“There is a reason you never hear of anyone finding the end of the rainbow”… your grandfather’s words echo in your head. You would feel like a real ass chasing down a seemingly half crazy, yet harmless old man’s unbelievable story were it not for your great aunt. You laugh to yourself because you know that is just another lie in the series of lies you have been telling yourself for two and a half decades… the lies that still allow you to take yourself seriously long after your colleagues laughed you out of the university and an actual paying career… the lies that make your ex-husband wrong for leaving you because you had more interest in chasing “fairy stories” than settling down to start a family. You shake your head and remind yourself that everyone lives on lies, that if people didn’t tell themselves lies everyday no one would bother to get out of bed.
Bed, now that is a nice idea. In your big cozy bed, faux down comforter pulled up to your chin and your fat orange kitty curled up in the bend of your knees, that is where ninety percent of you wants to be right now. But here you are sitting on a cold, mist covered hill in the rain at the ass-crack of dawn just waiting for a rainbow to appear so you can trudge off down a steep muddy slope on a wild goose chase which will more than likely be made in vain. The thought doesn’t make you move from your carefully plotted position. At least you have a cup of coffee to warm you. Your cup of coffee and a foolishly enthusiastic assistant who is nearly twenty years your junior, willing to work for close to free, and sleep in your cot on most nights without all the fuss about commitment.
The only thing he ever asks of you is that you recount the story that drove you to this point in your life three out of seven nights a week. It isn’t a bad deal at all; especially when you consider that it always ends in getting laid. You only recently realized that Anthony is probably crazier than you or your grandfather but you tell the story anyway; it keeps him interested and good help is as hard to come by as dates are.
The first time that you heard the story you were seven. You remember being so excited to tell your grandfather about the rainbow you saw while on an outing at the park but did not expect anything other than the cheerful response all of your stories got from him. He was a kind and jovial old man, which is probably why the story he told you that day stuck with you for all of these years.
The moment you jumped in his lap and began the fervent recounting of your rainbow sighting a strange darkness settled over the old man’s cheerfully weathered face; a manufactured smile remained on his face until you ended your story with the childish claim that you “could have walked to the end of that rainbow and stole that leprechaun’s gold right away from him”. The expression he wore immediately following that statement seemed to cover the sky with clouds. “Little girl, there is a reason you never hear of anyone finding the end of the rainbow”. There were extra stones in the gravel of his voice along with a desperate ferocity that simultaneously frightened and thrilled you.
Then he told you about that day in the country with his mother. How they packed a picnic lunch for an afternoon of berry picking. How they ran, laughing toward the shelter of the trees when their picnic was ruined by a summer rain storm and how his ten-year-old heart filled with joy when he noticed the rainbow after the shower tapered off. His mother made a game of it for him and his little sister by setting them to the impossible task of finding the end of the rainbow on their walk home. But it wasn’t impossible. They found it. His mother walked right into it, never to be seen again.
Just as you were ready to release the barrage of questions that had been building while you listened, entranced, to your grandfather’s story, your mother shot into the room loudly admonishing her father for filling your head with nonsense and lies. She forbade him from ever speaking of the subject to you again and he never did. No matter how often you secretly pestered him, he never spoke of it again.
That didn’t stop you from spending countless hours in front of the public library’s microfiche. By the time you were in high school, long after your grandfather’s death, you had read, copied, and tucked away all of the old newspaper articles. You knew that your grandfather had been accused of pushing his mother to her death. It was his outlandish story and how he so insistently stuck to it that made people suspicions. When they couldn’t find her body at the bottom of the ravine, or any trace of her for that matter, it was decided that your young grandfather was witness to a crime so horrific that he made up the story to force the images away. His little sister refused to speak of it or anything else until she was in her late teens.
It was his sister who threw the gasoline on the fire, who turned a girlhood obsession into your life’s work. You were a young woman getting ready to go off to college by then and there was nothing that your mother could do to keep you from hearing your great aunt’s deathbed confession. She confirmed each detail and filled every gap. The thought of that moment still gives you chills. Snapping from your trip back in time you realize that Anthony is bounding from foot to foot in your peripheral vision, arms loaded with cameras and recording devices. He is beaming. Leaping to your feet you take off in what looks to be the direction of the rainbows end.
Twenty-five years of compiling and toiling over statistical data have confirmed that this is the most likely spot for a rainbow to appear in the Continental United States. You have been living in a tent on this very spot for five months of every year for the last five years. You believe to the core of your being that everything your grandfather and great aunt told you is true, yet you are still oddly shocked that July morning when you walk into a clearing just 30 miles from the farm your grandfather grew up on to find what you have been seeking your entire adult life. There it is. The end of the rainbow, just as you had imagined it.
The momentary surprise wears off and you wipe your tears on the sleeve of your dirty hoody as you step into action. A quick glance confirms that your trusty assistant Anthony has all of the equipment set up and you make your first tentative move toward the wall of unearthly light and color. The sudden fear that it will evaporate before you reach it causes you to break into an all out sprint and then you are there, surrounded by glorious light and a warmth that somehow makes you shiver. You can hear Anthony yelling but are so distracted by the fact that you smell lemons you pay no mind to what he is saying.
Awestruck and overwhelmed it takes you a moment to comprehend that what began as a pleasant citrus scent has turned into something else, burning, you smell burnt hair. By the time you realize what is happening the only thought you can form is that you wish your last words could have been something more profound than “son of a bitch, he was right”! You are completely at peace with your demise. It is a comfort knowing that Anthony is recording this. He will personally deliver the recordings, data, and your hard drive to the university that scorned you so long ago. He will make the delivery and at long last all of those who mocked you will know the truth.
This moment of ethereal peace is shattered as your turn to gaze at Anthony a final time and see him running toward you. You would tell him no but speech is no longer an option. Your last barely coherent thought is “shit, I wonder how long it will take someone to stumble upon our equipment”.
