Soon as a Barometer

The hurricane hit with the force of arrogant in-laws.  Pine Tree Soon sighed.  Soon didn’t like hurricanes; she didn’t like low pressure and, let’s face it, you don’t get much lower, as pressure goes, than a hurricane.  But it was much more than mere dislike.  It was medical.  Pine’s body reacted to low pressure in that it felt pressure; it was just one of those counter-intuitive things, a paradox, an upside down, inside out piece of peculiar, although many people do feel bad when storms hit. 

With Soon, though, it was severe--Soon was a barometer, all right, a human indicator of low pressure.  So Soon scowled with thin lips.  She shook wee fists, but did so in unison and at bosom level, sort of like windshield wipers, and with fists meeting in the middle and elbows extending outward, like you would see when someone imitates a chicken.

Soon moved to Winnipeg, Canada to escape this hurricane threat--the threat of one hundred plus mile an hour winds, the tidal surge, the rearrangement of sand as if the North Carolina dunes and beaches were some expendable commodity with which nature could trade.  Here, in Canada, in the very heart of the North American continent, one was safe from such depressed states of nature, safe from the effrontery of ill winds that urge sea surge, safe from the sting of frenzied salt air.  At least this is what she was told.

Pine Tree felt the pressure drop and lowed.  All five foot two of her.  Delicate bones groaned.  Her normally passive eyes enlarged as if to turn on streetlights.  Her long, jet-black hair seemed to react at the ends as if pierced by fishhooks.  The humbleness in her countenance left to sell pencils on a street corner.  Moreover, Pine Tree turned an unctuous shade of red, starting at her nose, spreading, then, to regions unaccustomed to a flush so aggressively dispatched by a totally alien ire.

She turned to Maize, her cat, and expelled a plaintive, “Why,” which was high-pitched and not unlike the meows offered from her pet.  Maize meowed back, as if he understood, as if empathy was a species trait.  Soon sat on an old apple crate which she had covered with a red and white comforter made by her grandmother.  As she did so, Maize jumped onto Pine’s delicate thigh.  Blue denim afforded protection from claws, but now Maize was more; he was a puma, he was a lynx, he was a cougar.  He looked the same, but there was more cat--much more cat.  This was weight, oh yes, pseudo-feline weight, an imposition on femur, the massing on the feminine leg with no remorse or apology for disrespectful ballast--an outré accumulation made to burden vein and artery and capillary with carte blanche. A weight to bruise, to break and to deform.  Feline atom had ousted even the spaces within. This was degenerate matter.  Such was Soon’s sensitivity.

The hurricane approached, the wind howled, and yes, the pressure dropped.  Pine Tree was biological measure.  So in tune was she to the vicissitudes of pressures and fronts and aberrations of weather--serious weather.  And whom do I indict? wondered a shivering and oppressed Pine.  Her distress was such that even Maize cocked a bewildered head, and with warmth in his eyes he seemed to say, I feel your pain.

Soon tilted her demure head to eye the basement joists and random scattering of age defined by ubiquitous cobwebs.  She released a not-so-ladylike moan, an odd sound that slithered along a tightened tongue and clenched teeth.  A number of weather, “experts” flashed through her mind--she had done her research prior to moving.  Do I blame this one? she mused. Or none of them?  Soon knew the answer, as none of them could have predicted a hurricane in Winnipeg--this was an imperfect storm.

And reaction was imperfect, as was the sound of the wind battering the house upstairs, much like a freight train rampaging through a defenseless structure.  A explosive crash indicated a window was a window no more; this compelled two life forms in a modest basement on a humble apple crate to react; Maize jumped as if speared in the underbelly, wherein his claws tore denim as well as the delicate skin underneath.  Pine Tree, in turn, shot upright in spasm, then fell sideways to the cold cement floor.  Maize was a blur bolting behind the washer, knocking over a plastic table, spilling Tide in profusion.  Soon smelled the scent of laundry soap, and felt more pressure, as if a weighty atmospheric fist, clammy and dank, had intentions to merge flesh and bone with floor.

Pine’s delicate frame felt the cold on her shoulder and hip as she lay oblique, sandwiched between fist and floor.  She heard the wailing of Maize from behind the washer.  And she smelled the distinct aromas of country, of barnyards, of kerosene and of cider as if a blender had churned the atmosphere and the landscape with indiscretion.  The hurricane wind howled with a furious anger;  Pine Tree’s eyes welled with tears.

It was with remarkable suddenness that the wind abated, the howling ceased, and the sky cleared to a beautiful blue.  But the fist that so unceremoniously descended upon Pine Tree Soon was still strong, still pinning her like some atmospheric thug with even more strength than ever.

The storm wasn’t over--it was the eye of the hurricane, passing over the home of Pine Tree Soon, with pressure at its lowest.  The hurricane still had more to say.


922 Words
Writer’s Cramp Winner
10-3-15