Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Weather: To withstand, or to wear away (12/04/25)
-
TITLE: November’s Debt Collector | Previous Challenge Entry
By Corinne Smelker
12/11/25 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
At ninety-four, she still lived in the same house on Cartwright Street that her father had bought with the proceeds of one suspiciously profitable run of brandy in 1899. The house had withstood the Blitz, the dock strikes, and the tower blocks rising like concrete tombstones.
The vicar called her his weather saint. “She’s been weathered,” he told the curate, “and she has weathered others. Same wind, two meanings. The Lord is subtle that way.”
Every November, the wind arrived straight off the North Sea, down the Thames Estuary, and into the East End like a debt collector with a grudge. It lifted slates, rattled the stained-glass rose window in St. Botolph’s until the Virgin looked seasick, and found every crack in a person’s courage.
This year, it came early, the day after All Souls. Mrs. Drake donned the same charcoal coat she’d worn since 1963, wrapped her late husband’s Royal Naval scarf around her neck, and set out for evensong. The wind tried to push her back. She dug her stick in and advanced, one implacable inch at a time.
Halfway down Cartwright Street, she found Kyle.
Seventeen, hood up, face the colour of wet pavement. He’d been sleeping in bus shelters since his mother’s boyfriend decided a Stanley knife made an excellent argument. He came to the weekly youth group for warmth and for the old lady with the biscuits who never asked awkward questions. That was Mrs. Drake.
Tonight, he sat on the church wall, smoking something that definitely wasn’t tobacco and crying soundlessly.
Mrs. Drake stopped. “On your feet, lad,” she said. “You’ll catch your death and give the devil the satisfaction.”
“Ain’t no point, Mrs. D. Wind’s gonna finish me off one way or another.”
She regarded him for a long moment.
“There’s weather,” she said, “and there’s weather.” She pronounced it two different ways, the first a hiss, the second slow and deliberate. “One strips the paint. One sands wood for the painter. Same gusts. Depends which way you’re facing.”
Kyle gave a desperate laugh. “Yeah? And which way am I facing?”
“Into it. Stupid way to stand.” She took his elbow. “Come, inside.”
Mrs. Drake marched Kyle down the aisle, pushed him into her usual pew, and sat beside him. The wind found the organ pipes and played them like a drunk. The building groaned.
Mrs. Drake opened the prayer book to Psalm 107 and read under her breath. “He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves.”
The wind chose that moment to rip the south door off its hinges. It crashed inward, snuffing the candles. The congregation flinched. Mrs. Drake did not. She simply closed the book, rose, and walked into the gale’s throat. At the font, she planted her stick and stared the darkness down.
For a heartbeat, everything hung suspended.
The wind stopped. Dead. Candles relit themselves. Warmth returned.
Mrs. Drake turned, coat stuck to her bones, hat long gone, white hair plastered to her skull. She looked a hundred years old and utterly invincible.
“Storm’s weathered itself out,” she announced. “Cocoa at mine. Bring your own mug.”
To Kyle, she said, “You coming?”
He nodded, mute.
Over cocoa thick as tar, Mrs. Drake offered him, without sentiment, the spare room at the top of the house. The bed was lumpy, the sheets smelled of mothballs, and he had to be up at six to carry the coal scuttle. In return, he could stay until he found work or the Second Coming, whichever arrived first.
Kyle stayed seven years.
He never knew whether Mrs. Drake had prayed the wind into submission, or if the wind met something it couldn’t move. He only knew that every November after, when the gale came hunting for her, it left quieter than it came.
Mrs. Euphemia Drake was buried on a day so still that the Union Jack on the church hung limp.
The wind had tried for ninety-four years and four months.
In the end, it was the wind that was weathered, not the woman.
The attic room still waits, coal scuttle by the door, for the next boy the storm brings.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
Such vivid imagery. Well done.
That was my favorite story this week!
Well deserved first place win in EC.