RAIN CROWS
                   by Eugene Hutchinson Mallory 2


     I first learned of the rain crows at grandmother Ferris's
house. Grandma and I were there alone which was not unusual but
not customary either. It just was so that day.

     I had spent the night and breakfast had come and gone. I
had been outside and looked around the yard and the barn and hen
house. Grandma's place was always interesting to a child but the
only thing that was of special interest that day was the number
of crows about. Grandma's place being on the edge of town,
indeed it was the last one with sidewalks and things. It was
regularly visited by the resident flock of crows. I thought then
and now that they would be better called a gang of crows for
they were rowdy noisy birds who plundered the garden and the
orchard and harassed the sweet singing birds.

     That morning they were all about the place, in the apple
trees, perched high up in the dead limbs at the top of the
Lombardy poplar. They weren't up to any mischief but were just
sitting there ruffling their feathers and looking unhappy. They
were calling in a rather strange way and sounded unhappy too if
you knew crow talk.

     It was a cloudy day with a sky that seemed to get lower and
darker as the morning went on.

     Grandma had said "If it stays cloudy it will be cool enough
to keep a fire in the range and bake something good."

     She would not tell me what. It was to be a surprise. I
brought in some wood to top up the woodbox behind the black iron
stove. It was a chore about my size. The first German war was
over so I must have been six or seven not much more.

     I settled myself in the big red rocker that always sat in
front of the north window in the kitchen. It was one of my
favorite places. Grandma was busy with the stove to get the oven
just right and then back to the oil cloth covered table where
she did her mixing and rolling and the like. The yellow mixing
bowl with the blue tracings was out and the smell of cinnamon
was in the air.

     It was getting very dark and I would have liked to have the
light on. It was just hanging there a single bulb on its cord to
the ceiling. I knew grandma would not turn it on. Electric
lights were a novel luxury and not to be used in daylight. There
was something menacing in the gathering gloom and the incessant
calling of the crows.

     I said "Grandma why are those pesky crows making such a
racket?"

     She said "Why Gene those are rain crows and they are just
telling us it is going to rain."

     I asked her "Can those old crows really know its going to
rain?"

     I don't know what she said for just then the rain came down
and how it came. It positively thundered on the roof. The first
deluge overwhelmed the draft in the chimney and the stove puffed
white smoke around all the lids. That first burst could not last
unless there had been a lake above us. The stove soon recovered
and left only a faint scent of wood smoke in the air.

     As soon as we could hear again Grandma said "Oh, goodness
me. Me with my hands in the dough. It's going to leak in the
bathroom for sure. Take the dish pan Gene and catch it."

     Sure enough drops were forming along a crack in the
ceiling. By the time I got the pan spotted the drops were
plinking plunking in.

     When I got back in the kitchen I said "It's leaking but it
will be all right the pan is catching the water."

     Grandma said "That's fine Gene, but the roof is washed by
now and I want to catch this nice soft water in the cistern so
we can have it to wash our hair this winter."

     This didn't sound too great to me as they always got soap
in my eyes, but I went along.

     We went out through the summer kitchen to the back porch.
How it was raining yet. The air was thick with mist where the
big drops exploded whenever they hit anything solid.

     I was too warm inside from the stove but here the fresh
cool air was delightful and the odor of the rain washed grass
and leaves was even better.

     The water was gurgling and swishing in the rainspouts but
it was possible to change the pipes without getting wetter than
a boy would like to get.

     Grandma went back inside to check her baking. I went back
too, to check the west window, my watching window where I could
watch the Rock Island trains and the fascinating people who
lived down in the hollow. There was a little culvert in the road
down behind grandma's barn. It was full and water running across
the road. A wide stream of water was running across the little
pasture that once was grandma's where her two cows, Mattie the
Alderney, and her daughter Stubhorn, had fed along with Roderick
the wonder horse.

     I cried out "A flood, a flood!"

     Grandma came to look and said "It will be all right. I've
seen water there before. I've something for you from the oven. I
think it's ready and I'll get it out."

     Somehow I cannot remember what it was, but if grandma made
it, it was good.

     Now I live in this desert city built on this brown and
broken land where I fear I shall never really feel at home. An
abyss, a veritable gulf of years and miles has opened between my
present home and grandma's house and my red rocking chair. But
those rain crows somehow manage to fly that gulf and visit me on
my little patch of ground. Sometimes when it seems the time is
right, They, ever faithful, raise the cry of rain, rain, rain,
rain.

     In this desert climate sometimes they cry the rain in vain
and it hardly rains enough to lay the dust or does not rain at
all. There is no child to ask "Grandpa how could those old crows
know if it is going to rain?"

     I would not know how to answer that. It would be very hard
for an old squawking crow to compete with a weather satellite
which flies above the sky and searches for the rain.

     I would love to tell such a child some tales of the wonder
and the magic of the world. I fear there is really not much
magic in the world these days and a modern child might scorn my
foolish tales.   (What was I? Chopped Liver!  EHM 3)

     I think there are not many young or old who would want to
hear an old man's tales of how things used to be, so far away,
so long ago.