WELL DONE! WHAT THE STORM BROUGHT by Ramey Channell

WHAT THE STORM BROUGHT by Ramey Channell

Aunt Bobbie actually waited until the storm was right on top of us before she broke into a fitful and honestly comical gallop, out of her front door and, dodging flying tree limbs, odd debris, and torrential rain, made a mad dash up the hill to our house. She kept a tight grip on the waistband of her unzipped mint-green polyester Dollar Store britches as she crouched and sprinted, crouched and sprinted, until she reached the wide wooden steps leading up to our front porch and launched herself past me where I stood at the screen door monitoring her progress.

“Lordy!” she gasped in her signature Marlboro-rough contralto. “I was in the bathroom! On the toilet!”

That was her entire greeting and explanation. Several—three I think— medium sized tree limbs sailed across the dirt driveway, barely missing the cab of Daddy’s ancient black pick-up, and crashed into the thicket of bushes on the far side of the yard at the edge of the woods.

Daddy sat hunched over on the living room sofa, peering out the big picture window, keeping a steady eye on the maelstrom outside.

“Whew! Gordy!” Aunt Bobbie exclaimed, maintaining her death grip on the waistband of her britches.

Daddy shifted his attention from the chaos outside the window to his half drowned sister standing, dripping, in the middle of the small living room.

“Well, I’ll declare, Bobbie! We were just fixin’ to run down to your house! You’re down lower than we are up here on the knob. We’d all be safer down there.”

“I know it,” Bobbie replied, nodding her head vigorously and slinging rain water around the living room. “But you know I feel better up here with y’all anyway. Roy’s at work, and I couldn’t sit down there by myself, waitin’ to get blowed away!”

At that moment, an airborne tree limb struck the window with a loud whack. Luckily, the window didn’t break, and the three of us watched as our black and white tomcat, Black Bill, made a mad run out from under Daddy’s truck and dashed up the front steps.

“There!” Daddy motioned urgently toward the door. “Let Black Bill in, Patsy!”

I opened the door, barely able to hold onto it in the violent wind, and Black Bill made a bee line through the living room, into the bedroom, and under the bed.

Meanwhile, Aunt Bobbie finally succeeded in getting her pants buttoned and zipped up, just as the lamp beside the couch blinked out and the living room was thrown into gray gloom.

“There went the electricity,” Daddy calmly noted.

“Well, shoot!” Aunt Bobbie griped. “I was just thinkin’ about makin’ us a pot of coffee. I need a cup of coffee! What about you, Patsy?”

“There’s a pot on the stove, left from this morning,” I answered. “It might still be warm.”

So, as the storm intensified and Aunt Bobbie issued forth an occasional fervent prayer, the three of us drank room-temperature coffee and ate Fig Newtons. As sometimes happens, much to our relief, the storm finally blew itself out.

“I’m goin’ home,” Aunt Bobbie announced as she stubbed out her cigarette in the round ceramic ash tray. She stood, cautiously patting and fluffing her black curly head of hair as if she wanted to assure herself it hadn’t blown away in the storm. Outside, the wind and rain had subsided, leaving a mess of tree limbs, leaves, and trash scattered as far as the eye could see, and a few stray clouds with the bright sun peeking through.

Daddy and I stood together on the front porch, watching Bobbie pick her way judiciously down the dirt trail, hopping over small limbs and skirting around big ones. As she disappeared down the hill and into the front door of her house, Daddy cocked his head to one side, took a few steps into the littered yard and stood, hands on his hips, peering up into a near-demolished dogwood tree.

“Look here, Patsy. What is that?” he asked as he approached the tree and stared upward into the rain battered branches.

The thing we saw up in the tree looked like two really big aluminum pie pans, one atop the other. About the circumference of a Hula Hoop, and about two feet tall, it was lodged at an angle in a fork of the tree. And there it sat.

“They . . .” Daddy slowly exhaled. “What do you reckon that is?”

Right off the top of my head, I didn’t have an answer.

I looked all around the yard, out into the woods, and up toward the mountain ridge in the distance. Then I returned my gaze to the round thing up in the tree. It was still there, and I still didn’t have an answer.

“Run get the ladder,” Daddy said, motioning vaguely in the direction of the rear of the house. “See if we can get whatever that is down out of the tree.”

I dragged the wooden step ladder around from the back of the house and Daddy positioned it under the dogwood tree. Just then, the round metal thing emitted a low whooshing sound and a puff of what looked like steam drifted from underneath it.

“Hmm!” Daddy said.

Then he stepped onto the lowest rung of the ladder and said over his shoulder, “I’ll go up the ladder and see if I can wrench it a’loose from the tree, and you watch out. If I was to drop it, don’t let it fall on you.”

I nodded in the affirmative.

The round metal thing in the tree was surprisingly light. Daddy was able to get it down off the limb, and I grabbed hold of one side of it as he came down the ladder. We had no trouble carrying it out from under the tree, and we set it on the ground near the front porch steps. It was dented in on one side, and there was a big crack running from the dent underneath the underside of the thing. As we studied the object, another poof of steam wafted up from underneath.

A skritchy-scratchy sound from inside the circular object alerted us that there was something moving around inside there. Daddy gripped my arm and pulled me a step or two away, and we both watched as a skinny brown hand and arm appeared out of the sizable crack in the metal orb. The little fingers on the hand opened and closed a few times, then retreated back inside the metal thing, then reappeared. The fingers waved and flexed again.

A strident chirpy sound emitted from inside the object, as the little arm and hand waved frantically in our direction.

“Chee chee chee chee. Chee chee, chee chee chee.”

“It’s a chipmunk!” Daddy exclaimed. “They’s a chipmunk trapped inside that thing.”

I watched the little brown hand fluttering in and out of the crack in the round metal thing.

“I don’t think that’s a chipmunk’s hand,” I ventured.

“Chee chee chee chee,” the little voice squeaked. Then — the top fell off the round pie pan object and clattered to the ground in front of us. And there, in the lower half of the round thing, crouched a little almost-person. Definitely not a chipmunk.

“Chee!” it squealed.

The occupant of the round metal thing looked to be a little bit more than a foot tall. It had brown smooth skin, large brown eyes with long thick eyelashes, a tiny little mouth, and it wore a little suit that was looking worse for wear. There were several tears and rips and a couple of singed places in the smooth brown fabric. And a thin patch of wispy white fuzz on top of its head was definitely singed. With arms waving furiously, fingers pointing up toward the sky, then toward the dogwood tree, then back down to the interior of what I now recognized as a vehicle, the small being continued to chirp and screech.

“Chee chee chee chee! Ah chee chee ah, aloo uhtay!” he exclaimed.

Daddy put his hand up to his own mouth and thoughtfully scrutinized the little being.

“Nope, not a chipmunk,” he said, shaking his head.

Out hopped the little almost-human, and standing beside his round vehicle, he poked at it a couple of times with one long knobby finger, then while keeping up a constant chatter, he threw both hands toward the sky and pointed first to the east, then to the west, best I could figure. Then suddenly he balled both hands into tight little fists and covered his eyes and began to sob.

“Well the pore little feller,” Daddy said, and the two of us stepped closer to the being and his damaged round space craft.

That’s what it obviously was: a space craft.

Our moment of sympathy was interrupted by Aunt Bobbie, calling from her front porch down at the bottom of the hill.

“What are y’all lookin’ at?”

The little occupant of the round metal space craft uncovered his eyes and looked toward Aunt Bobbie’s house. He seemed to focus his eyes on her for a second or two, then covered his eyes again and continued weeping.

“It’s a . . . it’s a . . .” Daddy called out in Bobbie’s direction. “We don’t know,” he finished.

Bobbie wasted no time picking her way back up the hill.

When she got to us, she stood behind Daddy where he had crouched down to get a closer look at the odd and apparently traumatized being. The little almost-person had collapsed onto the ground and lay on his back near the circular craft.

“Hmm,” Bobbie snorted. “Hmm! Well, Gordy! What is it?” she asked.

“He’s wrecked his flying machine into the dogwood tree,” Daddy answered. “We don’t know what he is. It’s not a chipmunk.”

“Naw, it’s not a chipmunk,” Aunt Bobbie agreed. She leaned in for a closer look. “Well, the pore little feller,” she crooned.

“Chee, chee, chee,” the little fellow wailed. “Eee may toh nollin!” And he reached out one hand and patted the side of his space craft mournfully.

“Well, Gordy, you’ll have to fix his flying machine,” Bobbie announced. “You can’t just let him lay there on the wet ground like that. Do you think you can fix it?”

Daddy looked at Aunt Bobbie like he thought she had lost her mind.

“A flyin’ machine? Now, how in the world do you expect me to fix a flyin’ machine?” he inquired.

Aunt Bobbie shifted from one foot to the other. “Didn’t you work at Hayes Aircraft during the war?” She asked.

“Bobbie,” Daddy exclaimed. “That was a long time ago! And I made windshields and doo-dads out of Plexiglas! I didn’t make little round flying machines!”

Aunt Bobbie shifted her gaze in my direction. The little fellow on the ground continued to sob.

“What about you, Patsy? Did you study anything about aerodynamics in that physics class at school?”

“Aerodynamics?” Daddy erupted. “Pshhhh! Where’d you hear a word like that?”

“It’s a word!” Bobbie retorted. “I bet Patsy knows about it.”

I actually didn’t know anything about aerodynamics, or at least very little. But I agreed with Aunt Bobbie that something had to be done. The little fellow had stopped sobbing, but still looked pretty pitiful lying on the ground beside his cracked space ship.

“Well, I’ll see,” Daddy finally conceded. “Get up from there,” he said to the prostrate little space being. “Get up, now,” he said as he gently, and cautiously, touched the almost-person’s shoulder.

The little fellow immediately grabbed hold of Daddy’s hand, and slowly pulled himself up off the wet ground. Gesturing toward his wreckage, he once again started chattering and chirping. He raised up one side of the round metal object, and ran his hand over the cracked surface. Then he flipped the entire pie-pan thing over to expose the damage. He grabbed Daddy’s hand again and placed it on the broken metal.

“Dimmin. Dimmin a CHEEE!” he insisted.

“Maybe duct tape . . .” Bobbie ventured.

Daddy once again looked at his sister as if he thought she was insane. Then he shook his head and said, “I got duct tape.”

“I bet that’ll work,” Bobbie insisted, nodding her head. “What do you think, Patsy?”

“Maybe,” I answered. But I was already on my way into the house to scramble through the junk drawer to locate Daddy’s roll of silver duct tape.

With no electricity, there would be no middle of the day dinner cooked, but we had bread and peanut butter and jelly. And I mixed up a package of strawberry Kool Aid with lots of sugar. We all sat out in the damp yard on a big quilt I spread on the ground near where Daddy was working on the broken space vehicle. Aunt Bobbie filled a little cup with Kool Aid, and offered it to the space being. She took a sip from her glass of red Kool Aid, then held out the little cup toward the little almost-person, whom she had started referring to as Chee Chee.

“Drink it,” she crooned. “Drink it. It’s gooood.”

He drank it. And Aunt Bobbie set her glass down and clapped her hands.

“Look, Gordy! He drank the Kool Aid,” she cheered, like she had just witnessed a genuine miracle. “And he’s stopped cryin’. I bet he was just thirsty!” She patted the little brown hand. “I’d cry too if I’d rammed my flyin’ saucer into a dang dogwood tree!”

Daddy was busy with the silver duct tape, and he had me holding the bottom of the space craft while he worked on sealing up the crack.

“Chee Chee,” Aunt Bobbie chirped. “Peanut butter sandwich? Eat some,” she urged. “Ummm, it’s so good. Here. Taste of it. It’s got lots of grape jelly in it.” And he ate a little square of peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

“Bless his little heart,” Aunt Bobbie crooned. Then she looked at me and whispered, “You reckon he has a heart, Patsy?”

Daddy looked up from his duct tape and answered, “Why of course, he’s got a heart! He couldn’t live without a heart! The pore little feller!”

Then he called out, “Chee Chee! Look here! Come here and look,” he said, nodding his head toward the repair work on the pie-pan shaped craft.

The little fellow approached his space craft with an inquisitive expression on his face. Running his hand over the duct taped repair job, he muttered a few little chirps, then broke into funny dance that looked like he was doing the jitterbug!

With no warning, he quickly began grabbing random objects and tossing them into his space craft. He threw in half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the little cup he’d been drinking Kool Aid out of, the entire roll of duct tape, and a handful of ordinary gravel from the dirt driveway. Then he eyed the front door.

And there was Black Bill, sitting on the front porch, licking one paw and casting a surreptitious glance at Chee Chee.

Chee Chee immediately threw his hands into the air and started chattering. I foresaw disaster, and ran toward the front porch to grab Black Bill and get him back into the house. But Chee Chee got there first.

I don’t know what I thought would happen. But I’m pretty sure I thought Black Bill would eat Chee Chee. That’s not what happened.

Chee Chee threw himself at the big tomcat, wrapped his skinny frail arms around the cat’s neck, and pressed his face into Black Bill’s fur.

“Chee chee, chee tissin, mis lah. Chee chee may yah, ah loo itay!” he chirped.

He motioned toward the bushes and swept his hand in a wide arc around the yard. Then he stared into Black Bill’s eyes and waited.

Black Bill sauntered down the porch steps and disappeared into the bushes. The little space man looked at us and nodded his head, as if all was well. A rustling and thrashing commenced in the bushes.

Then Black Bill reappeared, carrying something small and furry in his mouth. It was a chipmunk. Chee Chee immediately broke into peals of high-pitched giggles.

“Chee chee may ah, ah loo itay!” he squealed. “Chee chee may ah, ah loo itay!”

Black Bill dropped the chipmunk onto the ground in front of Chee Chee, who was dancing and hopping around. The chipmunk cautiously approached the almost-person, who dropped to his knees and struck up a lively conversation with the small animal. Black Bill lay down on the bottom porch step and closed his eyes with disinterest.

“Well, I’ll say!” Daddy exclaimed. “What are they doing?”

The little space fellow appeared to be giving the chipmunk a full account of his activities and misfortunes, waving his hands in all directions, gesturing at the sky as he chirped and chattered. Then he held up both hands, palms forward, in a gesture that looked like he was saying “Wait just a minute.” And he ran to his repaired space craft and hopped inside. For several seconds, everything was still and quiet inside the round space craft.

Then, Chee Chee emerged cradling a very tiny animal in his hands.

“Why, look y’all,” Aunt Bobbie gasped. “It’s a little baby chipmunk!”

And sure enough, that’s what it was. Where it came from, or why it was traveling in a round metal space craft with a little almost-person from space, I have no way of knowing. But as we watched in awe, Chee Chee placed the baby chipmunk on the ground in front of the adult chipmunk. Then he clapped his hands and chirped excitedly. The adult chipmunk lifted the baby chipmunk in her paws, examined it head to toe, then gently placed it on the ground beside her. The baby chipmunk snuggled against the mama chipmunk’s fur.

That accomplished, Chee Chee resumed tossing things into his space craft: twigs, a handful of grass. He chirped and poked at Daddy’s pocket until Daddy handed him a penny, which he gleefully tossed into his vehicle.

Then he hopped in and gestured toward the upper part of the craft. Daddy and I lifted it onto the lower compartment, and with a snap and a click, the two pie-pans sealed shut.

“I think we better stand back,” Daddy said.

Aunt Bobbie, Daddy, and I moved a little distance away from the space ship. Black Bill lazily opened one eye. The mama chipmunk chirped and scampered into the bushes, followed closely by the baby chipmunk.

“Good bye,” Aunt Bobby called, waving her hand at the space craft. She elbowed me and said, “Wave goodbye, Patsy.”

I waved and called, “Good bye.”

Then Daddy waved and said “Bye, then. Good luck.”

There was a soft whooshing sound, and the circular metal space craft, looking like two big pie pans, one atop the other, about the size of a Hula Hoop, rose into the air and disappeared over the mountain.

Ramey Channell, award winning Alabama author, poet, and artist, is the author of three novels: Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge (2010) The Witches of Moonlight Ridge (2016) and The Treasure of Moonlight Ridge (2021). Her children’s picture book, written and illustrated by Ramey, is Mice from the Planet Zimlac (2021), also available in a French edition, Les Souriceaux de la Planete Zimlac (2022), translated by Alexandrine Duteil Stebach. Ramey’s poems and stories have been published by Aura Literary Arts Review, Alabama State Poetry Society, Birmingham Arts Journal, Alalitcom, Ordinary and Sacred as Blood: Alabama Women Speak (1999), Belles Letters 2: Contemporary Stories by Alabama Women (2017) Stormy Pieces: A Mobile Writers Guild Anthology (2021), and many other journals and collections. She is currently working on her fourth southern fiction novel in the Moonlight Ridge Series.