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After the Rain

by P. A. Cornell

I love a heavy summer storm. I love it when the rain falls so suddenly there’s no avoiding it and you’re drenched in seconds, or when the drops hit the ground so hard they bounce right back up at you. I love the crack of thunder that precedes the rain, and the rainbows that come after. This was the kind of storm I was riding through, just returned to our village after one of my courier runs to the neighboring communities.

Racing through puddles, I didn’t mind the mud splashing up at me or that all this moisture was going to make a frizzy mess of my long curls. I spread my arms and raised my face to the clouds, relishing the coolness after building up a sweat over the miles I’d ridden. As I cut through our food forest, the tree canopy abruptly ended my impromptu shower, so I went back to focusing on my path, careful to keep my bike to the walking trails so as not to damage the ground cover plants.

Passing one of the lower bushes, several chickens taking shelter burst out, startled, clucking their displeasure. That’s odd, I thought. Someone must’ve left the coop open. I hoped no predators had gotten into it.

As I emerged from the forest, the rain was already beginning to slow. I wound my way through the narrow paths between the buildings of our community, reaching up to gently touch the leaves of the hanging plants that descended from the balconies, creating my own little downpour. In some places, climbing plants rose up to meet the hanging ones, entangling like lovers, supporting each other as they grew. It made me think about how all of us in the village supported each other and were stronger for it, too.

Normally, a storm like this meant the village core would be deserted, so I was surprised to see a small crowd gathered around Emma’s toolshare. Emma stood, hands on hips, staring toward the roof with a dour expression. Following her gaze, I noticed Yi-jun had climbed up there and was looking around.

I brought my bike to a skidding stop in front of the shop. “What’s going on?”

Emma gave me a nod in greeting, digging her hands deep into the pockets of her overalls. “Hi Amalia. Got here this morning to find the lights wouldn’t work. Yi-jun says my solar panels are damaged.”

“From all the storms we’ve had lately?”

“Not likely,” Yi-jun said, from his perch on the roof. “One of the panels is missing altogether. A storm wouldn’t do that.”

“You think someone stole it?” I asked, surprised. In our community we shared everything. If there was something you needed, chances were someone else could make it or share one of their own. Theft just didn’t make sense.

“The turbine looks damaged, too,” Yi-jun added.

“Guess it’s lights out for me for a while,” Emma said.

Yi-jun came down and assured her he could fix the damage and get her a replacement panel. She’d have lights back on by tonight but wouldn’t be up to full power for a while. Emma’s response was what I’d expected: “S’pose you’ll be needing some tools.”

Then she looked at me. “Don’t tell me you came here for a bike repair.”

“Nah, but I had been thinking about stopping by for a tune-up, since it’s been a while,” I said. “I don’t need it breaking down halfway between here and Beachside and then having to hoof it the rest of the way with the bike on my back. But I can see things are a bit hectic for you today.”

“Never mind that,” she said. “Leave the bike. I’ll take a look at it out here once the rain stops. Won’t take long.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“You can do me a favor in return,” she said. “Head down to the potter’s if you don’t mind. He’s got some tools he borrowed I need back.”

“You bet. I was meaning to head Hidalgo’s way anyway,” I told her. “The people up on the hill placed another order for him I’m supposed to deliver.”

---

With the rain reduced to a handful of stray drops, the gardeners started coming out of the buildings, tools and baskets in hand to gather what they could from the food forest, which reminded me of the chickens I’d seen earlier. I walked toward Glen, the tall head gardener, who waved to me as I approached.

“Heading out to forage?” I asked.

“You know it,” he said, nodding his head so that a couple of stray locs fell into his face. He pulled them back and put on his woven hat to keep them in place.

“Just a heads up, I saw some chickens loose earlier when I was riding by.”

“That’s strange. They should’ve been shut in tight for the night. I’ll let whoever’s on chicken duty know.”

“Hey, while you’re in there, would you mind gathering some of those delicious morel mushrooms for me? I have a real craving. I’ll come by and help out later to earn them.”

“You got it.”

He gave me a tip of his hat and went off after the others.

I continued down toward the village outskirts and the potter’s workshop. Hidalgo’s was in a small depression between low hills that you could scarcely call a valley. His shop was made from a blend of life and death. Dead wood, intertwined with living vines, guided in a basket-weave to form walls. I loved the way it looked, like it had grown fully formed from the ground.

As I neared the structure, Hidalgo spotted me through the open door. I pulled the strap of my cross-body bag over my head while he came to meet me at the threshold.

“Morning, Hidalgo. Gorgeous storm, wasn’t it?”

“Only you love the rain this much, Amalia,” he said with a laugh, wiping his big hands against his work apron. “You and the forest.”

He moved aside to let me pass. By now I’d dried off enough I didn’t have to worry about dripping on the pottery still drying on his worktable. I put down my bag, noticing several terracotta cylinders stacked within a framework of dried vines. Hidalgo had been busy.

“Making another air-conditioner?”

“This one’s for the gathering hall. It can get hot in there during the festivals with all those people.”
“Especially once the dancing starts,” I agreed.

“Right, and with the rains as frequent as they’ve been, holding the dances outside isn’t always feasible. That’s where I come in.”

Hidalgo had made another air-conditioner for the communal kitchen last summer. He’d based the design on the cooling system bees used in their hives. It had worked like a charm.

“So what brings you by?” he asked.

“Emma’s asking for some tools you borrowed. And I have something for you from up on the hill.”

“How are those folks doing up there?”

“Oh you know, still growing their flowers and keeping their bees.” I reached for my bag, then pulled out the carefully-wrapped bundle of rags and placed it on the one corner of his worktable that wasn’t taken up by pottery. Hidalgo unwrapped the small jar it held and raised it to the light, admiring the amber glow.

“Beautiful work these bees do,” he said. “I assume this honey’s in payment for the usual?”

I nodded, and he turned to rummage through his shelves, moving finished pottery around to get to a tin box in the back. He opened it as he handed it to me.

“Just made a fresh batch. I had a feeling they’d be running low.”

The tin held a number of clay seed bombs. The seeds had been provided by the community on the hill; the clay and a couple of other things by Hidalgo.

“Still doing your part for guerilla gardening after all these years,” I said.

He shrugged. “There are still communities trying to cling to the old ways, doing their best to create heat deserts in their scrap towns. We’re just trying to show them there are better ways.”

“You think they’ll see a little green in their world and change their minds?”

“It’s about giving them hope,” he said. “That we can build something better. It’s up to us to lead by example.”

I wasn’t old enough to remember the climate collapse, but old-timers like Hidalgo sure could, and they talked all the time about the mistakes we’d made to cause it. Hidalgo had grown up in a place that no longer existed—washed away like so many others. He’d come out here with the mass migrations as a kid and remembered hard times I’d never known. I could understand why he and others of his generation wouldn’t want a return to that; why they fought so hard for our way of life.

“Well, I hope it makes a difference,” I said. “We could use more like-minded communities to share goods and knowledge with.”

“You can never have too many friends,” he agreed. I then followed him to the back of the shop where he gathered a handful of tools and gave them to me. “Used these to make the framework for the air-con.”

I stuffed the tools and tin in my bag. “Thanks old-timer. I’ll see you around.”

---

After returning the tools to Emma and stopping by my place to drop off my courier bag, I headed back into the forest to help out and hopefully get some mushrooms for lunch from Glen. I followed the muddy tracks to where the gardeners were working and found several of them still struggling to round up loose chickens.

“How’s it going?” I asked Glen.

“We’ve gathered most of them with some food. It’s strange. Mag was in charge of the coop yesterday, and swears they shut it before they left. There’s a couple of chickens still missing, too.”

“You think a fox or coyote got them?”

He shrugged. “Could be, but usually if that happened there’d be a mess of feathers.”

“Maybe they just hid from the rain and haven’t come out yet,” I suggested.

Weaving my now mostly-dry hair into a braid to keep it out of my face, I helped steer the chickens toward an area that needed a little more fertilizer. While they did their thing, we tended to the forest. It was mostly self-sustaining, but there was always something to do to help it out. And of course, someone had to gather the ripe fruits and vegetables as well as the medicinal plants, when needed.

After a while, Glen came over with a small basket, inside which he’d placed a few mushrooms. “I found you these. Sorry there aren’t many. There were several patches yesterday that aren’t there anymore. Looks like we’ve been picked clean by someone with the same craving you have.”

This was odd. People here knew to forage only what they needed, leaving plenty for others and to allow our forest time to replenish itself.

“It’s not just the mushrooms, either,” Glen added. “We noticed some of the plants had been disturbed. Some trampled, others torn right out of the ground.”

“You don’t think another community’s stealing from us, do you?”

“You travel between us and our neighbors almost daily, so you’d know better than anyone.”

I thought it over. “Seems unlikely. We’ve lived in peace with our neighbors for years. There’s no reason they’d do something like this.”

“Could be just kids left unsupervised. Too young to know the harm they’re causing.”

I nodded, but that seemed far-fetched, too, and I think he knew it. We were taught since early childhood how to care for our forest and forage responsibly. Only very young kids might not know better, and they weren’t likely to be left unsupervised.

---

The following day, the gardeners discovered the coop open again and more missing or damaged plants. There were also footprints left behind in the now-dried mud. They called an impromptu meeting at the gathering hall. With the whole village there in the middle of the day, the place was sweltering. I wiped my neck with a bandanna, thinking, Hidalgo can’t finish that air-conditioner soon enough.

Glen stood before the assembled crowd and described what they’d seen in the forest and how they now suspected someone had stolen plants, damaged others, and let the chickens loose, likely to steal one or two of them as well.

Emma and Yi-jun added their description of the damage to the toolshare, and the missing solar panel for anyone who wasn’t aware.

“We need to find out who’s doing this,” Hidalgo said. “We’ve clearly been targeted.”

“What’s most concerning to me is they’ve taken a lot of mushrooms,” Glen said. “This morning I noticed that includes some of the ones we plant for medicine that are dangerous if not used properly.”

“Seems our problem might take care of itself then,” Emma said, earning herself more than a few disapproving looks.

I stood from my seat next to Hidalgo and addressed the crowd. “With the recent storms they’ve left tracks behind. It shouldn’t be too hard to find them.”

“Assuming they’ve stuck around,” said Emma.

“They’ve hit the food forest twice now, so I’d guess they aren’t far, and they need food. It’s a good bet they’ll come back.”

Everyone seemed in agreement with that, so we organized ourselves into teams. Some would guard the forest and other potential targets, while others, including me, would try to track the thieves to wherever they were hiding.

Emma had returned my bike, so I rode around the village looking for the freshest tracks. I noticed they weren’t limited to the ones in the forest. Some went out toward Hidalgo’s shop, and there were a few elsewhere, too. Since the rain had continued on and off, there was no telling how many tracks had been washed away without us ever seeing them. The few that remained didn’t point a clear enough trail for me to follow. There were expert trackers in other communities, but they were a fair ride away. We’d have to make do with the people we had here.

I decided to pick a spot to guard between the forest and Hidalgo’s shop, not too far from where the chicken coop was. Hidalgo joined me, bringing mugs of hot tea to help us stay up late, since the thief—or thieves—seemed to come at night.

“Thanks. Nice cups. Your work?”

He gave me a look like I shouldn’t have bothered asking, then handed me a spare poncho. I pulled it over my head with my free hand, careful not to spill the tea.

“You think they’ll come again tonight?”

“If they do, we’ll be ready for them.”

“It was pretty hot in the hall today. How’s that air-con coming along?”

He smiled. “Finished. Got it all wrapped up, just waiting outside the shop for Carl to pick up with his wagon tomorrow morning.”

We watched the sun set behind the distant hills, and for a while there I thought it might rain again, but it didn’t. For once I was glad about that since we’d be spending the night outside and I didn’t feel like keeping watch in soaked clothing.

We couldn’t talk much since we were trying to stay quiet, so the silence stretched into the night making the time seem longer than it was. I was starting to think the thieves wouldn’t show when we heard shouting from the forest.

Both Hidalgo and I stood and turned toward the sound. I could hear a rustling now and spot the occasional flashlight beam as the sound of shouting grew louder.

“They’re headed toward the valley.”

“There!” I said, pointing toward a beam that was coming our way, ahead of all the others.

Hidalgo followed my gesture and started running toward the light. The thief must’ve seen him because the beam turned abruptly to the side. I started running ahead of it, meaning to cut them off, but then they turned again, heading between us into the valley.

I did my best to follow but, unlike the thief, I was wary about tripping over an unseen tree root in the dark and spraining an ankle, so they soon vanished around the right side of Hidalgo’s shop.

“I’ll take the left,” Hidalgo yelled, and I watched him run around the opposite side while I stayed to the right.

As I rounded the building, I was surprised to see the thief headed right for me. No doubt they’d run into Hidalgo and turned back. They hesitated when they saw me, then turned to their left, and ran head-on into a wall of what could only be the wrapped air-conditioner.

The entire thing came down on the thief with a crash of broken terracotta.

“Are you kidding me?” Hidalgo said, coming around the corner and seeing his work destroyed.

We both approached and started pulling the broken air-conditioner off the stranger, who was lying there stunned on the ground. Fortunately, the sheet Hidalgo had wrapped around it had held most of the pieces in place, so we didn’t have to dig for them underneath a pile of terracotta shards. When Hidalgo shone his flashlight onto the stranger’s face, we saw they were just a kid of no more than fifteen.

We helped them up and made sure they weren’t seriously injured. By then the others had joined us, and the kid had lost any urge to run.

“Anyone know this kid?” Glen asked.

I’d never seen them before, and I knew everyone—including those in four other communities.

“They’re not from around here,” I said.

“Why are you stealing from us?” Hidalgo asked.

“I was just looking for medicine. Herbs, for tea. My dad’s sick.”

“Let me guess,” said Glen. “Ate some bad mushrooms?”

“We put them in the chicken stew. He only had a little.”

“He the only one?” asked Glen.

“Yeah. He had them while he was still cooking. When he started to feel strange, he told us not to have any.”

“Take us to him,” Glen said.

The kid led us just past the far side of the valley where the smaller hills started. There we found a van, on top of which was Emma’s stolen solar panel.

---

The kid—Brian—was part of a family that had set out in a hybrid van from some city they’d been living in and had predictably run out of fuel somewhere along the way. They’d miscalculated how much power they’d get from a single charge on their backup solar panel—especially given all the rain we’d had lately—and that had vastly extended the length of their journey. They’d soon run out of supplies and were near the end of their food when they’d come across our community.

“Dad and I took the solar panel,” Brian confessed. “We didn’t mean to damage anything, but it was dark, and we were rushing so we wouldn’t get caught.”

Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to properly connect the panel and their van still wasn’t working well enough to get them out of here, so they’d taken to helping themselves to our food, and our chickens, who we personally didn’t consider food, aside from the eggs they provided.

Brian said his father’s name was Eric, as he was too sick to introduce himself. The remaining family member was a four-year-old boy named Matty.

Hidalgo took the boys back to the village for a proper meal at the kitchen. The rest of us stayed behind to arrange for transportation for their father, who we then took to our clinic. He’d luckily only ingested a small amount of mushrooms and would recover.

“There are more potent mushrooms than that in our forest, and other dangerous plants, too,” Glen later told the boys. “You’re lucky things didn’t go worse for you.”

“We’re sorry,” said Brian. “We wouldn’t normally have stolen from you, but along the way, not everyone we met was friendly. Dad said it was safer to stay hidden and hope we’d be out of here before you noticed, but that obviously didn’t work out. Now we feel bad because you’ve helped us even after all we did.”

In a community like ours, where everyone does their part and earns what they use, theft is serious, but we could only get so upset. These people had stolen in a moment of desperation. As for Brian, he was just a scared kid trying to help his dad. He’d certainly never intended to destroy Hidalgo’s hard work and was no doubt still sore from having all those terracotta tubes come crashing down on him.

“My friend Hidalgo told me we should lead by example,” I told the boy. “Building a better world means more than just growing more plants. We need to nurture each other, too.”

“We can help you get on your way,” said Yi-jun. “In the meantime, you can make up for some of the trouble you’ve caused by helping out around here.”

The boys agreed to help in any way they could. While their father recovered, the boys worked hard, even little Matty. In the process they learned a good deal about growing a food forest and responsible foraging from Glen. Meanwhile, Yi-jun managed to attach not just the solar panel to their van, but also one of his small turbines, just in case. We also gave them food to take with them on the rest of their journey.

As it turned out, the family had been heading toward the coast, and had actually gone too far. Since I knew the area best, I drew them a map to Beachside but also volunteered to ride alongside them on my bike as far as the hill community, since I had to deliver those seed bombs anyway.

On the way there, the rain started coming down in buckets again. They stopped the van and offered to let me in, but I just waved them off, spread my arms, and let the bike coast toward the rainbow forming in the distance. It’s not for everyone, but I love a good storm.

---

Host Commentary

And that was After the Rain, by P.A. Cornell.

This story reminded me a lot of Stephen Universe. Mysterious aliens, many of them military-minded, are tasked with raising a human/alien hybrid, a super friendly and positive boy named Stephen. Stephen has problems, like what to do when his mom’s home planet tries to track them down, or how to explain that he has three guardians from space and his mom doesn’t really exist anymore. But when things get bad, really bad, you think Stephen is going to bust out his alien powers and use the fighting skill he has been taught at last because the antagonists are folks that could destroy the earth if they wanted to (and they sometimes do.) But Stephen always solves the problem with kindness. Not pollyanna “I don’t want to think about the bad stuff” kindness. But it’s more like “I see you, and we can work through this” kindness The kid proves more mature than most of the adults in the story.

Someone once told me that he tries to always be positive and approach things with love and kindness. And I bluntly asked, what about people who actively wish you or your loved ones harm? He told me that if he can’t love someone, then he will pity them that they are so full of hatred. Pity is still a more positive emotion than hate, after all. It’s a step. I am still trying to get there. It’s a process, I guess.

In this story, nearly everything the settlement suspects is true: They were infiltrated. Their chickens were stolen and eaten. They had solar cells stolen and then broken. There was no misunderstanding; criminal activity was happening. And in an apocalypse setting, it’s got to be so much worse than right now to be robbed, since most of us won’t lose some of the basic needs for life if someone steals our car or our groceries.

The only thing missing from the thieves was malice. They didn’t want to hurt the settlement, they just wanted to get by. And I think that makes things easier to understand, for this cynical reader, anyway. Because they still helped. They knew what was going on and still they helped. Like Stephen Universe. I will fully admit I love stories like these — understanding that someone who did you harm is actually in desperate need and then showing them kindness, that’s always something to aspire to, even if I don’t manage it every day.

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That was our show for this week. Our quote of course comes from Stephen Universe, when he wasn’t always handling his problems with zen-like acceptance but trying really hard. “What do you know about my mom?! I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KNOW MY MOM! But I do know she saw beauty in everything! Even in stuff like this, and even in jerks like you!”