After the Rain (16 page)

Dale laughed at his joke, and at the girl’s discomfort and confusion. She went to the edge of the concrete pad and called to her dad. “Dad, I need to use the bathroom.”

Is there a bathroom she can use?” Broker called.

“Sure, it’s right in here,” Dale pointed to the doorway in the partition. “Sometimes you got to flush it twice.”

She nodded and went through the door and shut it behind her. Almost immediately Dale heard her playing with the toilet, flushing it twice. Then after a few moments, she flushed it again.

By the time she had finished in the bathroom and was back out standing by the desk, Broker came back.

Dale watched him closely. The guy was trying to act interested in machinery but what he was really doing was scoping out the Missile Park across the road. Looking for signs of his runaway old lady.

If that’s what she really was. Jeeez—if the wife could be a cop,
this guy
could be a cop too.

“Well, thanks for letting me look around,” Broker said.

“Any time. Like I said. There’s not much left. I’m about to the pull the plug.”

They said goodbye to the heavyset, moonfaced guy and walked out to the Explorer. Kit looked up at her dad and said, “That guy’s weird.”

“Why do you say that?” Broker said.

“Well, he told me this story about cows and farts.”

“Yeah?” A little more alert, Broker looked at the thickset man standing in the doorway.

“And when I went to the bathroom…”

“He didn’t do anything weird
then
, honey. I was watching him. He was sitting at the desk the whole time.”

“No, it was something that was
in
the bathroom. The toilet wasn’t flushed.”

Broker nodded in vague sympathy.

“
No, Dad.
There was this blue poop in the toilet.”

Broker grinned. “That’s probably Lysol bowl cleaner, you squirt it around the edge to clean—”

“No, Dad.” Kit stamped her foot and folded her arms across her chest. Peeved, she continued. “You’re
not listening
. There was this blue poop floating in the water. It was yucky.”

“If you say so.”

Kit turned away, hugged herself tight around the chest, and raised her chin in a haughty display of disapproval. “
Dad.
You are
not
taking me seriously.”

“Okay. I don’t know about blue poop. But I do know that when little girls crank their stuck-up noses in the air, they gotta watch out so birds don’t drop white poop on them.”

Kit glowered and kicked at the trap rock in the driveway.

“Sometimes you’re not a very nice daddy.”

“C’mon, honey,” Broker said. “Time’s getting close.”

Exactly an hour after he left, Joe Reed drove up and parked his van. He came into the shed wearing fresh jeans, a clean oatmeal-colored Carhartt T-shirt, and all his scars washed. Musta taken one of his cat baths in his van. He saw the loader. “No sale, huh?”

“She’s a boat anchor. Leave it for scrap.”

Joe looked up suddenly and cocked his head. Nothing wrong with his hearing. If anything, his other disabilities had made it more acute. Because Dale heard stuff just fine, and he didn’t hear it until seconds later.

“Plane coming in,” Joe said.

Nina woke up alone
—not just in Ace’s bed, but in an empty apartment over an empty bar. No smiling Ace handing her coffee. In fact, no coffee.

She had spent a second chaste night in Ace’s bed and he had slept on the couch. They had gone to dinner yesterday and to a movie at the refurbished Roxy Theater in town.
Signs
, with Mel Gibson. Then they’d gone out for a single beer afterwards at the bowling alley and talked about the movie. Like a date. She had been willing to kiss him at the conclusion to the evening, but he had stepped away.

Not yet, he’d said with less of his usual gallantry than tangible distraction. Was he losing interest? Was he coming around to Gordy’s suspicious way of thinking? Did it matter? She was getting antsy, too. She assumed that Holly was checking this Khari guy five different ways. So something might roll out tonight. Which was fine, because her game with Ace and Gordy was running out of steam. She’d just have to ride out the day. Later this morning she would call Broker to see how things went with Kit. Right now she wanted a cup of coffee.

She showered fast, threw on a summer shift, and went downstairs
just as Gordy came in through the front door carrying a bag of groceries. Seeing her, a malevolent smile smeared his hairy lips. His beady eyes darted around the room and Nina could practically read the thought bubble over his head.

They were alone.

She ignored him, went into the office, saw the can of Folgers on the sideboard sink, and started pouring water into the Mr. Coffee machine. Gordy followed her, set down his bag, came over, and stood beside her. She had never been this close to him and he smelled like stick deodorant aged in old sweat.

“I’m still here,” she said, deciding to take the offensive. He was wearing that Velcro back brace. She wondered if he slept in it.

“You ain’t the only one. Green Explorer, Minnesota plates, parked at the Motor Inn.”

“Shit,” Nina said.
All right!

“Yeah, he’s hanging around. Here. Let me do that.” Gordy took the can of Folgers from her and started measuring out the coffee. “Ace likes it strong.”

“Where is he?”

“Run off with the most popular chick in town.” Gordy grinned and held his hand palm down about waist level. “ ‘Bout this tall. She ain’t got legs or arms but she got these great lips, and her head is flat on top, just right for setting down a beer can.”

“Old joke,” Nina said and fixed a bored expression on her face.

“Ace went into court to fight a speeding ticket. He’ll be back pretty soon.” Gordy shrugged and removed a six-pack of Coke from the bag, and a cardboard box of assorted doughnuts.

“Breakfast of Champions, huh?” Nina said.

Gordy put the Cokes in the refrigerator, all but one can. He popped the top, took a sip, and opened the bakery box. “Want one?” he asked. As he held the pastries up he stepped closer, too close, so his arm grazed her arm.

Nina threw a warning glance. Gordy just smiled and selected a
jelly doughnut, took a bite, then leered at her, with a gob of goo caught in his mustache. His tongue darted out, snapped up the goo. Then he started to make his move. “So, where did he sleep last night. On the couch or on you?”

Nina extended the middle finger of her right hand.

“You give it up yet?” Gordy said, staring at her hips. “You satisfy his
curiosity
?” The leer accelerated and his breath came faster, working up to something ugly, and his eyes started to go fast, like two little caged rats.

“Back off, Gordy. I mean it.” Nina started for the door.

Gordy blocked her path, looming. Almost touching her as he whispered in her ear with his sugar breath, “It’s like this—you could leave under your own power, or you could disappear. It’d be easy…”

Nina, an inch taller, dropped her eyes to focus on the lump of Adam’s apple nestled in Gordy’s hairy throat.
Go on, asshole, touch me. Crush his larnyx in about two seconds
…

She moved past him and then the knife came out.

He drew it from his back pocket: a standard folding Buck Hunter with a fat, almost four-inch, stainless-steel blade. Gordy whipped it open with a smooth practiced flick of his thumb. He raised the knife in his right hand, menacing the blade back and forth. Catching the light. Not exactly threatening her directly with it, more like showing off and working up to something…

Broker had always told her how a lot of the assholes out there weren’t that smart. How sometimes they just
did
things before they thought…Okay, so, a knife—she prepared herself to fight. Gordy puckered his lips, blew a kiss, took a half-step toward her, still swinging the blade off to the side.

Instinctively Nina’s hands came up and she stepped back. What happened next was so strange and fast that she found herself in the middle, missing the beginning:

The voice rasped: “Leave her alone, Gordy. I mean it.”

Nina watched, stunned.
Where’d he come from?
A swarthy
man about five-ten, in jeans, a gray T-shirt, and boots. He had jet-black hair and the corded arms of a circus roustabout. His face was all wrong, rippled with uneven pigment. Scars showed even through his short hair. He approached silently, moving with a graceful limp, favoring his left leg. He carried his left hand protectively close to his hip, not swinging naturally and Nina immediately saw the nubs of the two missing fingers. She’d seen his kind of face before, in VA hospital burn wards; guys who’d been blown up, their skin grafted. But this guy was very focused, his quiet eyes checking the blind angles, the back doorway by the stairs.

Her response was visceral. One player sensing another player coming onto the field.

Gordy immediately put the knife away, stepped back. “Hey—just kidding, Joe,” he said.

If push came to shove, Ace and Gordy were country tough. Basically they were muddling along in a local tradition of smuggling whiskey and petty crime. Not this guy. Nina was sure. He was a trained man. For the first time since this project got under way, Nina knew she was close to something scary.

The guy stopped and probed Nina fast with cold brown eyes so intense she could almost feel her bones glow. Then he turned to Gordy and said, “We got nothing else to talk about, you and me. You understand?”

“Sure, Joe.”

“Where’s Ace?”

“He ain’t here,” Gordy said.

“Tell him George says it’s tonight, at the old remote missile bunker east of town.”

“Jesus, Joe.” Gordy rolled his eyes at Nina, alarmed.

Joe’s eyes stayed fixed on Gordy but his voice turned contemptuous. “Since when are we scared of women?” He inclined his damaged face toward Gordy for emphasis, then, “You tell Ace.”

Gordy stepped back, eyes wide; trying to make the best of things. “Yeah, sure, Joe.”

Then Joe continued on past the stairs and went out through the storeroom. Gordy, minus most of the color in his face, grinned nervously at Nina. “Just joking around, right?”

“Yeah, sure, Gordy. Ha ha. Who was that?”

“Joe Reed,” Gordy said, clearly agitated. He shook his head. “I don’t get what’s going on anymore. It wasn’t like this when Ace’s dad ran things.”

Nina folded her arms across her chest and watched him go into the office. Then she went to the table, where Ace’s morning newspaper was spread out. As she sat down she released a delayed shudder.

The Indian’s presence lingered in the room like a cool shadow. Tonight, he said. George, he said. She was with Gordy, thinking,
Why was this guy putting it on front street? What the hell’s going on?

Gordy reinvented himself fast, coming out of the office, smiling, bringing her a cup of coffee, and holding up two fingers in a V peace signal. Ace came in a few minutes later and set a still-warm Dairy Queen breakfast bag next to her.

“You’re still here,” he said with a wry smile.

Gordy watched her carefully from the bar to see if she’d let on about their confrontation. She didn’t and he occupied himself with his clipboard.

Ace said, “I had to leave early to go to court. Overslept, didn’t even have time to make coffee.”

“No problem,” Nina said airily. “Good old Gordy whipped up a pot.”

“Anywhere, anytime,” Gordy said.

Ace observed the touchy back-and-forth, filed it away. Gordy joined him, walked him to the stairs, and lowered his voice. “Joe was by, playing hard-ass. George sent him. George says it’s on for tonight. He’ll meet you at the old RLS site east on 5. Didn’t give a time.”

Ace nodded, stared at Nina’s back for a long moment, then went
upstairs. The phone on the bar rang, Gordy crossed the room and picked it up. Nina opened the Dairy Queen bag. It contained an egg muffin.

Gordy talked for a moment, put down the phone, then said to her, “That was Dale across the road. Your husband was over there this morning. Thought you should know.”

Nina lowered her eyes, picked up her coffee cup in both hands, and took a sip.

Dale really wanted to get a closer look at this woman who had come to spy on his brother. He wanted to so bad he kept putting it off just to build up the anticipation. He had Gordy’s request to intervene with Ace as an excuse to mask his curiosity.

Woman comes all this way just to see Ace.
Well, isn’t she in for a surprise.

It was an accepted fact that some new floosy blowing into town would be attracted to his brother. This had always been the case, all his life. And that’s why he found this woman so tantalizing.

Just showing up, kind of mysterious.

So he puttered around in the office, brooding, periodically glancing across the road. He’d glimpsed her twice now. First in that clingy tank top, then wearing one of Ace’s T-shirts. Tallish, lean. Short red hair. His eyes drifted up to the windows over the bar. He remembered playing there as a child, when his dad had an office there. Now Ace was probably sticking it to the woman up there—maybe right where he’d put his Tinker Toys together.

He peered out the window and finally he saw Ace’s Tahoe pull in and park in back. He picked up the phone and called. Gordy answered.

“Is he there?” Dale asked.

“Yeah. He just got back.”

“That guy you hit was here this morning with a little kid. He pretended he wanted to look at machinery.”

“I’ll pass it on.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll come over in a little while,” Dale said. He hung up, then stuck his head out the door. “Give me about five minutes to clean up,” he said to Joe. “Then we’ll go across.”

Joe nodded, raised his good hand and pointed. Across the highway, toward town, a small, single-engine plane took off, banked, and headed east.

Dale shut the front door and went into the small bathroom next to the office and inspected the toilet to see if the smart-ass little kid had left any unpleasant messes. She hadn’t. So he washed his face and brushed his teeth and gargled with Scope. Then he took a moment to study his reflection in the mirror. His teeth were normal and healthy but his gums were slightly oversized and made his choppers look slightly like lingering baby teeth.

At rest, Dale was plain. In motion, he tended to look deliberate, the power in him deep, hard to see. Clothes never meant much to him. But he wore a heavy leather belt; keeping himself real tucked in and tightly cinched. If you had stuff you had to keep inside, every little bit helped.

The way his life had worked out he wound up uncomfortable with his body. He had always suffered from a debilitating shyness, and now he went to great lengths to avoid looking at himself disrobed. If he used a public restroom on the highway he made sure the door locked. Then he’d turn out the lights and do his business in the dark.

Dale was a big man with a layer of fat on the outside. But he was solid on the inside. Years spent working around the big iron had given him a hefty core of muscle.

Sometimes he snuck looks at his brother, Ace, and had the impression that there had been a screw-up. Ace, with all his flaws, should have this awkward tub of guts.
He
should have Ace’s body.

As it was, he was just over six feet tall and weighed 240 pounds,
with sloping shoulders and a longish neck. His skin was smooth and white. He wore wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts. This habit struck people as odd in a farming community. “Dale, he avoids the sun,” people said.

That wasn’t it. Dale was hiding his body. Even from himself.

Everywhere he looked he was reminded of his grossness. The images of little-bitty tanned bodies shrieked at him from magazines, TV commercials, and especially the hours of “paid commercial programming” on cable—all those bikini babes demonstrating exercise equipment.

His face was the polar opposite of his older brother’s; as if Ace’s handsome face had been turned inside out. Where Ace’s cheeks were smooth and defined, Dale’s were lumpy with moguls of persistent acne. Where Ace’s nose was straight, Dale’s was thick.

Being plain and naturally reticent, his quiet voice had grown softer and softer over the years.

His hair was dirty blond, unruly even when short, as it was now. It sprouted from his scalp like a neglected lawn taken over by weeds. His eyes were pale blue and flat, without sparkle.

And now he was ready. So he stepped out into ninety-two muggy degrees wearing distressed Levis, steel-toed work shoes, and a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt buttoned to the neck and to the wrists. A broad straw Stetson perched at an angle on his head.

He looked to the east, at the ambiguous sky. According to the Weather Channel the rain had finally tapered off in Minnesota. But the solid cover of clouds remained.

He locked the door to the office and motioned to Joe, who pushed upright in the lawn chair on the concrete apron in front of the office.

“Let’s go have a look,” Dale said.

Joe squinted and said, “I just was over there. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“C’mon,” Dale cajoled and Joe grunted, reluctantly heaving to his feet. And so they walked across Highway 5. When Dale was
little, the Missile Park had smelled like a saloon early in the morning. Sawdust and soap covering a deep underscent of alcohol and tobacco smoke. He remembered the morning sun catching fire in all those bottles behind the bar. Now the bottles were gone. Now it just smelled musty, like what it had become, an empty warehouse.