The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw

by asking you: when was the last time you went out into the world beyond
Thunderstown?’
    He shrugged. ‘Once. Thirty, maybe thirty-five years ago. That was enough of seeing the world.’
    ‘Well ... it’s changed a good deal in that time. Shrunk. And it will come to Thunderstown before long.’
    Daniel thought of the American girl who had confronted him in the square.
    ‘Thunderstown,’ said Sidney, ‘will change. Old ways of doing things will slip away. You, for example, have not taken on an apprentice.’
    ‘I have no son.’
    ‘Quite. But you must have given thought to the question of who takes over when you are gone.’
    The truth was that he’d thought about it less than he should have. He could not imagine Thunderstown without a Fossiter. His family had been culling here since the first foundations of the
streets were laid, and it seemed impossible that it would fall to him to terminate such an ancient tradition.
    ‘Whether we like it or not,’ said Sidney, ‘we are approaching a moment when our old ways of doing things will be challenged. That is why I’ve been pressing you, Mr
Fossiter, for reports and schedules. Not to question your sense of duty, but to make the most of it. What if we harnessed this moment of transition, and used it to our advantage? What if the great
work of your family could be concluded?’ He gestured to the grim-faced oil paintings. ‘Think how proud you would make them.’
    Daniel shook his head. He knew where this was going. Sidney always came to it eventually.
    He looked down at Mole, who was staring into space, and wished she were still young enough to bite and growl. For when Sidney started talking about the future, he became like a fanatic in a
trance. Where before he had only irritated Daniel, now he unnerved him.
    ‘Old Man Thunder,’ said Sidney in a half-whisper. ‘The catch to end all catches. The one that eluded all of your forefathers.’
    ‘Old Man Thunder is a bedtime story.’
    ‘Is he, though? Only last week, somebody told me they’d seen a bald man walking on Drum Head.’
    Inwardly Daniel cursed Finn for being so careless. Outwardly he did his best to be indifferent. ‘None of us are getting any younger, Mr Moses, and half the men of Thunderstown have watched
their hair desert them. It was probably just Abe Cosser, searching for a lost sheep.’
    ‘Abe Cosser was the man who saw him.’
    Daniel shrugged. ‘If he were real, one of my fathers would have caught him. But not one of them ever even saw him.’
    ‘But what if your fathers never caught him because they never had the tools? If we organize, Mr Fossiter, and if we bring in the newest technologies, I believe we can flush him out. Then,
at last, the town will be safe from the weather.’
    Daniel stared across the room at the picture of his grandfather. Painted before his hair had turned white and his skin had wrinkled from the bone, he looked in the portrait the spitting image of
his grandson. As did every other man glowering from the hallway walls. He remembered his grandfather concluding wistfully that Old Man Thunder did not exist, just as each and every Fossiter before
him had concluded it, after hoping it was true and searching for him in vain. Old Man Thunder, the legend went, was a storm cloud that had become a man. He was the master of the wild dogs, the
rider of the brook horse, the herdsman of the mountain goats, and more. It was said he once lived, bald and wizened, on the spot where Saint Erasmus now stood, but he had been driven up into the
mountains by the first of Thunderstown’s settlers. There he still roamed, inciting the weather, scheming to reclaim the land from the townsfolk.
    It was said that if the culler were to put a bullet in Old Man Thunder, then the weather would stop forming into devilish beasts and the town would be reprieved. As such, each young Fossiter had
dreamed about being that gunman, then in old age called time on the fantasy and declared Old Man