The Scent of Rain and Lightning (3 page)

“You think I’d throw a beer away?”

Billy sulked in the passenger’s seat for the remainder of the drive.

Chase eyed the backs of both of their heads and then closed his eyes.

As the speed limit dropped on the approach to Rose, Hugh-Jay slowed to twenty miles an hour. They rolled past grain elevators, a convenience store, a Pizza Hut, a Chinese restaurant, an abandoned train station, and the Leafy Green Truck Stop with its attached café. He turned right onto Main Street, which took them down a four-lane corridor of modest frame and brick homes and then through the three-block downtown with its sprinkling of small enterprises. They passed Rose’s three-room public library, the two-room City Hall, the senior citizen center, an art gallery that was open only by appointment, the former bank where Hugh-Jay and Chase’s sister Belle were creating a history museum, and Bailey’s Bar & Grill, which was a tavern and the only place in town where a person could get served a decent steak, along with a beer or mixed drinks. As they passed other vehicles on the street, Hugh-Jay raised a gloved hand to greet their drivers, who performed the same friendly courtesy to him. His own home would have taken him north onto a block of big houses, but he turned south to get to Billy’s poorer neighborhood, where it sometimes seemed as if there were more old cars in the front yards than grass.

When Hugh-Jay parked in front of the small white house where Billy lived with Valentine and their son, he said, “You want cash for today?”

“Yeah.” Billy’s tone was sullen.

Hugh-Jay pulled out his wallet and counted out enough bills to equal the hourly minimum wage. Ordinarily, and without anybody in the family knowing, he would have added an extra ten, but on this day he didn’t do it. He handed the cash to Billy, who took it with an angry, disappointed grab, and said, “You think I’m ever going to see any more of this, Hugh-Jay?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you did, maybe you won’t do it again.”

Billy threw himself out of the truck, slammed the door, and yelled through the open window, “Didn’t fuckin’ do nothing wrong the first time!” Then he grabbed the rim of the open window, glared into the backseat and said, “Don’t think I’m going to forget what you said, Chase.”

Chase opened his eyes halfway. “You’re not supposed to forget it.”

As the brothers drove off, Hugh-Jay said, “Why’d you say that to him?”

“About beating Val? ’Cause it’s true.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I don’t think pretty sure is good enough for an accusation like that.”

“Well, that’s your problem.”

Hugh-Jay glanced back, surprised at the acid in Chase’s tone. Instead of pursuing it, however, he said, “Do you think Dad overreacted today?”

“No. I think he ought to have stopped hiring Billy a long time ago.”

Hugh-Jay nodded. “You want to ride up here?”

“This is okay. We’re not going far, are we?”

Hugh-Jay sighed. “I guess you think you’re having supper with Laurie and me?”

Chase, who had a talent for instantly recapturing his own natural good humor any time he lost it, grinned at him in the mirror. “Doesn’t Laurie Jo always set an extra place for me, just in case I show up?” Chase and Bobby Linder ate at their brother and sister-in-law’s home so often they both kept changes of clothing there, for cleaning up when they came in covered with horse hair and dirt. Suddenly, Chase turned uncharacteristically serious again. “You don’t think Billy will take this out on Val or his kid, do you?”

It took Hugh-Jay half a block to think about it.

Then he turned the truck around and drove back.

“Let’s make sure,” he said.

W
HEN THEY PULLED UP
in front of the small white house again, Billy’s wife and young son were in the front yard. In the sparse grass by his mother’s bare feet, the boy, Collin, was playing with a toy silver gun, twirling it around his left forefinger, then pointing it, then twirling it some more. His mother was a pale girl, thin, with hair so blond it looked white under the unrelenting sun, but the boy looked like his father—dark, handsome in a sharp-featured way.

The boy was alert to their arrival before his mother was, and looked up.

By unspoken agreement, both of the brothers got out of the truck, slamming their doors behind them. It was only when Hugh-Jay walked up to Valentine and her boy that he realized Chase had hung back and was leaning against the truck, even though it must have felt hot as a branding iron. Maybe he was resting his weight on his belt, Hugh-Jay thought.

“Hey, Valentine,” he said politely.

He winked at her son.

The seven-year-old cocked his head to one side as if evaluating the gesture, and then looked down at his toy gun, pausing in his play in the serious way he had, the way that made people worry about him.

“I didn’t see you out here before,” Hugh-Jay told her.

“I thought you might come in,” she said rather mysteriously.

He didn’t know why she’d think that, since he never had been in their house before. He looked down at himself. “Not with all this dirt on me.”

“Billy wanted us outside.” She didn’t sound resentful, just resigned, as if this was something to which she was accustomed—her young husband ordering her and their son to get away from him. She looked scrubbed clean and so did the boy. A smell of soap wafted from them, as if she had gone to some trouble to make them both look nice for when their husband and father came home. For all the good it did either of them, Hugh-Jay thought. His own wife, Laurie, didn’t do that for him, but then she didn’t have to fix herself up to make her husband want her.

“He went into the bedroom to take a nap,” Val was saying. “He wants some peace and quiet.”

Hugh-Jay frowned but didn’t say anything to embarrass her.

He didn’t find Valentine Crosby attractive, though he knew some men did. He’d overheard his wife Laurie comment to his sister Belle one time that Val Crosby could be pretty if she put on some makeup and “did something with that stringy hair.” Hugh-Jay didn’t think any of that would help much; although she had big breasts, he thought she otherwise looked scrawny. She had dark circles around her eyes that didn’t flatter her like his wife’s eye shadow flattered her brown eyes. He looked for the rumored bruise on Valentine’s jaw but didn’t see any sign of it. He felt suddenly guilty and grateful that his own beautiful, healthy, loved wife would never look like this defeated-looking girl and that his own daughter would never have the wary look of this somber boy.

Valentine Crosby glanced shyly up at him, a foot taller than she.

She hadn’t grown up with all of them the way Billy had; Billy had found her in Scott City, a county away, when he was working a summer job in a cattle feed lot. She’d been a clerk in the office there, sixteen years old, and soon pregnant, and then married to Billy and moving to Rose.

“How old is he now?” Hugh-Jay asked, even though he knew.

“Seven.”

She sidestepped a few inches and looked past him, toward his truck where Chase lounged.

Hugh-Jay nodded, unable to think of a single other thing to say about children, and also unable to think of how to ask what he wanted to ask her. He could have kicked Chase for hanging back.

“How’s your little girl?” she asked him in her high, light voice.

Every time she spoke now, she glanced over at the truck.

“Jody’s fine. Thanks for asking.” He gnawed on one side of his lower lip. “Uh, Billy had a kind of rough day, I guess you know.”

“What happened?”

“He ticked off my dad—”

“Your dad?” Her pale eyes widened and she looked panicked beyond anything he expected. “But your mom and dad, they’re the very last people who’ll hire him! Is your dad going to hire Billy anymore?”

He wanted to reassure her but couldn’t. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, God!” She brought both hands to her mouth. “What’ll we do?”

“Are things that bad?” he asked, feeling awkward and stiff.

Her eyes filled with tears. “We can’t live on what I make three days a week checking at the grocery. And Billy won’t take welfare, won’t even let me apply for it. He hates charity.”

Not enough to decline a free beer, Hugh-Jay thought, or my ten bucks.

He suddenly realized those extra dollars had probably always gone to please Billy, and never to help his wife or son. Hugh-Jay reached for his wallet, took out every bill in it, and handed them to Valentine. “Take this. Don’t tell him. I know it’s not much, but I’ll talk to my dad about hiring him again.”

She didn’t argue, just took it, and slipped it into a pocket of her shorts.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Your family’s always been good to Billy.” And then she said a thing that sent shivers down Hugh-Jay’s spine on that hot day. He thought at first that it was a non sequitur. “I sold Billy’s truck. Just before he got home. I haven’t told him yet. What do you think he’s going to do?”

“Sold his truck?” he asked dumbly.

Her son stared up at them, frowning, letting the toy gun hang limp.

“It’s not really Billy’s. He hasn’t got any credit. It’s in my name.”

That didn’t mean Billy didn’t think it was his, Hugh-Jay thought. He wondered who had the balls or was crazy enough to buy Billy Crosby’s truck out from under him.

“Who’d you sell it to?”

She looked surprised at the question. “Your dad.”

Hugh-Jay stared at Valentine and felt dumb again. “
My
dad?” he said, as if she must have meant somebody else’s father.

“Yeah, he called a little while ago and made an offer.” Innocently, she added, “I wouldn’t have thought it was worth that much.”

“Did he say why he wants it?”

Again she looked surprised at his question. “Because he needs a truck, I guess? He told me you were bringing Billy home. He said to tell you and your brother to pick up the truck and drive it to your house, or out to your ranch.” She shaded her eyes to look into his. “I said you don’t have to wait on the paperwork, or till it’s officially yours. You should go on ahead and take it now. It’s out back. The keys are in it. Maybe you can drive it away real quiet so it doesn’t wake Billy up?”

Good idea, Hugh-Jay thought wryly. “What are
you
going to do?”

“Me?”

“For a car.”

“Collin and I never go anywhere we can’t walk.” She looked back at her house. “And now
he
won’t, either.”

“Listen,” Hugh-Jay said, and then didn’t know where to go from that beginning. When she frowned, he said, “If you need help … I mean, if you need anything, call Laurie or me, okay?”

He had a nervous feeling about promising that his wife might help, especially when it came to helping somebody about whom she didn’t give two hoots. Which, Hugh-Jay had to admit in that uncomfortable instant, described most people that Laurie had ever known.

But they lived only three blocks from Val and Billy.

Surely, Laurie wouldn’t refuse to help if Valentine really needed it.

He heard a car rev up a couple of blocks away. Then he heard the sound of some kid—probably in the high school marching band—practicing on an instrument that sounded hideously like a tuba. It was all bleats and squeaks. Hugh-Jay wondered how the band director would ever get the young “musician” ready to play in time for half-time at Homecoming in November.

We’re such a small town, he thought.

Val Crosby glanced away in embarrassment at his implication that she might need rescuing, but then she nodded, with her face bent toward her son. The boy was still concentrating on his toy gun, and in that instant he aimed and “shot” it toward the sound of the tuba practice.

“Bang,” the boy said. “Bang, bang, you’re dead, but not really.”

“Not really?” Hugh-Jay asked him.

Collin looked up at his great height. “On TV. They shoot them, but they’re never really dead. It’s like a game.”

“Real guns aren’t a game,” Hugh-Jay reminded him.

“I know,” the boy said solemnly, and then he aimed his toy at his own head and pulled its trigger.

“Collin!” his mother cried, with a little scream. “Don’t ever do that!”

“Not even in play,” Hugh-Jay told him, feeling horror-struck by the kid’s action and lack of reaction. “Never. Not as a joke. Not playing around. Never on anybody else, and most important of all, not on yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy said, and looked as if he meant it.

W
HEN HE GOT BACK
behind the steering wheel, still feeling shaken by what the seven-year-old had done with the gun, Hugh-Jay found Chase in the passenger side of the front seat.

“Did you see that?”

“We all did that kind of thing. On ourselves. On Belle.” Chase smiled at the memory of tormenting his sister. “That was fun. Don’t you remember?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yeah, it’s irresistible. We played around, just like him.”

Hugh-Jay shook his head, finding that hard to believe but feeling comforted nonetheless. They were all still alive. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. “Dad would have killed us,” he said, still skeptical. “Mom would have killed us and then killed us all over again.”

“Not if they didn’t see it.”

“You were a big help just now,” Hugh-Jay said then, with mild sarcasm. He told his brother about their father, about the truck, about how Chase was going to have to get out again and drive Billy’s truck over to Hugh-Jay’s home. “You can park it behind the garage. Make sure it’s out of sight. I hope we aren’t making things worse for her.”

“Again.” Chase put a hand on the door handle. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?”

“That’s what I said earlier, that I hoped we weren’t making things worse.”

His brother shot him a suspicious glance. “You’re not screwing around with her, are you?”

“Billy’s wife? Are you kidding? Hell, no.”

“She kept looking at you.”

“Beats looking at you.”

Hugh-Jay laughed, and Chase grinned at him.

“Give me some credit, will you?” the younger brother requested.

“For what, respecting another man’s marriage?”

Chase grinned again, as he opened the door again. “No, for having better taste in women.”

It hit Hugh-Jay wrong, and was one of the few moments in his life when he didn’t like his middle brother very much. “Let’s go home,” he said sourly. “To
my
home.
My
wife.
My
supper.
My
television set.”

“Sheesh,” Chase joked as he stepped out. “Possessive, are we?”

T
HAT EVENING SEEMED
to pass peacefully in Rose and on the farms and ranches all around it. Chase parked Billy’s truck behind his brother’s garage and threw the keys onto their kitchen table, where they remained until he got ordered to set the table. He flirted supper out of his pretty sister-in-law, Laurie, and then pushed his giggling three-year-old niece Jody on the swing in the backyard. Then he walked over to Bailey’s Bar & Grill for a few beers before returning to a guest bedroom at his brother’s house.

Hugh-Jay called their father to ask about the truck, and Hugh Senior said, “Valentine told your mother in the grocery store last week that Billy was still driving, in spite of his license suspension. She told your mother that sometimes he has their little boy in the car when he’s been drinking. Your mother and I discussed it, and we agreed that we could not with good conscience allow that to continue. So we decided to take the truck away from him in the way best suited to help his wife and son. I suppose we could have reported him to the sheriff, who could have set up a trap for him, but how would that help Valentine pay the rent? It wouldn’t. But purchasing the truck for more than they can get for it from anybody else will help them, plus it will keep Billy from killing himself or somebody else on the road.”

Hugh-Jay couldn’t argue with his parents’ logic.