McMillan Made The Clouds

The clouds weren't always there, as the legend goes. Not on the Plains.

The West Coast had the thick marine layer rolling in with its putrid stench and the grey sort of gloom that clung to its people. And the Southern Coast hugging the Gulf had angry hurricanes that drenched the soil and turned the sky black. The East sat pretty in the summertime with its sea breeze that cooled off the scorching land at night and gave its residents a break.

But the Plains had nothing at all. Just hot wind, a scowling sun, and the hope for fall to arrive.

Hundreds and hundreds of years back, in the 1950s, it was just flyover country to most. An easy way to get from ocean to ocean. Bodies boarded and crammed into aluminum airplanes, shut their tiny little porthole windows, and pulled a mask over their eyes to slip into a drug-induced sleep. The only thing exciting enough to wake up for was the metallic rattle of the alcohol trolley rolling down the airplane walkway.

It was just the Plains, after all. A cloudless, boring stretch of land that suffered silently.

The roar of jet engines cut through the quiet. Sunburnt eyes looked up, glazed over with the early start to the plague of the Great Plains, heat stroke.

As the temperatures shifted and the mercury crept ever higher with each summer, the people began to succumb. Homes became too hot to live in and the air was unfit for human lungs, burning throats and alveoli with each inhale.

But there was no help to be had. The old gods had turned their back on the agony of the people.

And the people lost hope.

The small houses coloring the otherwise abyss-black nights huddled around blocks of melting ice at the day's end and washed the salt from their skin with cold groundwater, ignoring the tears. Ignoring the desperate need for shade.

The shadows in the windows wept.

One in particular, young and strong and full of a particular loathing for tears that didn't solve anything, stepped out of the yellow light of his home onto his front porch to the tapping of moths against a dim old light.

James McMillan.

The young man blinked at the rolling fields in front of him, following the black line of asphalt carved into the land as a cursory attempt at connection. To what or who, it didn't matter. It was there and that was enough to make the families spread across the vast lands feel each other's touch.

It was hotter this year.

Unbearable summers had shifted into something hellish. Hot days turned to boiling nights. The relief the dark once brought was gone as not even night could touch the humid heat of the Plains.

McMillan ran a tired hand down his face, following it with a swipe of his sleeve that dried him off.

"It's sick," he mumbled, lazily walking down the four steps into his dirt drive. "Land's sick."

He scooped up a handful of dried dirt as he squatted on his haunches. It trickled through his hand as dust lifted into the air. Sorrow grabbed him tightly, twisting his diaphragm until he couldn't breathe.

The heartbeat of the land was late tonight.

McMillan rose to his feet and stepped over to the rows of corn sweating beneath the tarp.

The heartland had a heartbeat. It used to create the rhythm of the day but as the heat grew and the respite shrunk, it weakened until McMillan and farmers like him could only catch a beat of the old heart at night as it struggled to press on.

Thump-thump.

McMillan undid another one of the buttons on his loose shirt. His father would have thrown a fit but it was his farm now, his rules, and he was hot. A pink tongue darted out and wet the corners of his dry mouth. It shouldn't have been his farm for another twenty years.

His father died four days back and he was probably already shrivelled up in the grave McMillan had spent an entire night digging. He scratched at a lingering spot of dirt beneath his jaw. He hardly knew his own grandfather and his daughter would never remember her own.

She was only three months old and he was only in his twenties.

Thump-thump.

Heat stroke. Everywhere McMillan looked, its nasty red fingers had dug into another family. He was sick of it. Sick of burying friends. Sick of digging graves. Sick of being unable to breathe inside his own home. Sick, sick, sick of it.

Sick of failing his family.

He had already buried one son.

Thump-thump.

He inhaled the damp night air with a sigh. Tears blurred his vision as he looked up at the moon. They were pointless tears. They were never going to bring Colt back to him. He wiped them away angrily with a sniff. They kept falling.

Colt would have been just over a year now.

Thump-thump.

James brought a hand to cover his face as the tears fell in silent rivers. He could still remember holding him out beneath the moon at night, desperately trying to cool off his little body. He could remember the way the boy always stopped wailing when he was outside. How he tucked into his own chest and sighed.

Thump-thump.

And now his daughter Bella had a fever.

The heartbeat stopped.

He trudged back to the house with the light of the moon on his hunched back.

The heartbeat of the land was starting to struggle at night now too. It was only a matter of time before it fell silent completely. He shoved his hands in his jeans as he kicked open the screen door and stepped inside.

"Bella's fever got worse."

"You put her near the fan?" he asked, his words drawn out by his after-dinner whiskey.

"Not sure it'll help much. Too hot today."

"Too hot every day," he muttered. "I could take her outside."

"No, baby." His wife smiled sadly up over at him as she tossed a wet towel near the sink. "It's alright."

McMillan's tall frame folded as he dropped into a beat-up armchair. He ran a hand through the curls plastered to his head by his cap. He knew what she was saying. It didn't work with Colt. It wouldn't with Bella.

His wife came over and sat between his knees, resting her head back against the cushion between his thighs. McMillan reached out and brushed several of the dark strands of hair from her forehead.

"'M dirty, Vie."

"You're mine is what you are, James." He huffed. A hand squeezed around his calf. "How're you holdin' up?"

"Ah, as well as I can be."

"Don't you lie to me, James." More quietly she said, "It's Colt innit?"

He scratched at the stubble on his jaw and blinked the tears away.

"Yeah," he rasped. His hand came to cover his face again as he bit his lip to stop the tears. "I miss 'im." He plucked at a loose strand fraying along the chair. "I keep thinking 'bout Bella. How long she has. Maybe it won't even be her. Maybe it'll be me and she won't remember who I was."

"James," Daisy hugged an arm around his leg. "I know, baby."

"The kids aren't making it anymore." He scowled at the flaking paint of the ceiling. "I can't do anything. I can't fix it. Vie, I let Colt die. I couldn't get enough ice. I couldn't give him shade. I let him-"

"Shh. Don't get worked up. You'll just get hot."

James fell quiet for several moments then asked, "Why don't we get clouds, Vie?" His voice was a reverent whisper, barely audible over the knocking of the old fan. "I wish the old gods would come back. I wish they'd give us clouds."

"I hear storms make it cold the next day."

"Why don't we have them?" His voice was rough with pain.

"No one to cry, James. You remember the story."

He scoffed. "Heard that one too many times to believe it."

Vie smirked, brown eyes gleaming with a mischief he rarely saw. "Maybe, maybe not. You know never know." He rolled his eyes at her as she stood up. "I've got to check on Bella."

He got up too and pulled her into his arms, kissing her lightly before pressing her against his chest. She was hot. Feverish and dry. She wasn't sweating.

He was failing her too.

Grief formed a painful lump in his throat.

"Think I'll go for a ride," he said softly.

"Now?"

"I just...I have to do something."

A slender hand cupped his cheek. "I'll hold down the fort. Be safe."

Guilt twisted in his gut as he watched her go up the stairs. Bella began to scream. When did you start with the heat exhaustion, Vie? I didn't even notice. How many days? Weeks? He turned, half in a daze toward the garage, grabbing his helmet on the way out. How many more are left?

He flicked the light on in the garage.

How long until he failed everyone? How long until the grief consumed him completely and he gave up? Bella was going to die, he wasn't stupid enough to think he could save her but Vie too? His wife?

James snatched up his bike from where it leaned against the wall.

Everyone who trusted him was on the path to their grave and it burned in his chest like an infection. If he didn't do something, he was sure his heart would explode. James grimaced, closing his eyes for a moment in a fight against his pain. He couldn't handle the preemptive grief.

He stepped onto the pedals and he pushed off.

It wasn't fair.

Bella, Vie, Colt, they all deserved better. They deserved a shot at life. He should have been able to do something for them. Fix them somehow. The anguish ballooned in his chest until he could hardly breathe. Spots danced in his vision.

He pushed harder, running from the tears and searching for the heartbeat of the land.

The resolve in his chest buckled. His abdomen began to tremble and his lips quivered as they fought against the pain.

Vie wasn't going to make it to the end of summer if she had the start of heat exhaustion now. All of August remained. And Bella couldn't live without her.

The pedals churned.

He had already failed his family once. Watching helplessly as his son went from loud wailing to quiet whimpers to limp silence had broken something inside him. Vie took it better. She had known, she said, that a June delivery would make things difficult. He blinked quickly, clearing the tears and sending them down his cheeks.

The bike wobbled over a pothole as his mind drifted to the old stories of a time before the cloudless sky.

Wichita lit up the world in front of him. He pedalled through the outskirts, listening to couples fight on their porch, children scream from the still present heat, and the distant sound of sobbing.

Colt. He couldn't see the road in front of him. The tears blurred it all. I couldn't save you. I couldn't save you! His knuckles went white against the handlebars. And I can't save your sister either. I'm going to just sit here and let her die. He inhaled sharply, blinking quickly but the tears wouldn't go away. Vie. Christ, Vie. Why you too? Isn't it enough that I lost my son, that I'm going to lose my little girl?

The tears brimmed and finally overflowed. A deluge of sorrow sped down his cheeks.

The road began to darken.

McMillan cried freely as he tore through the outskirts of Wichita.

His heart burned with grief of losing his son. He had been so small and McMillan couldn't get the image of him turned crimson by the fever out of his head. He couldn't stop hearing Vie wail over his tiny little body as it struggled, fought, and failed.

He opened his mouth and screamed. Behind him, thunder boomed.

The sound startled him into crashing his bike. From the ditch beside a field of soybeans, James looked up at the sky.

Black clouds billowed into the night sky and flashed with each pulse of grief that rocked through him. He followed the dissipating trail of black down to his still-spinning back wheel.

The old story echoed through his mind.

"He ran and kicked up the dirt of his sadness," he whispered. "The clouds followed him, touched by his tears. And they cried too. Oh my God, Vie. It was true."

The storm started.

Rain fell against his skin. Softly at first, it grew into an immense downpour that drenched him to the bone. McMillan sat in awe under the thunderstorm, breathless and shocked as cold water fell across him in sheets. The storm moved on to Wichita.

He listened, frozen in the grass, as the fighting and terror of the city shifted to squeals of glee and peels of laughter. He had brought them relief.

McMillan hopped on his bike and raced home, his features set in a grim look. The tears hadn't stopped and as he looked over his shoulder, he could see the black clouds rolling off his back tire and flying into the open air of night.

Nothing would be the same.

The thunder echoed his own internal cries. The black clouds blotted out the stars and the moon and became endless swaths of dark nothingness, illuminated only by lightning.

"James!" Vie cried as he raced up the drive. "I heard this noise and I thought about you and I was so scared and-"

He rushed up to her, flying off the bike and pulling her close. "Oh Christ, I love you, Vie. I love you so much." His hands pet her hair frantically before calming. "I can't stay, baby."

"W-what?"

"I...I can make clouds. That story...it was real. All of it was real."

"I don't understand. James, you're scaring me."

He drew Vie close to him. "I made it rain in Wichita. I was cycling and I started thinking about Bella and how she would never... Well, it doesn't matter. I was crying and my bike... My bike, Vie. It was making clouds. Rain clouds."

James breathed in her smell sharply. She could live. His family would live. He could save them. But he couldn't be with them.

"I have to go."

"James, no. No! She needs you." Small hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. "I need you."

"I know, baby. But what about them? The other children. The other families."

"You don't have to do this. You don't, James."

"Someone's got to do it, Vie."

James climbed back onto his bike.

"I have to. Please, Vie. Be strong for her. I'll loop around again."

And so, he began to pedal listening to his wife scream for him as he left.

Thunder growled through the sky. Lightning illuminated the tears glittering on his cheeks and the pain tearing him apart. Black clouds rose behind him. Grieving gales raced across the land. In his ears, he could hear his heartbeat synchronize with the failing, fluttering pump of the land. He was the heartland. The despairing center of the country.

That anguish would feed the sky until the end of time.

Vie and Bella would never have to worry about a cloudless summer again.

*********************************************************************

"I'm hot," a young girl complained. "I don't know why it has to be so-"

Her mother pinched her cheek lightly. "You know you're not supposed to complain. There are clouds, aren't there? Means a good storm's coming."

"But it's-"

"I don't care what it is, it's going to be cooler tomorrow."

The girl rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest with a dramatic pout.

"Mama, you only don't want me to have ice cream."

The woman turned her eyes up to the billowing black clouds on the horizon.

"No, baby." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as she watched the pale white clouds billow and go black on the bottom. "You know what it means."

"It means that I don't get ice cream."

It means your father is sad today. The woman swallowed around a knot of sorrow in her throat. He hasn't visited in a while. Always white clouds after he visits. Last time it lasted two weeks. Anguish pulled on her heart. He misses you, Bella.

"Please, Vie. Be strong for her. I'll loop around again."

The woman smiled and put a hand on top of her daughter's head. "It means that you should be grateful. Go pick yourself some blueberries. I'll freeze them for you."

The girl bounded away.

The woman turned her back to her daughter and hugged herself, wincing out of sight of the young girl. James would have loved her.

I'm sorry, love. The black clouds opened on the horizon, dropping sheets of rain off in the distance. I'm sorry.

She called Bella over, smiling sadly down at the little girl with a shirt full of blueberries.

"What about them? The other children. The other families."

Vie patted Bella on the head as she ushered her into the cool house. She stopped on the porch and looked behind her as thunder tore open the sky.

The storm was closer. James was closer.

"I'll loop back around."

Vie blinked back tears and stepped into the house.

"Someone's got to do it, Vie."