The little girl, seven or eight years old, walked in the rain. She was the girl that lived down the dirt road a few blocks away, in that crooked old house — a pioneer house that should have been demolished a long time ago. She was the girl whose father had gone to who-knows-where, and whose mother worked and slept and had no more time left in the day. She was the girl the neighbors sponsored for Christmas.
She stopped in front of a house, where the water moved swiftly, and she played in the current, walking in the gutter, and letting the stream wash the mud off her sneakers. She stopped often, and kicked the water, and stepped upon the curb, and leapt back into the gutter, and reached down to feel the water flow between her fingers. Her blue sweater and blue jeans were soaked.
The rain came harder, and soon the rainy day became a storm and the wind blew rain horizontally against the west-facing windows. There was a flash like the sun for an instant, and three seconds later an explosion of thunder.
The girl stood straight, at attention, clenching her fists. The thunderclap faded to a rumble, then to silence, and the girl splashed a foot in the water. She splashed again, and again, each time with more gusto. Soon she played as before, ignoring the lightning and thunder, even as the rain came in torrents.
A pickup truck sped past her, and the driver punched the horn. She raised a hand and waved at the truck. Then she jumped and spun around in the air, and fell into the water, and got back up to do it all again.
From a window a gray-haired man in plaid and khakis watched from the comfort of a soft chair, his face was turned away from the television for awhile. This girl’s gonna hurt herself, he thought.
“Honey!” he shouted to his wife.
“What?” His wife was somewhere in the far reaches of the basement.
“You know that gal that lives on the dirt road two blocks down — the one with that scrawny little girl?”
“I think so.”
“What’s her name?”
“Don’t know.”
Darn. So he sat, and he thought and he twisted his lips to the side, and he sighed, and he watched. Maybe I should tell her to go on home, he thought. But he didn’t leave his chair. He was too comfortable, and too tired.
The water’s flow was quickening, and the stream was widening on the road. It splashed up past the girl’s ankles as she played.
For a few seconds she looked down at her shoes, then she looked down the street in the direction of the flow, then back at her shoes. She reached into the water to feel the current, then stood back up and placed her hands on her hips.
“What’s she doing?” the old man said to himself.
“What did you say?” his wife shouted from the basement.
“Nothing,” he shouted back.
Then the girl sat down in the growing river. Water splashed against her back, and its force began to push her along. At first she moved slowly, but soon she gathered momentum and slid along smoothly. She raised her arms into the air and reclined a little, and the water took her even faster, to the end of the block, where the roads intersected.
At the intersection she leaped out of the water and skipped, danced and ran on the lawns and driveways, back toward the old man's house, and her skinny legs moved faster than seemed natural. Having returned to his lawn, she splashed back into the water and repeated her slide to the end of the block. Then again, and again, she repeated the ride, with little variations. Lightning broke the day’s grayness from time to time, and its thunder interrupted the rain’s white noise, but the girl carried on, unbothered.
Cars occasionally passed, moving slowly through the water that lapped at the tires. Drivers here don’t know what to do during torrents. We are high desert people. We plan on heavy snow and light rain. We depend on a slow spring snow-melt flowing down the mountain in temporary streams that fill our reservoirs. We are not prepared for bucket-dumping, gully-washing, cats-and-dogs rain. It isn’t something our streets were designed to deal with, and we don’t know how to drive in it. We sit inside and watch with wide eyes.
The rainfall lasted twenty minutes or so. The darkest clouds moved eastward, taking with them their water and their pyrotechnic displays. They were trailed by a lighter, more friendly gray sky with its drizzle of water, like a mist descending. In early July, that light sprinkling, the kind that rarely soaks far into the surface to feed the lawns and gardens, the fields, or the mountains, is the rain they recognize in Utah. It is the rain they enjoy after weeks of clear June skies. It is the I-love-rainy-days rain.
The girl — the gutter-sliding, overjoyed, unafraid, dancing, leaping, running little girl — went on playing as the waters calmed. When the current was no longer strong enough to slide her along, she went back to splashing and kicking in the gutter, and feeling the current with her hands. When the flow in the gutter became a trickle, she found little sticks and floated them like boats to the end of the block, following them, cheering for them, and waving goodbye to them when they passed the intersection.
The man had so intently watched the girl that he had not heard his wife come up from the basement. She had been standing beside his chair watching with him.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to be like a child again?” she asked.
The man startled and she pretended not to notice, and she went on.
“Do you remember our kids playing in the rain?” she asked.
“I do,” he said. “But we’d have never let them play like that.”
“That’s true. But they wanted to,” she said.
They watched the girl walk back toward their yard from the intersection. She balanced on the curb, and her thin arms were out as she made straight careful steps.
“What happens to us,” his wife asked, “that we no longer enjoy playing in the rain? Why do we sit here inside and watch the child play out there?”
“Just something we grow out of,” her husband said.
“I guess so,” she said.
Arriving back at their yard, the girl looked into their window and hopped off the curb onto their grass. She waved, and smiled. They smiled and waved back. Then the girl walked past their yard, past the neighbor’s yard, and out of sight.
***NOTE: This story is fiction and is not autobiographical.
***NOTE: This story is fiction and is not autobiographical.