-Chapter 1-
Southern Storm
I had felt a storm coming. I could smell the rain. The air was warm and thick with moisture. Earlier that morning, my bones ached and I had a little trouble doing a few of my daily chores from the pain. I have learned to heed my body’s warnings. I have also learned that nothing, not even my biological barometer, is always correct. The wisdom I have gained in my fifty-seven years is summed up in an old bayou saying: “The swamp is thick, and the swamp is dark, but I have no fear, because I will find my way out.”
The rain had started to fall upon my face as I looked up at the quickly darkening sky above me. The grayness of the clouds covered most of what the eye could see, but I had caught a glimpse of what lay on the horizon. A black, rumbling wall of thunder and lightning was approaching at a pace that made me a little uneasy.
I grabbed my clothes off the clothesline and hurried into my den. The wind had tried taking my hat as I closed the door and I slammed my hand upon my head to keep it.
I let a little laugh out and proceeded to prepare for what I believed to be a most formidable tyrant of nature. I wiped the rain off of my forehead and face and began my task.
The whole of my den was rocked all afternoon and into the evening. Luckily, I had foreseen such a storm, and gathered the essentials and strengthened my den walls back in early July. August was the month of storms, and I had put to use the knowledge gained from summers past. This comforted me deeply, but there was the ominous presence of the fact that I had not seen the storm through yet and that anything could happen. I tried to ignore it and buried my nose into a book I had been reading. The title escapes me to this day.
I had unknowingly fallen asleep and was woken by thunder. The wind had died, but the rain sounded like a million stones falling on my roof. I slowly yawned and grabbed a few more candles, seeing as how the others were almost burned out if not out completely. I had to rummage through an old trunk to find a large box of kitchen matches. The trunk retained the peculiar characteristic of leeching the moisture out of anything inside, so it had become the storage place of my fire and smoking tools.
I pulled a match out and stuck it on the box. The head broke off. I picked another out of box. My hand flew toward the box and struck it. The flame began to dance on the matchstick like a dancer, slow and flowing. I lit my candles and put my matches away. The bed was still warm when I laid back down on and burrowed myself beneath my blanket.
I had been half-asleep when a loud knocking came pounding on my door. This was strange. I had been visited by people that had gotten lost and needed directions many times before, but never this late and never in a storm.
