"It Pours" by Tim Parrish

"Y'all know. When it rains it pour. Can't argue that, can we?"

This is basically a story about sadness and awareness of the horrors of the world. The ending is absolutely my favorite part, when the narrator's father goes to help his neighbor, and, upon returning home, finds that the rainwater got into their house too. He seems to lose himself and become almost giddy, saying that when it rains it pours. I find this to be a very realistic image of a person in his situation. Faced with a son suffering at war, a friend lost in grief, and a terrible rainstorm, his cold, hard demeanor breaks away into delusional happiness. I've experienced this -- when you reach a point of sadness and misfortune and stress, you can kind of break, and start laughing or, in the father's case, pirouetting across your waterlogged living room. It feels like a survival mechanism, like a runner's second wind. It's this wave of energy you get when you hit rock bottom, and it's kind of beautiful in a way. The way the father is acting is a bit scary but so believable and real that I can't help but love it. It shows people's innate ability to power through things; even at the very rock bottom of sadness, when he is relying on basic tasks around the house to keep him productive and moving, we break into this almost carelessness, this moment of "everything has gone to shit so why not literally dance in the rain?" that, despite its terrible causes, is beautiful in its own way.

I also really like the multiple mentions by the narrator of mildew growing in his room -- it serves not only as foreshadowing to the massive storm approaching but also as a metaphor for the troubles he's beginning to see in the world. Before he heard Bob's tape, he didn't even think his brother was being shot at, let alone disposing of the dead and seeing people killed. It's a loss of innocence.

There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Mr. Ramos and his car and the narrator's father bleaching the house. They need these mundane, somewhat unnecessary tasks to keep them grounded and distract them from the terrible places where their sons are. It's the physical, aesthetic tasks that keep them in the world and grounded, and it's sad to see Mr. Ramos lose that, because it seems to have been the only thing keeping him grounded like that.