When the Rain Comes by Charles Heiner

The spears are sharp. I made them good. I cut them pointy with the knife. The stomach is soft. The guts are in the stomach. I’ll rip their guts out.

People have been in my yard, picking my mom’s flowers. They can’t do that. They’re my mom’s flowers. I see them walking through here. They can’t do that. It’s private property. They should go to jail. But I’ll get them now. With the spears. The spears are sharp.

The tulips are smooth. I press on their petals and they bend and rub my fingers. They are yellow, but some are red. They point straight up in the air. Then there are the little butterfly flowers. They are so small and my mom says they’re rare. That means there aren’t a lot of them, and no one can pick them, but they do.

They come through the yard to get to the stores. I can see them sometimes when I’m on the swing and I go so high I can see down the hill, over the flowers. It’s easier for them to go through the yard because then they don’t have to walk around it, and the yard’s so big. When they go through the yard they don’t have to walk to the end of the street, and that means they don’t have to turn and go all the way down the next street too. So they go through the woods next to the driveway and follow the ditch to the back of the yard. There’s a path. And they pick my mom’s flowers. My mom’s flowers are all over the place. She has all different kinds. I can’t remember them all, but the yellow stars are daffodils and the big puffs are zinnias. Those are just some. There’s lots and lots, and I guess they’re so pretty that people can’t stop themselves, because they don’t really follow the ditch all the way. They come up to where the flowers are, just the ones on the side next to the woods, and they pick some while they’re walking. I know who it is, too. It’s those college people, and teenagers, and it’s those girls with the wavy clothes and flip-flops who steal my mom’s flowers. They walk real slow and they look at everything, and they smile for no reason. Sometimes they smoke, and when they do, they leave their cigarettes right on the ground, which is bad for the flowers.

I picked a flower yesterday. I mean I picked some. A few times. They were small and firm on my fingers, like they were alive. And they were. But I killed them. But I don’t do that anymore. I only picked the ones that had opened up and a lot of them hadn’t opened up yet. They were just buds. I picked them because I couldn’t wait, and because I wanted to see the girl in the yard. She was real pretty, with a long white dress and silver beads around her ankle. I was on the swing when she came, and she was so far away then, away from all the best flowers up near the house, and it wasn’t fair. I thought it wasn’t fair, that she was away from all the pretty flowers that I could have, but now I know better about what’s fair for her. 

But that was yesterday and yesterday I didn’t know. I jumped off the swing because I wanted to give her some flowers. I knew she would want them because I had seen her pick one before, and I thought she might want some of the other ones too, but since the other ones were so close to the house I thought she’d be scared to come get them. Scared of my mom. I used to think I should be scared of my mom but now I know better, now that I know what the scare is for.

I got her some white flowers and then I saw the ones that have one petal going straight down and look like they have a caterpillar crawling out the middle of them. Those ones were real pretty so I got her some of those too.

When she saw me she looked all scared and said, “Excuse me, do you mind if I cut through?”

So I held out the flowers but she didn’t say anything and I didn’t know what to do.

I said, “These are for you.”

“You’re so sweet,” she said. “Thank you.” She smiled at me and my face burned, and when she leaned down to get the flowers it made her ankle jingle.

“I hope it’s all right if I cut through,” she said. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

I said, “Yes.”

“These are beautiful flowers,” she said. “These droopy-looking ones are called bearded irises, because that fuzzy thing in the middle is like a beard. See?”

            I looked at it and she was right.

            She said, “These other ones are daylilies. Have you ever tried one?” And then she did something crazy. She bit a petal off one of the flowers and chewed and chewed. She looked at me while she did it, and she ate another one of the petals after that. She ate them all. I thought she was going to spit it out but she swallowed it like food.

And then she held one of the flowers in front of me and said, “Want to try it?” 

“No,” I said, “stop. You’ll get sick.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Daylilies are edible.” That means you can eat them. But she was wrong. You can’t eat flowers.

She started eating another one. She was eating it like food. And I couldn’t do anything. I just watched.

            She said, “Thanks for the flowers.”

            I said, “You shouldn’t eat them. Don’t eat them anymore.” I didn’t know what to do. I thought something might happen to her. I thought it might be poison. So I told her where the hospital was in case she had to go there. It was near the stores and she was going where the stores were. They always go where the stores are, to smoke and drink beer and to listen to music. But she wouldn’t listen to me. She just kept looking all over the yard while she ate the flowers and I know the flowers are pretty but she still shouldn’t eat them. 

She said, “You have a beautiful yard. Your parents must put a lot of work into it.” Then she went away.

When I got back to the house my mom was coming out and yelling for me to stay away from the ditch because of all the bad people down there. That was when I thought they were good people. I know better now.

She said, “What did they do to my bearded irises?  Did they come all the way up here?”

            “No,” I said. “I brought them down to her.”

            “To who?” she said. I was scared.

            “To the girl in the yard.”

            “What did she do to you?” she said. “Did she touch you?”

            “No,” I said, “she liked your flowers.”

            “You brought them to her?” she said. I was scared. “You brought them to her?”               

I said I did. Then I said I didn’t.

“Why?” she said. “Why?”

            I said, “I thought she would like them.”

            “You killed them,” she said. “Look what you did.” She pointed where the flowers were and the places I’d picked them were empty. Some were left but those were the ones that hadn’t bloomed yet and it made me feel sad to see all those plain green heads looking up at me.

My mom said maybe I should die now that I killed the flowers, but she fixed that. She did it with the belt, and then she did it with her hand. She used her hand on my face and then she used the lighter on my arm. I told her it hurt, but she said don’t worry, God has a plan. She said He even has a plan for why people like me are born, even though they had to take me out of second grade and put me in the other class where I don’t know anybody. Suffering is the way to salvation. God was punishing me then so He could reward me later. My mom said the Lord needs to be satisfied, and He can work miracles for those who admit their mistakes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

The Lord really did reward me after that. I remember that now when I feel His plan on my arm, and it feels good when I know how blessed I am. He looked down on me and saw that I had paid for my mistakes, and last night He sent the rain. It woke me up in the middle of the night and I knew I had been saved. It was easy to get back to sleep.

This morning I wanted to go right out and see what the rain had done, but I didn’t do that. I’m not supposed to leave the house before breakfast and I didn’t want to get in trouble like I did yesterday, but I went in the yard after I ate and the little green buds had turned into great big flowers, not just the daylilies and the bearded irises but the other ones too, great big puffs and stars. I was punished and God made it better. God likes the flowers. He protects them.

Flowers need to be protected. They’re not like trees. Down by the ditch is lots of trees, but people don’t pick trees. Trees are old. They’re older than people and flowers are younger than people, and people can pick flowers, but I think maybe trees can do something to people. With their roots maybe. Because their roots eat what’s in the ground and when people die they go down in the ground. I guess some people deserve that. They deserve to be punished.

So now I’ve got the spears. There are six of them. I made them out of sticks. When God made it rain, He also made the sticks fall, with the wind, so now I can use them to punish the people who steal my mom’s flowers. 

I cut the sticks with the knife from the kitchen. It was hard to find the straight sticks because most of them were crooked, and God made it that way because He doesn’t always make things easy. But I looked and looked in the leaves and I found six good ones that I sharpened with the knife. It was hard at first. I could only cut off a little at a time. It took an hour to do them all. Or maybe twenty minutes. It felt like a long time. My arm hurt.

I have them in my lap now, and I’m rubbing my hand across the tips. The tips are sharp. If I press my hand too hard, I could cut it. But I won’t.

The leaves are itchy. I’m sitting on the ground in the leaves and the leaves are crunching and poking my legs and the bugs are crawling on me. I’m hiding behind the bush of big purple puffs of little purple flowers, watching the place where the ditch comes out of the pipe under the road. That’s where the people come from when they steal my mom’s flowers. Not from the pipe under the road, but from the road. I can see the cars go by but people don’t drive up. They walk up, and that’s because they’re not far away. Some of them come from that big red college building over there. I’m scared of college. They live near here and they are bad and I have to live near them. I know what kind of people are in the neighborhood. I see them on the street. I see trash on the street, just like the trash people leave in my yard. Some people like to make litter, and that makes them bad.

It’s hot out here, hotter than yesterday. The bugs keep crawling on me and I have little bumps where they bite me. That’s why I slap at them on my arms and my legs so they get squished on my skin, because they are like some people. They are bad and I have to kill them. 

I see somebody now, coming through where the trees go out to the sidewalk. It’s her. It’s her. It’s the girl who ate the flowers. She ate the flowers but she doesn’t look sick. God didn’t punish her. I’ll fix that. She’s smiling like she did yesterday but she shouldn’t be happy because things aren’t the way they were yesterday. She better leave. I can’t have her coming in here like that because it’s my yard and they’re not her flowers.

She better leave but she’s not leaving. She’s walking through the trees. Now she’s coming off the path and getting near the edge, near where the yard is, and she’s looking at the flowers. She’s smiling at them like she wants them. She can’t have them. Then there’d be more flowers gone. It’s bad enough already with just some of them gone. She’s coming out of the trees now and closer to the flowers. She thinks she can come closer now, because I was nice. I learned about nice. God doesn’t always want you to be nice. She can’t come any closer. She can’t come at all anymore.

Now she’s in the yard. She’s in the yard and she keeps putting her hand across the flowers. She keeps touching the flowers when she walks past them. She’s hurting them.

I press my hand around the spear and get up on my knees and the girl is still petting the flowers. She’s smiling and looking in the trees and at the flowers and she doesn’t see me. But I see her. And I am holding the spear in my hand. The tip of the spear is in the leaves on the ground and it has poked through the leaves like it will poke through the girl. I put my hand on the leaf at the end of the spear and pull it through so it breaks, and the girl keeps coming.

She keeps coming and I’m waiting but she walks so slow, so slow that I know she won’t be hard to knock over. She’s not paying attention. My mom says people have to pay attention, but the girl is looking up at the branches and she almost tripped on that stick. I could push her and she would be on the ground. Then I could put the spear through and she could go down in the ground and be food for the trees. Now she’s looking up at the yard and at all the flowers, and she’s looking at everything so slow, and she’s looking and looking until she sees everything and I think she sees me and now she looks scared, but now she doesn’t. And now she’s smiling at me but she doesn’t know what I’m going to do to her. She just stopped smiling and now she stopped walking. She’s standing by the flowers and she’s leaning down so her face is close to the tulips and I’m scared. I’ve got my hand on the spear and my other hand on the other spears, but what if I can’t pick up the other spears and still be able to run with this one? What if I throw and miss and I keep throwing and missing and she gets me? She’s bigger than me and she doesn’t get hurt when she eats the flowers.

She’s going for the tulips. She’s going across the tall special grass, the kind of grass that’s like big tall leaves, that’s around the tulips, and that’s the last thing keeping them safe from her. Now she’s walking in the tulips. Her legs are hitting the tulips when she walks past them and I know that it’s hurting the tulips but she doesn’t care and now she’s getting down and looking at each one. She’s just looking at one now and she’s smiling like she’s crazy and she’s taking one, the same one she was looking at. It’s a tall pretty yellow one and I’m not behind the bush anymore. I’m running at her and I have the spear in my hand but it’s only the one spear and I forgot the other ones so now I have to throw good. She’s turning and looking at me and she doesn’t look scared even though I’m running after her. She’s standing up and she’s taller now, but I keep running and she’s moving back. She’s moving fast. I didn’t know she could move that fast.

Now she’s moving faster. She’s got her hands out but she can’t stop the spear. I’ve got it pulled back and I’m throwing it at her but she’s just putting her hand out and stopping it there. The spear is falling down and she is strong. And even though she’s only walking and I’m running, she’s walking fast. She’s big and strong and fast and I can’t stop her now. I wish my mom was here.

She says, “I’m sorry. I’ll stay out of here, you little freak.” I’m scared. I’m scared but I’m running after her to make her go away. And now she’s running too. Into the trees. I’m chasing her into the trees and I trip on the roots but she’s still running and I’m on the ground and I don’t have the spear anymore. But there’s the knife. It’s dirty and under some leaves now, but it shines, and I can see it. Where I left it. The knife is sharp, sharper than the spears. But then why did I make the spears? I could have used the knife. But knives are for cutting food. They aren’t for people. But maybe I can use it a different way. You can do that. You can find different ways to use things when you don’t have what you need.

But now I need the knife. It’s over there, and I have to reach through the trees to get it but I can’t reach it, and it’s hard to get through the branches. I have to push them away and it’s hard for me to do but the girl can push them and I can see the muscles on her arms. They are stronger than my muscles because I can’t push the branches that easy.

            I have the knife. I have my hand on the knife and I’m taking it from the leaves and I’m jumping through the branches so hard they hurt but I get past them and now she’s screaming.

She’s saying, “They’ll lock you up you little freak. Get away you little freak.” She’s screaming too loud and it hurts my ears and I’m cutting her leg with the knife. Her face is screaming and she is hurt bad and the flowers don’t scream. The flowers don’t make blood. But people get punished for the flowers. She can’t pick the flowers.

The blood’s coming out and it’s getting on my hand and she’s still running, but it’s hard for her to run now, like she’s skipping but she’s not happy like people are when they skip but that’s how she’s running.

But God will fix her. He fixes me. She’s getting up to the road and skipping down the sidewalk and I’m walking back to the flowers and they are so pretty. I love them. She can’t touch them now. I’m feeling the blood on my hand and I’m sticking my fingers together and when I pull them apart they make a smacking sound. It can be washed off. God can fix it. I’m going to go lie on the ground and wait for the rain to come.