Rain by Michael Mcdowel Page B

overhead light in the hallway burned more brightly as she drew nearer to it. It began to hum, and Queenie barely managed to get inside her room before the fixture exploded. Shining fragments of glass and metal flew into the room along the plane of the closing door.
    In Queenie's room, all remained dark. She leaned against the door, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She listened to the explosions, less violent now, more widely spaced, but still continuing. The intensity of light appearing beneath the door was less each time Queenie looked down between her feet.
    After a while, the explosions halted altogether. No light came beneath the door into the hallway.
    Queenie, not knowing what else to do, returned to her bed.
    An electrical storm, she said to herself.
    She moved to the window and looked out, hoping desperately to see storm clouds overhead. She saw only stars.
    The window was open and the night was still, so Queenie was able to hear the footsteps—heavy booted footsteps crossing the sandy Caskey yards.
    She unhooked the window screen and pushed her head out.
    There, by the light of the setting moon, she made out the figure of a man striding toward the levee.
    He didn't need to turn for Queenie to identify him. She knew him by his stride, and by those boots— boots she herself had purchased.
    It was Carl Strickland, her husband, who had been dead these thirty years, drowned in the black waters of the Perdido.
CHAPTER 76
The Caskey Children
    " Mama," said Malcolm in amazement, "what the hell were you doing over here last night? Did you get mad at somebody or something?"
    With the exception of the ones in Queenie's own room, every light in the house looked as though it had been smashed with a hammer. The fixtures had been shattered, melted, or twisted beyond all further use.
    Queenie, following Malcolm around so closely that he bumped into her every time he turned around, said vaguely, "There was some sort of electrical storm last night. Didn't you and Miriam hear it?"
    "Didn't hear anything, Mama. You got any idea how long it's gone take me to clean this mess up? Looks like we got to get this whole damn place rewired. Probably never was done right."
    "That was it," said Queenie, hastily pinning the blame on faulty wiring and abandoning the electrical storm fantasy. "Bad wiring. Lucky I didn't burn up."
    "Mama, you better go out and stay with Grace and Lucille for a few days and let me take care of all this."
    To this Queenie readily assented, and that very morning, while Malcolm, still puzzled, waded through the wreckage, she drove out to Gavin Pond Farm.
    "Here I am," she cried to Lucille as she squeezed out from behind the steering wheel.
    "Mama," said Lucille, "you should have called so Luvadia could have fixed you something special."
    "I didn't want to call," said Queenie, rushing forward to hug her daughter. "Because I was afraid you'd tell me to stay away."
    "Stay away? Why on earth would we say something like that?"
    " 'Cause I've come to stay."
    "Well, it's about time, Mama. Grace and I have been asking and asking!"
    "Not forever, but for a few days. All the wiring blew in the house last night, and Malcolm told me to come out while he was fixing it."
    "Oh, Mama, we're gone have the best time!" cried Lucille, putting her arm around Queenie's waist— or as far around it as her arm would go—and walking slowly toward the house.
    Queenie, however, didn't have a very good time. She missed her daily routines in Perdido, as dull as they had been. She missed catching glimpses of Malcolm and Miriam, she missed lunches over at Elinor's. Perdido hadn't seemed much when she lived there, but compared to Gavin Pond Farm, it was the center of the universe. Queenie was particularly lonely at the farm, for Grace and Lucille were busy all day long with everything they had to tend—the camellia garden, the orchards, the cattle, the hogs, and the horses. And for some reason it seemed hotter out in the country than it