The rain was coming down in sheets as the old man sat on the porch of the empty house. He rubbed out the cigarette that had become nothing but an ashen cylinder and began slowly rolling another with his gnarled fingers. A sigh escaped his lips as he lit up the freshly rolled cigarette. Taking a long drag, he let his thoughts drift, and his mind wandered.

A deep sense of longing crept over him, and somewhere off in the distance, a bird called out.  The lyrics of an old Hank Williams song bubbled to the surface of his consciousness. He finished the cigarette and stood, joints creaking in protest.  The summer storm had not slackened, and that suited him. He stepped down off of the porch and into the rain.

He stood there in the downpour, letting the falling water wash over him, soaking and chilling him to the core of his bones. He began to walk down the gravel driveway, pausing here and there to survey the land that was once his. He was struck by an innate sense of wrongness, as if something that he could not quite put his finger on was missing. As he continued walking, he realized what was gone; this place that had been his for so very long no longer felt like home.

Reaching the end of the driveway, he turned to return to the empty house. He realized he was glad that this place was no longer home, but that realization soured his momentarily uplifted spirits. So much that had happened here was soon to be forgotten. Such is the fate of old men he thought as he made his way back up onto the porch. He stripped down out of his wet clothes and and sat naked on the worn floorboards of the porch to bear silent witness to the passing of the evening rain.

He rolled another cigarette, and he wished for whiskey.

The Evening Rain by Ian M Carlson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.