解放军文职招聘考试Glories of the Storm

 Glories of the Storm (I)

It begins when a feeling of stillness creeps into my consciousness. Everything has suddenly gone quiet. Birds do not chirp. Leaves do not rustle. Insects do not sing.

The air that has been hot all day becomes heavy. It hangs over the trees, presses the heads of the flowers to the ground, sits on my shoulders. With a vague feel­ing of uneasiness I move to the window. There, in the west, lies the answer—cloud has piled on cloud to form a ridge of mammoth white towers, rearing against blue sky.

Their piercing whiteness is of brief duration. Soon the marshmallow rims flatten to anvil tops, and the clouds reveal their darker nature. They impose them­selves before the late-afternoon sun, and the day dark­ens early. Then a gust of wind whips the dust along the road, a chill warning of what is to come,

In the house a door shuts with a bang, curtains billow into the room. I rush to close the windows, empty the clothesline, secure the patio furnishings. Thunder begins to grumble in the distance. The first drops of rain are huge. They splat into the dust and imprint the windows with individual signatures. They plink on the vent pipe and plunk on the patio roof.

Leaves shudder under their weight before rebounding, and the sidewalk wears a coat of shiny spots.

The rhythm accelerates; plink follows plunk faster and faster until the sound is a roll of drums and the in­dividual drops become an army marching over fields and rooftops. Now the first bolt of lightning stabs the earth. It is heaven's exclamation point. The storm is here!

In spite of myself, I jump at the following crack of thunder. It rattles the windowpane and sends the dog scratching to get under the bed. The next bolt is even closer. It raises the hair on the back of my neck, and I take an involuntary step away from the window.