Days of Rain

It rained for twelve consecutive days in the summer of 1976. Twelve straight days. Almost two full weeks of constant rain. It would come down in buckets at times, and other times it would pull back to a light pattering, but it never stopped raining the entire time. Not that I recall, anyway. It was twelve days of living beneath the confines of damp and satiated umbrellas, running from storefront to car to the front door of the house. The sun had disappeared during that time; the bright blue skies a distant memory. The grey that descended above the trees and over rooftops settled in as if it would never go away, as if it would be overcast for the remainder of our days - the sky forever suffocated by a thin charcoal mask, stretched across in every direction. Even when the rain let up, the clouds seem to hover, and the gloom one felt inside never lifted. Those twelve days changed my life.

I was twenty-two that summer, just out of college, working at Thomson's Gas Station at the corner of Vine and May. I had finished my last classes at the end of April, with graduation in June. I was the first child in my family to have a college education. It was a very big deal to everyone I knew. My bachelors was in communications but I didn’t know how to apply it to a career, not only in my hometown but anywhere. What would I do and where would I do it? I enjoyed communications but was at a loss as to actually using in a resourceful and economic-generating manner. I wasn't even sure why I had gone to college, what I wanted to do. Did I want to get into advertising? Or even go work in some office somewhere? Nothing appealed to me. So I decided to get a job, any job, just to clear my head and plan my next move. At least that is what I answered when faced with the perpetual, “So, what are you going do now, big shot?” My uncles, all my aunts, my mother, my neighbors, my old high school teachers. Their happiness seemed to hinge on my answer. I could not answer my own questions yet alone theirs. I just need time, I told them, I just need a little break from school. I just need a little time to figure what to do next.

So I spent the summer pumping gas and helping in the garage however I could. I didn’t know enough about cars to do any real tinkering under the hood but I held up hoses and steadied the crusty metal pan as the old oil drained like thick, deep blood from the Buicks hoisted high above me. Business was steady in the spring, just as Mr. Thomson said it always was. His station was the only one on the east side of town, out near the train tracks that loop around the edge of town. His customers were loyal and regular. It was in the middle of July when the heat spell of mid-summer was broken by a welcome relief of rain. The first day was fast and furious and we all smiled at the sight of the pouring rain as it soaked dry grass, parched cornfields. The rain, though, kept coming. It did not stop. For almost two weeks straight. It did not take long before puddles were everywhere, basements were flooded, grass disappears beneath newly formed lakes in front and backyards. Customers didn’t come to Thomson’s very often during that twelve-day rainy period. It was if the entire town decided to wait as long as it could, in hopes of avoiding getting any wetter than they absolutely needed to. The repair work could wait; gas was a necessity.

When a customer pulled into the station, I would run out, leaping over large puddles like landmines on the way to the pumps. I’d pull the brim of my Tigers cap low over my eyes, squint and ask how I could help them, though I knew the answer would always be, “Fill ‘er up.” Minutes later, as I stood with the pump in my hand, listening to the sound of gas cascading through the hose, splashing into their empty tank, there was nowhere to hide so I gave in and let the rain cover me. For me, there was a great sense of magic in those moments, when all you could do was just give in to the elements. Sometimes the best times are when we cease fighting and let ourselves go.

Often I was alone for long stretches in the afternoon and I would stand at the front window and watch the rain fall from the misty clouds, an endless parade of silvery glitter shimmering in front of my eyes. I would lean against the glass of the office and the moist heat from my skin would leave a vaporous fog. My skin was sticky, perpetually damp to the touch. I remember always feeling dirty during those days; I never felt clean, even after stepping out of the shower. I always felt wet and sticky and sweaty and tired.

The sound of the rain was a constant, and would fold itself into the fabric of everyday life. It was only when I stood at that front window that I remembered to listen to the sound. I would look out from the office and watch the houses across the street disappear, the large oak trees vanish behind a sheet of moisture, a dew that hung in the air. Up close, I would concentrate on the individual drops, trying to focus on a sliver of perspiration. The rain would sparkle and glisten in a hypnotic rhythm. My mind would wander and drift.

I would close my eyes and tried to place myself squarely inside my memory. I concentrated on the location, the surroundings, the atmosphere and then I tried to imagine my feelings at that time, my thoughts, what was topical and pertinent to me within a certain moment. I could never remember exactly what I was feeling so I made it up. But I surrendered to my imagination. It was easier to do for more recent memories – I started with that very morning, placing myself in the moments before I got ready for work that day, picking out my clothes, eating breakfast, really remembering the stories I read in the newspaper, how the spoon felt in my hand, the sound of my feet scuffling on the wood floor. I remembered the things that would make an impression on me on a given day, whatever it was. I pushed myself, pushed my recollections and impressions from my first day of high school when Martin Brady pushed my head so hard into the lockers, I had a knot for a week. I tried to recall what our summer vacation felt like when we camped out in a tent my dad had borrowed. We went to the General George Patton Museum in Fort Knox, Kentucky. In my desk at home, I have a faded picture of him and I that day, standing in front of a tank, his floppy mop of dark hair and a sly grin as he leaned his arms over my head, against the light tan metal. My mom must have taken the picture but I don't remember her being with us. I tried to remember the April morning when I was seven years old as I looked out my bedroom window and looked down and saw my father throw a suitcase and a duffel bag into the back of his car. With a cigarette dangling from his lips, he got into his Chevy Impala and drove away. It looked as if he was just going to get gas or run something to my Uncle Bucky’s house, but I knew he was leaving for good. I just didn’t realize I would never see him again. He would be dead within six months, a ruptured appendix as he sat at a red light in a small town somewhere in northern Wyoming. He bled to death by himself in his beloved automobile. I tried to remember the feelings I felt as I watched my mother stood at the telephone table in the hallway, the black receiver pressed to her ear, her head bowed, and then calmly tell me the news once she hung up. Fourteen years later, as I stood in the quiet of Thomson’s office, my head swirled as the rain seemed to envelope me, though I remained warm and dry. As I tried to replay moments in my life, I found that some memories were very difficult to place myself in, while other memories I did not need to remember at all, since I had never fully let them go from being immediate, no matter how long ago they first occurred. Being seven years old again was, unfortunately, extremely easy.

My reverie was halted when I heard a car coming up on Vine, it’s tires splashing in the gravel, hitting the bumps and holes of the wet dirt on the shoulder. The car roared by in a blur, accelerating as it passed the station, a large bag thrown from the back seat. The bag tumbled over itself and then came to a rest, landing in our lot. I ran out of the office in time to watch the fuzzy pink taillights shimmer behind a cascade of rain drops, eventually disappearing into the heavy grey dusk.

When I reached the bag, I stood over not a bag at all but a human body, broken and curled in unnatural twists. Even in the rain, a pool of deep red was visible under the neck and right shoulder. I could not detect where the face was or if the person was still alive. I saw no movement and could only think that, given what I assumed had just occurred to this person – the last of which was being thrown out of a moving car -- the last breath had already taken place.

I stood over the body and my eyes suddenly began to fill, tears flowing down my cheeks. It felt odd, even then, for there was no connection between this person and myself. I bent down and moved the left arm gingerly with my finger, revealing a man’s face. It was a thin face, ashen white, a sparse grey stubble, lips a faint pink. There was no sign of life, no residue of breath. He was so pale, it looked as if he had been dead for a very long time. I rolled him over a bit – so fearful I would crack a bone or separate a shoulder – and his broken body rested on my lap, thin, like a gangly teenager. The rain splashed against his exposed face, thinning his matted hair, bringing his mouth forward. I looked at his arms, his chest and torso, his legs. It took me a moment to realize the angle of his right leg was pointing into his body, so grossly twisted that I quickly turned away. The lot was empty, the street void of anything but the pattering of rain failing on the cement. Just then I a heard a gasp for breath, two short intakes, the second on top of the first, and then nothing. I quickly moved my body out from under his and rested him on the ground. I put my ear to his chest but heard nothing. I could not hear or feel a heartbeat. I moved my fingers to his wrist but felt no pulse. I saw no movement in his body, no struggle or fight. I put my ear near his lips and there was no breath. Even without a doctor or a priest, I knew that he was dead.

I sat back down in the wet minefield, among the multitude of puddles, and took his shoulders – gingerly – in mine and held him. I did not know this man nor did he know me, but we were now connected. I squeezed his shoulders and felt the life that still filled his arms and chest. I rocked us back and forth while the rain flowed from the sky, baptizing us both. “I don’t know who you are,” I said, “But you deserved better than what happened to you. I am sorry for that. Sorry that you had to die this way. To live all your days and then suddenly die this way.”

I picked him up in my arms and struggled in carrying him to the office, a dry haven for us both. I rested him against the counter. He looked even worse inside then he did outside. He had a large gash, a slit on the right side of his neck and there seemed to be blotches of blood everywhere – his shoulder, his chest, his thighs. I wiped my brow. I did not want to explore any further. I didn’t want to know too much of what happened. I slid my hand cautiously into each pocket to see if there was anything he left behind, any information or identification. There was no wallet, no keys, no money. I did find a handful of receipts in his pants pocket -- cash register receipts that were at least three, four months old. At the very bottom, curved and battered, there was a paper library card with the name “James Mauldin” printed in blue ink. The letters filled my heart with such happiness and I smiled in relief, as a drop of water fell from my hair onto my nose. I rolled it over my tongue – James Mauldin. James Mauldin. He had a name, a history. His name was James Mauldin and he was a person, after all, not just a body filled with holes, dumped to rot on the side of the road. Jim Mauldin, maybe, or possibly Jimmy to his mother. He was James Mauldin and he was sitting in Thomson’s Gas Station with me. In purple ink, “Santa Clara City Library” was etched at the top. I held the card in my fingers knowing that James too had held that same card in his fingers when he was alive.

I flipped the card over to see some scribbling in pencil – a word written and then crossed out and below that, seven shaky numbers. Some numbers were bigger than others and there was a weird break in the sequencing but I had to believe it was a phone number. Whose number could it be though? Did the word above it have any connection? Was it a name? Of a lover? A wife? A job? The horizontal markings were many, and too thick. It was a single word, I was pretty sure, but I could not make out what lie beneath the strikes. Something with a capital “S,” maybe, but beyond that, I just could not read it.

I pushed the card and the receipts in my pocket and grabbed the ring he wore on his right hand – a simple silver band with three thin intertwining gold strings wrapped around each other – and put that in my pocket too. There was a small piece of paper hidden under the cash register with Mr. Thomson’s home phone number on it. I lifted the cash register and then phoned my boss to tell him what had happened. I barely got the words out before I began to cry again. I was embarrassed but it prompted Mr. Thomson to assure me that everything would be okay, that he would be right there and he would take care of everything.

I went home and took a long shower. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and noticed the same grey skin tone, the same stubble I had seen on James Mauldin’s face. I slept hard but woke several times from a dream where I had scabs all over my body but I could not explain them to the doctor. He ordered me to go to the hospital, immediately, for tests but nobody could find anything wrong with me. The nurses were all very nice, like a grandmother or something, like they were in for a visit, just striking up casual conversation. They just kept commenting on how young I was and that this kind of thing usually happens to older men. They would sit in the side chair for idle chitchat but then would forget to take an xray or whatever they came in to do. I began to panic, wanting them to do whatever it was they came in to do, feeling I would die any minute. Three or four of them came in and each of them did the same thing, but I could not speak. As I was listening to these woman talk, the scabs multiplied and soon covered my body. I didn’t remember what happened after that.

The next morning I went to the library and found the section in the reference area of phone books. I grabbed a California book and found the area code for Santa Clara. I went home and dragged the phone to the kitchen table and sat with the library card in my hand. I dialed the numbers from the back of the card, adding the Santa Clara area code first. “Jetson Is a Son” the woman’s voice shot out after the second ring.

I didn’t catch what she said, “I’m sorry, what? What did you say?”

“Jacobs and Peterson.”

“Oh um, I am looking for someone who is a . . . a relative, maybe, a wife of a Mr. James Mauldin.”

“Who do you want to speak to?” the young woman asked, curtly, with an exhale, resigning herself to the fact that this very well would not be an easy or quick conversation.

“No, I’m sorry, no, I don’t want to speak to James Mauldin – I know him – but I am looking for someone . . .he may know. He gave me this number. He is really sick and gave me this number to call. I am not sure who I am supposed to talk to.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

I tried a slightly different approach. “Is there someone there with the last name of Mauldin? A man or a woman named Mauldin?”

“No,” she answered, “There's no one here by that name.”

I felt a little desperate; I could feel my only chance slipping away. “Has there ever been anyone there by that name? I mean, maybe that person just quit or something. Anyone named Mauldin at all?”

“No, no one I have ever heard of. I have only been here eight months,” she told me, “But I have heard lots of the names here.” There was a slight pause. “Sorry.” And she hung up.

I didn’t have much to go on and my options were limited, but I did know two things. I knew his name -- James Mauldin -- and I knew that at one time, he lived in Santa Clara, California. I went back to the library the next day and searched through rolls of microfilm - US Census for Santa Clara. I started back ten years thinking that was a safe place to begin. It took me several hours to find something in the 1945 Census – one William J Mauldin homeowner, wife Margaret, daughter Kathleen, 10 years old.

I spent the next day and a half in the library. Finally on Friday of that same week, I boarded a bus with a small bag and through a dirty glass window, watched America as it rolled by for the 2026 miles until I reached Santa Clara California.

On Tuesday evening, I stood in front of a small brown house with a white eagle over the front door on Winslow Avenue, and I felt an immense sense of exhaustion and nausea pound down on me. A middle aged woman answered the door. I handed Kathleen Winbeck her father’s wedding ring and library card. I told her that I found her father on the side of the road, in front of where I worked, and that I didn’t know anything else. She offered for me to come inside but I politely refused.

I did not go home. I stayed in Santa Clara for the next twenty-seven years. In all my time there, I was never able to escape the feeling of immense suffocation whenever it rained for a long period of time. I was forever thankful for the sun that seemed to forever shine on southern California.