Elgin, Suzette Haden - Weather Bulletin

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2024-11-19 2 0 104.99KB 3 页 5.9玖币

Weather Bulletin

Suzette Haden Elgin

Everybody said my Uncle Hamp could of been a federal weatherman if he’d wanted to; he was that good. He had such a light hand for mixing

weather that Tykire County’s idea of a crime wave was somebody’s dog killing somebody else’s favorite rooster. It like to broke Uncle Hamp’s

heart when the word came down from Washington that Congress had voted an end to local weather and all the weather was going to be federal

from now on, with only a transfer station in each state to send it along to us — exactly the same way the government handled climate

management. And when they came and took all the mixers and amplifiers and such away to be recycled, I thought Uncle Hamp was going to cry.

The fact that the government paid the county twice what the equipment was worth didn’t seem to make him feel any less heartsick over it.

"They’ve been talking about doing this for ten years at least!" my Mama said at the supper table that night, when Uncle Hamp kept carrying on

about government intrusion into our lives and destroying family tradition and I don’t remember whatall else along the same lines. "Surely it can’t

come as much of a surprise to you, Hampton!"

"But that’s just it, Sis," he said mournfully. My mother despised being called "Sis," but she’d had no luck getting him to quit it, especially when

he was upset. "Anything they talk about that long in Washington, usually they don’t ever do anything! The more they talked, Sis, the safer I felt!"

Mama clucked her tongue at him and changed the subject with the kind of firmness that meant it was well and truly changed, and we finished

supper discussing the problems we were having keeping the deer out of the garden and what we might could do about that. Uncle Hamp looked

hurt, but Mama ignored him; he was her little brother and she loved him dearly, but she didn’t intend to have him ruining everybody’s supper

with his political lamentations.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t concerned, mind. Mama had been a tranquillary in the Tykire County Choir from the time she was eleven — one of

the youngest such there’d ever been, so that there were stories in the newspapes about her all over the country. She’d had two brothers besides

Uncle Hamp in the choir, too — though Uncle Gandy hadn’t lasted long, he was too impatient, and he’d gone off to Montana to raise bison for a

living and done real well at it. And she had encouraged all of us kids to try out for the choir at one time or another. Most important of all, my

sister Elizabeth was an ecstatic, and a mighty powerful one; plenty of big-city choir directors had come around trying to woo her away from us.

Weather was a family tradition, and Mama cared about it as much as Uncle Hamps did. She just didn’t believe in thrashing out trouble while you

ate; it soured the stomach. She always claimed that arguing while he ate his meals was the main thing that had caused our Daddy to have the heart

attack and die so young.

But later, once we were all sitting out on the porch, she brought it up again herself.

"Hampton," she said slowly, "I suppose Washington’ll be after Elizabeth now."

"You know they will," he answered her. "And how do you suppose we’ll keep her here?"

"We shouldn’t try," Mama said. "Soloist for the Federal Choir, Hamp...that’s a fine career, with a splendid future. We’d be selfish not to let her

go."

"But you’ve always said she couldn’t, Mama!" I put in, quick before Uncle Hamp could say anything. "Haven’t you always said she couldn’t?" It

wasn’t fair! Why should Elizabeth get to go off to Washington and be some kind of big deal, while I had to stay here and learn to run a

laundromat or something? If I’d known they were going to federalize the weather I’d of practiced harder!

Of course, I’d only been a euphoric, and those are a dime a dozen — nothing like Elizabeth. Your basic mix, what Uncle Hamp calls "generic

weather," is a quartet: two euphorics, a tranquillary, and a melancholic. However big the choir got, you kept that basic mix. With — supposing

you were really lucky — an ecstatic to do your solos. Most choirs had to make do with synthetics for the ecstasy parts, and they didn’t really

work very well. Our county choir had known how lucky they were to have Elizabeth and were foolish enough to tell her so time and time again; I

used to follow her around saying she wasn’t so much, so she didn’t get a swelled head over it. The Weather Burea was forever claiming that next

year they were going to have the bugs out of the synthetic voices, but it never happened. Because, my Uncle Hamp said, it takes a human being to

project a valid human emotion. The synthetic emotions might be electronically identical, he said, but "they’ve got no human soul to them! And

that is what it takes, for them to have any effect!" If I’d heard him say that once, I’d heard it a thousand times. And—

"Johnny! Are you listening to me?"

I jumped; I hadn’t been. I’d asked her the question and then gotten to thinking so hard I’d forgotten all about listening to the answer.

"No, ma’am!" I said. "I’m sorry."

"Well, what I said was, as long as Elizabeth had a future here in the county, and could move up to the state choir as she got older, I didn’t see any

reason why she should leave and go off to some big city. But thing are different now, child! We can’t really expect her to give up weather and

start working down at the WalMart, Johnny. God didn’t make Elizabeth an ecstatic for her to just let that talent go to waste, you know — it’s

meant to be used. Damn Congress!"

"Amen," said my Uncle Hamp.

"So you think they’ll be calling now for her to go to DC?" I asked her. I had sense enough not to remind her that she’d always told us kids that

swearing was a sin.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, they will. Unfortunately." And she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

When I asked her and Uncle Hamp if it was really too late for me to take up weather and see if maybe I had some unsuspected talent that might

take me out of Tykire County without having to suffer the horrors of going to college — which I’d rather be horsewhipped twice a day than do —

they weren’t even polite. I couldn’t blame them. They’d tried hard enough, when I was little, and I’d paid no attention. They would warn me that

if I didn’t practice I was never going to get into a choir, and I’d smart off and tell them that was fine with me. It was my own fault. It’s just that of

course I didn’t know it was all going to change and go federal! Shoot! Like Mama said: Damn Congress!

When six months went by and nobody contacted us about Elizabeth, so that I was starting to think maybe I could relax about it, Mama asked

Uncle Hamp didn’t it seem kind of funny to him that nobody’d asked for her yet.

"Yes, it does," he said. And he cleared his throat. "And that’s not all that strikes me as way out of line."

"Like what, Uncle Hamp?" I asked, to be polite. I didn’t really care, but it was polite to ask.

"I don’t want to talk about it," he said crossly, and that made me a little cross myself. I mean, it was him and Mama that had brought it up in front

of Elizabeth and me, after all. I almost started to complain about it, and then I thought....naah, it wasn’t worth the bother. He’d been acting weird

ever since they shut down the local choirs and he’d go on that way a while, probably, before he got over it.

"I don’t mind them not sending for me," Elizabeth said peacefully, sounding to me like she meant it.

"You truly don’t?" Mama asked her.

"No, Mama, I don’t. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d just as soon stay here."

I knew what she meant. I’d pretty much gotten over wanting to get away from here myself. Running a laundromat, or whatever they came up with

for me to do, would probably be fine.

"You see what I mean, Carolyn?" my Uncle Hamp said, real sharp. Like I said, he’d been acting weird. "You see what I mean?"

"Hampton, please." Mama shook her head at him, and he took a deep breath and said all right if she was going to be like that and he got up and

walked off the porch and down the sidewalk toward town without saying goodbye or even looking back at us. I guess he’d forgotten they had rain

scheduled; he came back soaking wet and it gave him a sinus condition that lasted two weeks.

If I hadn’t heard him talking on the phone — which strictly speaking I wasn’t supposed to listen, but I had a kind of habit of doing it — I

wouldn’t of had any idea what he was up to. And you may wonder why after I heard what he was saying to Mr. Rackleigh at the Weather Bureau

I didn’t get excited enough to at least talk to him about it. I don’t know why either; it just didn’t seem to matter much.

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