Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 21:23:04 -0400 X-Sender: teddyt@teddyt.pop.crosslink.net Mime-Version: 1.0 To: laura@netgate.net From: Ted Subject: Summer Storm Summer Storm (M/f) Daryl Sinclair had a desk by the large window in his 10th floor office, and though he worked assiduously, the suburban greenery that filled his view was a tonic for summer lassitude. The window was also an instant weather forecast. This Thursday afternoon, he knew it was almost quitting time, not by the clock or by his headache, but by the changing nature of the atmosphere outside. The storm was barreling down the mountains to the west and across the malled patchwork of exurbia toward his village. That meant it was nearing 6 o'clock. The oaks and elms in the distance on this sweltering summer afternoon had begun swaying in advance of the approaching thunderclaps. It was a ritual dance of gentle undulation among the top branches and a flapping of twigs and leaves below, almost a belly dance performed by Mother Nature. The sight never failed to move him. The electricity sparkling through sea-green skies, the charcoal outlines of building clouds scudding rapidly low across the horizon. Most of all, the erotic buildup of the trees. Everywhere were there trees in this community. In the distance, the leaves were no longer dark green. When they showed paler, it meant that the foreboding swirl of winds had lifted the leaves to show their undersides. It was nothing less than an arboreal fluttering of petticoats. The intensity of recent storms, and the fact that his wife was out of town, impelled Daryl Sinclair to pile his work papers in neat stacks and hurry downstairs for the quick drive home. Lightning was already dancing through the sky, and the neighborhood had recently become a dartboard for nature's random electrical barbs. Houses had been struck, and one poor Little Leaguer with an aluminum bat stroked a changeup over the snow fence but never made it out of the batter's box. He still lay in critical condition at the local managed care emporium. Poor Priscilla, he thought, as he peeled from the parking lot. How she is afraid of thunder and lightning. He hoped she had heeded his repeated warnings to go inside the moment the summer afternoon sky darkened. When he arrived home, he found the forest green front door open, though protected by the screen storm door. "Prissy?" he called. But he was calling to no one there, not even a chair. Daryl scrambled outside as the thunderheads marched into place above him. He heard the laughing and giggling of young girls from two yards away. Prissy was in the McQuarry's yard with Cory, Tory and Rory, jumping and shrieking with glee at the forbidding weather. In his gray suit, he vaulted two sets of metal fences to reach the Simmons's yard, precisely at the same time as Laurie McQuarry raced from her driveway to the back yard to scoop up her three children. Daryl Sinclair gathered Prissy up his arms, but this was no act of paternal security. A gust of near tornadic proportion had cracked loose a branch from the tulip elm 45 feet overhead and it was helicoptering to the ground where his daughter stood frozen. Daddy had come the rescue in the nick of time -- as usual. As the bough broke, Daryl cradled Priscilla and tumbled to the ground with her, preserving her life beyond the eight years she had managed to survive thus far. She began crying the convulsions of fear and of narrow escape. Her father dusted off the grass cuttings from the back of her polka dot dress -- a little too stridently, she thought -- and grabbed a slender maverick from the fallen branch. Unmindful of the yelps emanating from the tripartite paddling about to commence at that moment inside the McQuarry's kitchen, he ran with his precious package to their home. He slammed the door with his foot just as a Zeusian bolt zagged into the transformer atop the utility pole at the front walk, plunging the house into darkness. Daryl Sinclair was scared, but he sounded calm when he set pouting Priscilla to the foyer floor. "You have been TOLD to come inside at the merest hint of a storm, young lady." "I know, Daddy. But it was fun this time." "Fun? I... don't... think... you... will... find... THIS... fun." With that, he turned Priscilla toward him, bending her over his left leg as he stood, lifting her skirt, drawing down her cotton panties and administering the first switching of her young life. Outside, the clouds burst and dropped heavy splats of summer rain drops upon the front walk. But none were as loud, wet or saturated with promise as the tears that fell on the Sinclair's parquet floor that afternoon. ####