First the Thunder Page 18

  46

  Will sat alone in the darkened bar with the door locked and the television off. He was ashamed of his stupidity and ashamed that he had involved Stevie and Harvey in it. Ashamed of wanting something that could never be his. He would settle now for having things the way they used to be, back when his mother still mothered and his father was still alive. Back in the innocent times. The first day of buck season, for example, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, one of the holiest of days.

  Because hunting had never been about violence, not as far as Will was concerned. It had been about the tenderness of the woods and of walking tenderly through them with his brothers and father, the way the sun rose on naked trees limned with ice or hoary with frost, of black branches looking diamond crusted, the sunlight as soft as candlelight, the woods as hushed as a murmured prayer. And it had been about that almost sacred moment of coming upon a magnificent animal in the heart of those woods bathed in shafted sunlight and shadow, the breathless stillness of seeing one another in that sudden sanctified moment, hunter and hunted, the two connected by the invisible thread of the bullet about to fly.

  Nor had Will ever felt violence in the ritual of gutting and skinning, nor later around the camp stove with their bellies full, mouths pleasantly numbed by the whiskey they sipped. All this had never seemed violent to him but an ancestral ceremony that strengthened and cleansed him for the other part of his life, the tedium and labor.

  But all that seemed a long time gone. The woods were smaller now and there were more hunters in them. Even deep in the woods you could hear eighteen-wheelers rumbling along the highway. The stillness and the tenderness were no more. The world was not a tender place, had had all tenderness stripped away, loaded into trucks and hauled off, incinerated in huge furnaces, reduced to ash and smoke and acid rain.

  47

  Harvey had to pound on the door of Stevie’s trailer for three solid minutes before Stevie finally appeared behind a curtained window, peeking out. Then the door creaked open and Stevie whispered, “Jesus. I thought you were the police.”

  Harvey pushed past him and into the kitchen. The place looked fairly clean for a change, not the way it usually did, as if a couple of suitcases and a refrigerator had exploded. Stevie looked small and frightened standing there in nothing but an old pair of gym shorts, looked as if he expected Harvey to attack him, to blame him for the awful discovery he had made. But Harvey went straight to the laptop on the kitchen table, saying before he got there, “I want that flash drive.”

  “It’s in here,” Stevie told him, and opened the hallway closet, bent down, reached inside one of his work boots. He pulled out the flash drive and took it to Harvey, who was seated at the kitchen table now, facing Stevie’s laptop, its screen raised by Harvey and coming awake.

  When the log-in page displayed, Harvey laid the flash drive on the keyboard, leaned to the side and said, “Log in and pull up those pictures.”

  “Ahh, I don’t know if I need to be looking at those—”

  “Don’t pretend you haven’t seen them more than once already. Just pull them up for me.”

  Leaning in beside Harvey, Stevie logged in his username and password, then plugged the flash drive into the port, opened the drive and brought up the folders. Icons for fourteen folders numbered consecutively. “Which one do you want opened?” he asked.

  “Which one did you open at the school?”

  “The last one.”

  “That one,” Harvey said.

  Stevie double-clicked, and the sixteen photos appeared in quick succession, lined up like erotic playing cards across the screen.

  Then he turned away and went into the living room and stood there at the window, looking out into the darkness. Harvey knew that his modesty was a farce, that Stevie had certainly looked at each and every one of the photos already, all fourteen folders, had probably copied them onto his hard drive. Maybe even masturbated while looking at them. Harvey knew all this but he didn’t care. He was beyond caring now, except for one last thing.

  Harvey gazed intently at each of the photos. Then returned to one in particular. Leaned closer to the screen. Squinted, trying to see it better. He said, “Is there any way to make this picture bigger?”

  Stevie wanted to turn away from the curtained window but didn’t. “You mean the whole thing?”

  “The whole thing, parts of it, I don’t care. I just need it bigger.”

  “There’s a little icon in the tool bar, up along the top of the screen. Looks like a magnifying glass. Click on it, then click on the photo you want to enlarge.”

  Harvey clicked on the photo. He still couldn’t see what he wanted to see.

  “Every time you click,” Stevie told him, “it will get bigger.”

  Harvey clicked four more times. Then he could see it. Jennalee’s hand. The wedding band on her fourth finger. Not just a golden glow on her finger anymore, not a trick of the light. Indisputable.

  Calmly, too calmly, Harvey said, “So is this the most recent bunch?”

  “Yeah,” Stevie said.

  “Any way to tell how old it is?”

  “Right-click on the photo, then select Properties.”

  “You do it,” Harvey said. He stood and made room for Stevie. Stood there watching over his shoulder. Staring at the filth in front of him.

  “The sixteenth of last month,” Stevie told him.

  “That’s when it was taken?”

  “It’s when it was loaded onto the drive.”

  “What about the other folders?” Harvey said. “You have any idea how old they are?”

  Stevie sat leaning forward, shoulders hunched. Finally he said, “The oldest one’s about four years old.”

  “Four years,” Harvey repeated. For a few moments he couldn’t get his thoughts straight, couldn’t reason out the implication. He had to say it out loud. “Just this one bunch covers the past four years. So there’s probably more. Other flash drives. Clear back to the beginning.”

  “Digital didn’t happen till the midnineties or so,” Stevie said.

  Harvey wasn’t listening. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. Took a long deep breath through his nose. Blew it out through his mouth. Then he lowered his hands, blinked, widened his eyes and blinked again. He stood staring wide-eyed into the living room and down the short hall and out the back of the trailer and down the dark empty streets and into the nothingness of space. Kept staring and staring until he felt weightless and free falling and had to put a hand out to the back of the chair to steady himself.

  A moment later he held his other hand out in front of Stevie. “I’m going to need that flash drive,” he said.

  48

  Harvey stood on the threshold to his bedroom. The room was at once familiar and foreign to him, as if he had been away a very long time. The room looked smaller than he remembered it, and parts of it were ugly now. He had never liked that green brocaded wallpaper. The comforter on the bed, the big useless headboard, the dresser with its baroque brass handles. He had chosen none of them. Gave her everything she’d ever asked for.

  Jennalee had fallen asleep with the reading light on, a magazine facedown on the bedspread, the television on with the volume turned low. A part of him wondered what magazine it was, what she might have chosen to divert her thoughts at a time like this. On the back cover was an advertisement for Absolut vodka. He thought about coming forward off the threshold and turning the magazine over, but he did not move.

  Jennalee slept on her side, her knees drawn up. She was wearing only panties and a matching teddy, eggshell white. The ceiling fan turned. He could feel the slightest of breezes across his face. He could smell the refrigerated air blowing softly from the air conditioner vents. Why did she need both the fan and the air conditioner? And why had he never noticed that before?

  She awoke with a start, though he had made not a sound. Her head jerked up off the pillow; legs straightened. For a moment she lay there blinking at the wall. Then she turn
ed her head slightly, saw him there in the doorway. She said nothing. She tried out a smile.

  Harvey said, “There was a break-in at the school tonight.”

  She tried to make her voice sound sleepy. “I know, Kenny called me. A bunch of kids apparently.”

  “Apparently,” Harvey said. “Apparently they wrote stuff about him on the walls. Called him a pervert.”

  She ran a hand over her forehead. “Who told you that?”

  “Laci told Will.”

  “Is that where you’ve been all this time?” she asked. “Over at Will’s?”

  He held the flash drive in his fist. Rubbed it with his middle finger. “You ever hear that about him?” he asked. “About him being a pervert?”

  She crinkled her eyebrows, gave him a confused look. Then she reached for the comforter, drew it up over her breasts.

  “If you’re cold,” he said, “you shouldn’t run the fan and the air conditioner at the same time.”

  She rubbed a hand over the goose bumps on her arm. “It was so hot earlier.”

  “One or the other,” he told her. “You don’t need both. And then you sleep with a light on. And with the television running. Just burning electricity every which way you can.”

  “Baby,” she said. “I think maybe you had a little too much to drink. Why don’t you come warm me up a little bit?”

  He kept looking at her and had no feelings he could identify. The love had disappeared quickly, rushed out of him like blood from a gaping wound.

  “Come on,” she said. “Come get me warm.”

  He walked to the side of the bed then. With his free hand he picked up the television remote off the bed, hit the power button and turned the TV off. Tossed the remote onto the bed. Then he went to the reading light and switched it off. Then, on his way out the door, he shut off the ceiling fan.

  She called to him. “You want me to come down and watch TV with you awhile?”

  He went down the stairs with eyes closed, empty hand riding the bannister rail, other hand gripping the flash drive. Off, he told himself. Turn everything off.

  49

  Harvey walked in shadow along the side of Kenny’s house. He peered into one dark window after another, knew them all, had spent plenty of time in the house when he was younger, when he and Kenny were the best of friends. And after Kenny went off to college, Harvey still came by frequently, but to spend time with Jake, usually in either the garage or kitchen. He wondered if Kenny missed Jake too, if Louise ever thought of him, if she and Jennalee ever sat around reminiscing about him. Probably not. Jake had seemed like an outsider to the family too, an add-on sometimes included, most often not.

  Still, Harvey acknowledged a kind of affection for Kenny’s mother. As a boy he had had a crush on her for a while, thought her very sexy in her tennis shorts and tight tops, those smooth legs and melon breasts. He remembered all the late nights when he and Kenny had come stumbling in, trying without success to conceal their drunkenness, and she would appear in the kitchen out of nowhere in robe and slippers, chide them playfully for their behavior even as she was pouring out a glass of wine for herself, and soon she would have a skillet full of eggs and sausages ready, a mountain of toast. She used to flirt with Harvey back then, especially after a glass of wine or two. Once, when Kenny fell asleep at the table, she came up behind Harvey as he sat over his eggs and sausage and massaged his shoulders. Told him what a strong, handsome boy he was. Then she opened up her robe and laid her breasts against the back of his head. He had sat motionless, unsure of what to do. Then he carefully slid his chair away from the table, said he should probably get home now, and stood. She followed him to the door and, just as he turned the knob, put her hand on the front of his pants and squeezed his penis. If Kenny had not stirred at the table, knocking a piece of silverware to the floor, there was no telling what might have happened.

  On the other hand he also remembered the scowl on Louise’s face when he and Jennalee had turned away from the minister at the front of the church, turned to face friends and family for the first time as husband and wife. Louise’s frown was fleeting, yes, and quickly supplanted with a phony smile. But Harvey had noticed it. He’d never resented her for it, though. Always understood her disappointment. Understood that she wanted and deserved someone better for her daughter, her perfect flower of a child.

  And now, remembering all this, not with anger or resentment but a kind of melancholy acceptance, Harvey crossed to the rear of the house, and there he saw a soft light glowing at ground level, just as he’d hoped there would be. He sank low and peered through the small window and into the basement game room. Kenny was sitting on the edge of the brown leather sofa, a drink in hand, the television on.

  Harvey settled onto his knees off to the side of the window, bent closer to the glass. With his free hand Kenny was bouncing a small yellow ball, a tennis ball, bouncing it up and down on the parquet tile floor. He looked too anxious to sit still. Too haunted, Harvey imagined, by all the recent possibilities suggested by the break-in. Did he know that the flash drive was missing? Probably so. Did he know that it was tucked safely in Harvey’s pocket? Not yet, Harvey thought. Not yet.

  Kenny took a sip from his glass, then bounced the ball five times in a row, a few seconds between each bounce. Then another sip. Meanwhile he stared at the television. Some old movie in black-and-white. Harvey watched it for a couple of minutes, then recognized the actors, Charlton Heston with a moustache, a massive Orson Welles in a fedora.

  Eventually Harvey drew away from the window and pushed himself up, felt the stiffness in his knees as he stood. He crossed to the back porch and let himself into the mud room using the key he had taken from Jennalee’s purse. Always when he came into the mud room he paused to remove his shoes, because that was Louise’s rule. She had a maid who came at least once a week and kept the house spotlessly clean. Kenny used to joke that they had to take their shoes off because it wasn’t the maid’s cleaning day and his mother didn’t know how to use a broom.

  Harvey took his shoes off this time too. Left them beside Louise’s and Kenny’s on the rubber mat beside the door. Two strides later he was in the kitchen. Three recessed lights above the counter glowed softly. He crossed the floor one sliding step at a time, looking at all the familiar things. The refrigerator and gas range. The microwave and toaster oven. The coffeemaker was new, something fancy with a couple of gleaming spouts. He spotted the knife block atop the counter, was stopped by the sight of it. He knew which knife Jake had used to slice the Christmas ham. Which knives he and Kenny had used when they tried to make bows and arrows out of twigs from the apple tree.

  Then Kenny’s voice called up through the open basement door. “I thought you were asleep already! You want me to get you something?”

  Kenny was silent for a few moments, probably waiting for a reply. Then Harvey heard the soft click of ice in the glass. Probably scotch, he told himself. Their favorite drink when they were young, that pleasant burn when the scotch went down, that slow scorching burn all the way into the stomach.

  Kenny called out again. “You looking for a Valium or what, Mom?”

  A moment later Harvey descended the last carpeted step and stood on the game room floor. Between him and Kenny was a load-bearing, four-sided white pillar. He looked for the marks he and Kenny and Jennalee had made as kids, back when they had measured themselves, Kenny and Harvey always in a friendly competition of who was growing the fastest. But the marks were gone now, painted over. No evidence remained of the children they used to be.

  When Harvey took a step past the pillar, Kenny jerked upright, and sucked in a sudden breath. Some of his drink splashed onto his trousers.

  Harvey said, “Looks like maybe you’re the one could use the Valium.”

  “Harvey, for Christ’s sake,” Kenny said. “I thought you were . . .”

  Harvey approached him slowly. “You thought I was what—your friend? Is that what you thought?”

  Kenny’s smil
e was pale and thin. To Harvey the smile looked tight. The way Jake’s smile had looked at his funeral service. Harvey’s smile, on the other hand, felt comfortable and real to him. Felt calm. As if he were watching a humorous movie. A movie about a guilty man sitting on a leather couch, pretending to smile and be unconcerned even as he cast about with his eyes, looking for something with which to defend himself from an intruder. The intruder had the only exit blocked and looked to be a strong man, a man who had used his muscles all his life, not like Kenny who, though he had managed to keep his weight down by walking on a treadmill three times a week, was soft inside and out, had always been soft, always needed somebody else to take the first risk, always needed to feed off somebody else’s boldness and daring, a weak man on his own, but a man who liked to control others in every way he could.

  Harvey had the only exit blocked and the billiard table to Kenny’s right was too far away, the rack of cues on the farthest wall. To Kenny’s left, a little over a yard away, was the fireplace with its andirons and tools, the poker and the shovel and the fireplace brush, none ever used, never dirtied by ashes because the logs in the fireplace were made of ceramic, they glowed but never burned. And the mantel was lined with Kenny’s and Jennalee’s trophies, hers for tennis, his for debate and state band.

  Kenny let the tennis ball drop. It bounced three times, then rolled across the floor. He held up his empty hand, palm out, a gesture of surrender as he slowly rose to his feet. “If this were the middle of the day, Harvey, I wouldn’t mind you coming into my house without knocking. But seeing as how it’s, what, nearly twenty minutes before two in the morning . . .”

  “Stand still,” Harvey told him.

  Kenny forced his smile wider. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I saw that same smile on Jennalee not long ago,” Harvey said. And reached into his pocket.

  And Kenny flinched, a full-body flinch in reaction to Harvey’s movement. He thinks I have a weapon, Harvey thought, amused, and made his hand bigger in his pocket, as if he were pulling out a pistol or a knife.