The Scent of Rain and Lightning

  AS HE BACKED DOWN the driveway with Billy in the passenger seat, Hugh-Jay watched his wife and daughter go back inside. When the sunlight shone through Laurie’s dress, it revealed the curve of her hips and her slim legs, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything else to cover them.

  He looked to his right, and caught his passenger staring at her, too.

  Billy looked as if he was going to say something admiring, but then he seemed to think better of it, closed his mouth, turned his face, and stared out the windshield. He tipped his cap down to shield his eyes from the white sunshine coming through the glass.

  Hugh-Jay, watching him, thought that was a wise move.

  He was accustomed to other men admiring his wife, but that didn’t mean he liked the fact that Billy now had a mental image of Laurie naked under her thin dress. He wanted to scrape that picture from Billy’s mind. He wanted to erase it from any other man’s mind, but especially from the imagination of a man like Billy. Billy had the kind of bad-boy appeal that baffled Hugh-Jay, because he didn’t understand why women ever went for guys who promised nothing but heartache.

  He smelled beer again.

  “You already drinking today, Billy?”

  “That’s any of your business, Hugh-Jay?”

  “If you’re working for my family, yes, it is. Did you?”

  Billy let out a martyred sigh. “A beer with dinner, that’s all.” In the country, they called lunch “dinner,” and the later meal was “supper.” He shifted in the seat. “What kind of work you gonna put me on today, Hugh-Jay?”

  “We’ve got to mend some fence lines.”

  “Really. I thought we was all caught up with that for a while.”

  “We had some vandalism. Somebody cut some wire, mixed up some herds.” He refrained from mentioning the dead cattle.

  “No shit? Who’d do a thing like that?”

  “Dad doesn’t know.” Hugh-Jay glanced at him. “Sure it wasn’t you?”

  Billy laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I walked all the way out there. You forgot you took my truck?”

  “I’m going to need to get that second pair of keys from you, Billy.”

  There was a sudden tense silence from the passenger. “Val tell you that?”

  “What? That you’ve got extra keys? No, I just assumed. Who doesn’t have extra keys?”

  “Me. I don’t. Never have. You can ask her.”

  “Maybe you forgot. Maybe she’s got them in her purse.”

  “She never had any. I never gave her any. I had the only pair. Now you’ve got them.”

  Hugh-Jay sensed the unspoken curse words: goddamn you.

  Billy said, “Does your dad know you hired me today?”

  “I told you, this was his idea.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Hugh-Jay saw Billy relax a little and even smile, close to a smirk.

  “Don’t make him regret it,” he advised.

  “Who you think did it?”

  “Cut the fences? I told you, Dad doesn’t know.”

  “How you gonna catch somebody like that?”

  “Might be hard to do.”

  “Prob’ly never will catch ’em.”

  Billy slumped down in the seat, pulled his cap fully over his face, and either napped or pretended to.

  Hugh-Jay turned the radio on.

  The sweet voice of Dolly Parton singing about a coat of many colors filled the cab with haunting melody.

  As Hugh-Jay drove and listened to the music, he thought about how some things are easy to prove: like the amount of mileage that got put on a truck between the last time it was driven and now, and how that mileage matched the distance to the ranch. He’d made a note of Billy’s mileage last night after Chase walked off to Bailey’s Bar & Grill. It had occurred to Hugh-Jay as he watched his brother stroll down the broken sidewalk that although you took a man’s truck, you might not keep him from driving it. In his right jeans pocket he now had a note with two numbers on it: one was the mileage he’d written down last night, and the second number was what he’d written down a few minutes earlier behind his garage where the truck was parked. Now he was going to have to break the news to his father that Billy didn’t deserve any more chances, and that the only thing he deserved was jail.

  He glanced over at the supposedly sleeping man.

  Billy didn’t have a clue, Hugh-Jay marveled, that he was now in the worst trouble of his worthless life. He thought he was getting away with it. Billy didn’t even sense how deeply offensive it was even to have to sit in the same truck with him. Billy Crosby. Drunk. Wife beater. Fence cutter. Cattle abuser, and now cattle killer.

  Or, as Bobby might say in crude summation: Billy Crosby, asshole.

  Hugh-Jay’s jaw locked, holding in his outrage.

  He hadn’t lied to Billy. He’d only said, “Dad doesn’t know.”

  That was true; his father didn’t know that Billy did the damage.

  Hugh-Jay recalled how he’d nearly pulled four strangers out of their car over a tossed cigarette, and how he had threatened to pitch Billy out of the truck for throwing a beer can out the window. That sin was nothing compared to cutting fence lines and killing cattle as an act of cruel revenge. For that, Billy deserved to be thrown out and run over a few times.

  And yet, Hugh-Jay was nearly grateful to Billy for distracting him.

  Nothing Billy did could hurt as much as what was happening at home.

  “Home,” Hugh-Jay murmured, moving his lips over the bittersweet word.

  Billy stirred a little, as if he’d heard, but then he snored.

  Tired? Hugh-Jay thought, glancing at him. You had a busy night, Billy.

  The cemetery and the bison herd rolled by.

  Hugh-Jay fought to keep his feelings of despair, loneliness, and anger bottled up inside of him so he wouldn’t slam his hand against the steering wheel, or beat up on Billy, or worst of all—cry. It was awful when people you helped and people you loved betrayed you and let you down. It made him feel like doing things he never wanted to do, hurtful, violent, shameful things. Hugh-Jay turned into the main gate of the ranch and prayed that the hours of hard work ahead of him would cleanse him and turn him back into the man he wanted to be.

  IN THE LIVING ROOM of the big stone house, Laurie sat with her back against the frame of a window seat with Jody slumped asleep in her arms. The child had cried after her father left, and then finally gave in to the hot and humid day, to her tears, and to the accumulated exhaustion of a morning spent being a three-year-old who loved to hop up and down stairs, and twirl until she fell down, and run a groove into the carpet around the big walnut dining room table.

  Long after Hugh-Jay’s truck turned the corner, long after her arms went numb from holding Jody, long after the telephone rang repeatedly and she didn’t answer it, Laurie continued sitting in the window seat, staring outside. She was furious and anxious about Hugh-Jay’s surprise visit home, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She wanted to throw things. She wanted to run out the door and keep running until she was far away from him and Rose. She wanted to scream. What she didn’t want to do was have to sit still to keep Jody from waking up, even though the quiet was a relief.

  Why had he come home? It was so unlike him. Was he checking up on her?

  Even on such a hot day, she felt chilled and ill at the memory of his voice behind her in the kitchen.

  The way he’d grabbed her …

  She shuddered, which made Jody shift in her arms.

  Laurie forced herself to sit perfectly still and barely breathe.

  She didn’t want to have to deal with a child’s wants and needs, but then the truth was, she never did want to play mommy. That’s what it felt like to her. Pretend. Not real. Only, it was a joyless game that never ended—like Monopoly, which Chase and Belle loved and played as if the fate of the ranch depended on which one of them got Park Place. She hated that stupid game, because she thought it was stupid to care so much about plastic houses, and because she wasn’
t accustomed to competing. But at least with Monopoly she could cash in and walk away. With the game of being a mother, she could never win and she could never quit.

  She stared down at the sleeping child, feeling resentful and trapped.

  Nobody had ever warned her she might feel this way toward her husband or her own flesh and blood. That was a nasty surprise. A child was a whole lot of work and trouble, she was finding out, just like marriage had turned out to be. A baby—like a husband—always had to be considered, even if all the mother wanted to do was take a nap. And God forbid she should want to talk on the telephone or take a leisurely bath or take a few hours off when there wasn’t anybody around to babysit.

  At least her daughter looked like her, thank God for that much of a blessing.

  If she’d had an ugly child, Laurie thought she’d have hated it.

  Her child was beautiful, and she lived in the biggest, nicest house in town, and her husband was rich, or would be someday. People thought he already was, just because he was a Linder, but all Hugh-Jay made was a salary like any other ranch employee. He made more than his brothers because he was older and had more experience and responsibility, but still, it was just a salary, as if he was a janitor’s kid instead of the oldest son of the wealthiest people in town. In a few years they could share in the ranch profits, but not yet, because his parents didn’t believe in giving their children too much, too soon, or too easily. Laurie wanted to shake Annabelle and Hugh Senior for being so selfish! It would be so easy for her father-in-law and mother-in-law to let loose of a few more dollars so that she and Hugh-Jay could have some fun instead of only work.

  Fun. It felt like forever since she’d had any.

  On days such as this one, when the house and the heat made her feel like an animal who wanted to claw and howl her way to freedom, Laurie thought she would take any escape that anybody offered to her.

  And it wasn’t as if nobody ever did …

  She smirked to herself, reveling in that other truth.

  Her thoughts made her shiver again, but in a delicious way.

  In that overheated moment, she intensely felt her own raw, tingling nakedness under her sundress, longing for hands upon her skin that were not her husband’s callused, fumbling, clumsy ones. She felt those other hands moving on her breasts, another mouth pressing against hers, another man’s weight on top of her, his eyes admiring her, eating her up, loving her in the ways she wanted to be loved and not in the tame, safe, predictable, infuriating ways she actually was loved. She imagined him commanding her, refusing to give her instantly what she demanded, making her wait and beg and do whatever he ordered her to do, holding her arms back, pinning her legs down, tasting her, teasing her, until she exploded with desire for him, and only then would he give it to her—laughing at her, tormenting her as he made her moan and scream and beg again, again, again. Her breath went shallow. She felt consumed by desire for skin she wasn’t supposed to touch, obsessed by sex she wasn’t supposed to have, wild with longing for things she wasn’t supposed to do and would never do with her husband. She didn’t believe she had made a mistake marrying Hugh-Jay—Laurie never thought she made mistakes because there were always other people to blame—but sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to marry one of those other boys who stared at her, one of the good-looking, sexy ones who hadn’t been respectful and patient like Hugh-Jay, one of the ones who’d been hot instead of lukewarm, who’d been exciting instead of steady, passionate and fun instead of plain and dull. What would her life be like if she went with a man who whispered shocking words to her, and who gave her things that didn’t have anything to do with money?

  What if she could have had both, the money and the pleasure?

  And then she finally saw it, the silver lining that her anger and the sluggish day had hidden from her until this moment: Hugh-Jay was going to be gone that night and maybe longer! She could do what she wanted to do. She could do what she needed to do, and had every right to do, because didn’t she have a right to be happy? And she wouldn’t even get in trouble for it, because there would be nobody home to catch her.

  In her arms, Jody stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Hi, sleepyhead,” her mother said, with an encouraging smile that surprised her daughter into smiling back. “How would you like to go out to Grandma and Grandpa’s to spend the night?”

  ANNABELLE FELT NERVOUS as she drove her black Cadillac out to the men working in the pastures that afternoon. She was going to have to see Billy Crosby—after the awful things he’d done—and pretend she didn’t know he’d done them. It was vital to keep Billy out here at the ranch while the sheriff did his work in town. Billy wasn’t to know what was happening there. He needed to be taken into custody out here in the country, far from his vulnerable wife and innocent son—who should be spared the trauma of watching his father be carted off to jail. Billy needed to be surrounded by strong men who would make sure he didn’t do anything crazy or violent. Hugh wanted the arrest made quickly, quietly, with a minimum of trouble. So, with all her heart, did Annabelle. It had slowly sunk in on her and, she thought, on Hugh, just how dangerous a man might be who could do such things, and so she wasn’t only anxious, she was also scared of what was going to happen next. She had never seen anybody arrested except on television or in the movies, and never dreamed the first time would be at their own ranch. As she parked on the dirt road that ran through the pasture, she sent up a prayer for everybody’s safety.

  It was her job now to contribute a touch of normalcy to the scene by doing exactly what all of the cowboys, including Billy, were expecting her to do.

  And so she was taking iced tea and cinnamon rolls to them, because she always took treats to them when they worked long afternoons or mornings. When her daughter Belle was younger, she’d gone along, or she’d been up on horseback herself, helping with the cattle work. On some days, Annabelle took coffee and chocolate chip cookies or lemonade and molasses crinkles. Because of the impending weather, she had also stocked her Caddy with rubber rain slickers and plastic hat protectors for any man who’d neglected to bring his own. The clouds had finally moved across the Colorado-Kansas state line, with the main part of the storm now only a county and a half away from them. The first rain had already blown through in thin, intermittent sheets, not enough to stop the work, just enough to cool and mist the cowboys and their horses, all of whom had been working ever since Hugh Senior convened them with his emergency request for assistance.

  “What will you tell them?” she’d asked him.

  “Same thing I told the boys, that it’s vandalism and that’s all I know.”

  Going nonstop, a group of neighbors, hired hands, and Linder men had managed to repair every cut section of fence but one that still awaited mending. A tour of the ranch had revealed other fences cut, other pastures breached, and other herds mixed up with each other. The cowboys were already organizing for getting on horseback to return cattle to their proper pastures, but when they saw Annabelle park on the shoulder of the highway, they tied up their horses again in anticipation of what she’d be bringing to them.

  Weather wouldn’t stop them from work, unless it turned to lightning, but the smell of Annabelle Linder’s homemade rolls could, it was widely claimed, stop a rutting bull in his tracks.

  The rain slickers that Annabelle brought, some bright yellow and others black, were heavy. Several of the cowboys jumped forward to assist her in carrying them, along with a big plastic jug of sweet iced tea and plastic cups. They transferred the treats across the grass and the dirt—which was just damp enough to stick to the bottoms of their boots—and set them on the backseat of one of their trucks.

  Annabelle followed under an umbrella, carrying the napkins.

  She was greeted with “Hi, Mom” from her sons and with courteous, drawled thank-yous from the other men. “Sure am sorry this happened to you folks, Annabelle,” one of the neighbors said. “It’s a rotten thing,” another man commented, which prod
uced a murmur of masculine agreement in bass tones that felt comforting to her, as if they’d put a collective, caring arm around her shoulders. “Hope they catch the sons a bitches,” asserted a cowboy, followed by, “begging your pardon, ma’am.”

  “I agree,” she said, and smiled at him.

  Red Bosch, the youngest cowboy there, jumped forward with an offer to assist her with the rolls.

  “Be happy to carry those rolls for you, Mrs. Linder,” young Red said earnestly.

  He put out both arms so she might lay the tray on top of them. The rolls, huge and warm, had dripped their powdered sugar icing down their sides into gooey, soft-crusted puddles on the waxed paper she had placed beneath them.

  “Don’t you let him do it,” an older cowboy warned her. “Or there won’t be any left for the rest of us.”

  “Hey,” Red joked back. “I’m just a growing boy.”

  “Exactly,” the cowboy said dryly, and everybody laughed, a welcome relief.

  “Here, Red,” Annabelle said, handing the tray over to him. “You pass them around where everybody can see your hands.”

  Another laugh went around the group.

  The biggest grin came from Red himself. The boy had flunked out of high school and was trying to earn money to buy his own truck. Annabelle often tried to talk him into returning to school, but at sixteen, and from a family where nobody had ever graduated from high school, he had a hard time seeing into the future. “Red” wasn’t a nickname; he’d been born with the red hair of his eighteen-year-old father, and so “Red” he had been officially dubbed by his fifteen-year-old mother. He was no pretty boy, people remarked of him, and no Einstein, either, but there was something about Red that made you smile.

  Annabelle forced herself to look for Billy Crosby.

  Fortunately, he was looking at the sky, so she didn’t have to speak to him.

  She darted a glance at her husband, who looked at his watch.