Rain finally returned to Hobe Sound. After months of nothing, the seagrapes had dropped all their dead-orange leaves, the palm fronds had dried to skeletal brown, and the dust puffed around the always-unexpected Florida cacti. Finally, here on Friday, March thirteenth, the skies belched a deluge.

Deedra rejoiced at the rain’s arrival. She couldn’t remember the last time there had been such a long drought. Years and years ago. Rain always made her happy. She loved to watch it draw its wire curtain around her tiny wood-framed house, loved to hear its roar on the tin roof, loved to anticipate how it would bring out the hibiscus blooms. 

“Run on out in that rain, Lebron,” she urged her little grandson.

“No, Grandmomma! I’ll drown out there!”

“You run on out. Open your mouth and drink that good old fresh rain.”

“No!” he squealed, but he was smiling. She grabbed him and pulled his T-shirt off while he laughed and squirmed. Barefoot, clad only in his shorts, he jumped away from her grasp.

“Go on! It’s good for you!”

She stepped toward him, and in his fear and excitement he rushed out the door, screaming under the impact of the water.

She chuckled, listening to him as she folded his T-shirt and tossed it on the couch. She would have loved to run out there too, but her running days were over.

She almost didn’t hear the knock on the door amid the pounding rain. The rapping sounds seemed to float through the watery air to her ears. She had already started back to the kitchen, but she stopped and turned around.

The main door was open, so she could see through the storm door. She adjusted her eyes, trying to make sense of what she saw.

Two men stood under the front door awning in black suits holding briefcases. That is to say they looked like men, but their heads seemed strange, almost as if they wore mirrored masks. 

Lord, I’m going to have to get these cataracts fixed, sure, she thought. But nevermind that now: two men in dark suits at your door was never a good thing.

She peered around them at Lebron and felt relieved to see him running and splashing. Then she cracked the storm door and said, “Hey.”

Up close, the men looked even more disturbing. Why would they be wearing mirrors over their faces? She looked down and saw that their hands too had that look. Reflecting the falling rain, their faces and hands appeared to be in motion.

“Mrs. Hardison?” One of the men asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Can we come in?”

No way she wanted to let them in. But something outside of herself seemed to grip and control her. Maybe it was the daunting appearance of their official attire, but it felt like something more than that. Despite not wanting to, she opened the door wide for them.

“Thank you,” the man said, although she could not see where he had a mouth to make a sound out of.

The two men walked in, and the same man asked, “May we sit down?”

Deedra realized her hand was shaking as she indicated the couch covered in plastic, as were the lampshades. The two men sat on the couch, and she sat in her usual wooden rocking chair.

She looked at the men’s faces and felt even more unsettled. They did not look so much like the fixed hard glass of mirrors now—but rather actual moving liquid, as if made of water. Impressions and shapes seemed to come and go in them, indicating here an eye, there a nose, lips, ears. But then they would vanish into liquid, as though their faces were the surface of the nearby ocean. She wondered if she was dreaming and surreptitiously pinched her leg to wake up. It unnerved her when she did not wake up—either she couldn’t, or this was all real.

“Mrs. Hardison, we’re here about your daughter,” the same man said. “I believe her name is Lakeesha?”

Oh no, Deedra thought. Here it comes. I knew this day was coming.

The man went on, sound emanating not from a mouth but somehow from his watery core. She noticed too that it had a weird resonance, as if literally spoken in water but with some kind of amplifier, “Her body was found last night in a canal in Greenacres. I’m sorry to have to tell you the details, but it was found half-consumed by alligators.”

“Just the head and shoulders left behind,” the other man said in an identical weird voice but with more of an edge. “Not sure why they didn’t just finish the job.”

“Lord,” Deedra said. So it had happened at last. Lakeesha had finally taken everything too far. Probably that Tony had killed her and thrown her into the canal.

“We’re sorry to have to bring you this news,” the first man said.

“But you’ve been expecting it haven’t you?” the second man said.

The question jolted her. It was true that she had, and it was also true that she had long since detached from Lakeesha emotionally. It was just too painful, and meanwhile she was raising this little boy Lakeesha had birthed and then left behind as soon as she could. Still, you never lost all emotion for your child. The brutality of the second man’s question rocked her as much as the first man’s description of her daughter’s body did.

“What you want here?” she asked the men, not without sharpness in her own voice.

The first man answered, “We represent a private firm that takes in the children of deceased parents.”

Her heart shook at that. Of course, they were coming for little Lebron. She had felt it the minute they arrived. 

“He’s been with me his whole life. Lakeesha never had nothing to do with him. He my boy. And he’s doing fine. Don’t need anybody to take him in.”

“I’m afraid that’s not how the government sees it,” the second man said. “You’re an old lady living here,” he waved his hand around the tiny house. “This is west of Highway 1. No real future for the boy. We’ll take him and make a real success out of him.”

Anger surged through her, “Mister, I think it’s about time for you all to be leaving.”

Before either of the men could answer, Lebron burst through the storm door drenched and laughing.

“Grandmomma!” he yelled, jumping up and down.

“Come here, baby,” she said, standing up painfully. She led him to the bathroom and took out a clean but worn yellow towel. Wrapping it around him, she whispered in his ear, “You take this towel and run out the back door as fast as you can. You run over to Uncle Mike’s, hon.”

“Back in the rain?” the boy asked aloud.

“Shh, you whisper. I don’t want them men to hear you. Yes, you run out there as fast as you can and tell Uncle Mike and them to be on the lookout for some weird government men.”

“That’s who they are?” he whispered now.

“I don’t know who they are.”

“Are you going to be ok?” he asked, his eyes big and fearful in his head.

“Sure. But you need to run out there fast as you can.”

“I’m scared, Grandmomma,” she could feel his little body starting to tremble in the towel.

“Don’t be scared. It’s all right. I just have to deal with them men. But you run on out as fast as you can to Uncle Mike’s.”

Tears filled the little boy’s eyes. That hit her soul. She pulled him to her and hugged him.

“Go on, honey. Wait ’til I walk back out and start talking, then run out. Ok?”

Trembling, the tears starting to run down his face, he nodded.

“Keep this towel on you. I love you, baby,” she hugged him again. “Now get ready and go when you hear me start talking, ok?”

“Okay.” His voice shook.

She patted him, then turned back and made her way slowly back into the living room where the two men sat. She eased slowly into the rocking chair, trying to keep the men’s attention away from the bathroom door and the little space the boy would have to dash through.

“As I was saying,” she said loudly over the sound of the rain on the roof, “I think it’s bout time you men leave.”

She expected to see movement out the side of her eye, Lebron rushing out. But she didn’t, and that worried her. Maybe the little boy didn’t understand her.

“It’s very simple,” the first man said, drawing a piece of paper out of his briefcase. She noticed that where he held it wetness spread on the paper from his hand.

Great Jehosophat, these are water men, she thought. Not that she had ever heard of or imagined men made of water. But she realized as sure as she knew anything that there were such men and that they were here to do harm and that one naturally called them ‘water men’.

“You just sign this paper, and Lebron will have a great future. He will be a big CEO or a great politician or who knows what.”

The wet paper had so drawn Deedra’s attention she had lost track of where Lebron was. She hoped he ran out while she wasn’t looking. She hated to look, but she needed to know.

  She drooped her head in a fake cough and cut her eyes to the bathroom door. Her heart stopped.

Lebron stood there as if in a daze, his large brown eyes almost glassy.

The second water man looked at him and said, “Don’t you want to be rich like LeBron James?”

“Run Lebron!” she yelled.

Lebron snapped out of his trance and took off, his towel flying like Superman’s cape.

The first water man morphed out of human shape into a stream that jetted out of his suit, which fell to the floor in a crumple. Deedra turned quick as she could and shot out her hand, panic driving her as she tried to stop him. An image of that stream punching through little Lebron’s body filled her mind.

But she missed, and the stream jetted after Lebron into the back of the house. Then came the sound of the slamming back wooden door followed by a loud smash, at which point the water flowed back through the air and filled the suit into human form again.

Her heart thumping, Deedra silently prayed thanks to God that the little boy had the habit of swinging doors closed behind him.

“You should not have done that, old woman,” the second man said. “We’ll find him easy enough.”

She knew he spoke the truth, but all she could think to do was stall as long as she could, so she said, “You men come out the rain? You water men or something?”

The second man laughed in a derisive tone, but the first one said, “Something like that. We do come from the rain. Our agency is a very special one, and your little grandson is very lucky. Most people are thrilled when we show up and give their little ones the hope of success. The American dream.”

She knew all about that American dream and didn’t believe in it one bit, “Humph, I see. Well, I ain’t signing that paper.”

The second man made an intake of breath, “That’s going to be a problem, lady. You don’t really have any choice to sign except that you can choose to do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“What you want with that boy, anyway?”

“He’s special, Mrs. Hardison,” the first man said. “In ways you and your family don’t really understand. There are certain children born every year with special things about them. They belong in our agency, so that we can train them.”

“What is this, some kind of thing like that bald man in the wheelchair in the movies? Where they take children in with superpowers. I ain’t seen no superpowers in Lebron.”

“The X-Men, nice,” the second man said. “I wouldn’t think an old lady like you would know about that.”

“We’re something like that, Mrs. Hardison, yes,” the first man said. “Think of it that way. You’re giving your special boy a way into something extra special.”

She only half-listened. She tried to envision where Lebron might be, running through that rain. She needed to give him enough time to get to her oldest boy’s house two blocks away. He was a big strong man and would think of something to fend off these water men. 

“But,” the first man said. “You have to sign.”

She saw a glimmer of hope. “What you mean? What if I don’t sign?”

“We have to have your signature to take him.”

“What you mean? You just shot off like a fireman’s hose to get him? Why you coming at me?”

The first man chuckled. “That was only to keep him nearby. You saw how fast he moved.”

“You saying he’s a little water man in the making?”

The thought would have made her laugh in other circumstances, but the first man shrugged and said, “He has special skills. But you have to sign. Those are the rules.”

“Whose rules?”

“The rules of the agency?”

“What your agency called?”

“We are not permitted to disclose that.”

“Well, it seems to me that’s the least you could do when asking to take a grandmother’s grandson away from her.”

The two men sat silently for a moment while the rain continued. Again, she tried to think where the boy might be. He probably had had about enough time to get to Mike’s. She wanted to call and let them know what was going on.

The rain let up a little, the pounding on the roof going quieter. The two men stood up abruptly, and the second one said, “Listen, lady, we’ve wasted enough time with you. Time to sign.”

A thought occurred to her, “You water men just come around when this heavy rain hits? That how it works? When it stops y’all go away?”

“Just sign, lady,” the second man’s voice grew more threatening.

“What if I don’t? I think I see what’s going on. You need me to sign before this here rain stops. If I don’t, then you all go away. Am I right?”

“We’ve got no time for this,” the second man said, taking a step toward her as the rain lessened more.

Courage filled Deedra with this new hope. She knew she was right. She just had to hold out a little longer.

“Well, I ain’t signing.”

The first man cocked his head as a smile appeared in his water face. “Stupid old lady.”

As he said the words, the second man’s right hand shaped into a long stiletto blade. Faster than thought, he jabbed it into Deedra’s heart, jerked it out, and hammered it in and out again two more times.

She fell dead to the floor. The first man flowed into her mouth, filling her body so that she arose as if alive again. Her hand signed her name on the form. Then the water flowed back out and into the suit. He put the paper in his brief case.

The rain had reduced to drizzle now.

“We probably don’t have enough time,” the second man spat at the first. “You have to be so nice all the time. No wonder we never can get recruits anymore. I sincerely hope they transfer me to another partner. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

“You’re a poor soul,” the first man said agreeably. “But we might make it. Let’s hurry.”

With that the two men stepped quickly back outside, vanishing in the drizzle, suits, briefcases, and all. Six minutes later the rain stopped altogether and the clouds dissipated soon after, leaving a hot sun to start burning the puddles into steam and driving the temperature up in the house where Deedra’s body lay.