‘Climate Change’ Contest Finalist

Michael Moreth is a recovering Chicagoan living in the rural, micropolitan City of Sterling, the Paris of Northwest Illinois.

Climate Change

Runner Up Spring Short Fiction Contest 2025

We run ahead of the sun as it travels around the house. It isn’t always this bad; it won’t always  be this hot. But maybe we can’t count on that anymore. This particular heat wave, eager to aggravate  everything it touches, appears to enjoy its reputation as a sign of increasing climate instability. In  response, tendrils of illness, like sleeping dragons, turn restless and edgy beneath my skin. Mom’s not  comfortable either — which inevitably means heightened anxiety — feeling wordlessly hunted by the  sun as it traces the shape of our lives. 

The big windows at the back are the first to be drawn, shades and slides adjusted according to  the amount of sun and breeze. No more than an hour later (oh, please God, no more than an hour later),  it’s close the window over the sink, lower the sheers, and adjust the blind on the rear-facing window in  the sun porch. Then around we go. Tend to the next set of windows, reset the last if the sun has moved  on and the air outside has lost its dull throbbing haze. Blinds, screens, sheers, sun, shade, breeze. And  always the fans. Yes, always the fans. The fans are always on and, for Mom, the fans are always a  worry.  

They will use too much power.  They will burn out. They are making an alarming noise.  They will come loose from their fittings and fall on our heads.  I feel painful and sluggish, with blood pressure that slumps through the day, and my throat is  sore — which is never a good sign. The world slides sideways, sometimes slowing into a fuzzy haze,  even when I don’t move my head too quickly. My stomach tightens and loosens erratically according to  its own rhythm and a fatigue runs like thick syrup through my muscles and my mind. So maybe it’s my  

own sensitivities causing me to feel like things have changed — like the tangled balance in which we  1 

live has shifted — but I swear I can see a different pattern rising to the surface, and in the heat it’s hard  for me to focus on it. Whatever is going on with Mom is a mirage, wavy softness distorting reality. She  notices it too. We talk about it without talking about it. Acknowledge it without identifying it.  

“The crows, or whatever you call them, are making a lot of noise.”  

Or whatever I call them? When did Crow become an uncertain thing?  

“Are they arguing about something?” I ask tentatively, extending the question across the length  of the house like a lifeline, hoping that encouraging her to talk about it will help one of us find our  bearings.  

“I don’t know. There’s a whole lot of them gathered on the lawn by the road. I can’t see what  they are doing. What do you call them?”  

Okay. No longer certain what a crow is.  

Careful now.  

I pull myself slowly from the chair and walk stiffly towards the window where she is standing.  “Yep. Those are crows for sure.”  

She’s moving her head in short bobbing nods, her eyes fixed on the ragtag huddle of glossy  black birds. They appear to be sweating in the heat with the rest of us. I can’t tell what the fuss is about  either; maybe they are just cross because of the weather.  

“Crows.” She says it reassuringly to herself. “In BC there were more ravens.”  This last part spoken to me. Daughter-as-anchor.  

“Yeah, that sounds right.”  

“I only ever saw crows growing up. I don’t think there were ravens in Toronto.”  

More certain now.  

“Well there were probably some around somewhere, but you’re right, in Toronto we saw  crows.”  

More nodding, brows furrowed.  

“What are those other black birds we have around here?”  

And there it is. She hasn’t entirely lost touch with Crow. It has simply begun melting into other  black birds.  

“Grackles.”  

“Cackles?”  

“Grackles.”  

“Crackles?”  

“Guh - rr - ackles. Gr-ackles.”  

“Grackles.”  

“Yes. Grackles.” That’s not going to stick. I make a mental note to track what may be the  ongoing disintegration of Crow, the repeated need to evoke Grackle. To watch and listen for the  moment both birds lose all form.  

It’s just after lunch. My clothes cling to me with damp and weariness. I can no longer tell the  difference between the ambient heat and a hot flash. Time to pull back the sheers and open the window  over the sink, close the windows and tilt the blinds all the way up on the side of the sun porch that faces  the neighbours, and test the heat levels on the main windows; but probably leave them closed for  another hour. Mom keeps repeating the phrase “a wall of heat” like an denunciation. I’m not sure if it’s  the anxiety punctuating her responses or her memory fraying, but she seems perpetually surprised, vaguely offended.  

We ate at the picnic table under the cedars. There are tiny tentacles of cool darkness that slink  up the bank of the river and through the bush to lick at our ankles and the backs of our necks as we sit.  Things are almost bearable. I return to the table with the mancala set.  

“Someone needs to check the blinds.”  

“I did that while I was in the house, Mom.”  

“Did you?”  

“Yes.”  

“Are you sure?”  

Breathe. Keep your vocal cords relaxed.  

“Yep! Do you want to go check?”  

“No,” although she sounds incredulous. “What about the big windows? You didn’t open them  did you? It will still be like a wall of heat.”  

“No, I left them. We can check them again when we are done with our game.”  My recent efforts to teach her mancala may prove futile, but she seems to enjoy the challenge.  This will be the fifth time we play in the past several days.  

“Should I help you at all this time?”  

“Yes.”  

“Are you sure?”  

“I won’t remember anything if you don’t help me.”  

The game is scattered and disorganized. She makes several astute moves without my help, but  she also gets confused more than once, and counts wrong several times. Early on in the game she looks  at both our home-troughs and notices that I am in the lead. She rests the tip of her knobby finger on her trough and says definitively, “I have three!”  

Sometimes my abject lack of certainty as to how to respond helps. In that space, sometimes  humour inexplicably erupts and engulfs us — and she is still in on the joke. Something in the  compassionate cosmic math of the universe resolves to “x equals funny,” and we laugh. Huge, breath taking, whole-body, tear-inducing laughs.  

When the sun dips below the treetops on the other side of the road, we open everything on that  side of the house. Tonight, we do this early because there are clouds glowering and the breeze has  matured into a full-sized wind. We are wet from a soak in the river. It’s not chilly, but it cools us down.  I’m making my way from room to room trying to let the house take a breath.  

“Do you want me to move the dehumidifier?”  

This is shouted from the basement. Does she even know where I am? How did I become the  authority on temperature and humidity levels?  

Should I ...?  

Do you want me to ...?  

Little words that signal such loss of agency, a transition of power. I don’t want it. Maybe it  doesn’t mean that at all. Maybe it’s a loss of focus and self-assurance. Maybe she can’t remember when  we last shifted the dehumidifier to the other room in the basement.  

“What do you think?”  

A beat. I slide the bathroom window open wide. Another beat. I pause in the hall, not wanting to  go into her bedroom where I won’t be able to hear her. A third beat and I lean towards the stairwell,  “Mom?”  

“Yeah?”  

“What do you think about the dehumidifier?”  

“Does it need to be emptied?”  

My mind runs the algorithm of likely possibilities given the known variables, uncertain as to  how to account for the unknown. Uncertain as to what might be slipping from her mind, like the river  water drips from her hair down the back of her neck. I stall because I honestly don’t know if I can  handle the stairs.  

“Is the red light on?”  

The moment stretches a little too long. Is she searching the face of the beast? Trying to find its  beady red eye.  

“No.”  

She sounds reasonably confident.  

“Well, maybe it would be good to empty it anyway, then leave it where it is overnight”  “It doesn’t need to be moved?”  

It might.  

“No. I think it’s okay where it is.”  

The storm starts around 4 am. I wake up to the wind howling. A strike of lightening hits so close  I hear it sizzle, thunder exploding like a world rupturing. Every window but my own had been shut  before bed. (What if it starts raining and we don’t hear it?) As the rain falls like a million ballbearings I  drag myself out of bed and crank the window closed.  Her door flings opens and I can hear her lurching forward, sock-padded feet hitting the floor  with clumsy urgency. She passes the bathroom and my own door, moving into the back of the house. I move faster than I should — faster than my body would like — until I’m standing with her by the outside door, her hand reaching for the lock.  

“Mom?”  

She jumps. Panic swirls beneath the surface of her face. Maybe she’s not fully awake yet.  Maybe she is, but everything is jumbled and tossed with the storm. The rain pounds the house, more  lightening and thunder, and then she blinks.  

“Are the windows all closed?”  

Her voice sounds far away and small, but I go with it.  

“Yes, we did that before bed.”  

“Even yours.”  

“Even mine.”  

She sighs and relaxes, leaving me a bundle of jittery tension, veins filled with adrenaline and  thwarted rest. We decide to sit on the couch and watch the storm for a while. The power flickers a few  times, the roof creaks as if to ask how much longer it will have to put up with this, and the tree  branches slash through the air, batting at the rain. After almost an hour the lightening and thunder fade  into the distance, the storm inhales deeply, and the wind unleashes itself.  As soon as the sun’s up, the phone calls and visits begin. Neighbour checking on neighbour.  The storm flipped over a few docks and pulled boats from their moorings up river. Trees are down, a  few windows broken, things that were meant to stand up-right have tipped over, but everyone is safe. 

“We’re going to have to borrow Bill’s ladder. The wind started to pull the siding off the house  by my bedroom.”  

Did it?  

Yes, as it turns out it did.  

Bill’s ladder is an handy thing — compact and extendable — but heavy as a dead body. The  siding isn’t too unco-operative about being cajoled back into the joins and my symptoms are just  manageable enough, but my job also includes randomly checking to ensure that Mom is holding the  ladder steady. At one point, I look down to see her leaning casually against the left runner, her attention  captured by something in the middle-distance.  

“Mom, I need you to stand directly at the foot of the ladder.”  

“What do you mean?” She looks up, searching for clues in the sun-bleached blue vinyl.  Aware of the soles of my feet pressed into the step, the palm and fingers of my right hand  wrapping the rounded top of the rail; steady but not tense. My left index finger scrying a direct line to  the foot of the ladder. Vocal cords loose, face open, breathing even.  

“Please turn to face the ladder, put a hand on either side, and lean towards it.”  “But its fine.”  

An image of the unevenly graded lawn ripples through my sternum.  

“Mom.” Slightly more authoritative. “I’m two stories up. I need you to move into position in  front of the ladder and brace it evenly, please.”  

She shifts her body, her expression petulant, “I was paying attention. I would have moved if the  ladder had started to slip.”  

Yeah, because that always works.  

Now happier, more eager, “I should be the one up there. I like climbing.”  

I turn back to the siding, not sure how my words will land, “I like the climbing just fine, it’s the  falling I have a problem with.”  They hit their target and she giggles. Thrumming pain moves around my body in a pattern only my neuroreceptors can track, tingling ghosts linger in the space it leaves behind. My head feels like a world attuned to its own rules of gravity. Like a lead balloon floating, barely tethered to the top of my  spine. I’m aware of every muscle; in constant negotiation with my center of gravity. I breathe. I think  of Mark, the guy who used to be our handyman. The guy who monkeys up tv antennae and sashays  across rooves as if he trusts what his muscles will do with the orders he sends them. As if his body will  know where it is in space and how to move through it without faltering. 

“While we have the ladder here, we should wash the windows!”  

Fuck me.  

“Mother!” Keep it playful. “Just so that you know: Your daughter is up a ladder with M-E,  fixing shit while her meds are wearing off.”  

“Oh no! Okay!”  

It worked. We’re laughing again.  

“I’m fixing the siding, getting down, and this ladder is going back. Yes?”  

“Yes!”  

“Okay?”  

“Okay!”  

Good.  

None of the neighbours mind the clean-up given that the air feels light and the moisture rising  from the sodden soil is cool and quiet. We trade encouragements like playing cards, each trying to  collect enough for a winning hand.  

“At least the heat has broken!”  

“I’ll take the hassle over the humidity any day!”  

“That storm was a close call, but worth it for this!”  

But by noon our optimism begins to wilt and go soggy in our sweat-soaked hands. The  humidity rolls back in like a fog, dense and heavy, and the sun reasserts itself in the sky. Moved by  forces bigger than ourselves, Mom and I try to keep pace with it. Blinds, screens, sheers, sun, shade,  breeze. And always the fans. The heat will break eventually and when it does, I will need to gather my  strength and talk to Mom about what’s happening — acknowledge the changes coming to us. But not  today. Today we’ll just try to stay ahead of the sun.  

Arria Deepwater (she/they) identifies as white, invisibly disabled, queer and faithfully middle-aged. Her work appears in In Between Spaces: A Disabled Writers Anthology, and she runs a newsletter, “Together, Between Worlds,” offering notes on a bad breakup with modern society. Arria shares a home by a lake with her mother near Perth, Ontario, Canada on unceded Algonquin Omàmìwininì Territory, where they regularly remind each other that they can, in fact, live without a dog. www.arriadeepwater.com