Raincrow

By Joe Watson

Raincrow is set over 9 decades, spanning past present and the future. It is a roller coaster ride, rich with characters, full of humor, and the highs and lows of everyday life. The story takes us from an orphanage in Firestone, Illinois, to the river town of Flatwater, Nebraska, telling the story of Thomas Raincrow, along with Harley, Eve, Angeline and Big Hat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781477166420

Joe Watson

JOE WATSON is a dynamic management consultant, business owner, and former business executive who now leads major corporations and individuals through the process of operating and living Without Excuses. Much of his time is spent advising on employee issues, especially workplace diversity. His clients include Freddie Mac, MTV Networks, and Lifetime Entertainment, among many others. He was a special aide to former Governor Mark Warner of Virginia. Joe Watson has hosted his own radio program and is a sought-after speaker to organizations around the world.

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Copyright © 2004 by Joe Watson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 1

I am nameless at the start of this story. Born in the heat of August here at Saint Benedict’s Hospital and Orphanage. I have been here 5 months now, first in intensive care and now out in the ward. They have the respiratory troubles under control. The scar from a surgery for an umbilical hernia is healing. I am separated from the other children down the hall.

From this crib on the fifth floor I can see the light fading. Through the big ward window I watch the sun drop with its cold fire below the horizon. It is a December Friday night, and evening shadows fall quickly. On the big river, Jack Frost crystals form along the sandbars, and an icy gray mist leads toward the snow that will fall during the night. The lights of the town begin to blink on. People start towards their homes. Parking lots empty, as workers leave the great expanses of Minneapolis—Moline, John Deere, and International Harvester. Tail lights wind out of downtown Firestone, up the bluff, past this old building which stands surrounded by trees, cut into the side of the hill, looking off across the Osaka river valley. A statue of its patron saint, Benedict, looks down the bluff, his arms thrown open wide, his hospital peering over his shoulder.

On the third floor the bell for Compline rings up the stairwells. The whole order gathers to chant. He summons clouds from the ends of the earth, makes lightning produce the rain; from His treasuries He sends forth the wind. The echoing footsteps of a novice who waited till the last bell reach the bottom of the stairs.

During this time, I have been in the care of Sister Louise. She sits with me in the long night hours, and during the day she tells me things she tells no one else. I miss her gentle presence as the dark shadows pull in around me. She is down in the chapel.

There is a small dark form at the window. It pecks at the pane. The street lights glint on its dark feathers. There is a form in the darkness. As it draws near I instinctively withdraw, both mentally and physically. The inexorable weight begins. Pushing me downward, and ever downward. I cannot breathe. The fever dreams begin.

I feel I am no longer in the hospital. I am lying in the dark of night, on a plain, in a hard country, far from humans. There, shadowy figures move just inside the first trees of a vast forest.

What is a child without a name? the dark one asks.

I wrap my arms around myself so tightly that they will be bowed all the days of my life. Compline ends. The night nurse begins her rounds. Sister Louise comes silently in the middle of the night to find me awake, softly crying. She gathers me up and holds me close.

Sister Louise stops in the grotto on a spring morning in 1955. Holy Saturday. The parents are coming to pick me up this morning. The Virgin spreads wide her arms, Harry the gardener kneels in the jonquils with his hearing aid turned off, oblivious to Louise as she kneels on the flagstone pavement. She prays, Blessed Mother, I beg of your Sacred Heart. Intercede with your son for me. Tell Him how much I love. Let them be kind. Watch over them. Pray for me, Blessed Virgin.

The wind has shifted from the north this morning, high white clouds blow past, their shadows crossing the courtyard. Sister’s wimple flutters in the breeze. Down in the river valley a cannon volley is fired at the Firestone arsenal. Neither she nor Harry hears it.

Louise came here as a novice in 1948. She grew up down the hill, on the north side of Firestone. She comes to St. Benedict’s as a child with her parents. They light novena candles in the darkness of the church, stained glass the only other light. Her father, a painter, falls off a ladder and is buried up on the crest of the hill, in the old cemetery, up the path behind the convent. Her only brother, Francis, is run over by a utilities truck on his way home from school. He was 11. Her mother still walks up the hill to Mass every morning. After her last day of high school, her mother walks with her up the hill and she enters the novitiate, dedicating her life, a bride of Christ.

She rises from her knees hesitantly. She walks to the administration building. Mother Superior Mary Joan looks up from the papers on her desk as she enters the office.

Sister Louise, I’d like you to meet the Raincrow’s. They are here from Wasichu.

Good Morning.

The warm air in the office fogs up her glasses.

These are the adoption papers. I’ve filled them out and only need your signatures—here, and here, and on this one. She pushed the papers across the desk.

Sister arranges the papers on her desk again. She has a compulsive habit of arranging and rearranging.

I wanted Sister Louise to be here in case you had any questions. She has spent the most time with this child. It was a rough winter for him. Doctor Saline says he is in good health now.

Louise studies the couple. Harley and Eve Green. Not all that young. The man is something of a dandy, cashmere topcoat, initialed cufflinks, tailored suit, and curly hair. He smokes and looks back at her with a detachment that makes her feel one of them is not in the room.

The woman has long dark brown hair, eyes with a steady devout blue light. Her face is already a little worn, with a look of concern and need. Early thirties maybe. Louise’s reaction is these people are not meant to spend their lives together. This woman will take care of her child, though.

Sister Mary Joan pushes back in her chair. Her bulk seems to be ready to spill out from that woolen habit. Sweat beads on her brow. The child was born here. His mother was one of our nurses’ aides. I cannot tell you much more. All of this information is confidential. These files can never be released.

The woman looks toward Louise. She sees the great longing there. Will you walk with us and tell us what we need to know?

I will.

They talk down the corridors to the parking lot where the man’s Cadillac is parked. They tuck me into a car seat, light cigarettes and pull out of the lot down the hill, and off downstate.

Ellen Erickson works at the dime store in downtown Firestone. When she is done with her shift she looks up the hill to St. Benedict’s. She stands on the corner. Is her baby still up there? They never let her see it.

Last winter, before her 21st birthday, she had been working at the hospital. On one of her nights off she met a college boy from over at Glenn College in Storm Center. Good looking. He wasn’t tall, but he towered over her. He made her laugh. He was going somewhere; and that confused her. She had no concept of anything but day to day living.

She is one of 11 children. Her father, an alcoholic, walked out on his family at the height of the great depression. Ellen is raised in an endless stream of orphanages like the one on the hill. She has no contact with any of her family.

The college boy, James, took her out on Saturday night to the Drive In. It is back in the last row I am conceived. She never tells him. She never sees him again.

At 5 months she develops complications. She remains at the hospital, bedridden, until I come. They take me. She never gets to hold her child.

When she leaves the hospital she takes a job at the five and dime. After six weeks there a woman in the checkout line looks familiar. The woman meets her eyes, and asks, Don’t I know you?

I don’t know. I’ve never seen you.

Did you grow up around here?

Yes. All around here.

The woman starts putting her groceries on the conveyor.

Do you have any family here?

No. They split up.

Mine too. I found my mother and a sister.

Ellen started ringing up her groceries

What were their names?

The woman peers at her again from underneath long bangs. My name is June Johnson. My sister is Sylvia, and my mothers name is Cecilia.

Yes. she holds a can of Crisco. I think I must be your sister.

Monday morning. The sun shines brightly through the Venetian blinds. Eve lays me down in the bedroom. My brown eyes look back into her blue ones. She prayed long and hard for this. She had one pregnancy, which went full term. They named the baby Joseph. He lived 3 days and is buried in Mayfair cemetery. She cannot bring herself to go out there. Her 5 sisters have housefuls of children, except for sister Rachel, who is in the convent. Having babies to them is like breathing. Her own mother has 9, raised in a tiny house during the depression on a civil servants wage.

Is it her man? He’d gone to the doctor. Low sperm count they said. Is it her?

No need to think about it any more. There’s a child here.

Her husband went into work that Monday. She hoped he would stay home with her. I was baptized on Easter Sunday at Saint Theresa’s. Eve’s family is there. Loving her, they know how much this means to her. I am christened, Thomas Francis Raincrow.

My daddy carries me out to the Cadillac. None of his people live in town, so his wife’s family adopted him, in a way. When a family is that big, what is one more?

He pulls off the dirt road into the driveway of the small house he bought for his wife.

The child will take some getting used to. He likes doing things in his own time. When the house get’s too small, he leaves. It seems to him, no matter how much his wife loves him, that she never really approves of what he says, or what he does. No matter what that is. He’d never really spent much time with babies. He supposed he could learn to hold the child without feeling nervous, but he’s not really sure. Sometimes he believes he isn’t sure of anything. She talked him into this. It isn’t a bad idea, but it will take some getting used to. He is around the house, restless, until about 3.

I’m going down to Arnie’s house to look at his new Pointer.

Now?

She makes it sound like that is the stupidest thing in the world to say. Or do.

Why not?

Don’t you want to hold your son?

Looks like he’s been on your lap all day.

The door closes behind him. No matter. They have gone to bed before he returns. I sleep with her that first night. Sister Louise told her I rarely sleep through the night, but she thinks its just the loneliness. Sometimes she walked up the stairs from the convent to check on me, to find me rigid and covered with sweat, wide-awake. She confides that she asked Mother Superior if she could move a cot into the wardroom. The answer is no.

We seem to melt together. If I wake at all except for an early morning feeding, she is not aware of it. Her husband is gone to work before she rises. He likes to go in early, and he likes to get out of bed, fumble for his clothes and go out the door in about ten minutes. The man is not a kitchen table, newspaper, coffee drinker.

Eve left her job at the phone company last year. Harley is making good money at Marston Label. He runs a big multi color press, and is lead man on the day shift. There’s a strong union, and all the overtime you could want. Eve likes staying home, and she needed a reason to stay home. Same reason she’d always wanted.

She picks me up and walks through the silent house with me. She wants to show me everything. She wants to show me the world. There are no end to the possibilities. She lights a cigarette as she turns on her Hi Fi. It is her proudest possession.

These things are scarce as hen’s teeth in 1955. She starts the Student Prince. Smoke curls in the sunlight through the blinds and she and I dance. She sees I love the music.

We’ll sing together, you and I. We sit in the sun in the afternoon. Harley’s dogs stay quiet in their kennel. She reads and listens to the chickadees in their apple trees, and the wind in the neighbor’s cottonwood, across the alley. I’m not alone anymore.

Those first dark memories are covered up, for all time, probably. I go from that unremembered loneliness, to unrequited love in what seems like an instant. Oh, how I love her. She sings, and she smells good, and she moves like liquid. She has things like her, around her. She likes to be out of doors. We are meant for each other.

Eve is afraid of storms. She’s determined not to let me see that fear. I think she learns not to be afraid by doing that. We sit and listen and watch the late afternoon thunderstorms roll in.

The angels are bowling up in heaven. Hear them?

Well, he’s walking.

Good?

Yes. Takes off through the house. Sis, hang on a sec—I’m going to check on him. Eve lays the phone on the table. I stand at the screen door, wobbly but balanced. He’s O.K. Have you talked to Mom lately?

I hear the bubble of voices from the kitchen. I explore this small world. Outside through the screen is space and noise and smells, inside are shadows, and things that remind me of mother. Father’s presence is relegated to the basement and garage. I try to crawl down to the basement, but am apprehended. The garage is a distant memory. It’s cold out there even with the little firebox stove going full blast. The basement is dark and scary. There’s a room against the back wall that I will never go in. The darkness waits there.

In the house the air is smoke; Luckies and Camels. There’s a box on the wall something comes out of and makes noise—(a cuckoo clock I learn, years later.) there are soft places and hard places. On the floor (which I regard with disdain now that I can walk) there are things to examine. Sometimes I hear, No, No, No! There is the place the music comes from. There is mother’s scent, White Shoulders. There is the man on the wall whose eyes follow you everywhere you go. He is always there. If you are in that room, He is watching you.

Sometimes the big people poke at you. Sometimes you get picked up and carried places when you really don’t want to go. Sometimes it turns out to be a good idea. There is old friend, pain, who comes sometimes, usually unexpectedly, sometimes you see him coming. There is the little room with the water in it that you can’t quite reach. There is the dark place in the closet. It is filled with the shadows I remember from the orphanage, I’ve not felt that weight here.

Getting carried by dad is different. You are much higher. There is hair to hold onto up there. There is hair all over this one. Usually you go outside with dad. Out where those wild creatures are. They see you coming and begin to jump and whine. Dad walks fast. He is louder. His breath smells like the smoke, but also has a sweet smell when he drinks from those shiny cans.

Where does he go? Mother is always here. He comes when it is almost dark and passes by. Even on the sunny mornings he leaves. I leave the screen door and look up at the man on the wall. Peas. the man looks down. I toddle into the kitchen.

Hello Tom, mother says into the phone. He’s returned from his travels, sis

I squint up at mother. Peas. Oh, that’s not right—there’s an L sound I’m not getting in there.

I think he just said something. Thomas, what did you say dear?

Peas. Rats. That’s not right.

Sounds like peas. Are you hungry?

Hopeless.

In my father’s world, there is the motion. Always thinking of where you are going next, thinking past where you are. He is never about feelings, he’s about duty, and misplaced honor, about work, and his no-good friends; and distance. He keeps himself aloof with his grownup toys, his tinkering and his running around. It’s not that he can’t be kind, you have to catch him to see it, and that is work. I think Eve is beginning to tire. When this happens the anger comes, that hopeless anger which in reality is caused by realizing how futile your efforts are at changing another human being. Can’t do it. Not through love or anger. So the biggest distance in their lives is the void between them.

There is no way he can see to change, because there is nothing wrong. That downward slide into