Falling for Rain (17 page)

The wind knocked the air from her lungs, and she could hardly keep her feet on the ground. She bent over double and, keeping her head down, pushed her way toward the barn. The rain jacket was useless. The rain was so hard that it immediately soaked the bottom of her dressing gown and travelled up under the jacket. The dressing gown snarled around her legs and threatened to trip her, so she held it up around her bare thighs, oblivious to the cold stinging rain.

The gate to the barn yard had been ripped from its hinges and was lying on the ground ten feet inside the yard. The cattle and horse would get out but that was better than leaving them trapped in a burning barn. She raised her head for the first time since leaving the house. The whole top of the barn was glowing, little vertical strips of red light showing between the boards of the siding. It wouldn't be long before the siding and the roof were ablaze. She had to work fast.

The barn door was torn out of her hand by the wind, and inside the frightened cows strained against the stanchions as they attempted to extract their heads from the iron restraints, while the horse neighed wildly. Smoke was swirling down the stairs from the loft, and Emily's first act was to close the door at their foot. Emily didn't know how the fire would spread, but she guessed that eventually the loft floor would catch fire and collapse into the main floor. That is if the smoke didn't kill everything first.

She ran into the aisle between the rows of cows and undid the first stanchion. The cow had tried so hard to free herself that she had pulled the bottom of the stanchion from its concrete base. Eyes wild with fear, white foam flying from its mouth, she let out a bellow of terror. Emily realized that, fire aside, she was in danger of being hurt by these fire-crazed animals. Ordinarily docile, fear had transformed them into wild beasts. The cow backed out of her stall and, in her haste to get to the door, slipped in the aisle and came down hard on her knees. Quickly, she staggered to her feet and seconds later was through the door and in the yard.

Emily remembered something about animals running into a fire. It had been a movie, a horse barn was ablaze, but the animals had refused to leave, actually running deeper into the flames. She was glad to see that this wasn't the case, or maybe it was because the flames as yet weren't visible.
Yet
being the operative word.
It wouldn't be long. Above her head, the fire roared above the sound of the storm, and she wondered if it would spread in all directions simultaneously - up through the roof, sideways through the walls, and down through the hay to the floor. She opened the stanchions one by one, crying out more than once when a tossing head caught her hand against hard metal.

It seemed to take forever, the smoke becoming thicker by the second, but in reality it only took six or seven minutes to release all twenty-five cows and the one horse, which galloped out the door. She was right behind them. Somewhere she had lost her flashlight, not that it would be much help in the smoke-filled darkness.  She stumbled and tripped but at last emerged, gasping for air. She bent double in the rain, sucking the wet, soot-filled air into her lungs. Above her, the barn was ablaze, and, between the fire and the lightning, it could have been midday in the yard. She straightened herself up just in time to see Rain come through the gate, weaving his way between the cows, flashlight beam overwhelmed by the light from the blazing barn. He was running toward her and calling her name. At the same instant she remembered something else: the mother with the new calf, the one named Emily, was still inside the barn!

Rain screamed at her to stop, but she ignored him and ran back into the barn. The dense smoke seared her eyes and lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to breathe as she felt her way along the wall to where mother and daughter in their fear had flung themselves against their pen. She groped her way along the pen, feeling for the latch. At last she found it and, releasing it, opened the pen door. The two animals bolted through the opening, and Emily jumped out of the way, narrowly missing being trampled. She took in a painful lungful of smoke, turned, and staggered into Rain’s waiting arms. He lifted her off her feet and ran for the front door. For the second time she emerged from the barn. He set her down near the yard gate, and she leaned against him, coughing into his coat.

As soon as the coughing subsided, she gasped, "Did the calf get out alright?"

Rain grasped her by the shoulders, held her at arm's length, and looked her in the eyes. She was astonished to see the mixture of fear and anger in his face. When he spoke, his voice shook with emotion. "What the hell were you doing? Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"The calf...," she coughed.

"Damn the calf!" He was yelling now and shaking her.

"Stop!" she cried "You're hurting me!"

"Hurting you? You could have been killed!" He abruptly let go of her, and she lurched back into him.  This time he held her hard against him. She struggled for a moment before she gave in and let him hold her.  She turned her head sideways to watch the progress of the fire. Adrenalin still pumped through her veins, and she couldn't understand Rain's reactions. Why was he so angry?

Now that the fire had broken through the roof, already the driving rain was having an impact on its progress, but Emily knew it would not go out before the barn was completely destroyed. All around them stood the cows. They were quiet now, great wet bodies standing dejectedly around them in the downpour.

Behind them a pickup truck pulled into the yard. She looked up at Rain enquiringly.

"It's Don, the neighbour. He must have seen the flames." He released her and moved toward the truck as Don stepped out. Emily followed him.

"Hello," Don called above the storm. "What a terrible night.
Although the lightning seems to be letting up."
It didn't matter how big the crisis; in the country, the weather was always the first thing to be discussed. He stared at Emily intently in the light from the truck headlights. "Emily?" he asked uncertainly.

Emily nodded. Of course he would recognize her. He had been her neighbour too, a long time ago.

"Are all the animals out?" he asked, looking around him at the huddled wet cows.

It was Emily that answered. "Yes. I saw the lightning hit from the house and came right out."

"Well, that was a good thing. Good thing you didn't get hurt too."

Emily looked at Rain triumphantly, but he still didn't look pleased. She didn't know why. After all, hadn't she saved the animals?

"Look. We can drive them down the road and put them in my barn for the time being,” Don offered. “They'll catch pneumonia if they stay here.”

Rain seemed to recover his wits. "Thanks." He turned to Emily. "Go back to the cabin. There's a fire on. You'll be warm there."

"No. I'm coming with you. I'm not cold." She should have been – she was wet through to the skin. She looked at Rain defiantly, and he didn't challenge her. Instead he moved away from her and began to herd the animals toward the road.

The wind and rain stayed fierce and steady, but the thunder and lightning had moved eastward. Don put the calf in the cab of his truck and drove on ahead to prepare room in his barn. Rain took the frightened and nervous Celeste by the halter, and he and Emily walked behind the slow-moving cows. The trip to the barn took at least half an hour as beast and human alike bent their heads to the wind and struggled against its force. Twice Emily stumbled and twice Rain caught her, releasing his hold on the horse’s halter to do so, but both times she pulled away quickly. She was determined not to fall apart now.

But at the barn things were different. In the quarter-mile walk from Maple Tree Farm, the adrenalin had dissipated, and she shook with cold and shock. Don gave her a blanket out of the truck and she wrapped it around herself while Don and Rain rearranged the living quarters of Don's livestock to make room for Rain's. It was crowded, but a separate stall was found for Celeste, and it wasn’t long before she was enjoying a warm porridge made of oats. The men
rubbed down the cows with burlap sacks and made certain there was plenty of warm, dry bedding.

Emily moved outside the circles of light from their flashlights and huddled on a bale of hay. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, fatigue washing over her in waves. She was miserable now and desperately wanted to be in front of Rain's fireplace. She held the blanket tightly around her wet head and shoulders with shaking hands, waiting for the men to finish.

The wind whistled through every crack, knothole, and broken window pane in the barn. Even without the thunder and lightning, it was a frightening storm, and in Emily's exhausted state it was too much to bear. She closed her eyes and rested her head against a post until she felt herself lifted from the bale. "Rain?" she asked as she weakly struggled in his arms.

"
Ssh
.... Don't move. I'll carry you to the truck. I think you've had enough for one day." He spoke gently and soothingly as if to a child, and for once she didn't fight him but submitted gratefully to his attentions.  

"Don't worry about the animals," Don said as he drove them back to the farm. "They can stay in my barn for now. You call the insurance company and get things rolling. No reason why you can't get a new barn by Christmas. You'll need hay and grain for the winter too."

"I appreciate your help," Rain replied. "This is beyond the call of duty for a neighbour. I'll be by to help with chores, and the insurance should cover the costs of feeding them."

"It's no problem at all.  Just glad I can be of some help."  He pulled the truck into the driveway of Maple Tree Farm. "And you look after this little girl here. We don't want her catching cold."

Rain laughed softly. "It's a good thing she's half asleep. Any other time and she'd give you a good blow to the head for calling her a little girl."

"Well, she isn't looking very tough now."

"You just better hope she doesn't remember this conversation, neighbour." 

Back at Maple Tree Farm, Rain climbed out of the truck and gathered Emily into his arms again. This time she didn't protest, not even feebly. She couldn't have walked on her own if her life depended on it. She clung to him, pressing her face into his chest as he carried her toward the cabin. Even in the wind and dark he carried her almost effortlessly.  And when he set her down in the chair beside the fire, she was so grateful to be out of the storm that she almost cried in relief.

Rain, on the other hand, flew into action.  He threw a couple of logs on the dying fire and lit the candles on the mantle. It was unlikely the power would be back on that night. He poured a generous shot of brandy from the decanter next to the candles and drank it with a toss of his head. Then he refilled it and held it to Emily's lips. She shook her head.  She was too tired.

"Drink it!" he demanded. So she
drank,
the fiery liquid causing shivers of a different kind. He refilled the glass and set it on the table next to the chair before pulling off his wet boots and dumping them on the floor by the door.  He disappeared into the bathroom for a minute, re-emerging in dry jeans. He had not bothered buttoning his shirt, and, as tired as she was, she could not help but stare at his smooth, strong chest. How nice it would be to lay her head against it as she had when he’d carried her to the house. Just lay her head against his safe chest and go to sleep....

"I shouldn't have let you go to Don's," he said angrily as he pulled off her boots. He didn’t ask her if she wanted help with her wet things. He just went straight to work undressing her.  She had taken another sip of brandy while he was changing in the bathroom, but she had made no attempt to remove her sopping wet clothes.

"Well, they couldn't stand out in the rain all night," she said grumpily.  His harsh tone had awakened some of her own spirit, although she continued to submit to his attempts to undress her. He took the jacket off next, tearing at the buttons and pulling her arms roughly from the sleeves.

"Since when did you care so much about cows?" he said sarcastically as he carried the jacket into the bathroom to add to his own wet clothes. He was back moments later with a terrycloth bathrobe.

"I didn't rescue them from a burning barn so they could drown in the rain." 
Why is he so angry?
she
wondered.
You'd think he'd be happy that I rescued his precious animals.

"For heaven's sake, Emily, take off the rest of those wet clothes before you drown in them." 

"Fine," she said angrily, jumping up from the chair. Immediately the room swam before her eyes, and she almost fell to the floor.  Rain caught her, eased her back into the chair, and held the brandy once more to her lips.

“Are you alright?” His voice was full of concern.

She took the glass from his hands and swallowed what was left. “I’m fine. Now let me get my clothes off,” she said with annoyance. She was already feeling a little drunk, and if Rain wanted her to take her clothes off in front of him, she would.