The Wind Story

The porch was sopping wet; the snowfall from only the second major snowstorm of the season hadn’t been shoveled, and only now, a week later, was it melting. It hadn’t made sense to get rid of it; the creaky stairs leading to the small side porch off the kitchen presented one directly with their own mortality. It was a well-known secret that the landlord of the property, a man named Courtney, didn’t know the first thing about carpentry. First off, he believed the term belonged to someone who dealt with carpets.

Second, my roommate swears he has, on occasion, seen a ghost on those stairs. The apparition appears only on moonlit nights; he says it stands atop the porch, and upon seeing something in the backyard somewhere, it casually begins a walk down the stairs, towards the driveway, but upon leaning on the railing, the apparition falls through, plummeting ten feet from the top of the porch to the sloping downward driveway. The apparition did not end; according to my roommate. He said once, “The ghost falls ten feet, and lands on her face in the driveway just as a truck is backing out of the driveway; they don’t see her and they run her over.”

I asked, “Is that all?” amazed such a straight-laced, drug-free adult would admit to believing in seeing such a spectacle multiple times.

He replied, “No. Two ghost men get out of the ghost truck and they run back to see what they hit. They check on the ghost, who turns out to be a girl; and then they throw her in the back of the truck and drive off.”

I didn’t believe him; but then I figured, Courtney is a really bad carpenter, electrician, arsonist, and exterminator, so it would be better not to risk it.

It was forty degrees outside, according to my newly bald head, which is as accurate a weather instrument as my Grandma’s knee. The temperature is probably warmer on the thermometer just four inches to my left, hanging on the outside wall, direct sunlight hitting it. A blast of cool wind off the mountains to the west, my right, recalled the springs of my youth. Back then, I hated wearing a winter hat; something about the raw, real cold spoke to me, even then. I knew I was a man if I could stand up to the cold. Now, pushing thirty, balding, and newly buzzed down to the metal, the cold wind masquerading itself with warm temperatures only excited me.

The wind was always blowing in Reno, something was always moving in and coming out. Much like the city itself. Action reigned; just not the Vegas type. If you want late-night Vietnamese food, Reno is king. If you want cheap, buck-toothed, hairy legged hookers, Reno is king. If you want the wind, as I did, Reno is king. The wind was as varied as the places it came from; and it came from all directions, sometimes at the same time.

My mind was ravenous; sticking my head out of the door had inspired me. I had to write. I had to write right now!

I race to my bedroom and grab my laptop computer. I bring it back into the kitchen and place it down on the counter top, but finding it to be cramped with unexpected items: a side view mirror from a truck, old papers and bills from months previous, a giant plastic bag filled with smaller plastic bags, three lighters, and one pack of Parliament cigarettes—which caught my eye especially because nobody in my house smokes…cigarettes. Realizing the counter won’t be ample space for me to flex my wit and wisdom about the wind, I focus instead on the stove. The glass flattop was dirty and filled with dirty pots and pans my roommate hadn’t picked up since cooking dinner the previous night. I normally didn’t care; I couldn’t recall a moment during this calendar year I had used the damn machine which sat as an island in the middle of the kitchen.

Not using it didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the value of it. After clearing off the pots and pans and putting them on the counter my computer still sat, along with many other objects, and after spraying it with Windex and wiping the top of the oven, I had lucked into a clean and orderly desk at waist-level with a grand view through the two floor-to-ceiling windows of my kitchen, with a view of the driveway, sloping downward from my right to my left into the backyard. From there, I could see the wind blowing through the neighbor’s trees; a gale was currently gusting directly downward down the driveway. The words were flowing out of my fingers and into the keyboard so fast, I thought I was right about to sprain my left index finger.

As I begin my attempt to write my tale inspired by the wind, and the weather in Reno in general, my roommate’s blushing newly-wed wife comes into the kitchen. She was average in height, small body, and had dark, mocha, skin and a smug face which belied her humble African origins. As I begin to write, I yell to her in excited disbelief, “It’s fucking raining now!” The sun was still shining, yet clouds were moving faster than the freeway traffic into the city from California. The clouds would continue on Interstate 80, through Sparks and out into the middle of nowhere within the hour, most likely.

She begins to make herself a sandwich; I pay no attention to her. I begin reflecting of my first journey into the city of Reno. It was two days after my birthday in 2006, I had traveled directly through a thunderstorm the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in my life before or since and probably won’t ever again. Lighting hit quite close to my car on multiple occasions, the static electricity was palpable, as if it filled my car like a gelatinous goo. I recall hearing an odd buzzing from the radio, so much so, the fear of my car shorting out, stranding me, seemed very real. I turned the radio off, only then realizing I had been listening to a CD, and yet I heard static interference; I began instead singing to myself any song I could think of, which consisted mostly of Disney movie songs, in vain attempt mask the thunderous booms which echoed in my small Honda Civic as if God were swinging a sledge hammer into my hood. In horror, I realize I cut most of this exciting story out of my manuscript. I desperately begin to write, standing with my legs spread almost two feet apart at the stove.

“Hey…hey…HEY!” she is yelling at me. She’s to my back left, at the refrigerator, leaning in, while staring at me in full-blown panic.

I yell back, “What?!”

With a curious, child-like tone, she asks, “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing. Don’t bother me,” I brush her off, with a fair amount of attitude.

She continues, “Why are you doing it there?”

I am being distracted at my fated task at hand with her unnecessary questions. I can’t but help my heart rate jump as I speak in a frustrated tone, “Am I in your way? And do you even pay rent here? And whose food is that?” With that she gave it up, walked behind me and began to make a sandwich on the excessively-full counter to my right.

“Why—sorry, why…?” she started, then stopped, then started, then stopped. I looked over and gave her the same look my mother used to give me whenever I was being a pest. She had two pieces of wheat bread in her hands, a sealed plastic container of spinach, deli salami, mustard and a package of shredded cheddar cheese stuffed on the counter next to the pots and pans.

“What?” I ask; calming down considerably, but by no means calm.

“What are you doing there?” the curious bride asks. Without knowing how, because I would only continue to scan back towards her only after she spoke, she had managed to put mustard on both slices of bread, but still had both slices in the palms of her hands.

“I’m writing. I’m writing here because I got inspired here, looking outside, then putting my head out the porch door and feeling the wind hit my newly-shaved head, you know, kind of acting like a puppy dog when he sticks his head out of a moving car door. Anyway, I got really inspired by the wind.”

“The wind?!” she bellowed in her heavy African accent. Two slices of salami were on each slice. Again, I hadn’t caught how she had done it. Then, underneath her breath, she whispered, “You’re gay.”

I retorted, in extreme anger, but not wanting to waste my time insulting her, which is one of my favorite hobbies, “Fuck you! I’m just a writer. Anything I ever do is but research for an upcoming project. And did I ever tell you about the day I moved to Reno?” I cut the question off early, I bellow, “What the hell are you doing?”

She still had the bread balancing on each hand, yet remarkably she had added a heap of shredded cheddar on each, along with the mustard and salami and now was attempting to open the spinach container, but was finding it difficult.

“Are you fucking serious?” I can’t help but say in disgust. An insult concerning a soccer ball comes to mind, but I don’t pursue it. “What seems to be the problem?” I ask, finally allowing for breath.

“I’m trying to make a sandwich,” she says with helpless naivety. I scorn her for upsetting me in such a manner, and ruining my chance to write about the wind; as I now stare at her in disbelief. She places one piece of bread down precariously on a driver’s side view mirror from a 1984 Toyota pickup which somehow ended up on counter at that precise moment. How?

The truck which formerly owned the side-view mirror, which now was a holding-place for one half of her sandwich, had cut me off while I was walking in a crosswalk on the corner of 10th and Sierra Streets months previous. Two weeks later, I recognized the truck from the oddest assortment of bumper stickers I had ever seen. One read, “Voldemort votes Republican.” One mocked the current President in the form of the statement: “O Bummer,” complete with the signature ‘O’ from the campaign posters. Another said: “My kid slept with your honor student.” That one was my favorite. Stumbling across the car on a dark Oak Street, adjacent to a Civil War cemetery, I decided to extract my vengeance for such mind-numbingly dumb bumper stickers, and take the side-view mirror. Oh yeah, and for cutting me off, too!

From there, I had stored it in a real place of honor, upon the end table adjacent to the front door, the one living room item which was most-disfigured during a gasoline attack months previous, and was thusly hidden in the corner. I placed the mirror there; over time it was hidden under more and more sediment of no interest, including the plastic baggies and numerous papers I couldn’t care less about.

I would have been content to let the items of no interest stay in the corner I never looked at until the time I moved out, but as fate would have it, the night previous, my roommate hands me a summons, I am being taken to court by an apartment complex which believes I owe them money. It seems someone put my name on someone else’s lease after I left that apartment. Now I’m being sued. After seeing the summons, I recall the papers of no interest hidden in the forgotten corner. Figuring, correctly as it would turn out, since I literally had no interest in this summons I had just been handed, perhaps I had already had no interest in it. My roommate and I tossed through the papers and items, him cleaning and organizing, I simply cautiously for a visual cue, a memory which would come back to me if only I see the correct corner of the correct paper. I find it! The papers of no interest simply become the papers I couldn’t care less about. I place them on my desk, presumably they will get lost there too. He continued cleaning; all the items which weren’t to be tossed out, or didn’t have a rightful place, were placed on the kitchen counter, including the mirror.

“Are you crazy?” I yell to her. She was attempting to pull the top off the spinach still, somehow not realizing the plastic band seal was still there. She held it against her body, pulling with her right hand; her left still held the piece of bread with the mound of cheese now falling all over the counter and the floor. I calm down, and reach for the scissors.

I walk over to her, I tell her to put her bread down, and now I notice: no plate. I begin slowly first, but by the end I berate her, “First off, don’t you realize there is a seal on the spinach. And second, don’t you realize your husband is deathly allergic to cheese and you are spilling it everywhere. And why don’t you have a plate?”

I grab the spinach from her and place the scissors atop them. “Here. Take care of that.” I walk over to grab a plate.

“What do you want me to do with this?” she asks as she takes them, incredibly blowing my mind.

“What the hell do you think?” I yell back. She looks as if she needs me to draw her a map; I instead give her another glare and she puts her other piece of bread down on the only exposed part of the counter and cuts the seal off the spinach.

“What are you writing about?” she asks me as I place the plate on the counter; she places both pieces of bread and their toppings on the plate in haste; figuring it out much faster than the spinach.

“Nothing.” I say derisively. “So, instead of grabbing the plate two feet away from your hands in the dish-drying rack, you use a truck mirror. Don’t you get it?” I tried my best to be gentle at the end, and spare the bride’s feelings.

“In Africa, we know what are on things, we are okay with germs,” she says as she finishes her sandwich-making on the plate, placing her cheese and crumb covered hands into the baby spinach container.

Against my devilish wishes, a win for my better judgment, I do not make the completely obvious observation about her continent of origin and their propensity to not worry about germs. At least, I don’t make it aloud.

She cleans up the cheese as best as she can, she even begins to wash the dishes, even the pots and pans from the counter, after she finished her sandwich. I have to remind her to put the hot water on. I say, “You wash dishes with hot water.” She had never heard that before; and again I hold my tongue.

She washes last the mirror she had formerly used as a plate, that of the 1984 Toyota. Water gets on the inside, from a small crack in the plastic casing which had occurred as I liberated it from the truck; creating a grimy mess in the sink. All I hear is “Uh oh.”

The naïve young woman didn’t realize cleaning car parts always had inherent risks. She was about to panic, and pull the mirror from the sink, frightened about leaving dirt in the sink. I let this opportunity to make fun of her pass, I know a better opportunity will come later.

I tell her, “Without tipping the mirror and letting the water spill everywhere, keep it level, like this,” I adjust it into the proper position for her, so the crack is at the top. “Now, carefully walk that out to the side porch and put it on the bannister and let it dry.” She does as I tell her and then she vanishes. I recommence writing, hoping the inspirational spark remains.

My roommate’s diesel pulls up, driving it down the sloping driveway, from my right to my left, and into the backyard. He had just come back from getting another lift on his truck. As I would measure later, the floor of the cab was somewhere between my knees and my waist. He darts into the kitchen from the basement door to my left, and he reaches into the refrigerator and pulls the same ingredients, save the cheese, had to prepare himself a sandwich. I warn him beforehand, “Careful. She just made a sandwich with cheese, spilling it everywhere. She says she cleaned it all up, but I don’t know. She isn’t a very good housekeeper.”

My roommate flips out. “She touched the cheese without cleaning her hands too, right? That means all my food is contaminated. Quick!” He grabs me by the shoulders, twirling me away from my computer, and dropping the mustard, salami, baby spinach container, and a half-loaf of wheat bread onto the floor at our feet. “Did she touch the spinach after touching cheese?!”

I reply, “Actually, it is a funny story. Why?”

“Because I just ate some.” It was true, though I hadn’t noticed. The first thing he did after opening the refrigerator, was to snack on his favorite snack, baby spinach leaves. His wife had taken a liking to them thanks to his influence. I hadn’t thought much of them, they seemed to me clover equivalent of Sloth from The Goonies.

“Dude,” I reply, attempting to break the news as softly as I could, “She put on the cheese and then dipped into the spinach. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it at the time.”

He replied, “It’s okay.” It wasn’t.

He said next, “I will be fine.” No, he wouldn’t be.

After staring into his ever-whitening face, he whispered in a low voice, “Just get me to the hospital. Let’s take my ride.”

I follow him intently down the back stairs into the backyard and hop into the driver’s seat of his new Dodge, emphasis on the word hop. I begin to drive casually, attempting to pull around in the muddy backyard, he had seemed to have ripped it up enough with his brand-new, perfect for mudding, tires. He says, “Don’t mind that, just go.” Instinctively, I thrust the truck into reverse and haul ass backward.

What I don’t see is that his bride, in effort to redeem herself, had retrieved the mirror from the bannister, hoping fifteen minutes drying time would be enough. She sees me as I begin to race away. She leans on the bannister to get my attention, waving with all her might. The bannister quickly gives way, she falls straight to the ground, only the broken bannister and the two inches of mud breaking her fall. I didn’t see her, like I said, so I ran her over.

Upon running her over, I jump out of the truck, and call to my roommate, “Holy shit! I just ran over your wife!” He hops out of the truck quickly, breathing heavily but still seemingly fine and rushes over.

He says almost casually, “Get her in the truck, we are going to the hospital anyway.” We each grab an arm and pull her up; she seemed perfectly fine. The muddy driveway had absorbed much of the impact; she had scrapes and bruises across her face and torso. Her wrist, her left, the one I grabbed, seemed torqued and twisted at an odd angle, but she didn’t feel it, and I took special care not to injure her further.

Upon getting to her feet, she screamed as she hit me with her bad hand, “You ran over me! You jerk! Is this about the cheese?”

My first thoughts ran to throwing her in the back of the truck; I think her husband might go for it. Instead, for expediency’s sake, we shuffle her into the cab and we drive off to the hospital.

The emergency room isn’t much more than a three minute car ride, with traffic. We don’t catch a single red light or have to worry about cutting off any pedestrians, so we get there in half the time. Convulsing, looking as if he were about to die right then and there in his three ton waste of gas and metal, I get his bride to run inside and call for help as I drag him from the cab. He was speaking, but I couldn’t make anything out; I’m starting to get light-headed, the prospect of my roommate dying and me being left with his African bride is burning an ulcer into my stomach with each passing second.

Thankfully, men and women in scrubs meet us within five feet of the truck, taking my friend the rest of the way into the hospital. Thankfully, he lives. Hours later, after his wife had been released with six or seven Band-Aids and splint on her sprained, but not broken, left wrist, she and I enter my roommate’s hospital room. He jovially greets me, “Thank you, sir! The doctor wants to keep me overnight for observation. But he thinks I am fine, and that we probably overreacted.”

We? I think to myself. I wasn’t in the mood to be a jerk, happy as I was that I wouldn’t have to take care of the girl who couldn’t even make a sandwich properly for an eternity. “Did you notice, by chance, the odd similarities to what has just transpired, and your fabled ghost experience?”

He shrugged, “I suppose the situations were slightly different.”

This one I couldn’t hold back, “Slightly?!” I ask. “I should say your ghost experience was in fact a premonition.”

Again he shrugged, but added in a humorous head shake, left and right, “A premonition? Hardly!”

“How so?” I ask.

“First, it didn’t take place during the moonlight hours. And second, we didn’t throw her into the back of the truck, though I certainly thought about it.” He looked at her with a look bordering on sarcasm and seriousness.

I interjected, “Me too. Was there a third reason?"

“Actually yes,” he says to me. “If it were preordained by some silly ghost story, then we couldn’t, in all proper rights, blame our landlord for such shoddy workmanship.” My mind goes blank. “After all,” he continues, “a lawsuit might be in the works.”

“Eh….”