RAYMOND STEIBER DRY AUGUST The heat lay weighted and immobile on every square inch of skin. It drew the air out of the lungs and only grudgingly gave some of it back. Out beyond the hood of the moving car waves of it rose from the pavement like an undulating barrier. Sim was driving and now he glanced over at George in the passenger seat. He sat there with his big hands in his lap, his mouth gaping, the thin blond hair on his scalp plastered with sweat. Last night there had been heat lightning out on the horizon, but never any rain, never any rain for a month now, and he'd told Sim: "He's out there. He's out there sprinkling lightning bolts across the land." And Sim, thin and dry as August, had said: "George, it ain't nothing out there but the weather." And George had answered, "No, Uncle Sim, it's the weather man." Sim had stared to answer him, then given up. A forty-three-year-old nephew, his brain gone south -- what could you do with him? So he had simply looked out over the darkened fields of wheat, threatened on the one hand by drought and on the other by the possibility of a storm. After a while he'd said: "We'll drive into Jefferson tomorrow afternoon and get ready to pick up your mother from the bus. She don't get in till Wednesday, but weal stay overnight, maybe take in a movie. How'd you like that, George?" "I'd like it fine, but it won't get rid of that old weather man." Just those three, the uncle, his sister, her son, living in the old white-frame farm house. It was company, Sim thought, and old and lonely as he was, he was grateful for it. He was even grateful for George. Now they drove through the oppressive heat toward Jefferson, and George sat there, seemingly without a thought in his head. Sim wondered sometimes, What goes on inside him? Does he remember them --his family? The boy -- why the hell am I thinking of him as a boy, he's over forty -- the boy never smiles. There's a deep melancholy river that runs through him, and he may not even know its source. George staring through the: windshield. George breathing shallowly through an open mouth. George with that great sad face and those eyes like a basset hound's. Sim said: "When we get to Jefferson, we'll check into the motel and then go get some fried chicken at Tull's." He was trying to cheer him somehow though he knew he never would. "That'll be fine," George said. "I know you like fried chicken. You always liked it. Why, May --" He shut his mouth. Why had he brought up May? "The weather man got her, Uncle Sim." Sim gripped the sweaty steering wheel. "He got Marjorie, too. And then that thing he sent at the house, that black twisty thing he took out of his old black leather bag, it ripped everything to flinders." "George, I --" "They say one of them flinders hit me in the head. That that's why I'm like I am nowadays, but that ain't what happened. The weather man did it. He did it deliberate. Then he left me for dead. He didn't want me to tell anybody I'd seen him. He didn't want his secret let out." "George, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up." "I was all right before that, wasn't I, Uncle Sim? You knew me then. I could think like anybody else and I was working Dad's old farm and I was doing just fine. That's the way it was, wasn't it?" "You were a born farmer, George. You could sniff a handful of soil and tell just how good it was and what for. You still got some of that in you." "The weatherman didn't take that away. But he took everything else away." A tear rolled out of George's eye. He seemed unconscious of it. "May. I can't remember what May was. Was she my wife, Uncle Sire?" Sim nodded dumbly, unable to speak. "What must I have been then? To have a wife, I mean. Why, even you never had a wife, Uncle Sim." "I was too dry and sour for one, George. And too homely. If I ever could've got one though, I would've wanted her to be just like May." "Like wheat in sunshine, that's the way her hair looked. Or maybe I just said that to her sometime, trying to impress her. Would I have done something like that, Uncle Sim?" "Back then you would. You had that way about you that you got from your father." "And then that old weather man came along and took it all away from me. Such a little man to cause so much harm." Don't let him mention the child, Sim thought. Don't let him remember crawling through the debris with blood in his eyes and finding her broken body. Spare me that one today, there's already enough misery in my life. George's mind shifted again. "I sure look forward to that fried chicken at Tull's," he said. And then he lapsed into silence without his face ever having changed its melancholy cast. They put up at a motel on the edge of town just off the interstate. Behind it fields of wheat and corn stretched away without a break to the horizon. The double-bedded room seemed luxury enough compared to the farm house, yet Sim missed his rocking chair and the view off the front porch and his last pipe there at nightfall. George sat at the foot of the bed and watched some kiddy show on the room television, his face so serious that you would have thought it was a lecture in nuclear physics. Around six-thirty they got dressed and drove over to Tull's. It was an old family restaurant with checkered tablecloths and fresh-faced high school girls to serve you. There were always kids in there, always some young mother trying to eat with one hand while she soothed an infant with the other. And across from her there'd be dad and a slightly older kid, slathering butter on hot rolls and putting them away like they were caramels. Sim liked it. He liked the grandpas and grandmas and sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters at the longer tables. It made him sad though to be sitting there with his nephew George and not be one of them, the grandpa maybe with a rich life behind him. Besides themselves there was only one other person who wasn't with a family. He sat at a table behind George, and he wore a black suit and a black vest and a black tie. Sim found himself wondering what his profession might be. Undertaker, he thought. Or maybe hangman. The man ate his soup, pausing every once in a while to survey the room and give it a little smile. Once he caught Sim's eye and gave a nod. The man's own eye seemed like that of a crow or a jackdaw, looking out at the world of men from some other, older form of intelligence. After a while the man finished his soup and picked up his check and headed for the cash register. He had a black valise in his hand, the kind that old-time doctors used to carry. Maybe that's what he is, Sim thought. But more likely he's a drummer. They ate their hot rolls and fried chicken and corn on the cob and mashed potatoes with gravy. Then they followed up with huge slabs of apple pie a la mode and sat back content -- even George for all his melancholy. "That was good, Uncle Sim." "If one of them diet ladies on the television could see us now, she'd have us thrown in jail." When they stepped back outside, the night was hot and still. It seemed to be waiting for something to happen, something fearful and unpleasant, and all their good feelings evaporated into thin air. George stood stiffly in the restaurant parking lot and gazed off to the northwest where the sky seemed especially black. "He's here, Uncle Sim. He followed us from the farm." "Who's here?" Sim asked, already knowing the answer. "That old weather man." "Let's get back to the motel, George." He took him by the arm and walked him over to the car and got him in the front seat. All the way back to the motel George kept turning his head and staring off to the northwest. This was about the time of year it happened, Sim thought. His nerves remember and it makes him edgy. Sim tried to get George's mind off it. "Want to run over to the movie theater?" "I don't feel like it, Uncle Sire." "It'll take your mind off things." George turned and stared at him. "That's just what I don't want, Uncle Sim. Maybe I can catch him this time. Maybe I can stop him just once. Then maybe he'll think twice about doing it again." "Dammit, George--" "Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to do it just once." "You're not the man, George." "That's what I'm afraid of, Uncle Sim." Sim got him back to the motel and took him to their room and put hi m to bed with the television for company. Maybe his mother could handle him when she came in on the bus tomorrow. Maybe she could dilute his melancholy some. He got his pipe and tobacco and went out back of the motel where there was a little bit of lawn. The field of wheat came right up to it, separated only by a wire fence. Sim stood there and smoked his pipe and gazed off into the darkness. The night had become more and more. oppressive. "Do you think it'll rain?" a voice said behind him. He spun around. The little man from the restaurant was there. He still had the doctor's valise in his hand, but now he wore a hat. Sim thought it was a bowler -- something you only saw in old movies and photographs. "It may rain," Sim said. The man smiled enigmatically. "Yes. Yes, I believe it will." He was silent a moment, then he said: "It's been a long time since I've been in these parts. I should've known they'd put a town along that meandering little river." "Why, this town's been here a hundred years or more." "Has it? Has it now? How time flies." Sim laughed nervously. A joker, he thought, and yet it hadn't sounded like a joke. "What trade are you in?" he asked. "Oh I'm a traveling man." "What exactly do you sell?" "Sell? I don't sell anything. I give little demonstrations of what I can do. Why, I gave a little demonstration over in Centralia just last week. Of course, one day the home office will come through and show people what really can be done. They've been preparing it a long time. Biding their time so to speak." "I'm not getting your drift, stranger." "Aren't you? Well. Let's just say my particular line of business is a little hard to describe. And yours?" "I'm just a farmer." The man smiled. "Ah." "It's an honest profession." "I didn't say it wasn't. Rather risky though, wouldn't you say -- what with the weather and all?" "The weather can do a man in all right." The man smiled again. "I quite agree," he said. They stood there without speaking and all around them everything seemed still as death -- even the traffic on the interstate. "I must be off'," the man said at last. "I have some samples I need to deliver tonight." "Kind of late, aint it?" "Oh late's just fine. It's the best time of all, in fact." And then he tipped his bowler and ambled away into the darkness. Sim stared after him a moment, then tapped out his pipe and headed back toward the motel. There was a pale face at one of the second story windows. It was George's, and all at once it disappeared. Sim walked back into the motel building, something making him hurry his steps. He reached the bottom of the stairs, then found himself running breathlessly up them. When he got to their room, the door was partway open. He stepped inside. No sign of George. No sign of the clothes he'd worn either or his shoes. Sim crossed to the window. He flung back the drapes. The lawn below was empty, but far out in the wheat next door he sensed something moving. George, he thought. What the hell's got into you? He hesitated a moment longer, then headed for the door. As he reached the top of the stairs, an unexpected quiver of fear ran through him. * * * George followed his trampled trail through the wheat field. He didn't think the terrible little man knew he was behind him, but you never could tell. He might be leading him on, wanting to finish the thing he'd started the day he'd killed May and Marjorie. Shut him up forever. Keep George from telling about him although he needn't have bothered since nobody believed him anyway. That bowler hat -- he'd remembered that all right. And then he'd seen him back of the motel with that valise of his -talking to Uncle Sire of all people. Was Uncle Sim in with him somehow? No, he couldn't believe that. Sim was like everyone else. He thought the weather was just, well, weather. That little man in the bowler hat. All the trouble he'd caused. All the heartbreak and suffering. Those black twisting beasts he carried in his bag-they'd be bumping around right now, anxious to be out. That was why the air was so still. It sensed them coming and was afraid. A fragment of breeze swept across the wheat field. Its cool fingers touched his face like a blind man trying to identify one of the sighted. I've got to hurry, he thought. He's getting ready. Soon he'll let one of those things out and it'll turn everything to flinders. The breeze rose some more, roiling the wheat stalks like wind in water. He could smell the dry soil it raised and the vegetable grit from the wheat. Some of it got in his eyes and blurred them. He blundered onward. May, May, he thought. Hair the color of wheat in sunlight, like cornsilk under his hand when he crashed her to him. The pink of her cheeks, the way it had spread to her bosom that first time they'd innocently fondled in the back seat of the car. Had that really been? Or was it just something his poor fuddled mind had lifted from a TV show or a movie? And Marjorie -- oh God Marjorie! Her broken body cast by the terrible beast among the debris of the house. So pale in the greenish light, hair like cornsilk, too, but plastered now with rain and blood. And her flesh -- so icy to the touch -- like warmth would never touch it again. His eyes blurred again, this time not from grit but from awful remembrance. The wind blew harder. It gusted and shook and sent a quiver through his bones. All at once he came to a place where the wheat had been flattened in a great arc. And there in the center of the arc the man in the bowl er hat crouched beside his valise. He looked up once and his eyes flashed green -- like the light blink that's sometimes seen at the setting of the sun. George hadn't yet emerged from the standing wheat and he crouched in the wind-whipped darkness. The man in the bowler hat went on with his work as if he hadn't seen him. He had the valise open and that was where the wind was coming from, pouring out of it in an endless stream. The valise appeared to be filled with little leather bags that bumped around as if they had animals inside them. He selected one, held it up before his eyes, decided it wasn't what he wanted, put it back. He rummaged some more, took out two or three other bags, put them back also. Each quivered in his hand as if anxious to be free, then bounced around in frustration as he thrust it into the valise. At last he found the one he was looking for. A slow, mean smile curled across his lips, He slipped the bag into the side pocket of his coat, closed the valise, put it to one side. The wind that had been worrying the wheat field died away to nothing. In the sudden silence that followed George could hear the little bag bumping around in the man's pocket. He took it out. He pinched the top of it with his thumb and forefinger. He slowly eased the drawstring, The thing knew it was going to get out now. It seemed to be gathering itself for the rush. He placed the leather bag on the ground. He released his thumb and forefinger. And out: it came. A tiny twisting funnel of darkness that seemed to gather an eerie green glow about itself. The breeze rose up again. It flowed past George's ears into the center of the flattened arc of wheat. That thing was gathering it in from all directions. It was feeding on it. It was growing. The man drew' something that looked like a pointer from his inner coat pocket. He extended it until it was nearly three feet long. Then he began using it on the black twisting funnel, tapping it here and there, making it do what he wanted. The thing was as high as a man's knee now. George could hear the rushing sound it made -- like a big electric fan on high speed. He heard the snap, too, of the little green and yellow sparks of lightning it made. The beast, he thought. And his knees went soft. The beast that killed them all. The wind rushed more quickly past George's ears. The thing was as tall as a large man now, as big across as a grizzly bear. It roared with anger and desire. The man strutted around it like a lion tamer, stepping back when it lunged at him, then snapping the stick at it to show it who was boss. It grew larger still -- a raging rhinoceros now, then a T. rex. The man remained its strutting master, laughing at the sheer power of the thing he held in check, his awful green eyes flashing with joy. There were lightning strokes now within the funnel, real lightning that sizzled and boomed. The thing flung itself about, towering the noise of it like an express train, like a dozen express trains. The man threw back his head and roared with laughter. George was on his hands and knees. His fingers clawed the earth in an effort to keep himself from being blown away. It was going to be like the last time. Only this time it would kill him, too. "Oh May!" he cried. "Marjorie!" Some force seemed to rise up in him then. A thing almost the size of the loss he had suffered. He rose up, fighting the wind, and lunged across the flattened wheat toward the man in the bowler hat. The man saw him coming. He made a sweeping gesture with his pointer and an arm of wind .seemed to boil out from the twisting funnel. It drove at George and hit him square and sent him rolling to the ground. He felt his nose crunch and tasted blood in his mouth. But he picked himself up anyway. Another terrific blow from the whirling beast. He was looking straight up at the towering mass of it as he rolled in the dust. Sim, he thought. Help me. But there was no Sim. Not here anyway. He'd have to do it alone. He got himself up on his hands; and knees. The man in the bowler hat was dancing around, whipping his pointer like a conductor's baton. The great beast roared and roared, and blinding strokes of energy crackled within its awful funnel. George gathered himself. He lunged. That fool of a man thought he was down for good. Thai fool of a man was looking the other way. And now George grappled with him. They crashed to the ground. The pointer broke into a dozen pieces. The man's breath was in his face and it smelled like the ozone after a lightning strike. George closed his hands around the man's throat. Above them the whirling beast seemed to hesitate. Its master was down and now it was free. But which way should it go? In which direction lay the most prey? It suddenly made up its mind, plunging across the wheat field toward the interstate and destroying everything in its path. The man threw George from him as if he were a child. Then he struck him and George rolled a dozen feet across the flattened wheat. "You filthy little farm boy!" the man screamed. His eyes flashed green anger. "You've done it now! You let that thing get away before I was ready and now it'll miss just about everything in the town!" He gathered up his fierce little body and struck again. George rolled over and over in the dirt. "I wanted to flatten that town, boy! I wanted to show those people just how feeble and insignificant they are! That's my job! That's my profession! Oh you'll pay, boy! You don't cross me! You don't cross the old weather man!" His hand darted under the lapel of his coat. George lay there broken and helpless, unable to move. The man's hand came out again crackling with fire. He drew it back as you'd draw back a spear hand and suddenly there was a dancing lightning holt there. He flung it straight at George's chest. George screamed as it hit him, and his scream chased off across the field, following the twister into the night. The tornado caught Sim in the open, but he was able to fling himself into a ditch and survive. It tore the roof off the motel. It killed a mother of four in the parking lot. It ripped up trees and tossed cars around and then fled into the night without hitting the town itself. Sim worked his way back to the motel as the last of the rain fell. He got a flashlight out of their battered car and returned to the wheat field. It took him a long time to find George's body, but finally the flashlight picked it out, spreadeagled in the mud. Sim put the beam on his face. The jaw hung slackly open and the empty blue eyes bugged horribly. No melancholy there now. Something worse. Something much worse. As he turned away, a cold .gust of wind struck his cheek. It was like something out of the grave. The weather man, he thought. And shivered in spite of himself.