The New Normals Chapter 7
“You don’t happen to have a car do you?”
“Yes, actually. It’s back at the ranch. I’m headed there now, if you guys want to tag along.” Kit and Roland agreed happily. The sun was slowly setting now. The mountainous walls of rocks surrounding them transitioned delicately through an almost unworldly array of colors as the sun sank behind them.
They weren’t walking on road at this point. It seemed to Kit, and even a little to Roland, as though their destination might not even exist. Still, they didn’t take Violet for the murderous type.
Soft red sand and rogue tumbleweeds surrounded them. Violet looked undeterred.
“I don’t understand it. How would they just fall from the sky like that?”
“The world is a strange place,” replied Roland.
“I’ve seen some strange shit too… but c’mon. Literal whale poop raining from the sky? It wasn’t even cloudy!”
“Some say ambergris is actually whale vomit.”
Kit looked unrelieved. As another chunk landed nearby, he looked even less relieved.
“I wouldn’t think matters like these would be up for debate,” Roland admitted. A few minutes passed in relative silence.
“Did you know that recently in Japan it rained frogs?”
Roland continued.
“Really?” said Violet and Kit echoing one another.
“Some reported seeing fish and tadpoles too… best guess was that they got sucked up by a water spout and then rained down. Apparently not unheard of.”
“So you think there’s a natural explanation for this then?”
“And then in Australia it rains spiders…” persisted Roland.
“Spiders?”
“Well, not rain in the most literal sense I guess. There’s a species of spider that climbs to the top of trees or tall plants, spin themselves a parachute, and allow themselves to get carried away by the wind. Don’t have much control over where they land apparently. When it rains a lot, sometimes millions do this at once… alas, spider rain.”
“So that’s supposed to make me feel less concerned about the raining whale shit then?”
“I always enjoy a good anecdote,” replied Violet congenially.
“I just mean — ” Kit backtracked.
“I just mean that the shit rain is pretty fucking bizarre is all.”
“Maybe God hasn’t liked our performance lately,” entertained Roland with raised shoulders and a comical grin. A few minutes passed. After a few more, “And then there was that one time it rained whale guts out in Oregon…” Roland pondered aloud — loudly enough to warrant a sidelong glance from Kit and a mildly shocked expression from Violet.
“What?” said Kit and Violet, once again in unison. Roland’s latest interjection had sounded almost relevant to the situation at hand this time. Kit decided to refocus.
“Yep! Not all that far from here apparently. Florence, Oregon I think it was.”
“It rained whale guts?” Pressed Kit.
“Well, the whale needed to be exploded first…”
At this, Kit had already lost hope he was going to learn anything useful, but wasn’t about to stop shy of getting an explanation for why the whale had exploded.
“So then how did it explode?”
“Well, when a whale showed up on the beach, dead on arrival, apparently it had been so long since that had last happened that people simply forgot how to deal with these sorts of things.”
“Surely they didn’t explode it…”
“They quickly realized that burning it wasn’t a great solution… presumably because no one wanted to be around the fumes that would emerge from a 45-foot-long, 8-ton burning whale corpse. They reasoned that if they buried it, it could soon simply be unburied. The highway division tasked with the whale’s removal thought they’d found a solution when someone proposed first cutting it to pieces and then burying it, but they quickly found that they had no volunteers.”
“They didn’t just — explode it right?” Violet asked, practically pleading.
“Eventually they decided on dynamite.”
“Oh god…”
“A half ton of it. They tried to place the dynamite so that it might at least explode toward the ocean. But that proved ineffective.”
“So what happened?” Kit asked.
“They thought they’d succeeded until the whale guts began raining back down on them. People needed to find cover.”
“Oh my god! That’s disgusting!”
“Entire cars were crushed… It had been hoped that seagulls might at least help with any remaining cleanup the explosion had left for them, but the explosive blast forced nearly all the birds within earshot to flee the region. Some say they haven’t returned to this day.”
“You’re not suggesting this could be at all related…”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. I think people learned from what happened in Oregon. It’s a cautionary tale.”
“I hadn’t heard that before…”
“Me neither.”
After another hour or so, it had grown very cold again. Familiar winds whipped violently overhead and the sky opened up dramatically once again. Kit was beginning to struggle with the bag over his shoulders. Roland offered to lighten the load by taking a turn.
“The sky looks beautiful tonight,” said Violet simply. The ground was once again getting so hard to see that it was beginning to appear to Kit as though they were all walking through the cosmos. Roland was looking up as well.
“Even if things are getting a little weird here on earth — the night sky will never change,” she continued. “That’s — ” she let out a grunt as she began climbing a small rock formation that neither Kit nor Roland had noticed. When she reached the top, she got herself to her feet again and stood tall. “That’s not going anywhere,” she gestured first toward the sky, and then for Kit and Roland to join her. In truth, neither Kit nor Roland had seen either of these gestures but decided still to put their things down and begin to climb as well.
Roland reached the top and stood beside Violet.
“So why do you think we exist?” He allowed the question to float there. Another thud sounded quietly in the distance as Kit made his way up and stood at Roland’s opposite side.
“I personally think that love is the greatest force in the universe,” stated Violet.
Roland wasn’t sure whether she was going to continue from there.
“And that’s why we’re here?”
“It’s as good a reason as any.”
A couple more moments passed in silence.
“It can’t all be random?”
“I don’t think so.”