Bobby was standing by then, too. “Answer the question, Billy.”
The other man laughed in his face. “No evidence, Bobby. You can’t hold a man when there’s no evidence. Not even in this county named after your goddamned grandfather, or whoever it was.” Billy looked all puffed up with victory and with drink. “There’s still some justice in this world!”
“Take it easy, Billy,” Chase said in a low voice.
“Ain’t nothin’ easy, Chase,” Billy retorted. Holding a long-necked beer bottle in his right hand, a drink he appeared to have brought in with him, he was swaying on his cowboy boots. “But I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you? Everything comes easy for you Linders, don’t it?”
Bobby pushed back his chair.
Chase shook his head at his brother, to head him off.
“You got all the money you’ll ever need,” Billy went on, while the women stared at him, and the men waited tensely to see what might happen next. “Everything you ever want. College, all paid for. Even you, Meryl. They never offered me that—”
“You never got straight A’s,” Bobby said sarcastically.
“Neither did you,” Billy shot back. “But that don’t mean you don’t get everything all paid for by your mommy and daddy. You just got nothin’ to complain about in this life, do you, Chase? Do you, big Bobby? Or you, either,” he said, looking straight at Belle. Then he stared at Laurie. “Smart of you to marry a rich rancher, Laurie, instead of some poor-ass county lawyer like Belle’s gonna do. Or maybe you’re marryin’ Belle ’cause you don’t wanna be a poor country lawyer, is that it, Meryl?”
Meryl let go of Belle’s hand and got out of the booth.
“Time for you to take a nap, Billy,” he said.
Bobby grabbed the back of Billy’s shirt collar.
“Take your fuckin’ hands off me, Bobby!”
“Shut up, Billy,” Chase snapped.
“What’s wrong with you?” Laurie said, looking with disdain at Billy.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Billy said, staring first at her breasts and then at her face. “What’s wrong is how some people treat other people like shit—”
“Nobody has treated you like shit, Billy,” Meryl said. “Haven’t you had lots of regular work from them? Haven’t they paid you what they owed you, and probably extra over that? Haven’t they given you the only real chances you ever had? People like Hugh and Annabelle Linder don’t come along in every man’s life, and you ought to recognize how lucky you are that they came along in yours. Seems like if anybody has treated anybody else like shit, it’s you who’s treated them—”
“You can’t goddamn prove that!”
“I don’t hear you saying that you didn’t do it, Billy,” Meryl observed.
“Why should I? Are you saying any of you’d believe me?”
The bar’s owner stepped into the scene again, this time saying, “What’s the matter here, Chase? Is he bothering you people?”
“He’s drunk,” Belle said, stating the obvious.
“I got good reason to be drunk,” Billy shot back at her. “Your dad’s never going to hire me again, and he’ll tell everybody else not to hire me. I got no job. I got a wife and kid and no money. I got no wheels.” He glared at Chase. “I got nothin’, and you people got everything. What am I gonna do ’cept get drunk? What am I supposed to do?”
“Go to hell,” Laurie suggested in a cold voice.
Billy shocked them all by taking a wild swing in her direction.
Bobby’s arms came around him so fast and hard that it knocked his fancy straw hat onto the floor and also knocked the wind out of the drunk man. He struggled for breath and gagged, nearly vomiting.
“You’re disgusting!” Laurie looked nauseated herself.
Bailey and Bobby hauled him away from the booth.
“Did he hit you?” Belle asked, breathless with shock.
Chase slid back into the booth beside Laurie and put a hand on her shoulder.
Looking half scared and half excited now that Billy was gone, Laurie shook her head no. Chase didn’t move his hand, and she didn’t brush it off.
“My God,” Meryl said, looking stunned. “I can’t believe he’d do that.”
“Hit a woman?” Chase turned to stare after the other men while they made their way to the front door. “Why not? He doesn’t mind hitting his wife. Why would he mind hitting somebody else’s wife?”
Belle muttered something.
“What, Belle?” her brother asked her.
“I said, at least he didn’t hit on someone else’s wife.”
Chase took his hand off his sister-in-law’s shoulder.
The whole restaurant and bar had gone quiet, all other conversations ceasing as diners and drinkers watched Billy Crosby being thrown out.
“You going to put him out in this weather?” a man at a front table asked.
At that moment lightning flashed, and the electricity in the bar flickered again, causing a murmur of disquiet to go around the restaurant and bar.
“He’s not staying in here to bother anybody else tonight,” Bailey informed everybody who was listening. “Maybe some nice cool rain on his face will cool him off.”
“I don’t think you ought to put anything out there tonight,” a woman said.
“Not even a drunk,” somebody else called out.
“Not even Billy!” a man said, and a few people laughed.
Bailey ordered, “Open the door, Bobby.”
They threw him outside into the pouring rain.
The storm, already loud enough to cover conversations, sounded like kettle drums when Bailey opened the door, and when he shut it again, the interior of the grill seemed silent by comparison until a few people broke into applause.
Bailey turned around, his hands on his hips, and looked at some of his customers who weren’t clapping. “Don’t be mad at me,” he advised them. “Billy started it, like he starts any trouble he gets into. I’m just ending it. Everything bad that ever happens to Billy Crosby? You can bet he caused it, and it’s about time he suffered some consequences for it.”
A LITTLE LATER, after Bobby had returned to the booth and the restaurant settled down, Chase turned to his sister-in-law. “Did you drive over? I didn’t see your car outside.”
“I walked.” Laurie raised her right hand and put it palm up to the ceiling as if to catch some of the raindrops thundering on the tin roof. The din was now so loud that she had to raise her voice so they could hear her even just across their table. “So who’s taking me home?”
“We can’t,” Meryl said, glancing at Belle. “I’ve got my backseat full of files.”
“I’m too drunk,” Bobby said. He was too young to drink legally, but that hadn’t stopped him from guzzling what his brother provided when Bailey wasn’t looking.
“Oh, all right, I will,” Chase volunteered, with a feigned sigh of resignation.
On the way out, Laurie noticed they hadn’t tossed Billy Crosby’s cowboy hat out with him. It still lay where it had fallen on the floor, where it had been trampled in the melee. Serves him right, she thought, remembering the nasty way he had looked at her chest, to say nothing of the swing he had taken at her. Serves him right if it was ruined and he never got it back. She grabbed it from the floor and carried it with her outside to make sure it got soaked in the rain.
IT WAS 10:00 P.M. when they ran through the rain to their vehicles.
Meryl let Belle off at the bank and then left to check on the power situation at his office.
Chase chauffeured his sister-in-law to the big stone house.
When they were inside, dripping all over the kitchen floor, he went upstairs, after saying he would gather up a change of clothing to take over to the motel with him. Laurie stood in the kitchen for a few moments, listening to the thunder and lightning and the powerful downpour that sounded as if it might batter down the walls and wash them all away. She was chilled and shivering and longed to strip off her wet c
lothes and get warm. Hot shower or bare warm arms—either sounded delicious to her at that moment. Both at the same time would be even better. When she realized she still held Billy’s ruined hat, she contemptuously tossed it aside. She followed her brother-in-law up the stairs, trembling from cold and desire, trailing her wet fingers along the banister.
A LITTLE LATER young Red Bosch drove by Bailey’s Bar & Grill and thought he saw somebody lying flat on the pavement in the parking lot in the pouring rain. He turned in to take a look, shone the headlights of his pickup truck on the object of his concern and saw it was Billy Crosby lying there. Red put his truck in park, threw open his driver’s side door and ran through the rain to see if Billy was dead. He wasn’t. He was just dead drunk, from what the teenager could tell. Red managed to prod Billy to his feet, more or less, and guide him to the truck with the heavens nearly drowning both of them before they got there.
He drove Billy home to Valentine and their little boy.
ALONE AT THE RANCH with Jody, Annabelle scurried around to get things done before the power went out, as it often did during electrical storms. Her granddaughter trailed her everywhere, chatting up her own storm and “helping” in ways that caused more work, but for which Annabelle had endless patience. It was more patience than she’d ever had with her own children, she knew, but then that was the way of grandkids and grandparents. Boom! went the thunder, which didn’t scare little Jody at all, but only caused her to clap her hands and yell “Boom!” right back at it. Whenever the lightning flashed and cracked very close, the child flinched, but then giggled, which made Annabelle laugh, too. “Storms are exciting, aren’t they?” she said to Jody, who threw her arms up in the air and yelled “Boom!” again.
It pleased Annabelle that this child was so open and fearless.
At the same age, Belle had been a nervous girl, terrified of electrical storms, of horses, of barking dogs, of anything that startled her sensitive nervous system. Annabelle had dreaded storms of all kinds then, and knew that a long night was ahead of her as she tried to calm and comfort Belle.
Eventually Belle got over most of those fears, if not the hypersensitivity.
Annabelle thought the thunderstorm was carrying on as if it might wash the ranch into another state. When it rained like this, she pictured everything sliding east until it landed in one massive mud pile in Kansas City. She could only imagine how it was beating up on the poor little town of Rose.
When Hugh called from the Rose Motel to tell her he couldn’t make it home, he told her that the smaller trees in town were bending half over and there was hail the size of ball bearings.
“The highway is already flooded?” she asked in wonder.
“Yes, it is, and I’ll bet you’ve never seen whitecaps in Kansas.”
“Whitecaps! You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not. Right there on the highway. It looked like a river.”
“Have you talked to the kids—”
Annabelle lost her connection to Hugh just when she was about to ask if he had seen Belle, Bobby, Chase, or Laurie. Surely they’d have enough sense to get in out of the rain without their father telling them to do so. She also wanted to tell him their granddaughter was at the ranch. On the other hand, she was relieved when the phone went out, because it meant she didn’t have to tell him why he might have to finance a trip to Colorado Springs for his spoiled-rotten daughter-in-law.
“That was Grandpa,” she told Jody.
“I talk to him?”
“The storm knocked out the telephone, sweetheart.”
“Pow,” said Jody.
Annabelle, wondering if a child that young was smart enough to make a joke like that, laughed and hugged her. When Jody laughed, too, Annabelle realized, with no small wonder, that Jody had heard “knocked out” and put it together with “pow,” all the while knowing that’s not what it meant.
“You are a smart little girl,” she told her.
It gave her an idea: maybe she could “knock out” Laurie’s bad idea of going to Colorado by herself—supposedly by herself—by getting Belle to go, too. After all, Belle might be jealous and resent the expensive treat for her sister-in-law, and Laurie had already talked about inviting a friend. She and Belle weren’t all that close, but they were friends in the way that people who had gone all through school together in low population counties were.
Yes, Belle definitely deserved a short trip to Colorado.
Glad of a solution, Annabelle hurried to get some laundry done.
She occupied Jody with sorting whites from colors.
Annabelle picked up a pair of Bobby’s work jeans and started going through the pockets. She found three pockets clean, but he had missed clearing out his back left pocket. She pulled out a wad of stuff: a feed store receipt, an AA battery, a piece of wintergreen gum, which she unwrapped and stuck into her mouth, his (now useless) K-State student ID card, and a small photograph of his sister-in-law and his niece.
Surprised to find such a sentimental thing in his pocket, Annabelle smiled at the discovery.
“Look, Jody.”
The little girl hopped up and came over to see.
“Is that baby me?”
“It sure is. That’s you and your mommy.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“From your uncle Bobby’s pants pocket.”
“What was it doing in there?”
“He wants to keep you close to him.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s proud of you. You’re his only niece.”
Annabelle had no idea if any of that was true, but she liked the sound of it, and judging from the way Jody’s eyes were shining, so did his niece.
“I love Uncle Bobby.”
“Well, he loves you, too.”
“Mommy’s pretty.”
“Yes, she is.”
Bobby was better with children than he was with grown-ups, Annabelle thought. Or at least he was better with this one child. He was willing to pick her up and swing her when Laurie asked him to, and not opposed to walking out to the barn with her to visit the cats. She suspected that Laurie only wanted to get Jody out of her hair when she made those requests, but that didn’t take anything away from Bobby’s willingness to fulfill them. It seemed to make him almost as happy as it made Jody.
Annabelle felt delighted to think that her most difficult son wanted to keep a picture of his niece in his pocket. It was a small thing, and she knew she might be giving it too much weight, but she couldn’t help what it made her feel. It gave her hope for Bobby, who could be lazy and sarcastic and sometimes even a little mean. She laid the photo carefully on top of the dryer and told herself to remember to tell Hugh about it. Maybe it would soften him a little bit, and then maybe Bobby would respond to his father’s softening …
The only thing you should soften by pounding is steak, Annabelle thought. Children were not cuts of beef, and parents shouldn’t be meat mallets.
There was a ferocious crash of lightning, and the basement laundry room went dark.
“Grandma, what happened?”
“We’ve lost power, honey. Here, take my hand. We’ll find candles.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Then we’ll find a flashlight, candles, and something good to eat.”
Feeling grateful for her gas stove, Annabelle made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for the two of them, and followed that with a special treat of hot fudge sundaes. “May as well use up the ice cream before it melts.” She lit kerosene lanterns, put one on her reading table, and after dinner took her granddaughter onto her lap and read to her, in the flickering light, from Make Way for Ducklings, a tattered copy that was now on its third generation of handling and love.
Outside, the storm battered the house.
Inside, they were cozier than any pioneer women could have been.
As she turned a page and Jody snuggled against her, Annabelle thought, I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
AT THE ROSE MOTEL, Hugh Senior peeled down to his skivvies and crawled between the thin white sheets of the lumpy motel bed, for lack of anything else to do. There wasn’t any light to read by, except a flashlight, and the television was out, and it was raining too hard to go anywhere, even over to Bailey’s Bar & Grill for supper. He would have loved a couple of big fat pork chops with a baked potato and some green beans, but his stomach was just going to have to grumble because it wasn’t getting fed anytime soon. Unlike the motel, Bailey’s place would have electric generators going, so they’d still be serving, but that didn’t do him any good if he couldn’t get there. He wasn’t hungry enough to pay the price of getting soaked to the skin when he didn’t have a change of clothes, and he’d stupidly left his rain slicker in his truck. He thought about forcing his way through the downpour anyway, and driving over to the grill, but decided that he’d had about enough of his own kids for one day. He knew they were at Bailey’s because when he’d driven past he saw Bobby’s truck and Meryl’s. A phone call to Bailey himself had filled in the blanks: his two younger sons, his daughter, and his daughter-in-law; they’d take care of themselves and each other.
Truth to tell, they’d probably had enough of him, too.
He ran his hands over the sheets—so cheap and rough compared to the soft, good-smelling ones that Annabelle used on their bed at home—and wished she was there with him to complain about them.
“At these prices, you’d think they could afford decent sheets,” she’d say.
In truth, at the prices the local motels charged, they probably couldn’t afford anything but old towels and sheets, but his wife was careful about money, which was one of the things he loved about her—as opposed to some other wives he could think of, including one in his own family.
He liked staying in hotels and motels with Annabelle—well, nice ones, at least—especially now that the kids were grown and got their own rooms. And, frugal or not, Annabelle loved room service. She would never get that at the Rose Motel, but she could have awakened to fresh coffee made in the room by her very own husband.
Hugh Senior crossed his arms behind his head on the pillow and smiled at the ceiling. His kids drove him crazy half the time, the ranches were heavy responsibility and hard work almost all of the time, there were various problems that he’d just as soon he didn’t have to deal with, but overall, life was pretty good …