The Scent of Rain and Lightning

  “Daddy!” three-year-old Jody squealed, and rushed at him from the hallway.

  The child leaped at him with both arms up, trusting him to catch her in midair and sweep her into his arms. In an instant she was cuddled against him with her head tucked onto his left shoulder, and she was chattering away about her day. She had on a blue sundress and was sticky with little girl sweat, which told him she’d been busy that morning, probably hopping up and down the stairs, her current favorite indoor pastime when she wasn’t twirling to make her skirts fly out around her. Like her mom, her feet were bare, and like her mom, her toenails were painted red. They also made his heart hurt for love of them and her.

  “Hey,” he said gently, to both of them, when she paused for breath.

  Laurie had whirled at the sound of “Daddy!” dropping her paring knife.

  “Daddy’s home!” Jody told her, with joy in her lilting voice.

  “Hugh-Jay, you scared me! What are you doing here?”

  He smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt.

  “I can’t have lunch with my wife and daughter?”

  “Yes, Daddy!” Jody chirped, and hugged her arms around his neck.

  He looked over at Laurie to hear her say so, too.

  She turned her back and continued dicing carrots.

  Hugh-Jay set his daughter on the floor and gave her behind a gentle swat as she ran off to get something from her bedroom to show him. Then he took a shaky breath and moved purposely toward his wife.

  IT SCARED LAURIE that Hugh-Jay had come home without any warning.

  She counted on him to be predictable, as he was every time he came in the house. First he’d scrape the soles of his boots on the shit-catcher, a little metal bar attached to two other bars, then he’d pick up his boots, knock them together to dislodge more dirt and cow shit, and then set them neatly side by side beside the back door. Laurie knew that if she looked out there now, she’d see them paired like that. Before he walked into the house, he took off whatever hat he was wearing—today it was a Kansas City Royals baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat—and he knocked it against his jeans to clean it, and then hung it on a hook above the boots, leaving his blond hair plastered down and sweaty where the cap had been. His big square face was reddened, and rivulets of dirty sweat ran down it. That meant that he would come to the sink to wash off.

  The routine of his thoughtfulness drove her crazy.

  She also depended on it, however, especially lately.

  “I missed you,” he said, answering her question about why he was there.

  “Missed me!” she scoffed, still without turning around. “You’ve been gone, what, five hours?”

  She heard the old wood floor creak as he walked toward her.

  She tensed as he hovered like a huge tent closing around her, darkening the space, exuding heat from his big body. She expected him to grasp her arms and move her aside so he could rinse his face and arms. Instead, she felt his big arms come around her, felt him bend down to kiss the back of her neck. When he kissed her right ear, she shuddered reflexively. She felt his surprise as he discovered she was naked under her sundress.

  “Are you sure you weren’t expecting me?” he teased.

  “I just got out of the shower,” she said sharply. She tried to lean away from him, to reach for a dishcloth. “I didn’t have time to put on anything but this.”

  His hands moved to the straps of her dress.

  “What are you doing, Hugh-Jay?”

  She heard his breathing quicken, felt him pressing harder into her until the front of the sink bit into her waist. “Hugh-Jay!” He kissed her neck again and started pushing the straps of her dress down over her shoulders until the tops of her breasts were exposed to him. “Don’t!” She bent her head forward, trying to get away from his mouth. She jerked her straps back up. “Stop it!”

  He backed off immediately. Then he did what she had originally expected him to do: he gently moved her aside, turned on the water, and washed off his hands, then his face, lower arms, and the back of his neck, until the water finally turned from mud to clear.

  He grabbed a nearby towel and rubbed his face and arms dry.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she accused him.

  “Did what?” He turned toward her, his broad, plain face looking hurt, his voice plaintive in a way that only annoyed her more. “Try to love my wife?”

  “In the middle of the day? In the kitchen? With Jody right here?”

  “I wouldn’t have done that in front of her!”

  “You shouldn’t have done any of it.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  Before they married, she hadn’t objected to anywhere or any time, or even to the chance that somebody might see them. He was the one who’d been straitlaced and worried about getting caught. She remembered that; she knew he did, too. Neither of them reminded the other of it.

  Hugh-Jay, noticing something shiny under the kitchen table, bent down to pick it up, but his daughter ran back into the room and beat him to it. “Here, Daddy.” She placed a silver cigarette lighter into his hands, along with a doll in a new dress that she’d brought down to show him.

  “It’s Unca Chase’s,” she said. “He left it. Do you like her dress?”

  “It’s very pretty. I’ll bet Uncle Chase left this at breakfast.”

  “Nope! Later, when he came back and drank all Mama’s coffee, didn’t he, Mama? You always say Unca Chase drinks all your coffee.”

  “I don’t say any such thing.”

  Jody frowned, but didn’t argue with her mother.

  Hugh-Jay asked, “Chase came back this morning?”

  “Yeah, and he swung me!” Jody exclaimed. “On the swing!”

  “What did he want?”

  “Just coffee,” Laurie muttered.

  “But Mommy—”

  “Jody! Take your doll and go play somewhere else!”

  Hugh-Jay saw his daughter’s lower lip start to tremble, so he stuck the lighter into his back left pocket and grabbed her onto his lap. Softly, he said, “When did Mommy get your dolly a new dress?”

  Laurie whirled around to face them. “What difference does it make? It’s just a dress, it doesn’t matter when I got it, I can get my daughter a dress for her doll if I want to.”

  Upset by her mother’s anger, Jody started to cry.

  It only made Laurie sigh angrily and roll her eyes, leaving the comforting to Hugh-Jay. The oven timer went off, and Laurie put on padded gloves to remove her pies and set them on racks to cool.

  “Maybe pie would make us all feel better,” Hugh-Jay said, hugging Jody.

  “Not yet!” Laurie’s tone was still furious. “They’re still too hot.”

  “That’s when they’re good.”

  “Yeah,” Jody agreed, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, hiccuping little sobs. “I’m hungry.”

  “No, they need to set up more,” her mother insisted, which settled it.

  LAURIE WOULDN’T EVEN let them have any pie after they ate the tuna fish sandwich and potato chips she put out for them.

  “I made the pie for supper tonight,” she said.

  “I won’t be here for supper tonight,” Hugh-Jay told her.

  “Why not?”

  “Where are you going, Daddy?”

  Jody had recovered from her tears, helped along by the tuna sandwich.

  “Colorado,” he said, avoiding his wife’s eyes.

  “Why?” she asked sharply.

  “Dad’s sending me.”

  There was a silence, and then Laurie repeated, “Why?”

  Hugh-Jay shrugged, and bent his face toward his empty plate, as if there might be crumbs he’d missed.

  “Well, then,” Laurie said, her voice hard, “if you’re leaving, I guess you won’t be getting any, will you?”

  “He won’t get any pie?” Jody looked anxious. “Are you mad at Daddy?”

  “I’m not mad at him.”

&nb
sp; “Yes, you are,” Jody said, starting to cry again.

  “No!” Laurie suddenly slammed down a fork and shouted at both of them. “I’m not!”

  Her husband and daughter stared at her, but neither of them spoke. Even to a three-year-old, the truth was obvious.

  OUT AT THE RANCH HOUSE, Hugh Senior came up with a plan.

  “Don’t say anything to Bobby about what’s happened,” he instructed Annabelle. “He’ll just go roaring off to find Billy and get himself in trouble. And don’t tell Chase, either.”

  She stared at him, waiting to hear his reasons.

  Instead of explaining, he got on the telephone and let her listen.

  First he called their eldest child at his home in town. “Son, I want you to bring Billy Crosby back out to the ranch for some work today.”

  Annabelle’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “Yes,” Hugh Senior said into the phone, apparently in reply to his son’s reminder of what had happened the day before, “but I have a special job I want him to do. I’m going to need you, too, and if you see your brothers, tell them to show up ready to mend fences.” He paused to listen, and then said, “Somebody cut some of our fence lines, son. They let the weaned calves back in with their mothers. But the worst thing is, they killed a pregnant cow. Sliced the poor girl’s throat.”

  Standing a foot away, Annabelle heard their son’s exclamation of shock.

  And then she heard his father tell a lie.

  “No, it wasn’t Billy.” He listened. “Of course I’m sure of that, or why would I allow him back on the ranch?”

  When he hung up, Annabelle said, “You lied to your son.”

  “Well, I had to. Hugh-Jay can’t lie worth beans, and I don’t want him giving the game away to Billy on the ride out here.”

  “What game are you playing?”

  “A serious one.” He leaned over to kiss her forehead.

  “What are you up to, my darling?”

  “Getting Billy to clean up his own mess, that’s what.”

  He then made another call, this time to the county sheriff’s office in Henderson City. “This is Hugh Linder Senior,” he said with easy authority to the deputy who answered. “I am reporting that Billy Crosby killed one of my cows last night … Yes, I’m sure. He also cut my fence lines and tried to set fire to one of my pastures. I have arranged for him to be away from his house for a few hours this afternoon. I want you to go there while I’ve got him safely out of your way. Talk to his wife about where he was last night. Look for evidence while you’re there. You should find the knife or some bloody clothes. Look for wire clippers. When you’ve done all that, then I want you to come out here to the ranch and arrest him.”

  “Speaking of misbehavior,” Annabelle said after he hung up the phone, “what about Colorado?”

  “What’s wrong out there, you mean? We’re getting overbilled on some things. It could be nothing but sloppy clerking. Or it could be that our man is lining his own pockets. Hugh-Jay should have caught it in the bookkeeping. It shouldn’t have had to wait for me to find. I’m sending him to clean up his own mess. It’s the only way either one of them will ever learn; it’s the only way anybody learns.”

  A little later Annabelle said, “He won’t appreciate that you lied to him.”

  Her husband’s reply was confident. “It won’t do him any harm.”

  LAURIE AND JODY accompanied Hugh-Jay onto the back porch after lunch. He set his suitcase—a battered old leather one that his grandfather had used—on the porch floor beside his feet.

  “I’ll be driving into rain tonight,” he predicted, observing the western sky.

  The clouds looked taller, darker, and closer now.

  Laurie squinted at his truck, which he’d parked under cottonwood trees at the rear of their driveway. The dogs came running over. When they pressed against her, she shoved them with her knee and said, irritably, “Go on! Get down from here, you hot, smelly things! Hugh-Jay, is there somebody in your truck?”

  “Billy Crosby, probably.” He took hold of the dogs’ collars and tugged the Labs down onto the gravel, away from her. “Didn’t you hear me call him on the telephone? I told him to walk on over.”

  Laurie saw Billy turn his face in their direction as if he knew they were talking about him. He lifted a hand and waved in a halfhearted way. Laurie didn’t return the gesture.

  “I can’t believe your dad would hire him for anything again.”

  She wasn’t trying very hard to keep Billy from hearing her.

  “A man gets to have a second chance, doesn’t he?”

  “But not a fifth and sixth,” she retorted sarcastically.

  “I didn’t know you disliked him so much.”

  “I don’t.” It sounded more defiant than convincing. “I don’t care about him.”

  Hugh-Jay bent over to kiss the top of her head, but she moved at that moment, so his affection only grazed her. He stood up straight again. “It’s hard for a man to support his family when he’s got a suspended driver’s license.”

  “Well, and whose fault is that?”

  “Okay. You’re right.”

  She looked up at him. “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. I might come home tomorrow, or I might have to stay a while longer. I won’t know till I get there.”

  “Well, call me and let me know what you’re going to do.”

  “All right.”

  Her expression turned fierce. “Swear.”

  “I do, I will!” He bent way down to kiss his daughter’s tiny nose. “’Bye, baby girl.”

  She took the opportunity of her father being down at her own level to throw her arms around his neck. “Don’t leave, Daddy.”

  He put his hands on her waist and stood up with her clinging to him. Her breath smelled of tuna fish, and her hair, dark like her mother’s, flew into his face, and both sensations made him smile as he hugged her to his chest and picked long strands of her hair out of his mouth. “Got to, baby girl.” After a moment he gently unwound her from around him and set her down and pushed her arms back down to her sides, as if she were a tiny bellows. “But I’ll bring you back a surprise.”

  “A horse?”

  “Not this time.” She desperately wanted her own pony, and yet she still adored to ride in front of him while he kept one arm around her and one hand on the reins. “You still need to grow some.”

  The excitement on her face fell away in disappointment.

  “But it’ll be a good surprise anyway,” he promised her, which earned him a brave little smile accompanied by eyes still moist at the loss of the horse and his impending absence.

  “Hugh-Jay, you spoil her.”

  “I like to spoil my girls.”

  “No,” his wife said in a hard voice. “You don’t.”

  Without looking into her eyes, he grabbed his overnight bag and started down the porch stairs, a big man moving with athletic grace. The dogs labored up and joined him. Laurie expected to see him get into his truck with Billy, but he didn’t do that; instead, he set down the suitcase, walked toward one side of their detached garage and disappeared around to the back of it.

  “Where’d Daddy go?”

  “There’s no telling.”

  In a few moments he appeared again, and this time he did get into his pickup.

  “’Bye, Daddy!” Jody hollered in her loudest three-year-old voice. “I love you!”

  Her next-to-last sight of him, which would fade from her memory, was of his face framed in his truck window with his left elbow propped on the edge. He had changed into a cowboy hat, and underneath it he was smiling at her out of his plain, pale, wide face, his gaze returning all the love she’d yelled at him.

  AT THE RANCH HOUSE, Bobby ambled in past noon, looking for a meal his mother might provide. Instead, he found his parents talking together in the kitchen, where the overhead fan was turning and nothing was cooking. Hungry, hot, and disappointed, he said, “Don’t you two ever leave thi
s house?” If Chase had said it, it would have come across as a good-natured joke, but Bobby had little talent for humor, and so it came out sounding aggressive.

  His father gave him a sour look. “Sit down. I have something to tell you.”

  “Yes, sir.” It sounded more as if he were glad to sit than to obey his father. Bobby collapsed into a kitchen chair, stuck his long legs out and slouched there, his big hands loosely grasping the top rungs. “You’re not sending me to some junior college, Dad.”

  “I’ll send you where you deserve to be sent!”

  “Hugh,” Annabelle said, in a tone that reminded him he had other problems to discuss with their youngest. Without giving him another chance to argue, she told her son, “Bobby, we have some fences down. Somebody cut them and mixed up the weaned calves back with their mothers.”

  “You’re kidding.” Bobby’s jaw dropped and he sat up. “Cut them?”

  “That’s not all,” his father said, “they killed a cow, one of the pregnant mamas—slit her throat.”

  He didn’t say which cow.

  “Holy shit!” Bobby exclaimed.

  “And nearly set fire to the pasture,” his mother chimed in, shaking her head at both the event and his choice of words.

  Bobby shot to his feet. “Goddamn him!”

  “It wasn’t Billy,” Hugh Senior said, understanding immediately whom Bobby meant. “And watch your mouth in this house.”

  “Of course it was Billy, Dad! What are you talking about? There’s nobody else it could be! He’s pissed at you. He was already pissed at you over that stupid thing yesterday, and now he’s probably really pissed about his truck. Who else would do something like that?”

  “Somebody we don’t know, Bobby.”

  “I’ll slit the throat of whoever did this!”

  When he left to go wash up, Hugh said to his wife, “And that is why I don’t want Bobby knowing ahead of time, before the arrest. If he knew it was Billy who did it, it would be our son who’d end up in jail for murder.”

  Annabelle stepped into his arms.

  “I hate this,” she murmured against his chest.

  Every time she remembered the poor old cow, so docile, so defenseless, so reliably productive for so many years, she wanted to kill Billy Crosby with her own bare hands.