"NEW MEXICO RAIN" or "THE MADNESS OF DROUGHT"
Those who have experienced it know that there is nothing else like it. How amazing is it that something so simple could be so divine?
You begin in a state of misery and desperation...the dry summer heat bakes you like a piece of fish in a clay-oven. The brutal New Mexico sun beats down on everything you see--ultra-violent sunbeams quietly disintegrate the very fabric of matter itself. Tempers rise with the heat of the drought and reason is destroyed by angst. Driven by maddening winds over the parched land, fires rage unimpeded, turning the only remaining shade-trees into pointy blackened spikes. Roasting in their cars and choking from the smoke of the fires, tired and angry people try to get home through the thick traffic: After battling the heat and frustration of the day, they finally return to their abodes and remember that here the heat is only worse--the dilapidated homes they occupy, built sometime in the seventies, weren't designed to withstand these kinds of temperatures.
He quickly removes his slacks and his Oxford shirt, hangs them carefully in the closet and then takes off his t-shirt; he steps into his small bathroom, leans over a crooked sink and wets it down. He winces as he pulls the clammy, wet shirt over his head and allows the cloth to settle on his skin...at last, some sense of relief from the maddening summer heat. He hears the faint rumble of thunder in the distance and looks hopefully towards the nearby mountains. A few small and widely spaced high clouds drift slowly across New Mexico, but the promise of rain is feeble. His eyes burn from the smoke of the fires and he thinks of his son, so far away. He wants to scream, but he knows it would only freak out the neighbors. “Let them call the cops...” he says to himself, “...they would be doing me a favor if they came over here and shot me.”
The madness of drought can be cured by only one thing. Rain.
THIS STORY IS STILL UNDER REVISION. MORE TO COME!
