Send Down the Rain

by Charles Martin

felt like Bobby drank life through a fire hose; if I felt an emotion, he felt it ten times as strong. It was as if his emotions were hooked up to electricity. Magnified.

When I was a kid, I remember feeling with great emotion. My eyes would see and my heart would feel. The line between the two was taut, and when one pulled, the response was immediate and constant. I drank life through a fire hose. Then life dinged me, restricted the flow, and pretty soon the raging river was a dribbling trickle. Then some giant hand clamped down on the spigot nozzle and the trickle was reduced to nothing at all. Not a drop. Did it dry up on its own, or had my life just dammed it up? Either way, the flow of water was gone. Ever since, I’d lived my life through a dusty, calloused piece of lifeless meat. That’s a pain-filled way to live.

“I’d seen what evil could do. Evil never gave itself for anyone. It takes what it doesn’t own. Holds your head under the water. Rips your head off your neck and dangles it from the city wall. Evil dominates. Controls. Eradicates. Evil is a sniveling punk, and if you let it inside you then you spew hatred, which is just another name for the poison we drink hoping it’ll hurt someone else.” I glanced around the courtroom at Allie, Catalina, Gabby, Suzy, and finally at the cameras. “But not love. Love rushes in where others won’t. Where the bullets are flying. It stands between. Pours out. Empties itself. It scours the wasteland, returns the pieces that were lost, and it never counts the cost.” Despite a packed house, the room was silent. After a minute, I continued, “Love walks into hell, where I sit in chains, where the verdict is guilty, grabs you by the heart, and says to the warden, ‘Me for him.’”

nothing that happens here today changes the fact that love heals the shattered places.” I shook my head once. “It’s the only thing that can—” The faces in the courtroom held steady on mine. “It’s the only thing worth fighting for,”