Sometimes it rains when you least expect it. And when you are merely a man on the backside of the desert, and filled with frequently flaring lust for water, rain is relief and joy and rest. To have to rise and actually go to work in such coziness defied the nature of the gift, and he imagined God laughing aloft the cloud. “I will give you what you want, but you shan’t fully enjoy it, and must work instead of sleep.”
God would say shan’t as surely as he would tempt and mock. Alexander Farthing hardly expected any less from an invisible God, and walked through certain days certain that he was heaven’s favorite source of amusement.
He showered, got dressed, grabbed his umbrella and backpack and headed off to his second year at Sunshadow School up somewhere north. In the desert, and if when one hails from regions filled with rain and distinct seasons, you begin to imagine the rain as brighter than the light from the sun, and more than mere water.
It was late August in Phoenix, and school districts one by one began drawing their students back in, cutting vacations and leisure short. No matter that it was hot, 115 degrees of hot, and that if by some unfortunate accident you managed to knock yourself out, you would lay there baking into a loaf of man on the sidewalk. It was the nature of the city and its satellite cities to make as though all was normal, and you were not in the oven. Phoenix toddled after New York, Chicago, or Atlanta, smiling along the way saying, “Aren’t we all fabulous cities, and what friends we are.” But no city in the middle of a desert is normal, no matter the appearance and pretenses. It takes an irrational type of man to start a city in a desert, and to try to force the desert into the normative behavior of a non-desert region. It took a crazy person, or a bunch of crazies actually, and no amount of stadiums or new light rail trains would obscure that lack of practicality.
Thursday and Friday there would be no real work. Just arranging the room, pulling books to use for the reading, language and math groups, and sitting through various meetings. On Thursday at 9 am the staff gathered themselves in a circle on chairs fit for much smaller derrieres. The owner of the school welcomed them back, and invited each staff member to share their summer experiences. Farthing was not born with the constitution to be a sharer, nor did his summer circumstances lend themselves to animated story telling: he was not pregnant with future man-child, he hadn’t biked with his best coworker friend 20 miles or gone to a family reunion in New Mexico, he had not been to Disney, nor bought the house next door so that his granddaughter could be within a hug’s distance. Such were the tales told, and as interesting as they were, it upped the pressure. When away from school, you ought to return with a story to tell, no?
It seemed an equal balance between those who did a lot, and those who did nothing, but even those who didn’t travel or “vacation” had accomplished a lot; Farthing was among the do nothings, having neglected for practical reasons to pro-rate his salary at the previous year’s start, and leaving himself in permanent mental dichotomy for the entire summer break, both wanting the summer to end in order to have money and something meaningful to do, and wanting the summer to never end in order to avoid ever having to do anything meaningful at all.
He assumed that the lazy, hungry, bored and ambitious parts of his brain would re-harmonize sometime in September. His first free paycheck, one he could blow without spontaneous homelessness, would come on September 18th. He had calculated that out, and set that day as his first moment of potential optimum happiness. He hoped the arrival of students next week would provide sufficient distraction till that date arrived. That was over a month away.
And today was Thursday, the first day, with tables to move, and coworkers to say hello to, and daydreaming to be set aside. He arrived early, as was his deliberate habit, and, back in the room, he turned the air conditioner down to 72. The desert is hot. No reason for the room to be, ever.
