First the Thunder Read online

  He walked along the side of the house, his hand trailing lightly over the rough, weathered clapboards. He half expected to find that Will and Stevie had chickened out, that nobody was waiting for him. They weren’t really going to do this thing anyway. It was a chickenshit plan to begin with. Nothing ever works out the way you want it to.

  But then he turned the corner and saw two silhouettes sitting on the back porch steps, odd shapes of gray against the darker gray of the building. Harvey could see well enough to distinguish the silhouettes as two men, and he pushed his sudden heave of disappointment away.

  And that was when he thought, Maybe we are going to do it. Breaking and entering and who knows what else. He would have liked to back out and return to his life but he despised his life and everyone who had made it what it was, not least of all himself.

  And what is it? he asked himself, and paused for just a moment before walking up to his brothers. What is your life?

  A joke, he answered. Just one big fucking joke.

  40

  “You’re ten minutes late,” Stevie said, his voice too loud to Harvey’s ears, startling in the darkness. Both Stevie and Will were clad in black from head to toe, only their faces from eyebrows to chin visible beneath black ski caps.

  Harvey thought of his wife at home in bed, curled on her side. Who was she dreaming about right now?

  Inside his head a distant thunder rumbled, and he hoped that this night’s action and whatever followed would quiet the noise, would release the band of metal ever tightening around his skull. He asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  Will flicked on a small flashlight and shone the light toward the ground, illuminating a duffel bag and a telescoping aluminum ladder. Stevie zipped open the bag and held the sides apart so that Harvey, leaning forward, could see two cans of neon-orange spray paint, a long-handled screwdriver, a loop of new nylon rope still in its plastic bag, and several magazines. Stevie pulled one of the magazines and a DVD out of the bag and held them in the flashlight’s beam, just long enough for Harvey to see the glossy photos of half-naked boys on the covers.

  Then Will flicked the flashlight beam off the covers. “Did you bring gloves and a ski mask?” he said.

  “I don’t have a ski mask,” Harvey said.

  Stevie reached into the bag, pulled out a pair of dark-brown cotton work gloves and a black ski mask, and handed them to Harvey. “Now you do,” he said.

  Harvey stuffed the gloves into a hip pocket, and pulled the ski mask over his head, but left his face exposed.

  Stevie snickered. “I had to drive almost fifty miles to get those magazines and DVDs. Clear to the adult bookstore at the truck stop on Exit 41. Jesus, I was so nervous I thought I was going to piss my pants before I could get back outside.”

  Harvey looked at Will’s face but could make nothing of his brother’s expression in the darkness. Harvey asked, “Who’s watching the bar for you?”

  “It’s Sunday night,” Will said. “Remember?” He closed the bar at nine on Sunday evenings. Laci, years ago, had insisted. Family time, she had said. At least one night a week, Will. Please.

  Their plan as new bar owners had been to eventually hire a couple of bartenders as soon as business took off. Maybe even a short-order cook. They would buy a house and rent out the apartment upstairs to one or more of their employees. They would have plenty of time for vacations and family outings, while every night the cash register would sing like a fat soprano. That’s what the previous owner had said on the day they closed the deal. A couple of tweaks and you’ll have that cash register singing like a fat soprano.

  But not a single song had ever issued from that cash register. It never even hummed.

  “I close early on Sunday nights,” Will said.

  Harvey nodded. For some reason this did not feel like a Sunday night. He remembered Sunday morning, remembered meeting Will at the convenience store, but that seemed too distant to be the same day as this one. His mouth tasted chalky. He worked up some spit, swallowed, but his throat did not clear. It felt tight, as if a hand, his own or somebody else’s, was gripped around his neck.

  “The plan,” Will whispered, “is so simple it’s brilliant. We use the ladder to get onto the roof, then get inside through one of the skylights over the cafeteria. Using the rope, of course. Then to the administrative offices, where Stevie will plant the magazines in Kenny’s desk and load the porn onto his computer. We’re thinking maybe—”

  “Wait a minute,” Stevie said. “I just thought of something. Any uploads will be time-stamped.”

  Harvey asked, “What does that mean?”

  Will said, “Shit!”

  “What?” Harvey asked.

  “So we just leave them in a drawer,” Stevie suggested. “Maybe one in the disk drive.”

  “Okay,” Will said. “Okay. Then we trash the office, spray graffiti all over the walls. Then we get out of there the same way we got in. Once we’re all home again, Stevie uses a burner to place an anonymous call to the police to report suspicious noises and lights at the school. The police get there, find the porn, and within twenty-four hours everyone in town is going to want to run Kenny out of town on a rail. Hell, he’ll probably be tarred and feathered before it’s all over and done with.”

  “This could work,” Stevie offered. “It really could.”

  Harvey’s head was spinning. “I know for a fact that Stevie can’t climb twenty feet up a rope.”

  “Speak for yourself, fat ass,” Stevie said with a grin.

  “Okay, me too. I doubt like hell I can do it.”

  “Then we’ll find some other way out,” Will said. “We’ll open a window. They open from the inside, you know. Every classroom’s got them.”

  “What about janitors?” Harvey asked.

  Stevie said, “Last summer when I helped do the roof, everybody went home by six at night, didn’t show up again until six the next morning. The place is empty for twelve hours.”

  “You sure we can get in through a skylight?”

  “We replaced all the flashing for the roof job, had to take the skylights off to do it. All it takes is a Phillips screwdriver.”

  “What about security cameras?”

  “Only place that isn’t covered is the rear wall of the boy’s locker room. ’Cause there aren’t any windows there.”

  “Where’d you buy the paint?” he asked, and felt a sour swell of panic in his stomach. “Stores have security cameras, you know. And the rope. And everything. Shit, Stevie, we’re as good as caught already.”

  “The rope’s old,” Stevie told him. “I’ve had it for years, just never used it. I got the gloves at Dollar General along with six packs of flower seeds. I got the ski masks at Burton’s at the mall. Five-finger discount. They were having a going-out-of-business sale. The place was so busy, no one will even remember I was there.”

  “Somebody’s going to remember two cans of orange spray paint,” Harvey said.

  “Harvey, come on,” Will said. “He bought them at the Walmart in Gallatin. Used the self-checkout scanner.”

  Stevie said, “You can’t for once in your life give me any credit at all, can you?”

  Harvey stood there shaking his head, looking at the ground. How could he describe the feeling washing through him, the dark heaviness of foreboding, the bubble of panic inflating his chest?

  “What?” Will said.

  “If any one thing goes wrong,” Harvey said.

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

  “Famous last words.”

  “What’s with you?” Will asked. “Now you don’t want to do this?”

  “I’m just saying,” Harvey answered. “There are way too many variables.”

  “You know, this is how it’s always been with us, hasn’t it? You get some wild hair up your ass and come running to me about it. I lie awake all night trying to figure out how to help you out with it, and next day you’re like, ‘Oh, I guess it’s not so bad after all.’”

&nb
sp; “Did I say that?”

  “I don’t know; did you? Truth is, I don’t think you even know what you’re saying half the time.”

  “I can still beat the shit out of you.”

  “Still? You never could. Not since I was sixteen anyway.”

  Harvey tried without success to suppress the small smile that, despite his discomfort, came to his lips. He remembered well the time Will first took a swing at him, how after all those years of torment from his big brother, all those knuckle thumps and punches on the arm, how Will, instead of running away as he always had, threw a short, unexpected punch that bloodied Harvey’s lip, then stood there waiting for the rest of the fight, stood his ground like a man, ready to take another beating if necessary. Harvey should have told him then that he was proud of his little brother, glad to see that the boy’s balls had finally dropped. But he hadn’t. He had sneered, as if the blow stung no worse than a mosquito bite. And then he had walked away wordless, still seeing stars.

  “Come on,” Will said. “Haven’t you wanted to trash the place ever since you went there? I know I have.”

  Stevie said, “Yeah but don’t do anything to Mrs. Miller’s room.”

  Both brothers looked at him.

  “She was nice to me,” Stevie said. “I liked her.”

  In the distance a car horn sounded. It was answered by a barking dog.

  Harvey said, “Part of me hates this town and everything in it. I sometimes wonder if we all wouldn’t be better off getting the hell out of here.”

  “Tell you what,” Will said. “Let’s concentrate on getting Kenny out first. Then we’ll see how it looks to you.”

  “The thing is,” Stevie said, “if Kenny goes, he might take the motorcycle with him.”

  Harvey said, “Screw the motorcycle.”

  “Good,” Will told him. “Because this isn’t about the motorcycle anymore.”

  “It never was.”

  “Yeah?” Will said. “In that case, it might be good for us to get some specifics about what this really is about.”

  Harvey replied without inflection. “You don’t need any specifics.”

  Fifteen seconds of silence passed. Then Stevie bent down, grabbed a rail of the ladder and lifted it up. “So are we going to do this?” he asked. “Or do I need to drag this thing back to my truck?”

  Will studied his older brother for a moment. That moment stretched into thirty more seconds. Harvey remained motionless, staring off into the darkness. Then he lifted his head, raised his eyes to the dark sky.

  “I can’t remember a time in my adult life,” he said quietly, “when I didn’t feel alone. Maybe the first few years with Jennalee, I don’t know. But even then . . .”

  Will waited for him to continue. When he did not, Will said, “Everybody feels alone sometimes.”

  “It’s different for you,” Harvey said. “I’ve seen you with Laci and Molly. You’re a family. You’re tight. With me, there’s Jennalee and Kenny and Louise. Then there’s Harvey. I’m just a sidenote to them. Always an outsider.”

  Another long silence surrounded them.

  Then Stevie said, “You guys don’t know the first thing about being alone.”

  “Everybody,” Will said, “and I mean everybody, feels alone at one time or another. I mean sure, Laci and Molly and me, we all love each other. A lot. And we couldn’t make it—financially, I mean—without Laci’s help. But I’m the man in the equation. I’m the one who’s expected to come through. But I can’t. There’s a lot of aloneness in that too.”

  “Okay,” Harvey said. “But let me ask you something. Have you ever felt as if you really belong in this place? The way you did when we were kids? Dad was rough on us, yeah, but we were his kids. We were his family. And we knew it.”

  Will nodded. “Thing is, we’re not anybody’s kids anymore. We’re the adults.”

  Stevie shook his head back and forth. “You guys have no idea.”

  Harvey said, “What are you talking about?”

  “You both have a family.”

  “Are you saying you don’t?” Will asked. “What the hell are we?”

  “It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  Harvey said, “We’re your family, asshole.”

  “Since when?” Stevie asked. “’Cause as long as I can remember, you’ve both treated me like a leper or something. Like I’ve got a contagious disease you don’t want to catch.”

  “You do,” Harvey told him. “It’s called stupidity.”

  “There you go. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “What’s exactly what you mean?” Harvey asked. “What?”

  “You treat me like I don’t matter. You always have.”

  Will put his hand on Stevie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he told him. “But we never saw you that way. You’re our little brother. We just . . . and I know Harvey will agree with me on this. We always held ourselves responsible for your accident. So we did our best to keep you out of, you know . . .”

  “Stuff like this?” Stevie said, and gave the ladder a little shake.

  “Yeah,” Will said. “Stuff like this.”

  “First of all,” Stevie told him. “I came here tonight to bail your asses out when one of you screws up. I’m good at this kind of stuff. Secondly, it wasn’t you two who told me to jump. It was Kenny. And I still owe him. So if you two pussies want to chicken out on tonight, adios. I’m still going in, even if I have to do it alone.”

  Will smiled. Then turned to Harvey and asked, “Satisfied?”

  Harvey stared into the darkness, felt the warm, thick air engulf him. Then he leaned over, feeling like he was going to throw up, but instead picked up the duffel bag, and said, “I’m not sure I know the meaning of the word.”

  41

  Will was the first man down the rope, sliding into the stale-scented coolness, the cafeteria a cavern. At the bottom he quickly adjusted the ski mask to improve his vision through the eyeholes, then stood motionless, catching his breath. He could see reasonably well in the large room, one long wall lined with tall windows overlooking the practice field where, for three years as a boy, he had run wind sprints every August until he thought his lungs would explode. Dim red exit lights glowed over every cafeteria doorway, and even softer white lights shone from the kitchen.

  Though no lunches had been served in this room since the first week of June, the familiar smell was unmistakable, Meatloaf Thursday, and for a moment he heard the clamor of a hundred hungry kids all jabbering at once, the scrape of chairs, clack of plastic trays, clink of forks attacking plates.

  “Hey!” Harvey whispered from above.

  Will aimed his flashlight at the heavens, flashed an “all clear.”

  Harvey came down an inch at a time, grunting. He lost his grip while still eight feet above the tile floor, dropped with another grunt and the smack of his tennis shoes. The duffel bag’s strap slipped over his shoulder and the bag thudded to the floor.

  “For chrissakes,” Will whispered.

  Harvey blew on his hands through the ski mask. “I forgot to put my gloves on. I got a rope burn.”

  Stevie surprised both of them by coming down quickly, sliding in full control with one leg wrapped around the rope. Harvey asked him, “When did you get so agile?”

  “You should see me on the climbing wall at the Y.”

  “The YMCA? In Gallatin? What the hell are you doing at a YMCA?”

  “Tae Bo classes every Tuesday night. Lots of tits and asses in spandex.”

  “Any chance we can get on with this?” Will said. He grabbed the duffel bag and headed for the exit into the hallway.

  Out the double doorway, a right turn down a short hall, then into the spacious lobby, where, every school-day morning, a half dozen buses spill out their charges, hundreds of adolescents loud and eager, groggy and grumbling, carrying with them their scents of bed or shower or breakfast or barn. Then a hard right past the lighted trophy case, up the four steps, administrative
offices on the left, faculty lounge, boys’ and girls’ restrooms on the right.

  The hallways were dark but navigable, one or more small equipment lights glowing in every room, illumination bleeding through the glass or under the solid wooden doors. Will’s eyes quickly adjusted to the dimness, and his memory flooded with details.

  The door to Kenny’s office was locked. The glass panel in the door was opaque, rippled and thick. Will said, “We’re going to have to pry the hinges off.”

  But Harvey pointed to their brother at work four feet away, leaning close to the door that opened into the front office. Stevie had stuck a small suction cup to the clear glass and was now dragging a glass cutter around it in a slow circle.

  “He’s just one surprise after another,” Will whispered.

  Stevie grinned beneath his mask but said nothing. Finally he pocketed the glass cutter, tapped his knuckle around the circle he had cut, wiggled the suction cup until the circle of glass snapped free. Then he inched a gloved hand into the opening, felt for the door lock on the other side and gave it a twist. He swung the door open wide and said to Harvey, “Now will you ask around for me over at Jimmy Dean?”

  And Harvey said, “I guess maybe I will.”

  Just inside the front office Harvey set the duffel bag on the floor. The moment he zipped it open, Stevie reached inside for the spray paint. He handed one can to Will, gave the other to Harvey.

  “I’ll take the porn,” Stevie said. “You guys decorate the walls.”

  Will said, “Tell him what else you’re going to do in there.”

  Stevie turned to Harvey and said, “That was Big-Ass Bobbert’s desk before it was Kenny’s, and I’ve been drinking water and saving up for this all day.”

  Harvey remembered Conrad Bobbert too, the pear-shaped guidance counselor who told each of the brothers in turn to forget about college, don’t even consider it. He had recommended the army for Harvey, a two-year business school for Will. And he had recommended that Stevie—then in his junior year and a talented cartoonist, a boy who had covered his bedroom walls with pen-and-ink caricatures of movie stars and famous singers but was too shy to show his work to anyone outside the family—that Stevie drop out of school and fill the school’s new vacancy for a janitor. None of the boys took Bobbert’s advice.