Darla Smith, a dark haired wisp of a middle-aged waitress, poured him another cup of black swill. “Yeah. This is a bit much.” She aimed her voice at my booth. “What d’ya think Professor, we going to drown out here, wash away with all this rain? Some kind of biblical flood?”

I hated the nickname. Most everyone in town over the age of twenty-five called me Professor because I taught English at Grant County Consolidated High School. I was the only teacher on the payroll who lived in Monument. “I wouldn’t know really, but I figure these things go in cycles.” I straightened my glasses and turned back to the newspaper.

“What do you mean, ‘cycles’?” Randy asked through his beard, sitting up on his stool to show his barrel chest.

“The rain. Some years it’s more; some years less.”

“Damn genius,” Randy muttered. He looked down just then, spotted that little black beetle, and crushed it with his size thirteen boot. “Hey, Darla. Don’t call the health department just yet, but it looks like the rain is driving ‘em inside,” he said, holding up the soiled sole of his boot.

“Shut up, Randy,” Darla said.

“Speaking of health codes, why don’t you sell that bread anymore, the stuff you used to bake right here in that big old oven out back? Somebody find a bug in a loaf?” Randy asked with a wide grin.

I saw Randy again about a week later. He stood at the back of his of his dented Chevy, leaning over the tailgate and talking to a couple of his workers: Pete Archer and Manny Swick. Pete and Manny were Monument’s Laurel and Hardy. Manny was the plump one with a constant smile lurking under his thick mustache, and Pete had a pale face — long like it had been stretched in a taffy machine.

“Hey Professor, get a load of this.” Randy waved one big paw in my direction as I crossed Main Street in front of Peterson’s Drug.

The sky still hung in a damp gray shroud around the trees, but Monument was as dry as it had been in weeks. A quick thought shot through my head: Randy, Pete, and Manny should probably be out in the forest cutting on a day like that, especially during such a wet year.