The Bringer of Rain

by João Ventura

Edward Smiley had a unique talent: he could make rain fall.

When he was a child, like all children, Edward loved to jump in mud puddles. He must have been six or seven when, on his return from school by the usual dirt road, he found himself wishing that rain would come and create some beautiful mud puddles. A few minutes later, the rain started to fall, getting heavier and heavier, and soon he was jumping happily in the mud it created. Given the pitiful state of his shoes and clothes, his mum sent him to bed that night without dessert. But he did not mind.

Gradually, he became aware of the power he possessed. His parents were great outdoor picnic enthusiasts. When Edward didn’t feel like going, all he had to do was concentrate a little and wish it would rain, and shortly afterwards it was pouring, the picnic spot was drenched, and the picnic had to be cancelled. Problem solved.

At first, he kept his skill a secret. But there are no secrets that can resist sharing with best friends. And when one of them showed disbelief, it was not hard to make a demonstration to convince him.

By the end of high school, his special ability was already becoming known. And when some of his colleagues were arguing about whether they would apply to university, and which one, and which course to enrol in, Edward had a revelation: why not start making money now, using precisely this skill of his?

And from thinking to doing was a snap.

First, he started by offering his services to farmers on the outskirts of the city where he lived. Payment only after results. Success was immediate. The information spread about the reliability of the service and went on to the next level. He registered as an individual entrepreneur and opened a website with a resonant name: “Rain by Order.” He drew up a price list, hired an intern to answer the phone and record orders and, within days, business was booming. When a farmer needed rain after sowing, he called, indicated the GPS coordinates, paid by bank transfer, and Edward Smiley made it rain on the land indicated. He just had to use a map of the region and concentrate on the place he was interested in.

The years went by and Edward became a millionaire, and as he paid his taxes scrupulously, part of which reverted to the municipality where he lived, the latter awarded him the Medal of Honour of the City and there was no one who did not consider him a model citizen.

In the year he was about to turn 60, a bad cold caused by a rainstorm to which he was exposed, degenerated into pneumonia, which resisted medication. In spite of all the doctors’ efforts, he fell victim to a hospital infection and was unable to survive.

His funeral was one of the most attended events in his city. The coffin was accompanied to the cemetery by the local living forces and by many people. Before the body descended to earth, there were complimentary speeches under the rain that had begun to fall.

In the six months that followed, a subscription initiated by a local newspaper gathered money to erect a statue to Edward Smiley in the main square of the city, whose inauguration was carried out, as required, with pomp and circumstance.

Over the cemetery it rained almost continuously, but this was considered a minor inconvenience.

About a year later, a strange rumour began to circulate in the country. It seems to have started in the bar of a hotel in a tourist area, where the manager, after a couple of drinks, will have vented: “The son of a bitch finally died. His extortion racket is over!”

A client of the bar, who was a little more sober, overheard it and told a friend; this one told another. There’s no smoke without fire, said another that he had heard, and as malicious rumours about illustrious citizens, already deceased, are harmful to social cohesion, the Public Prosecutor’s Office was led to intervene.

The investigation brought to light a sinister plot. In parallel with his legal activity of producing rain on demand, Edward Smiley had set up a mafia operation, in which tour operators, as well as promoters of large open-air events had to pay him to avoid rain. If they did not pay, he would make it rain over the area, making the tourist season unfeasible or forcing a rock concert with thousands of spectators to cancel.

Not even small rural tourism enterprises escaped his predatory activity. A family business with two houses that refused to pay saw the torrential rain made by Edward cause the stampede of the guests already lodged and the cancellation of the reservations that had been made.

When the results of the investigation were known, the shock wave was tremendous. The statue in the main square was torn down and shattered by an angry mob. The City took away his Medal of Honour and, to solve once and for all the problem of continuous rain on the cemetery, which had transformed the ground into a permanent mud, bothering all those who went there to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones, exhumed the corpse and cremated it.

But the urn with the ashes remained an attractor of rain. Then someone in the City Council came up with the idea of auctioning the urn on eBay. The auction was very lively, and the urn ended up being bought by a vulture fund, which then divided the ashes into small bags of 5 grams each and sold them immediately, making a profit of almost 700 percent on the operation. It was said that they mixed ash from other sources with the original, but certain types of claims are virtually impossible to prove.

Today, in Edward Smiley’s hometown, he is only remembered by a heap of stones in the middle of the main square, among which grow some stunted herbs, and by an abandoned burial plot in the cemetery, because nobody would pay for a relative to be buried in the former grave of the infamous Edward Smiley.