The Scent of Rain and Lightning

  Especially now that the Billy Crosby problem was solved.

  Any second thoughts he’d had were gone.

  We’ll be fine, if we don’t lose any cattle in this storm, he thought.

  He felt a bubble of laughter in his chest, knowing what Annabelle would have said if she’d heard him think that: “You’re just an old farmer,” she’d say, “always happy to find the cloud in the silver lining,” and then she’d put her arms around him and kiss him.

  In his imagination, he kissed her back.

  He wasn’t through thinking, though.

  He was convinced—again—that he’d done the right thing about Billy: get him arrested, put him in jail. A lot of things got tolerated or overlooked in small towns because people had to live together, but this wasn’t going to be one of them.

  Satisfied with his own intentions, Hugh Senior closed his eyes.

  Outside, lightning crashed as if the end of the world had come.

  Exhausted from the day of stress and hard work, Hugh Senior slept through most of it.

  TWO DOORS DOWN from his father, Bobby ran in from the rain.

  He’d brought a six-pack with him, provided by a cowboy he’d asked to buy it for him. He proceeded to get started on it by pulling a chair up to the window and drinking while he sat in the dark and watched the deluge. The gutters were lakes by now, water stood deep in the valleys of intersections, and tree branches had come down all over town. There had been a couple of times when he was sure his truck was going to stall, but he’d managed to roll it on through the high water, feeling like a barge captain.

  Half a beer down, he smiled with satisfaction, remembering how he had manhandled Billy Crosby at the tavern.

  Bastard.

  One beer down, he glanced over at the two beds.

  He was thinking of fading into one of them, but Chase didn’t have a key to the damned room. What the hell was taking Chase so long anyway? All he had to do was drop off Laurie …

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he muttered to his absent brother.

  When he was away from his parents, who forbade such language in their home, he liked to let loose with it. The word “fuck” made him nervous, however, when combined in the same sentence with his brother and Laurie. It wasn’t easy being crazy in love with his own sister-in-law and never letting anybody know it. It was painful knowing it was probably never going to come to anything, and always looking for any little sign that she even liked him, and knowing what his fathers and brothers would do to him if they ever so much as guessed what he thought about in bed each night. And when he was driving his truck. And when he was doing practically anything. Like, when he should have been studying.

  He’d flunked out of K-State because he couldn’t stop thinking about Laurie.

  He had this one fantasy he loved, even though he was deeply ashamed of it because it required both of his brothers being dead. It made him feel kind of sick every time he let it play in his brain. He already felt bad enough about betraying Hugh-Jay, even if it was only in his imagination, and this story only made that worse. In his fantasy, they were all back in biblical days and it was the law that when a man died his next oldest brother had to marry his widow, just as things had been back then in real life. That was why in the fantasy Chase had to be gone, too, of the plague or something, or being stabbed by a jealous husband, maybe. Laurie’s and Bobby’s parents and the whole community insisted on their marriage, so Bobby and Laurie didn’t have any choice in the matter. They had to get married to satisfy tradition and religion, so it didn’t matter if Laurie didn’t want to. In his fantasy, Laurie came around to appreciating that he was honorable and noble, and that he was only doing the right thing because he wanted to help and protect her. And then she’d have a chance to fall in love with him, like he was with her.

  It was also hard to be in love with her because of Chase.

  When he saw Chase talking and joking around with her, making it look easy, it ate him up with jealousy. It made him want to grab Chase and slam him up against the house and then stomp on him. Talking to women was easy for Chase, like swinging up into a saddle, or smoking a cigarette. Nothing to it, if you had the bullshit for it. It was hard for Bobby to talk to most people, but it seemed like his tongue swelled to twice its size when he was anywhere near Laurie. About all he could get out of his mouth was grunts, which sometimes made her give him a look like he disgusted her. Like this evening, when she’d complained he was too big to sit by her.

  That’s real attractive, he thought, loathing himself.

  Thinking about what really was attractive, Bobby reflexively reached for his left rear pocket where he kept a little photo of her.

  When all he felt was denim—and he remembered where the picture was—he had a scary moment of thinking, Oh, shit! What if his mother found the picture when she washed his other jeans? He told himself she wouldn’t think anything of it, because little Jody was in the photo, too, so it was just an ordinary picture of his sister-in-law and his niece, like any loving uncle might keep.

  Next time, though, he would put the photo in a more private place.

  He didn’t know how he’d explain it if his dad or his brothers saw it, and how ragged and worn it was, which could only be from him handling it so often. Stroking her face. Her hair. Her mouth. And other parts of her. Chase would immediately suspect something, and he would never let go of it.

  Where was Chase, for God’s sake?

  This was pissing him off.

  Bobby squashed the empty beer can in his right hand.

  If Chase didn’t show up soon, he thought that he might have to get in the truck and go after him.

  BELLE JUMPED when she heard pounding on the side door of the bank.

  At first she thought it was noise from the storm, maybe a big branch blown into the door. But when it kept up, she made out a human voice mixed in with the thunder, rain, lightning, wind, and pounding. She weaved her way toward it and jerked the door open. As hard as it was raining, she was surprised that whoever it was hadn’t just come on in. Then she saw the screen door and remembered she had latched it to keep it from blowing open.

  Meryl Tapper stood outside in the rain, looking in at her with a sheepish expression.

  “Meryl! Come in, get in here!”

  He had dropped her off and then gone back to his office to check on things there. She hadn’t expected him to come back, which made it all the sweeter that he had gone to the effort, especially in the storm. He had his shirt pulled up over his head for cover, leaving his belly and half of his chest and his back exposed. It didn’t keep him from looking as if he had been swimming in drainage ditches. His sandy-colored hair was plastered to his face and neck. Water streamed down his raised arms. His blue jeans were so wet they looked as if they’d be heavy to walk in. He looked like the most beautiful drowned rat that Belle had ever seen, and she was so eager to let him in that her fingers fumbled with the latch on the door.

  Belle wasn’t feeling too steady. She didn’t often drink more than one beer, and the three she’d had that evening made her feel dizzy and reckless.

  “You’re wet as a sponge!”

  “It won’t kill me.”

  “It might.” She started fumbling with the bolo tie she’d given him, trying to get the silver horse to slide down the twined leather so she could lift it over his head. “You need to get out of those clothes.”

  He put a hand over her hand to stop her.

  “I don’t have anything to change into, Belle.”

  Belle, who was a virgin, swallowed hard and said, “That’s okay.”

  Meryl instantly realized what she was saying. He took her forearms in his wet hands and said, “Then I’m going to ask you now before this goes any further. Will you marry me, Belle Linder?”

  Belle laughed a little. “You don’t have to marry me to have sex with me, Meryl.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  She stared at him, feeling confused, not sure whether to be disapp
ointed or glad.

  “We’re going to get married first,” Meryl told her, “if you ever remember to say yes.”

  “What about your wet clothes?” she asked, feeling stupid the second after she said it.

  “They’re going to get wetter because I’m going on home.”

  “Did you come here just to ask me to marry you?”

  “Yeah.” Meryl grinned. “Come hell or high water.”

  “Are we in love?”

  “I’m pretty sure we are, Belle.”

  “Yes!” she said. “I’ll marry you, Meryl Tapper.”

  He kissed her without holding her, for fear of soaking her, but Belle wasn’t having any of that kind of restraint. She pulled him toward her, wrapped her arms around him and got just as wet as he was.

  WORKING ON his third beer can, Bobby peered through the heavy rain and recognized a truck that splashed by.

  “What’s Hugh-Jay doing here?” he asked the storm. He was positive that was his eldest brother’s truck, the one that was supposed to be in Colorado by now. Bobby raised up out of the chair so he could follow the truck’s rear lights down the dark street. It was hard to see, so he could have been wrong, except there wasn’t another silver truck like that in Rose.

  He watched Hugh-Jay’s truck turn left, toward the big stone house.

  WHEN ANNABELLE AWOKE the following morning, with Jody warm and sleeping beside her, she knew by the blessed silence that the rain had finally stopped. The storm front had moved on to terrorize eastern Kansas. Batten down your hatches, she thought sympathetically. All night she’d been plagued by awful nightmares that she blamed on the storm. They had awakened her several times, and each time she’d felt an urgent need to do something, without knowing what.

  It was a relief to wake up this time, even if she was still tired.

  As soon as she looked at her bedside clock, she knew the power was still out, and when she quietly lifted a telephone receiver, she didn’t get a dial tone.

  Judging by the slant of the sun, she gauged it to be around 5:00 A.M.

  She slipped out of bed without waking her granddaughter and took a moment to look back and enjoy the sight of her, all rumpled and flushed with sleep, with her arms flung out. That vision of innocence smoothed the sharp edge of disquiet that followed Annabelle as she put on a robe and went downstairs. She made her first cup of coffee with water boiled on her gas stove, and then carried it out into her yard to check on the damage. She hated instant coffee, but any caffeine port in a storm, she thought as she sipped it and then made a face at it.

  The morning had a mildewy smell.

  She clasped the mug in both hands, not minding the heat of it.

  She observed that her abandoned flower beds had finally been watered, albeit much too late and too heavily to save them. Their poor little root systems were drowned now, after having been parched first. The soil around them—the dirt she worked so hard to improve every single year—would turn to hard-pack clay again. It was the kind of ruined garden soil that cracked when it was wet and when it was dry. If she wanted to make bricks, she could do that with the hopeless soil; it was flowers that she wasn’t going to get this year.

  Annabelle sighed with regret for all that beauty lost.

  But she perked up at the sight of intact roofs on the house, barn, and other outbuildings. She felt astonished to see only a few shingles blown off and a slat of wood or two. She saw no fences down around the house, either, and thought bitterly that it took a man with wire clippers to do that, darn him.

  “We got off easy,” she said to herself, feeling a little guilty.

  She was sure that many people had not escaped so easily.

  She needed to feed the dogs and horses, but the remainder of the daily chores could wait until her men came home. She tossed the execrable coffee onto the ground and hurried back inside. She was worried about Rose and anxious to get Jody dressed so they could drive into town to see how their little town—and their family—had weathered the storm.

  ANNABELLE AND JODY had no problem getting past the low place in the highway. The high water had drained back into the creek by then, leaving only muddy traces of its raging self. She was shocked to see—by the vegetation clinging to fence rails—how high the water had risen over the road.

  Whitecaps! she thought, but stopped herself from saying it aloud, because if she did, she’d need to explain to Jody what they were, and she was too tired to answer any “Why, Grandma’s?” Jody was cranky from being pulled out of bed sooner than her body wanted to rise. A big breakfast would help both of them. Annabelle’s plan was to round up Hugh, Belle, Chase, Bobby, and Jody’s mother and herd them over to the Leafy Green Truck Stop for breakfast. The place didn’t look like much, but it served the best pancakes in four counties, even better than she herself could make from scratch. The family rarely went out to eat all together, because why pay money when they could eat just as well—except for pancakes—at her table?

  Why do it now? Annabelle yawned. So I don’t have to cook, that’s why!

  In spite of her urgent need for better coffee, she took an alternate route to town so she could drive past a local landmark, a set of famous rock monuments that rose high above the ground, looking like a natural, bigger, taller Stonehenge, a startling contrast to the rest of the flat landscape. Testament Rocks, as they were known, attracted about the only tourists her county ever saw—archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists, for the most part. A great inland sea had once surged through this area, an enormous body of water replete with prehistoric sharks and other seafaring creatures; later, a vast river took its place. Just to look at Testament Rocks gave Annabelle the sense of being part of something bigger, something almost incomprehensibly old that changed so slowly the alterations were nearly imperceptible unless you watched them for a lifetime. Only erosion, pollution, earthquakes, or dynamite could alter this landscape; cataclysmic change came rarely, but it did come now and then. The head of a high rock formation known as the King had been shattered by lightning a few years before, and she still mourned its disfigurement.

  Annabelle didn’t drive out to the Rocks, which would have taken too long.

  She simply slowed down when she could see them in silhouette in the distance. From that angle, they all looked as she remembered them; the storm had not visibly affected them.

  As always, she felt steadied by the sight of them.

  “Why are we going so slow, Grandma?”

  “So we can see the Rocks, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t want to see rocks.”

  The early morning light was hitting the Rocks just right to turn them a spectacular white-gold that made them look as if they’d been painted there against the sky, because surely no rocks in nature could shine that brightly. Annabelle thought about insisting that her granddaughter look and appreciate their beauty, then remembered that the child was only three and that her tummy was probably hungry enough to feel as if it had rocks rumbling around inside of it.

  “What do you want to see instead?”

  “Daddy. And pancakes.”

  Annabelle decided not to ask for trouble by explaining that Hugh-Jay wouldn’t be home for a while yet, and maybe not for a day or two.

  “Do you want to see butter, too?”

  “Yes!”

  “Maple syrup?”

  “Yes! And Mommy.”

  “That we can handle.”

  As Annabelle sped up again, she had the thought that everyone she knew would be gone long, long before the Testament Rocks fell down. That’s what she hoped, because that should be the natural order of things.

  Along the rest of the way there were manifold signs of storm damage: trees sundered by lightning, branches and fences down, water standing in ditches, a few telephone poles on the ground. Distracted by the evidence of other people’s problems, Annabelle forgot her own disquieting dreams.

  WHEN SHE DROVE into Rose, she saw branches down there, too, and streets carpeted with wet leaves. I
t was clear the power was still out, but otherwise the town seemed to have escaped without major wind damage. How their basements looked this morning was probably a different story, she knew. There could well be dozens of people with their sump pumps turned on, or bailing out water by hand, by the bucketful. She saw one large tree split in two, burned streaks down the inside announcing that the lumberjack had been lightning.

  She went to the Rose Motel first and parked in front of the office.

  “Where’d you stash them?” she asked the proprietor, whom she’d known for years.

  “Your husband’s in Seven,” he told her with a smile, “and your boys are in Nine. How’s the highway from the ranch?”

  “Clear. Water was very high, though.”

  “I heard. We’re lucky nobody got washed away.”

  “We sure are lucky. May I have keys to their rooms?”

  With a cheery wave and keys in her hand, Annabelle left him to his paperwork. Taking Jody by the hand, she walked past the long row of rooms. She marched past Room 7 to pound on Room 9, and then to unlock it, making as much noise as possible to warn the boys to get decent. Before she did that, however, she gave Jody some instructions. Then she stuck her head in, with her face averted, and they both called out, “Pancakes! In half an hour! At the truck stop! See you there!” Jody didn’t get all the words out, but it did achieve Annabelle’s goal of giving her the giggles. The room smelled of wet leather and sons. She slammed the door to the muffled sound of “Mom?” in two deep voices, as if she had shocked them awake.

  At home they’d have been up much earlier, and already working.

  This felt like a vacation day, a special day for sleeping in and eating out.

  As quietly as she could, Annabelle slid the key for Room 7 into its lock and turned it, after giving Jody certain other instructions. When the two of them slipped in as quietly as possible, they found it dark. Annabelle saw by the lump of covers that her husband was still in bed. She could barely remember the last time Hugh had slept so late, and although she knew he’d complain about it, she was glad for the extra rest for him.