After the Rain (15 page)

Knowing they were there didn’t mean he had to watch them.

He was watching them now.

So he tried his tricks. Broker was adept at walling off his life into compartments, only allowing enough fear and doubt to percolate to the surface to add a streak of afterburner to his adrenaline. Everything else he kept strictly locked up.

Repressed? You bet.

They came to the elementary school and Kit dashed through the gate for the playground equipment. Broker hung back, dug in the hip pocket of his jeans for a Backwoods Sweet cigar. He took out one of the rough wraps, put it in his mouth, and flicked his plastic lighter.

Smoking was another trick, a method of fear management.

He walked down the block, not wanting the smoke to drift into the playground, and came to the corner of the school.

Down the street the Spartan missile stood against the gray sky like a stark black-and-white exclamation point.

He glanced back at the playground, where Kit and a boy her age were monkey-walking up the slide, holding on to the sides. They were still intact, he realized: forty years of Cold War reflexes. Clenched guts, every day, as whole populations went to work, loved, hated, propagated, and always they carried in their hearts the same blank fear when they looked up at the threat suspended in the sky.

Is this the day our children will burn up in fire?

Did we really think we’d drawn a pass because one government collapsed? Because a wall had come down?

A lot of that shit was still out there.

Some of it came in suitcases.

Kit and her playmate were at the swings now, yelling, exhorting each other to pump higher. Their seven-year-old minds incapable of imagining the images and feelings churning in his—

“Dad! Da-dee. Do an underdog.
DA-DEE…
”

Broker shredded his cigar, tossed it, joined Kit at the swings, and pushed her with his strong right hand, straight arm over his head as he ran under her. Kit swung higher.

“Again,” she squealed.

Again.

As he pushed her on the swing he felt the dizzy spin of Nina’s, Holly’s, and Jane’s frantic intensity. And all his compartments came to nothing, and all his daddy fears washed through him.

How much time—what kind of time—would his daughter have in this new century?

After he was gone.

Who would protect her?

Broker watched Kit arc up toward the gray clouds, and the persistent shadows moved right into his chest. He had the fleeting thought—

What if I never see the sun again?

Joe Reed came down
from Winnipeg just before dawn, drove through Mulberry Crossing with his headlights switched off, continued on into Langdon, and pulled into the lot in front of Shuster’s equipment just as the sun came up. He unlocked the door, unfolded the surplus cot Dale kept behind the desk, lay down, and was asleep in minutes.

An hour later, Dale Shuster had his usual breakfast of a double stack of blueberry pancakes at Gracie’s Café. Coming back to the shed, he saw Joe’s beat-up, brown Chevy van parked in front. Dale opened the door and found Joe napping in his underwear on the cot next to the desk. A fan wobbled back and forth on the floor, stirring the dampness. The second the door eased open Joe rolled up, his good hand coming up from under his pillow with the Browning nine automatic.

“Just me,” Dale said. Once you knew Joe for a while you expected him to go armed and you didn’t ask him how many times he’d used it. That big pistol was the main reason Gordy Riker wanted Joe back in his employ, to help increase market share with the rough-cut biker gangs up north.

Joe grunted, slipped his pistol into a leather gym bag under the cot, and sat up. He rubbed at his patchy brush cut with his right hand. People rarely tried to make conversation with him. For starters, it just wasn’t easy to look at Joe straight on.

Joe’s face looked like a Klingon special-effects mask-in-progress from
Star Trek
. Ridges of grafted skin had healed unevenly and there was a suggestion of fine belly hair on his cheek and forehead where they’d taken the grafts from his abdomen. The stitch marks looked like wrinkles stretched the wrong way.

And then there was his voice. He’d swallowed fire and the sound that came from his throat was somewhere between a grunt and a hoarse whisper. He’d scarred his vocal cords.

The little finger was totally missing from his left hand, along with the first joint of his ring finger. Snakeskin ridges mapped his arms and his neck. His black hair grew in streaks between furrows of scar tissue. He limped.

But he was something to watch. He’d been handsome once. Athletic. Now he was like a photo of his former self that had been ripped longways and sideways and then pasted back together. None of his edges quite lined up. Yet the injuries had the effect of making him heal stronger. Joe could come up on people real quiet.

Joe showed up one night last winter to pick up a load of whiskey at the Missile Park. He was driving an old border runner, a muddy, rusted-out truck without license plates. And that’s how Dale came to meet him, when Gordy Riker put him to work hauling contraband: whiskey and tobacco going north into Canada, meth precursor coming south.

Joe was the ideal driver. A Turtle Mountain Ojibwa, his treaty card gave him privileges crossing the border. Once he was known to local customs, they usually just waved him through. Dale understood vaguely this had to do with the Jay Treaty of 1794, which excused Indians crossing the border from paying duties on “their own proper goods and effects of whatever nature.”

But Joe didn’t fool much with formal ports of entry. He knew all the prairie roads in four counties.

And locally, people who were put off by Dale and Joe as solitary misfits approved of them as a pair. Maybe it was just that now that they had each other to talk to, it cut down the talking load on normal people. People said that Joe and Dale sort of
found
each other.

They found each other, all right. Meeting Joe turned out to be the most significant event in Dale Shuster’s life.

Next thing, Dale had stolen Joe away from Gordy to work for him. Gordy was still pissed about that. And now Joe and Dale had become something of a team.

Joe gestured vaguely with his good hand, cleared his throat, spit, and said in his feathery voice, “So how’d it go?”

“The rental haulers arrived on time. Irv took possession yesterday afternoon,” Dale said.

“In the fucking rain,” Joe said.

“In the fucking rain,” Dale repeated.

Joe shook his head. “He give you a check?”

“Sent partial payment. Called me and said one of the loaders ran a little stiff. He’s using that as an excuse to hold back on the balance.”

“Uh-huh. Just like we figured. And you told him what?” Joe asked.

“That I’d be happy to make a special trip to check it out. Him being such a good buddy and all,” Dale said.

“Good.” Joe inclined his head and carefully studied Dale’s bland face. “Okay. I got all your stuff. And the Minnesota plates. Some cash.” He reached under the cot and pulled out a briefcase. “There’s more coming later.” Joe gave a twisted smile and looked up almost deferentially at Dale. Then he pushed the briefcase forward across the concrete.

Dale reached down and picked up the case and hugged it to his chest. It was a pretty decent leather briefcase with a brand-new smell that was intoxicating, that new car fragrance.

Dale controlled his excitement. It was important to him to always appear absolutely in control in front of Joe. Casually he placed the leather case on the desk and said, “Gordy’s come asking again. Wants you back for something. And, uh, he got in a fight.”

Expressionless, Joe said, “Word travels. Was it about the woman who showed up?”

They stared at each other until finally Dale said, “Maybe.”

Joe blinked several times and scrubbed at his head with the knuckles of his right hand. He got off the cot and crossed the floor to the window over the desk, favoring his bad left leg, and stared across the highway at the Missile Park. After a moment, he said, “We should go have a look at her.”

“Okay, first we gotta load that digger attachment for Eddie Solce. After that, we’ll go have a look.”

Joe nodded and put on his jeans and boots. A minute later, a rumble and cloud of smoke filled the back end of the shed as Joe started up the solitary old Deere 644C loader that needed new tires. Dale had three 644’s and had given it his best try to get Irv in Minnesota to take them all. But Irv didn’t want to deal with putting a new set of tires on this one. And Dale wanted to sell it as is. So the deal went down for the other two. Dale hadn’t been able to peddle this beast at any price and was resigned to let it sit here for scrap.

Dale pushed open the tall sliding door at the back of the shed. While Joe maneuvered the loader through the open door, Dale collected two heavy lengths of chain.

The backhoe boom sat in the weeds along the side of the shed like a leg joint plucked off a giant yellow crab. Fortunately the ground around the shed was well drained, because the bald tires on the old loader would get zero traction in mud.

Gingerly, as Joe raised the wide bucket, Dale attached the chains to the bucket, then looped them down from the control tower on the boom and around the elbow joint by the bucket. Then they played with the tension, Joe raising the bucket ever so gently as
Dale made sure the chain didn’t pinch any of the hydraulic lines on the tower. Satisfied, he gave Joe a thumbs-up and slowly the arm was hoisted in the air.

Carefully, Joe drove it around the shed to the apron of trap rock out front, where he lowered it, leaving just enough tension on the chains to keep the boom upright.

A few minutes later Eddie Solce showed up with a twenty-ton lowboy off the back of his Chevy dually. Nice trailer. Eddie welded the frame himself. Dale gave Eddie a good deal on the digger arm because Eddie had done some difficult custom metalwork for him on fairly short notice.

Eddie was a vinegar shrivel of a man with a silver mustache and a silver Trautman farm hook where his left hand had been. He’d lost the hand down around Oakes, working on his brother’s farm, when he reached in to clear the corn picker one too many times. Doing metalwork around loud machines all his life had taken most of his hearing, and he had a habit of shouting when he spoke.

The customary joking ensued, Eddie giving Dale his usual loud shit about leaving town, moving to Florida. They raised the arm and placed it level on the trailer bed, loosed the chains, and proceeded to ratchet it in place with chain-link tie-downs.

Joe remained in the cab of the loader, just a shadow in the dirty window glass. Eddie waved at him once in perfunctory greeting. Eddie found it hard to look directly at Joe. He had a thing about blown-up Indians, Dale figured.

Whatever.

“You sure you don’t need this old Deere?” Dale asked one last time.

“Sorry, Dale. Hell, my wife finds out I’m bringing this boom on the place she’ll skull me with the frying pan.”

“Shit, don’t see why. You’re getting it practically for nothing. Now, for a few more bucks you can have…”

Eddie waved Dale away with his hand and his hook. No.

They shook hands. Joe climbed down from the loader and they watched Eddie get in his truck and haul the boom away.

Joe came around from in back of the shed where he’d parked the Deere. He said he was going to get some breakfast. He’d be back in an hour to check out Ace’s new lady friend.

As Dale walked Joe out to his van, a green Ford Explorer with Minnesota plates pulled off the highway and into his parking lot. A man and a little girl got out. The guy was six foot, outdoor lean, but not a farmer. Carpenter maybe. The kid was six or seven, with coppery hair done back in a pony. She wore denim shorts, a green T-shirt, and scuffed tennies.

Looking closer, Dale saw that the guy had a fresh bandage on his left hand and the makings of a shiner on his left cheek under his eye. Then he placed him.

“That’s the guy Gordy knocked on his ass in front of the bar yesterday,” Dale said in a low voice to Joe. “Supposed to be that woman’s husband, come to take her back home. Guess he didn’t get very far.”

“Still here though,” Joe said slowly. “Maybe he’s gonna give it another try.”

“Or maybe he’s shopping for big iron. Tell you what. He can get a hell of a deal on an old Deere 644.”

“An hour,” Joe said. Then he got in his van and drove away.

Dale walked up to the stranger with the black eye and the little girl. He extended his hand. “Dale Shuster. You need some help?” They shook hands.

“Phil Broker,” the guy said. “We’re just passing through on our way back home. Heard in town you were clearing out your stock. I got this little landscape operation on the side. Thought maybe I’d take a look.”

“Damn near all gone.” Dale motioned for Broker to follow him into the shed. Then he pointed at the Deere sitting just outside the open door at the far end. “All I got left is that loader. She’s got a few miles on her, so you could practically name your price.”

“Kinda looking for something in a backhoe.”

Dale smiled. “ ‘Backhoe in every garage’ was my old man’s motto. Sorry. No backhoes left.”

“I was looking at this Jap rig back home, a Komatsu…”

“Nah, don’t do it. They might be cheaper up front, but the repair and the replacement will kill you. That’s where they make their money. Stay American. Get you a Cat or a Deere.”

“I’ll remember that,” Broker said. He pointed to the loader. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Go on. Go ahead, start her up if you want.” He paused and pointed to the ground. “Ah, kinda muddy out there. Probably more than her footwear can handle.”

Broker nodded and stooped to his daughter. “Kit, I’m going to look at that machine there. You stay right here where I can see you. I’ll never be out of sight, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“She be all right here?” Broker asked.

“Sure,” Dale said. “I’ll find some cartoons on the TV.”

Arms folded defensively across her chest, Kit nodded warily.

Dale went and thumbed the remote off the weather channel, finally found Nickelodeon. “How’s that?”

“Thanks.”

Then Dale opened the refrigerator. “Would you like a Coke?”

The girl, arms still crossed, looked at him, wary, smart, judgmental. “That’s just sugar-water and acid. It rots your teeth and makes you fat.”

“Oh-kaaay…” Dale studied her and felt a slow rise in his mood. She was a pretty kid, healthy, athletic, nurtured. Smart little bitch would never be fat or unpopular.

“I’d like a water, please,” she said, pointing at several clear plastic bottles on the shelf next to the ranks of red cans in the open refrigerator.

“Sorry,” Dale said blandly. “I don’t have any water.” He watched her young face jerk, trying to make the evidence of her eyes and the message of his words link up. He shut the ice-box door. “Where you from?” he asked, sitting down in his desk chair. He was starting to enjoy himself.

She shifted her feet, uneasy. Glanced out toward her dad, then back again. “Devil’s Rock, Minnesota.”

He glanced toward the back of the building where Broker was walking around the loader, inspecting the worn-out tires. He stayed in sight, like he told his kid, but he was ducking around back there, definitely snooping. Dale swiveled his chair back toward the girl, composed himself with his hands folded in his lap. “You like stories?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Well. I know a guy named Ole, and he went over to Thief River Falls in Minnesota and he bought this cow.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Well. He got this cow home and he went out to milk it. You know how to milk a cow, don’t you?”

She nodded her head. “I been on a farm. You squeeze the things and the milk squirts out.”

“Right. The things are called tits, just like your mom’s got. Course she’s only got one on each side. Cow has four.”

The kid narrowed her eyes, alert but not quite sure what she was supposed to be wary about. She took a step back to put distance between herself and something in Dale’s manner.

Dale said, “So this guy yanks on the tits and the cow farts.”

The girl made a self-conscious face, but a fast lick of humor darted in her green eyes. The old bathroom humor connection.

“So the guy went and got his neighbor and brought him over and
he says, ‘This is the damnest thing. I bought this cow and I go to milk it and I grab hold of the tit, and when I squeeze, the cow goes and farts.’

“And his neighbor says, ‘You got this cow in Minnesota, didn’t you?’

“And the guy says, ‘How’d you know that?’

“And the neighbor says, ‘ ’Cause I got my wife in Minnesota.’ ”