SEASON OF CORNFLOWERS (lust, love, family, natural disasters, Hemingway, Biblical references)

THE SEASON OF CORNFLOWERS

The girl came at the end of May. She wore a light blue sundress and golden sandals at least three days a week. When she walked hesitantly on the dusty road, each step glinted like a tiny jewel. Even when Paul watched her from the shade of the family restaurant he always sweated a little more, and had to clear his drying throat. One day she looked back right when he was spitting into the metal rain bucket left on the wooden steps. He looked up, just in time to see her wince. God Damn.

Since the beginning of summer he didn’t sleep so well. In the night, while every living thing was at peace, even the fleas in the carpet, he stared at the rough wooden beams above him and thought of her. The way her skin looked as soft as satin and glowed like the wheat fields at sunset. How when the wind picked up the blue dressed fluttered against the curves of her body. What he would do for a small patch of that sundress. Just to feel the texture between his thumb and fingers. It looked so comforting.

Paul realized he had to read, love, live Hemingway because he heard the girl had a thing for this writer, and if he didn’t have a reason to meet her soon he wouldn’t survive. After the Breakfast rush at Old Dominion Café Paul jogged over to the county library. It was such a lonesome building that you couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. It looked like a single cylindrical cement fort standing on the crest of a hill. Paul noted that if he stood in the middle of the room, and slowly turned around once he could see all of the books in the building.

After only a few days, Paul began identifying with Hemingway. His feelings for the girl in the blue dress were so clearly defined in Jordan Robert’s love for Maria. Similarly, although he blushed, he understood David’s love for both his Catherine and Marita. Half way through the Hemingway’s bibliography he began wondering about the girl in blue. How did she come to know, let alone, love this writer so much? What sort of woman craved this sort of writing?

Then, on July 27th the floods came. It began as a typical summer storm. Constant, if light, warm rain. Paul had just finished that last Hemingway book that the county owned. In the café he paced, and couldn’t help but feel that the downpour had it in for him. It was a steady reminder of his imprisonment. He needed a fix. He needed Hemingway’s words. He needed to be reminded of what it really felt like to be alive. He needed to know it could be okay with a bit of rum and lime juice. That it was still possible to have dreams, to change the space he lived in.

Weeks passed. Conditions grew worse. No one came to the restaurant. Tourists stayed away from the town, and everyone else stayed at home. The wheat fields flooded, and the moldy stench filtered through the muddy alleyways. Even worse, the girl in the blue dress seemed to vanish with the sun. As the rain continued, her image began to fade from Paul’s memory. Even when he tried to conjure up what she looked like, he could only see the gray water seeping through the floorboards.

Eventually, Paul had to move his parents to the cement fortress on the hillside. The highest point in the county, actually. It was 567 feet above sea level. Most of the town had vacated in the first week. A few, who couldn’t bear leave their homes, died clutching their photo albums, land deeds, or bathroom doorknobs. The warm water continued dropping, bucketful on top bucketful, from above.

He worried about his mother. Physically she was fine, but her strong belief that this was the Armageddon, he was sure would be the death of her. She refused to change out of the damp nightgown that she was wearing when they had made their exodus from the rickety house moments before it was washed down the street. Despite Paul’s best efforts, she would circle the library mumbling verses from the Book of Revelations, only pausing for gulps of water. Their town, which proudly had 37 residents on record, was hardly a state of emergency.  The governor had other problems to consider such as recent city bombings, baron farming fields, and attempts on his life. A little puddle in the middle of the state would just have to wait.

Paul frequently looked out on the glistening lake that used to be his valley, and wondered why this was happening to this specific 50 mile by 50 mile patch of terrain. He heard on the radio that the rest of the country was parched. The correspondent reported that bottling trucks were being high jacked and that water tanks were being raided. He noted that at this rate, it would be three weeks and four days before the compound flooded. Then again, would starvation come first?

A small stream, breaking free of the lake began to flow past the window. The water, like a curvy branch of a tree, curled close to Paul. He tilted his head, seeing that there was something being carried by the water. It was a ripped patch of fabric, as blue as cornflowers. Innocently it floated by him, and as the stream curled around the edge of the building, the fabric was carried out of sight. Paul quietly fought the urge to run outside and be embraced by the warmth of the storm. He looked down at the book he was gripping in his hands. His knuckles were white from tension. The cover of Islands in the Stream stared back at him.