The Man Who Waited for the Rain

The ground had split into crooked smiles, the kind that didn’t reach the eyes. The air smelled like heat and salt and old disappointment. People stopped watering their gardens; even the weeds had given up.

But there was one man who refused to surrender to the drought.

Every morning, just as the sun began to crawl over the empty fields, Mr. Aster would pull his rocking chair out to the porch, sit down, and place a faded green umbrella across his lap. The umbrella was older than most of the town’s children—its wooden handle smooth from decades of use, the fabric patched in three places with thread that didn’t match.

He would sit there quietly, facing the horizon, watching the sky like it might speak to him. Sometimes, he whispered to it first.

“She’ll send the rain when she’s ready,” he’d say.

The townsfolk called him Rainman Aster. They meant it kindly at first, but over time, the name turned into something people said with a shake of their heads. Children would cross the street when passing his house, whispering that he talked to ghosts.

Maybe he did.

Years ago, before the drought, Mrs. Aster had been the town’s unofficial weather watcher. She kept journals filled with scribbled forecasts, pressed wildflowers between the pages, and claimed she could smell storms before the clouds even gathered. When she died—suddenly, quietly—Mr. Aster started sitting on that porch with her umbrella. He said she’d never forgive him if he didn’t watch for the rain.

At first, people brought him things: iced tea, sandwiches, old stories. Then the drought deepened. Folks grew too tired, too hopeless. Mr. Aster was left alone with his chair, his umbrella, and his promise.

By day 217, nobody had visited in weeks.

That morning was like all the others. The sun rose red and swollen, pressing its weight across the roofs of the town. Mr. Aster felt it on his neck, heavy and unkind. He closed his eyes and imagined rain—the clean percussion of it against the tin roof, the scent of wet earth, the sound of her laughter echoing through it all.

“Just once more,” he whispered. “Just once.”

By noon, the heat had swallowed the air whole. Cicadas screamed in the distance. A dog barked once, then gave up. Mr. Aster stayed where he was. His hands trembled slightly, but he kept the umbrella balanced on his knees, the same way he had every day for seven months.

Then, sometime after sunset, when the sky turned purple and strange, something changed.

A breeze slid through the dry grass—a real breeze, not the hot gusts that carried dust and regret. It smelled faintly of iron and lilac. Mr. Aster straightened in his chair, his heart stuttering like a clock that had been wound too tight.

He lifted his face. For a moment, the world was silent. Then, far off in the distance, thunder rolled—low, uncertain, but alive.

He smiled. “Took you long enough,” he said softly.

The first drop landed on his hand. He watched it soak into his skin, then another on his sleeve, then another. The umbrella slipped from his lap, forgotten, and tumbled across the porch.

Within seconds, the rain came in earnest—wild, unstoppable, furious with joy. The town woke in disbelief. Windows opened. Children ran barefoot into the streets. Women tilted their faces upward, mouths open, laughing through tears. The smell of dust gave way to the smell of life returning.

When the neighbors thought to look for Mr. Aster, his porch was empty. The chair rocked gently, as if someone had just stood up. The umbrella had blown into the yard, resting against the fence.

A boy named Eli swore he saw an old man walking down the dirt road beyond the cornfield, green umbrella open, though the rain poured hard enough to drench him.

“He didn’t look wet,” Eli said later. “He looked… bright.”

Some said Mr. Aster finally went to find his wife. Others said he became part of the rain itself, keeping his promise until the end.

The next morning, the town smelled of petrichor and possibility. And on the porch, where the chair sat empty, a single note was found pinned beneath the umbrella:

“Told you she’d send the rain.”