Only the Rain Read online

  Unfortunately, Rev. Miller’s sermon that day was about “the reckoning that none can escape.” On the way home I asked Gee what kind of wrecking it was going to be. Could it happen in a school bus, for example? Would it happen when I was on my bike?

  She explained that the word was three syllables, not two, and that it meant a final judgment. The day when every soul is called to account for its sins.

  And that’s what I was remembering at the community picnic when I was walking back toward Cindy in a kind of slow-motion haze. This is my reckoning, I kept thinking. But it’s not even the final one. This was only the Cindy reckoning. There was also bound to be a McClaine reckoning. And probably a Donnie reckoning of some kind, though in truth I was actually looking forward to that one. Most likely there’d be a Pops reckoning too. And maybe even a legal reckoning, which actually made me sick to my stomach that day because of the courthouse looming above me.

  It’s funny how many fears and thoughts and agonies can go crashing through your brain while you’re walking in a slow-motion haze toward the woman you love.

  “Oh honey,” Gee had told me back when I was little and scared and thinking me and everybody I loved was going to have some kind of wreck like my mother did. She reached out while she was driving to squeeze my hand. “Not wrecking. Rec-kon-ing. They mean entirely different things.”

  But what she failed to mention was that they feel pretty much the same.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” Cindy said.

  I looked into the bouncy house to see how the girls were doing. Emma was sitting in one corner, bouncing up and down on her butt while Dani and the other kids kept trampolining from wall to wall.

  To Cindy I said, “Now’s not the place or time for that.”

  She reached down then and took hold of my right hand and lifted it toward her. It was only then I realized I was still holding the sheet of paper, but all balled up in my fist now. She pulled back my fingers and pried the paper loose and opened it up again, looked at it for a second and then grabbed me around the wrist and dragged me back behind the bouncy house. There was an empty space of maybe four feet between the bouncy house and the courthouse, with a long orange extension cord running from the bouncy house power unit to an electrical outlet carved into a granite block. The hum from the blower that kept the bouncy house inflated made a low, steady echo against the granite.

  Cindy said, “Who were those men? And what’s this about you and that Shelley being friends?”

  “I never saw those guys before today.”

  She held the paper up in front of my face. “You have these boots,” she said. “Are these your footprints?”

  “They could be,” I answered “Or they could be a million other guys’.”

  “Where was this picture taken?”

  “Cindy, come on. We’ll talk about this at home.”

  “How do you know her? Were you in her house?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “My father knows, doesn’t he? Do you want me to ask him?”

  I moved closer and put my hands on her shoulders. She’s as rigid and cold as a slab of stone. “Sweetheart. Listen. I swear to God. I met that girl once for maybe five minutes. I said maybe ten words to her total. Nothing happened. And nothing ever would. I swear that to you on my children’s souls.”

  She was blowing one quick breath after another out between her lips. And then her eyes started to tear up and her body sagged a little beneath my hands. “You and the girls are my life,” I told her. “The only life I will ever want or ever need.”

  Bit by bit her breaths got slower, every exhalation a little longer than the last. Finally she broke eye contact with me, looked at the back of the bouncy house for a few seconds. Then she folded up the piece of paper and slipped it into her hip pocket. She said, “I think it’s time we pack things up and head back home.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said.

  We drove home from the picnic without much talking, same as I expected we would. Every now and then Cindy would turn around and ask the girls a question, like what was the favorite thing you did today? Something that would get them chattering again for a few minutes. Pops sat in the back with a girl on each side of him, hugging up against him. Sometimes he would tickle one of them and I’d get startled by a quick burst of giggles.

  Most of the way to Pops’ place I followed an Escalade moving maybe forty miles per hour tops, so it didn’t take me long to start hating the driver and the vehicle itself. What the hell is an escalade anyway? I wondered. I know what an escapade is, and I know what it means to escalate, but the word “escalade” did not make any sense to me. In fact I got so impatient with the driver in front of me, who seemed to think it was necessary to slow down and tap his brakes every twenty feet or so, that I finally started thinking out loud. Pops surprised me by knowing the answer to my question.

  He said, “You’ve probably seen a dozen movies with escalades in them.”

  “Like this stupid Cadillac in front of me? That’s the only kind I’ve ever seen.”

  “You never seen soldiers trying to climb into a castle or a fort using ladders?”

  “Yeah. And most times they get burning oil dumped on them.”

  “That’s called an escalade. Trying to scale a wall with ladders. It’s where the word ‘escalator’ comes from.”

  Cindy turned halfway in her seat and gave Pops a big smile. “I’m impressed,” she said.

  He said, “I tend to have that effect on the ladies. Right, girls?”

  “I still don’t see what that has to do with a vehicle,” I said. “What wall is that vehicle climbing?”

  “What does Lumina have to do with my little car?” he asked. “What that word really means is the open space inside my intestines.”

  “Ewww!” Dani said, which was probably the effect Pops was going for.

  “How do you know all these words?” Cindy asked.

  “You didn’t know I’m such a brainy guy, did you, sweetie? Truth is, I’ve been playing a lot of Scrabble with a former English professor. She whups me good every time, but at least I’m learning a thing or two from my beatings. It’s got so that now, every time I hear a word I don’t know, I look it up.”

  Cindy said, “Maybe that’s something you should try, Russell.”

  “What? Playing Scrabble?”

  She said, “No. Learning a little something.”

  For Cindy to say that in front of the girls and Pops, it hit me like a slap. My face went red and hot. And I realized then how angry at me she still was. She was still stinging from being humiliated at the picnic, from the suggestion that I’d been cheating on her. She’d been stewing about that the same as I’d been stewing about those McClaine brothers and what their next move might be.

  So I sat there with my mouth clamped shut and my stomach churning until I pulled up in front of Pops’ place. Then I told her, “I’ll be right back. I need to make a pit stop.”

  In the lobby I gave Pops a quick hug and told him, “I’m going to hit the head. I’ll call you in a day or so.”

  Then I hustled down the hall to the men’s room and made it into a stall maybe half a second before I started throwing up. I gagged and spit until I felt like crying.

  When I came back out of the stall to wash up, there was Pops leaning against the wall. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Something I ate, I guess.”

  “I ate the same things you did, Rusty.”

  Him calling me Rusty again, which he hadn’t done since before I went into the Army, made my stomach buckle. I turned on the tap and rinsed out my mouth.

  He tore a couple sheets of paper towel off the dispenser and walked over and handed them to me. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I don’t know you,” he said. “I know you like the back of my hand.”

  I took the paper towels and wiped my face off. I still couldn’t look him in the eye, so I looked at myself in the mirror. “What do you know about a couple of brothe
rs named McClaine?” I said.

  “I saw those boys at the picnic today,” Pops said.

  “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “What do they have to do with you?”

  “I’m trying to find that out. Can you tell me what you know about them?”

  “I know I wouldn’t want you messin’ with them.”

  “I’m not but I think Donnie is. He pointed me out to them today. Then they wanted to know if I have a pair of desert boots. They had a picture of tread marks off somebody’s floor. Trying to track somebody down, I guess.”

  “That piece of shit Donnie would turn on his own mother if there was a dollar in it for him.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  Pops leaned up against a sink and gave me a hard look. “You have a pair of those boots.”

  “Me and a few thousand other guys, yeah. But you still haven’t told me anything about those brothers.”

  “They’re like Donnie except meaner and nastier. Neither one of them’s ever worked an honest day in his life.”

  “What are they into?”

  “Whatever they can get their fingers in. Started out, I seem to remember, rolling Amish guys. They was arrested for that. Both did a little time, but not enough. I don’t like judging a man on rumor but those two are an exception. And over the years, rumor’s had them involved with everything from pimping to assault to breaking and entering to dealing. These days they always manage to skate, though. Learned a thing or two in prison, I guess. Or one of them did. That would be Phil, the older one. The other one’s Howard, goes by Bubby. He’s more than a little light on the intellect.”

  I nodded. Couldn’t think of anything else to do or say.

  “What do they got against you?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  He kept looking at me. Not that I could see him doing it, but I could sure enough feel it, even as I stood there staring down at the faucet. It was made of brass and getting that bluish crust along the joints and seams. The longer I stared at it the harder it was to look away.

  Finally he straightened up. “Whatever it is, don’t let it get out of hand.”

  “There’s nothing to get out of hand, Pops.”

  He nodded once. Then turned and headed for the door. “Nip it in the bud, son. If I taught you anything, I taught you that.”

  When he walked out, it felt like he took all the air out with him. He had me for a liar, I’d seen it in his eyes right from the start. One bad decision, and now this. I wanted to put my fist through that face in the mirror.

  Cindy never said a word about the incident at the picnic until she came to bed that night. I was already in bed, stiff as a board underneath the cotton sheet. She came out of the bathroom wearing a full set of summer pajamas, which I knew right there was a bad sign. Plus she left the bathroom light on, then also turned on the table lamp on the nightstand. And tossed that sheet of paper down on my chest.

  “You plan to tell me or what?” she said. “Cause if you’re not, you might as well get out of my bed right now.”

  I took the paper and crumpled it up and dropped it off the side of the bed. Then I rolled toward her and pulled the covers back. “Turn the lights out and come lay down,” I said.

  It took her a few seconds to move, but she finally did. She flicked off the bathroom light, then the table lamp. Then she climbed in, rolled onto her side and looked me square in the eyes. “Why’d you lie about having those boots?”

  A long, slow breath came out of my mouth then. It felt like surrender, which I knew I had to do.

  “Remember that day I got caught in the rain coming home from work?”

  “What about it?”

  “That was the day I found out the plant was closing. I had to take a new way home because of an accident on the main road. It was mostly farmland, second-growth timber, a few houses here and there . . .”

  “And?”

  “I’m taking it fairly easy in the rain because the roads are slick. And I pass this one house, out in the middle of nowhere. A little cottage is all it is. Some kind of mongrel dog chained up to the front porch. But there’s music blasting out of the house, I can hear it from the road. And there’s this woman in the yard. Turning circles in the mud and the rain. Dancing, I guess.”

  “What kind of a woman?”

  “That one at the picnic today. With the two guys.”

  “So you stopped?”

  “No! I mean I did, but only because she slipped in the mud and fell down flat on her back. So I slowed down and kept watching and she never got up. Never even moved. So yeah, I stopped. If she was hurt, you know, I couldn’t ride away and leave her lying there.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “I really don’t know. She was high as a kite on something. I mean . . . she was outside dancing, and she was . . .”

  “She was what, Russell?”

  “She didn’t have any clothes on.”

  “What!” she said.

  I just nodded.

  “What did you do?”

  “I asked if she was okay, but I couldn’t understand much of what she said.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  “I should have. That’s what I should’ve done. But she was trying to get up then and said something about me carrying her inside.”

  “I thought you couldn’t understand her.”

  “Most of it I couldn’t. A word here and there is all. But she kept reaching up to me and saying what I thought was, ‘Take me inside. Take me inside.’ So I picked her up and carried her inside.”

  “She was completely naked and you picked her up?”

  “Sweetie, what was I supposed to do? Let her lay there hurt?”

  “How did you pick her up?”

  “One hand under her shoulders, one hand under her knees.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I carried her inside.”

  “Where inside?”

  “The front room was like . . . nothing but a couple of chairs and a TV set. So I took a look in the nearest room and there was a mattress on the floor, so I laid her down on it.”

  “Nothing but a mattress?”

  “A single old mattress, that’s it. I kept asking if she was okay, if she wanted me to call anybody, but all she did was to keep smiling, you know? It didn’t seem like she was in any pain.”

  “So you what? You left her there?”

  “I honestly didn’t know what else to do. She seemed fine physically, other than being sky-high on something. And that house, I don’t know, it felt strange to me. It wasn’t a place people lived. So I’m thinking about you, I’m thinking about the girls. I’m thinking whatever this place is, I don’t want to be seen here. So yeah, I left. I got my ass out of there and back home to you.”

  “And that’s it?” she said.

  “That’s it. I swear.”

  “It was your boot prints on the floor?”

  “Probably.”

  “So what do they care for? Those men. If that’s all that happened. They should be grateful to you. Not looking like they want to hurt somebody.”

  “All I can figure is they came home and found her there, probably sleeping it off on the mattress, mud everywhere, some man’s boot prints leading into the room where she is, and they jumped to the wrong conclusions. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but she had a pretty good-size bruise on her face. Somebody had laid into her for some reason.”

  Cindy was silent awhile, looking at me but not looking at me, if you know what I mean. Convincing herself to believe me, you know? And I want her to believe me, Spence. More than anything in the world I want that. Even though I’m sick to my stomach for not telling her the whole truth.

  So finally she says, “So now what?”

  “Now nothing,” I say.

  “Are you sure? What about those men?”

  “They were fishing, that’s all. I’m guessing that girl mentioned that the guy who helped her was on a motorc
ycle. And they matched up the boot prints with GI desert boots. But that’s all they know. That’s all they’ll ever know.”

  “So how’d they match the boots and the motorcycle with you?”

  “Your fucking father, that’s how. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to swear. But I saw him pointing me out to them. Apparently he knows them. I can even hear that slimy you-know-what. ‘Hey, my son-in-law has boots like that. Hey, my son-in-law rides a motorcycle.’”

  “I saw you talking to him.”

  “I know you did. I’m not trying to hide anything here.”

  A few moments passed. Then she laid a hand against my chest. “Every time I see him I get sick to my stomach.”

  “That makes two of us. I told him you don’t want him around. I told him I better never see him anywhere near this place again.”

  I thought she might have a few more questions for me, but she didn’t. The thing about Cindy is, she knows what she has, and she knows she wants to keep it. She slid up closer and laid her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and buried my nose and mouth in her hair. Her scent went into me like light into darkness.

  The only problem was, I knew the darkness was still there. I knew it was all around us now. And I knew who had invited it in.

  First grade started for Dani the day after Labor Day. On Friday of that week I had a job interview with Lowe’s in the afternoon—nothing special, wear a red vest and a name tag and help people find the lightbulb aisle, that kind of thing—so Cindy had to get off work early to pick up Dani. There’s an afterschool program at the school she goes to, though; they hire a couple of high schoolers to watch the little ones until four in the afternoon, keeping them active on the playground or on rainy days in the gym. But on Friday those extra minutes or so of playtime brought Cindy as close to a breakdown, and me too in a different kind of way, as either of us ever wants to come.