My mother-in-law, Ruby Apple, lives on a farm in southern Indiana. She’s lived there since before World War II, in a house whose two front rooms used to be a grain crib. A man with a tractor pulled the grain crib over from Grandpa Linus’ home place. She and her husband, Howard, bought some dairy cows and chickens and sold milk and eggs to the dairy Ruby remembers lying in bed at night and listening to the eggs crack after her wood stove lost its battle with the winter cold.

    Ruby and Howard had three boys, waited eleven years, then had two girls. Howard used to say they were the best crop they ever raised. The boys went to a one-room school. Poor, disadvantaged things. No swimming pool during gym class, no teacher fretting over their self-esteem. Not knowing any better, the boys went off to college, got degrees, and made something of themselves. Then danged if those two girls didn’t go and do the same.

    Ruby and Howard had a straightforward parenting philosophy — hard work, good food, lots of love, and church on Sundays. They also had the good sense to live beyond the range of most television stations, so the reception was pitiful. They watched Hee Haw on Saturday nights, but Grandpa Jones was always upside down and green. A little of that went a long way.

    Howard died in 1975. Ruby sold off the farm equipment, learned to drive, and took a job in town caring for an old man and his wife. The girls went to college, got married, and started families of their own. None of the kids wants to live there, so when Ruby dies, one hundred and fifty years of Apples living on that old gravel road will come to end. I try not to think about that.

    I go down to visit Ruby every now and again. We get in the car and drive down toward the old Grimes’ place and past the Roscoe Bennet farm. We stop at the Apple Chapel graveyard where those one hundred and fifty years’ worth of Apples are buried. Ruby knows the story of each one. When she dies, that will come to an end too.

    One day I was visiting, and Ruby called me to the window.

    “Listen to that,” she said. I listened and heard a bird give five short “whooos.”

    “What is it?” I asked.

    “A rain crow,” she said. “You hear them before a big rain. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard them plenty of times.”

“I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard them plenty of times.”

    That was a new one on me, but I wasn’t about to argue with Ruby. If she says there are birds that call out five “whooo’s” before a big rain, birds she’s never laid eyes on, the smart money is on Ruby. It rained two hours later.

    The Gospel of John tells about the resurrected Jesus visiting the disciples, and Thomas not believing it was Jesus until he touched the wounds. John tells how Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). A lot of smart people say John wrote at a time when the folks who had known Jesus were dead and gone. So John told this story to reassure early Christians that you can believe in something you’ve never seen. Kind of like Ruby believes in the rain crows.

    We’re all Missourians at heart, inclined toward the “show-me!” Except every now and then we bump into Jesus and rain crows, where seeing doesn’t come easy. Then the only thing to do is listen for the still, small voice and the five short “whooo’s” to know there’s substance beyond the seeing.

    Sometimes the most real things are the things we cannot see.

From the book Front Porch Tales, by Philip Gulley. © 1997 by Multnomah Pub., used by permission.

Title: "Ruby and the Raincrow"
Author: Philip Gulley
Publication Date: April 12, 2001

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