[Verse 1] Mr. Bell lives over the laundromat where the dryers shake the floor Keeps seventeen broken barometers nailed above his door There’s a photograph of Cleveland there’s a tooth inside a jar there’s a postcard from a woman who never said where they are Every night at half past eleven someone asks him, “Think it’ll rain?” He looks up like the sky owes him money and says, “Could go either way.” [Verse 2] He used to read the weather on Channel Number Nine Back when men wore narrow neckties and the forecast had a sign They gave him forty-seven seconds to explain the shape of wind He said, “There’s something coming westward.” They said, “Just tell the people when.” So Bell pointed at the blue part and promised them the storm And somewhere fifty miles north a little girl was born beneath a sky that never changed at all. [Chorus] Oh, Mr. Bell keeps the weather in boxes by the stairs Thunder in the dresser drawer fog tangled in the chairs He says, “The sky don’t break a promise, son. The promise wasn’t his.” Then he listens to the pipes knock twice like they know something we missed. [Verse 3] There’s a notebook in his kitchen bound in peeling leather skin called Weather That Did Not Occur with the years all written in June the third: no tornado August twelve: no hail November twenty-seven: wind predicted, wind failed I asked him why he kept them, all those storms that never came He said, “Everybody keeps what happened. Somebody ought to keep what almost did.” [Piano Interlude] [Slow, enormous piano chords; bowed bass; the room itself seems to hum] [Verse 4] Last winter Bell went missing around the first hard freeze His landlord found the windows open and snow across the keys The television whispered to nobody in the room: Ninety percent chance of snowfall continuing through noon. His coffee cup was empty His old brown coat was gone Every barometer pointed somewhere different before dawn And taped across the kitchen wall in letters black and small: DON’T CONFUSE THE ODDS WITH WHAT HAPPENS AFTER ALL. [Final Chorus] Now Mr. Bell keeps the weather somewhere out of town Maybe underneath the river Maybe six feet underground And when somebody tells me they know exactly what comes next I hear that old piano upstairs and Bell clearing his chest: “The sky don’t owe you certainty. It barely owes you rain.” [Outro] Could go either way. Could go either way. Could— [piano chord] —go either way.
