fishing hat, he had a dog with him whose chain he held loosely with his left hand. The rain was flowing down like threads from the brim of his hat and it acted like a mesh that partially hid his features. Meanwhile, the dog just stood beside him with the rain continuously running down its short brown coat. It didn’t even bother to shake off the water as other dogs usually do.

She once had a dog like that, I thought, she being the woman whose name I don’t even remember but I remember the dog of hers as something that was very vicious especially when it comes to other’s belongings. It ruined my shoes which I left on the doormat as we ate dinner that time. I remember being so pissed that I had to control my tears after finding them later with their soles torn off. I walked home with a great part of my feet scratching the damp ground.

The old man took off his hat and held it with both hands as he squeezed the water off from it. The thinning of his grayish white hair was made more evident by the rain as the wetness plastered it on his forehead like a rag. He looked exactly like the old man from my thoughts, it was a perfect picture.

‘Him’    the woman on the counter said flatly. I turned my face to her.

‘That man in the rain’    she said again, she was looking at him. I nodded.

I was thinking about the thought I had earlier, how it was that as if this ld man came straight out of it. I scanned my memory of that thought for a dog but I don’t remember it having one.

‘Do you think that we should get him to come inside? He might get sick or something’     I asked her out of duty.

‘I think he wouldn’t come in here even if you asked him to’     she answered.

‘How can you say that?’      I said incredulously, staring at her.

Her eyes were still fixed on the old man, even the crook of his nose was exact, the way the water treads its slope was precisely what I would have pictured had I thought about it.

‘I just know’     she shifted her eyes to me and I looked away,

I stared back at the street and the old man. Maybe it was just pure coincidence, how the old man was a perfect copy of my thought earlier, or it is also possible that my remembrance of that memory adjusted to this resemblance, though I seriously doubt that. I really have no way to be sure. Also, maybe she was right, that the old man wouldn’t really come in here even when asked to, and that may be because he was searching for his bucket which somehow slipped from his hands as he poured rain earlier. Or maybe he was a bit off his marbles that’s why he decided to take the dog on a walk at a time like this, although the dog doesn’t really seem to mind it at all. The old man and his dog looked like different ideologies that were being spoken simultaneously, the man being a rain god who pours water into the earth, and the dog being the silent ground that was just taking it all in, it was as if the chain that connected the dog and the owner was made of water and was the in-between where passes the one way messages of the rain god.

‘Do you remember the time when my dog Razor died?’    the woman asked so suddenly that I was somehow taken aback. I grunted in response.

I turned to her after a few moments and saw that she was back to staring at the old man so I looked back too. I remember that day, though not the whole of it, what I could not forget about it was seeing her pick up with her bare hands the bloody bits and pieces of her dog after if got ran over and torn apart by a speeding van. It was like that, as if the dog who was made of fur, organs, bone and spirit suddenly stopped existing, it was like someone just suddenly turned off the lights. At that time I don’t think I saw her smile at all, I am almost sure of it.

It was since that time when I started forgetting. Gradually, I had a hard time remembering her name every time I thought of it until the memory of it became so faint that I soon doubted its overall existence. I do not have an explanation for it but it was as if her name got shattered along with the dog and every time I try to pick the pieces up, the more it got dismembered, the more the original being’s shape got elusive. After that, it was as if my memory decided of its own independent will to forget her name all in all, other memories followed, and soon, even our friendship was forgotten. Now, I can’t even remember most of the time what it had been like, the incident seemed to have afflicted both our memories the same way. At first I tried to dig my memory for anything about her, but it was always the same, like trying to make a solid grip on a shadow.

‘It’s been like twenty years right?’     I said to her, pertaining to the time when we both figuratively and literally still knew each other.

‘Yes, I’m almost sure’     she answered; I could feel her eyes at the back of my head. The other three customers were still staring blankly at the old man’s direction.

‘I remember the dog’     I said and glanced towards her, she nodded and lifted her eyes towards mine before speaking

‘Tell me, does the old man also look familiar to you?’

I turned back towards the old man who was still standing at the same spot; his hat was atop his head again. The rain was now accompanied by lightning and the flash created long shadows everywhere. I noticed how the shadows of the old man and the dog were overlapped that it was like they shared it. It gave me an idea about the rain god and the ground. How intertwined they were, of how many things in this universe were distant but still somehow linked by something that could be as insignificant as shadows and rainwater. It was getting colder and I could feel the weather’s long icy fingers jabbing my flesh like a child asking for immediate attention.

‘Yes’     my back was still turned to her when I replied. I watched the old man turn his face towards the display window and very slowly curve his lips up into a smile, with droplets of water dripping like gems from his chin.

i remember approaching her as i got out of the van with my father who was teaching me how to drive. i remember the rain that suddenly fell that time and cleared the streets of blood and flesh. 

the old man stared at me for what could’ve been a full minute before removing his hat and squeezing it as he did before. After draining his cap of water, he set it atop his head and adjusted its position towards the center where it again spew threads of water that instantly veiled his crooked nose and tanned features. I watched him lift his left arm sluggishly towards the sky in a commanding gesture with his palms spread out like a spiderweb, the dog raised the tip of its nose to where his hands were. I saw it close its eyes, and the old man pressed his middle finger to his thumb and the two fingers slid against each’s surface with a thunderous sound that sounded like a howl.

The rain suddenly stopped without warning and the stillness was instantly replaced by the rush of sounds from the city that was muffled by the heavy dance of water a while ago. Now, the city comes to existence again and the sky beyond has started to rid itself of darkness; on the edges of clouds were glowing lines that proclaimed the light’s reclamation of its old domain.

I looked around and saw that the customers were now slowly walking towards the bakeshop’s exit in a silent manner, as if the rain didn’t fall at all, or as if they have suddenly forgotten it.

I picked up my paper bag, took one last glance towards the woman at the counter who smiled like she always did, whose name I would never remember, and made my way into the street where the old man no longer stood, carefully clutching the paper bag and moving with care so as not to disturb the sudden silence of the water puddles.

*****