The Scent of Rain and Lightning

3

WHEN 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.

WHEN 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?”

THAT 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.

He was proud of them for doing it.

Out at High Rock Ranch, Annabelle and Hugh Linder ate a light supper of cold fried chicken with their youngest child, Bobby. Even their daughter Belle was gone, spending the evening at her bank-cum-museum, closing a deal on a stuffed buffalo head. Over Annabelle’s cold green bean salad and her radish-potato salad, Hugh lectured Bobby about college, and Bobby lectured his dad about giving tenth chances to “losers like Billy Crosby.” Annabelle finally told them to lay off each other or else she wouldn’t let them eat the last of her chocolate-vanilla marble cake, which was their favorite.

That being the price of goodness, father and son simmered down.

Inside the little white frame house three blocks away from Hugh-Jay and Laurie and Chase, Billy Crosby woke up late from his nap and went outside looking for the truck he wasn’t supposed to drive.

Moments later seven-year-old Collin heard his father yelling and his mother crying. Then he heard his dad slam the front door, and then he went back to reading a book that was two grades above his own level because his teacher recognized a high IQ when she occasionally saw one. His heart was pounding hard, and he knew that if he could get lost in a story, the sad feelings might go away. The book was about a courageous knight on a quest to kill a monster so he could marry a beautiful princess and inherit the kingdom. Collin read until his eyes burned, and then he kept reading to the happy ending.