Summer thunder in April, low and black, shake the windowpanes, rattle me, and all the powers that be.
They call me to come watch it come, broiling green and grey churning from the west, a stirring, beating, of the atmosphere, and she thunders, that chariot come bearing down. And when the hail pelts glass, a barrage of pebbles flung up in fierce gallop across the sky, and Little One pulls at me to pull her up, and the world whips in wind before the foaming rage of rain, we say nothing.
Just reverberate with the thrumming of the pounding hooves.
Did the chariot careen? I catch the flicker, that tremor of light. There’s a quiver in the bulbs, one last shudder of power, and then all lies dead. Hydro’s out.
Stillness has a voice of its own.
Children dash for candles, serious boy work, and Little One wanders from room to room, stretching on tip toes to flick each and every switch, just to be certain, and Farmer Husband leaves for the barn and that distant drone. I can hear the generator rolling over, lugging out of long slumber, roaring to muscle and brawn. We don’t know how long till wires buzz with voltage again, reviving us run down.
The house will lie quiet, but the barn, those hundreds of sows, hundreds of litters of piglets, it requires uninterrupted power for water, for heat lamps, and most critically, for fans and fresh air circulation. That generator surges life. Without it, sows will suffocate in less than a handful of hours.
And candles weave shadows on the window panes late into the night and the storm claps east.
I sit in a quiet so wide it echoes.
How did I never in my living notice the deadening intoning of appliances, the dull hypnotizing hum of computers and light bulbs? I watch the dance of the silent flame.
Hydro is this spinning fan lulling the populace into torpidity with its incessant white noise. And when Someone shuts the fan off and the lines go down, we’re startled awake by sonorous tranquility, luring and deep.
Is the power that’s meant to race through our hydro lines primarily hooking our culture into its own lightning-pace race?
Throughout the hours of Day Two, children read books and I hear my heart pound, and the quiet settles deep down into my cells.
Twenty-four hours of soundlessness pass before we set out to find the reason for the outage. Strong boy arms have hauled pails of water from the generator-powered barn to the hushed house so I can wash dishes. We’ve eaten only sandwiches, wraps, cold cereal. Urgent trips have been made to the washroom in the barn, anxious child in tow.
Driving by the road closed sign on the third of Wallace, one line to our south, our breath catches in gullets. How untamed chariot must have swayed and pitched, snapping off eight hydro poles, tooth picks cracked down on an obstacle course.
Wind’s pried back steel, ripped open roofs, and we are laid low, an act of God exposing us to God. We have no power. Only cupped hands and stunned silence.
Phone’s ringing when we arrive back home, on the one cord phone we’ve brought in from the barn’s office. A friend with power’s searched online: according to Environment Canada sources, we’re in one of the worst-hit pockets in the province, a pothole on the storm’s crazed ride.
It could be at least 72 hours before hydro’s restored.
Farmer Husband and I take a deep breath, smile weakly, and he fixes on the clock face, both ticking off numbers, his low voice figuring hours and gallons of fuel. We’ll need — no. Rather, 650 sows and a thousand baby piglets will need that generator to grunt a power marathon. The boys look for more kerosene. Farmer Husband heads out to fill the thirsty tank of the generator.
In twilight’s long coming, I find him in the shop, last jerry jug in hand, generator humming from barn. It’s raining again, slow and steady. We stand in the shed doorway exchanging words muffled by drum of drops on tin roof. It’s a rare moment, only he and I, listening to rhythm of rain. We don’t touch but are held by the moment, puddles pattering down across the lane.
Joshua crosses the yard, a dark silhouette in the pouring. He’s doing the night choring, feeding all the nursing sows, checking on newborn litters. He’s eleven, cap pulled low like his dad.
“A good son.” Farmer Husband nods towards Joshua, jerry can resting on his hip.
I smile.
“Born on a Saturday, carried to the barn with us on the Monday.”
Joshua spots us there in the shop doorway, behind the eave’s veil of rain, and waves.
“Look at him now, doing our work.” He dashes through a puddle and into the barn. “Babe who became a boy about to become a man.” Something sweet hurts inside.
I look over to Farmer Husband, boy I met when he was only three years older than Josh. “Yes, good son.”
We quietly find words, pass them back and forth, in the wet of coming night, until he finally says, “I’d better get this last jug in the generator tank and check on Josh.” He pulls his brim low, ready to step out into it, then turns back to me. “But this was good.” It comes again, twenty years later, that same rush through my veins as when he’d stop to talk to me after class.
He winks and I laugh. How can he still make me blush?
I’m just standing there, watching him head up to the barn, thinking of us, all of us, working it out on this edge of the battered world, when the drone strangles out. I start, unbelieving, like a mother listening for crib’s next breath. Nothing.
He breaks into a run. I follow, fly too, shoes splashing through clouds drained out. I dare not think what this means.
He’s got his hand on the panting generator when I reach the utility room. Frantic eyes meet.
“Josh closed the back door when he came in.” He’s checking guages. “Overheated. I just hope that it’s the safety shut-off. That we haven’t cooked it.”
I’m finding it hard to breathe.
“I cooked it?” Joshua’s standing in the black of the far doorway in his rubber boots, his voice high and trembling in eerie stillness. He knows what that means.
Without power, the barn slaps closed, lack of ventilation slowly suffocating everything gasping for breath in stifling heat …. until it doesn’t breathe.
I shake my head, shake the vision of it away.
“Hope it’s not cooked.” Farmer Husband’s words trail away as he feels along to the breaker panel. But sure words still find us. “You’d better open everything in the barn all the way up. Everything.”
I can’t ask how long he thinks we have before….
Joshua’s already in motion, breathless, shaky motion.
In the dark, on the brink of the unspeakable, there’s a power working in the powerless.
Lord, there is only One power in heaven and on earth. Course through my veins today.
