More rain today. Rain is rare in southern California and its chilly rhythms are welcome in between the scorching attacks of the sun. Driving east into the desolate landscape is almost like a deep space voyage: about as quiet and boring, as if you’re stationary and no closer to finding what you seek. The flat, cracked earth holds no secrets. Not these lands.

When it’s not raining, the glare of the shimmering road throws mirages into your vision, heat waves and wizards’ spells, GHOSTLY impressions of an ancient world that doesn’t exist. White monsters bellow at you: other cars. When it is raining, the dull grayness is somehow more interesting.

Porler’s windshield wipers needed replacing; with every intermittent swipe the frayed rubber scraped against the glass and left behind a trail of dirty water that did not clear the windshield so much as obscure it completely.

“You should probably get those replaced,” Nannia muttered, eyes still closed. She had been sleeping in the passenger seat, curled up like a fox in a foxy foxhole. Porler liked foxes and in his mind he thought of Nannia as his fox, especially when she was asleep. Nannia didn’t like that pet name so he kept it to himself.

“Yeah,” Porler said, squinting into the road and willing the rain to clear.

The wipers screeched again. Just a tortured scream.

“Maybe we can pull over and adjust them.” Nannia was awake now. She wiped her eyes in a theatrical gesture. Her hair was a thick nest on top of her head and she smoothed it out. The prosaic murmuring of the rain continued outside.

“Yeah, maybe at the next rest stop, I’ll take a look.” SCCCREEEEECH

The rain increased. It went from a distant sprinkle to an insistent roar, the kind of rain that dominates the Midwest in late April. The kind that took Porler back to his childhood. Once during a majestic Greek tragedy of a thunderstorm in the countryside, he took his one-speed Trekster down the big hill near his house on Route 35. His parents were not home so he was free to risk his life. He ended up breaking his wrist after crashing into a dense thicket. He did not even feel it and instead lay there in the weeds laughing like a clown, a human-sized sponge, LOVING IT.

SCCREEECHH

“Ugh these damn wipers! I’m gonna turn em off.” But Porler didn’t. He thought maybe it was illegal to have your wipers off in the rain. His wrist always throbbed with some phantom pain when it rained but so did his mind with the secret thrill of that slide down the hill.

Nannia gazed out her water-streaked window and meditated on the ashen nothingness of the wasteland as it flowed past. Rain made her uncomfortable and moody. Weather was chaos and she didn’t like it. Traffic always worsened during the rain and her 4 year old collie Fox had been struck by a car in a storm like this. The driver sped away and Nannia was the only one who witnessed it. Rain always reminded her of that afternoon on Bension Street, wet and alone and crying beside Fox—

SCCCCREEEEECHHHHHHHHH