In the dream I’m standing in a cold, violent rain storm. I’m waist high in quickly running flood water. There is a Baptist women’s choir (don’t ask me) also standing waist high in the freezing flood water, in what used to be the front yard of this pale green and white colonial style house. As I look up at the house through the downpour I see that there are warm lights blazing in every window of the house. I look back at the women who are dressed in pale, pastel colored cotton, summer church dresses.
I think, ‘I think they’re standing in my flowers’.
The drenched women are clinging to each so as not to be swept away by the flood. They’re singing ‘Amazing Grace’ in loud, high quavery voices. Now whether their voices are high and quavery because they’re cold or because they’re old I don’t know. Some of them are only wailing loudly, arms stretched above their heads as if imploring the heavens.
A deep and sonorous TV announcer type voice is saying through the gale, from somewhere far off “…about a mild mannered neighbor who turns out to be more than he appears. But what…” But the voice is drowned out by the storm and I don’t hear any more.
At pressure on my right elbow I turn and look up and Denzel (Yes, Washington! I know!) is standing there in a dark suit, also dripping wet and shivering. He looks down at me and says ‘Come on, let’s get inside.’ He tightens his grip on my arm and forcefully guides me up the stairs to the house.
Half way up the stairs we hear a loud roaring sound. We turn in time to see a long white church bus come to a screeching halt in the driveway. (Or what used to be the driveway.) In large black block letters it says ‘VOLUNTEERS’ on the side. Inside another group of women in pale cotton dresses, stand up, swaying in the flood buffeted bus, and join the women outside in singing ‘Amazing Grace’.
‘An emergency volunteer choir?’ I shout up to Denzel over the noise of the storm.
‘Fake’ he shouts back, as we reach the absolutely dry porch and head toward what I know is an absolutely dry house.
Fake choir? Fake church bus? Fake rain? All questions I’m about to ask Denzel along with many others when…
I’m sitting up in bed. My bed, my dark bedroom. Straining in the dark to hear the sound that woke me. I thought I heard…what? The driveway intercom buzzer? Phone? Alarm clock? Waiting to hear it again. Nothing. Was the sound in my dream or real?
I hate it when that happens.
