It was raining.  A dark and stormy day, if you will.  Everything is green, the river is up, flowers bloom in the fields.  So, what does some clown say?

“We need the rain.”  Goddammit, we don’t need the rain.  In fact, unless you are a farmer, you never need the rain.  What do you think, that the aquifer will run out in your lifetime?  I’ll resolve that little bit of uncertainty for you.  It won’t.  It’s not like you live in a desert.  And even if you live in a desert, do you really need the rain?  It’s a desert.  Cacti don’t need rain.  In fact, too much rain kills them.  You will never hear a Saguaro cactus say, “we need the rain.”  Unless he is a suicidal cactus.

Saying you need the rain is just a vestigial artifact from an agrarian lifestyle long past.  Farmers nowadays irrigate.  They make their own rain.  You don’t have to make it for them.  All the rain does is force me to mow my grass every week.  But people like the old time talk.  It makes them happy  to imagine themselves leaning on a fence post, timothy dangling from their mouth, while they watch the tumbleweeds rolling across the dusty field.

“We sure enough need the rain, Clem,” they say.  Clem nods.  Clem don’t say much.  He’s from down Enid way.  He had a wife and son and little place down by the creek before the dust came.  But the dust choked off the farm and his son got the TB.  His wife said she couldn’t take it living out there.  The Big Lonely she called it.  So she moved down to Dallas to live with her sister-in-law and brother.  The brother was in oil.  Last Clem heard, he was making money hand over fist.

“I hate those damn tumbleweeds too!” screams the suicidal cactus before resuming his rain dance.  “Hi hi hi hi, hi hi hi hi.”  The dance is difficult to perform without legs.  But the cactus has nothing to live for.

Interestingly, tumbleweeds are not native to the West.  They are actually Russian.  Ha!  Trump was right.  There are interlopers everywhere.  Did you ever see what happens with those tumbleweeds?  They roll up into a giant tumbleweed ball next to a fence.  What a mess.  Plus, they provide a handy, Russian-made ladder to any shifty Mexican who wants to come to our country and ruin our way of life.

“Shoot that there Russian spy, Clem.”  Clem nods, then squints over his Springfield.  It is an old gun, but reliable.  His grandaddy had used it during the Civil War.  He’d given it to Clem on his eighteenth birthday and told him to take care of it.  Clem pulls the trigger and drills the tumbleweed dead on.  But the illegal alien continues to roll.  Soon the dust obscures it.  Clem spits and wonders if he should move to Dallas.

“We need some rain,” he says before heading back to the bunkhouse.

“No shit,” says the dancing Cactus.