The Weatherman Wakes

The first morning, Samuel woke up on the barroom floor. He couldn’t remember how many drinks he had, but he felt pretty good for a man waking up on a barroom floor. Just a little sore in the neck.

His Ford waited for him in a parking lot where grass was seeping up through the concrete. Despite waking up on a barroom floor, the brightness of the sun did not hurt his eyes, nor did our friendly greetings make his head ache.

He got into the vehicle, drove out, and thought that was that.

“Sunny skies ahead,” he said to himself in his weatherman voice, “no chance of rain.”

When he started feeling tired, he found himself a motel in a small town and got a room.

“Welcome back,” the young woman said as she reached for his key.

“Back?”

“Mmmhmm. Room 301.”

She handed him a key, and he headed out.

The next morning, he woke up, looked through the blinds out the window, and saw the bar where he had woken up the morning before. In the grass-peppered parking lot to the side sat his car. He gathered his things, shook his head, and walked over to the office.

“Checking out?” asked a pale, forty-something woman from behind the desk.

“Sure.”

“Where you headed?”

“San Fransisco. New job.”

“Whaddya do?”

“Weatherman.”

“hm.”

He drove faster that day, pushing the pedal to the floor and earning himself two speeding tickets. He was to be well paid when he made it to San Francisco, so the tickets only bothered him because they slowed him down.

He did not stop when he felt tired, but pushed on across the desert, on the small, straight roads that stretch across the vacant parts of this land. Finally, long after the sun set, when he could no longer keep the car on the road, he pulled over. Without even leaning his seat back, he placed his head against the headrest and dozed.

As the heads of sleeping men do, his rolled to the side, then forward, and when his neck started to hurt, he awoke with a start.

An old woman in a pillbox hat clucked and shook her head in the pew across from him. A preacher stood at the front of the chapel, reading from the book of Isaiah. Samuel looked down to see that he was wearing a suit. A few other churchgoers glanced over to see that he had woken up.

Samuel waited it out. He even shook the preacher’s hand and told Mrs. McLarty to have a great week and inquired about her husband, who was sick. How did I know that? He thought.

“Oh he’s got good days and bad days. Thank you for asking, Samuel.”

Three buildings down, he saw his car sitting next to the bar. He waved at Earl and said hi. He went in for a quick drink, then got into his car and drove out. He woke up the next morning in a stable, sleeping near some of Earl’s horses, who didn’t seem to mind the company.

Not knowing where he was in relation to the town, he simply walked out of the stable into a field of grass.

The way things are going, he thought, there’s only one place I can end up.

Late in the afternoon, he staggered into town to find his car parked next to the bar. He knew all of us by name now, and greeted whoever he saw, asking things about our lives and relatives. He got into his car and drove away, and was back the next day and the next and the next and the next until winter had fallen upon us with its deep chill.

Each day awoke in a different place knowing more and more about the town. When he knew everything about all of us, he began waking up with knowledge about our past, and he’d sit at the diner some mornings before driving away and tell us things about our history which we didn’t know.

It wasn’t until an icy day in mid-January that his car got covered in snow and he did not try to leave. He shivered when he stepped out of the grocery store that morning, and went back inside. He bought some granola bars and had them for breakfast.

That evening, he found his way to the bar, finally resigned to the fact that he would not get out of town. He ordered a whiskey neat, make that a double, please, and sat down across from Earl.

“I’m staying,” he told Earl.

Earl chuckled.

“This town need a weatherman? I know what’s coming,” Samuel said.

“Ain’t got a TV station for a hundred miles,” Earl told him.

“Don’t matter. I can tell you what’s coming and you can spread the word.”

That morning, Samuel had woken up with the final piece of information about the town: how it would end, and when. Taking a sip from his drink, he looked straight at Earl and gave him the weather.

Story by Ian North