Only the Rain Read online

  We used the position illustrated in the book, and afterward Cindy laid on the floor for an hour with her legs up on the bed and a fat pillow under her butt. All this was supposed to give the boy swimmers a downhill swim, I guess. We did that two nights in a row and then the next morning Cindy said, “Well, it took. I’m pregnant.” I said she couldn’t possibly know that already and she said, “Trust me. I know.” She was so sure of herself she wouldn’t even let me buy her a pregnancy kit at Walmart. “Waste of money,” she said. “I know what I know. I know I’m pregnant and I know it’s a boy.”

  There’s no use arguing with a woman when her mind’s made up, so I just quit trying. Besides, she’s spooky like that sometimes. Seems to know stuff she has no way of knowing. Which only makes matters more worrisome for me since I got into this trouble I’m going to tell you about.

  Anyway, it wasn’t two weeks later she was puking before breakfast. So I guess she did know what she was talking about. Whether the book did or not remains to be seen.

  The reason I’m telling you all this is so you’ll understand what our situation was when the trouble started. Despite the inconvenience of not having a second car, the situation was full of hope. We were still living paycheck to paycheck but life was really starting to look good for us, and not in a pie-in-the-sky kind of way either. We even picked out a name for our new boy: David Russell. He had Pops’ first name and my name for his middle name. We still didn’t know for sure that he’d be a boy but I decided to think positive and maybe all our good thoughts would work the necessary magic.

  I had a new job and a new vasectomy scar, and Cindy and Dani and Emma and Maybe-Davy and me all had a new house to live in. It wasn’t a cast-off house either. It wasn’t a hand-me-down. It was brand-new construction, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s only sixteen hundred square feet on a quarter-acre lot in a small development of twelve homes lined up along both sides of a cul-de-sac. I wasn’t crazy about having a house that was exactly like eleven other families’ but Cindy loves it. “It makes me feel normal for a change,” she said. “Like we’re all in the same boat together.”

  And then one gray morning my whole world went upside down. If I had let Cindy drive me to work that day instead of riding the motorcycle, it never would’ve happened. Gee always used to say, “God works in mysterious ways.” But as much as I loved her and appreciate all the things she did for me, I think maybe my former staff sergeant might have understood life better than she did.

  “If you even once happen to look the wrong way,” you used to tell us, “if you so much as fucking blink out here, you’re gonna find yourself getting raped by an elephant.”

  And that’s exactly what happened to me that day, Spence. I looked the wrong fucking way.

  I mentioned my motorcycle last time and now this thought keeps interrupting my other thoughts, if you know what I mean. I can’t ever climb onto my bike, or usually even pass it in the garage, without remembering that medic on my, what was it, second or third day in-country. The one who was riding around the FOB on his Honda and got his leg blown off during an attack. There we all were crowding around the medevac bird telling him he was going to be okay, and him pleading and pleading for some drugs to knock him out.

  I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t even know the dude’s name yet, so I wasn’t going to ask anybody about it, but I’ve never been able to get him out of my head, not even back here at home. So one day when I was out riding by myself I decided I’d come up with a name for him, and I started running through the alphabet, thinking up every name I could, until I came to one that felt like it fit him. I remember he was sort of thin and had sandy blond hair, and I also remember his eyes being a pale blue that most girls would kill for. And the name I gave him finally was Springer. Don’t ask me why, but when I heard it inside my head I thought, that’s it, he’s Springer.

  I dream about him sometimes. I dream about the two of us riding up north into the big forests up there, cruising along in and out of the sunlight and shadows, riding parallel to the river with the sunlight shimmering like silver leaves in the ripples and rapids. He’s got both legs in those dreams, and he’s always got the biggest fucking grin on his face. And his name’s always Springer. I mean without a doubt, I never even question it, he’s always Springer in those dreams.

  And we’re riding along side by side on our bikes, not a care in the world. Except that I’m watching him and thinking, the poor sonofabitch doesn’t have clue one about what’s going to happen to him.

  Is that a weird dream to be having or what?

  Sorry about how short my last e-mail was. Sometimes I get all, you know, emotional when I’m remembering stuff. When that happens I have to just lean away from the keyboard and get my shit together again. Don’t want to rain on the electronics, you know what I mean?

  Anyway, I’ll go back to telling you about that morning the real story here actually started, and me riding the bike into work as usual even though a thunderstorm was in the forecast. My boss waited till after lunch that day to call me into the office. For some reason, the moment I heard my name coming through the loudspeaker, I knew it was the voice of doom calling. Truth is I’d felt funny all day, even before I’d left the house. There was a weird heaviness in my chest that morning, like I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs because they were already filled up with something else, with some kind of gray fog maybe that had settled into me during the night. But when I got to the plant that morning without being hit by a single drop of rain, I chalked the feeling up to nervousness about the weather, and told myself it was the air that was heavy, all that damp August air I’d sucked in because Cindy liked to sleep with the windows open.

  Thinking back on it now, the only other time I had that feeling in my chest was in Mahmudiya. I remember waking up with that feeling for most of a week, and how all throughout the day I felt like I was pushing through water, like the sand under my feet was the ocean floor. This was in the second week of February—you know where I’m going with this? The city was full of Shia Muslims for that festival they call Arbaeen. I remember how strange it was to see people crawling through the streets on their hands and knees, all to show their allegiance to Muhammad’s grandson. But it was also damn impressive they could have so much respect for a guy who got beheaded a thousand years or so ago. The only thing people in this country might crawl through the streets for is a chance to win a big-screen TV.

  Anyway, you kept reminding us to expect some kind of trouble, what with those millions of Shias in the city. “It’s supposed to be a really peaceful time for the Shias,” you told us, “but you can expect the Sunnis to see it as a prime opportunity to fuck up somebody’s day.”

  Our squad was on security detail along the road leading up to the grandson’s shrine, just standing there watching and making our presence known. When the propane tank exploded it made this woo-whooom kind of sound, first the bomb itself and then, before you could even think, bomb!, the tank explosion. I felt the air punch into my ears and smack me in the face and then I went down hard on my ass. I never even noticed that shard of metal stuck in my interceptor vest until you pointed it out to me. Funny thing is, after you checked under my vest, then pulled out the hunk of metal and handed it to me and I saw there was no blood on it, my chest didn’t feel heavy anymore. That heavy fog feeling I’d had all week was gone. Except that now there were dozens of other people dead and dying, bleeding and crying and screaming, when all they’d wanted was to be peaceful and pray.

  In any case, the heaviness I had that morning at the plant was like the first heaviness in Mahmudiya, not like the other one I get whenever I think about those dead pilgrims, or about Springer or Pops and my mother and Gee. I was doing my usual rounds, making sure everybody was busy, when out of nowhere my boss Jake’s amplified voice cut through the cloud of limestone dust like a kind of muffled explosion, but I felt its punch all the same. “Attention, Russell. Attention Russell Blystone. Please stop by the office before you cl
ock out. Thank you.”

  Thing is, there was absolutely no reason for that announcement. At the end of the day I always change clothes and shower off the worst of the dust, and then I have to walk right past Jake’s door on my way to the bike, which I keep parked up against the rear of his building so it stays relatively clear of the dust. Most of what we produced was a fine aggregate used for highway construction and concrete reinforcement, but that week we were filling an order for talcum that was headed to Indonesia. So that week was a particularly dusty one for me, what with the slightest breeze stirring up the material on the conveyer belts as well as in the big piles.

  But whatever kind of order we were filling, it was always my routine to say “See you tomorrow” or “See you Monday” to Jake on my way out, unless it was the second or fourth Friday of the month, in which case he’d be sitting there with my pay envelope in his hand. So for him to make that announcement over the loudspeaker when it was completely unnecessary, well, I couldn’t do anything but stand there in that thick cloud of talcum and feel like every last drop of air had been sucked right out of me. I think I even took off my mask, which is a stupid thing to do when you’re enveloped in white dust. All I remember for sure is staggering over to the office building while coughing my lungs out. Even now I can taste that dust in my mouth. It’s a gritty, chalky, suffocating memory I’m not likely to forget.

  “Stop right there,” Jake said when I stepped into his doorway. “I said before you clock out. Not this very minute. Meaning after you’ve showered and changed clothes first.”

  “I’m here now,” I told him. “What’s up?”

  “You must’ve left a trail of dust the whole way down the hallway.”

  “Did something happen to Cindy or one of the girls?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “Come back in an hour when you’re supposed to.”

  “Tell me now. I’m already here.”

  “You look like Casper the fucking ghost,” he said. “You’re not stepping in here looking like that. And I don’t want to have to tell you this without us sitting down face to face.”

  “Are you firing me?” I said. I couldn’t believe he ever would, being a friend of Pops and all, and having told Pops several times already how glad he was to have me there. He’d said that in almost forty years I was the only foreman who ever went voluntarily down to the pulverizer to check on things. The only one who’d scramble up a belt if he had to, or get his hands up inside a piece of jammed equipment. Plus he was always joking around with me when I was at my desk across from him, working on my reports. Out of the blue he might ask me something like, “Anybody ever tell you you look a lot like Billy Conn?”

  And I might answer back something like, “You mean James Caan, the actor? The guy from Honeymoon in Vegas? Man, he’s a dinosaur. He’s almost as old as you.”

  To which he would say his standard line, “You fucking college kids, that’s all you know about, isn’t it? Movies and television and all that Internet stuff.”

  I know all about Billy Conn, of course. You can’t have a grandfather who was a boxer and not know about “The Pittsburgh Kid.” I could even have quoted that line from On the Waterfront, which was Pops’ favorite movie of all time. And I don’t mean Marlon Brando’s line, the one everybody knows, when Brando says, “I could’ve been a contender.” I mean the one Rod Steiger says, “You could’ve been another Billy Conn.”

  So not only did Jake like me but I was the best foreman he’d ever had. Plus he knew I was a veteran, and that fact cut a lot of ice as far as he was concerned. Plus I was his friend’s grandson. So he never would have fired me unless maybe I’d seduced his wife and their daughter and their granddaughter and then ate the Limburger cheese and onion sandwich he had every day for lunch.

  “I told you a couple weeks ago that the Chinese made me an offer on the plant,” he said.

  “And you also told me you probably wouldn’t sell. And if you did, it wouldn’t affect my job anyway. You said they’d need to keep me and at least a couple of the other guys on.”

  “I was hoping,” he said. “But they say otherwise. Said they’re bringing in all their own people. In fact they’re selling all the equipment off for scrap, turning this into a high-tech operation. Bringing the whole shebang over prefabricated from China.”

  I felt like I wanted to throw up. But it wouldn’t have done me any good to argue with him. The deal was done, I could see it in his eyes.

  “How long do I have?”

  “Shutdown on September 1.”

  “Ten days?” I said. “We have orders to fill.”

  “Canceled,” he said. “Russell, I’m sorry. You have no fucking idea how sorry I am.”

  “I’ve barely been here half a year.”

  “I know. And I know what I said when I hired you. Put in a year as the foreman, then I’d bring you in to handle all the accounts. Put in five more years to prove you could run this place, and I’d give you a chance to buy me out.”

  “Except that you didn’t know about the Chinese then.”

  “The only thing I knew about the Chinese is . . . Well, hell. Fuck what I thought I knew and didn’t. You’ll find another job soon enough. And until you do you can sit at home and collect unemployment.”

  “I’m not eligible for unemployment,” I told him.

  “The hell you’re not.”

  I told him I collected that whole time I was home and without a job after my discharge. Used up all my eligibility. Then three and a half years on the GI Bill getting my business degree. “I started here the day after graduation,” I said. “I haven’t worked long enough to collect unemployment again.”

  “Then welfare for a few months. I mean fuck it, Russell. You’ll do whatever you have to do. You have a family to think about.”

  But by then I felt like my chest was being crushed. Cindy has a job at the bank, so there was no way I’d be able to get welfare. No way I’d even think about it even if I could.

  I told Jake all that, and he said, “Well you better at least check it out. Fuck your pride. You know where my pride is right now? And I’m not even talking about all the ways the EPA’s been squeezing my balls for the past forty years. Charlie Chan said if I didn’t sell, they’d fill in the quarry and put their plant there, undercut all my prices, steal all my customers. I’d be bankrupt by the end of the year. That was the deal I was offered.”

  All I could do was to stand there in Jake’s doorway and shake my head. It wasn’t going to do any good to plead or beg or cry, no matter how much I wanted to. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even see the whole room for a while, like my peripheral vision had shut down. I started falling to the side and caught myself against the doorframe.

  Jake came up out of his chair. “You okay?” he said.

  I held up my hand and nodded, though I wasn’t okay at all.

  “You need a drink of water or something?”

  “I need a job, Jake.”

  He settled back into his chair, and neither of us said anything for a while.

  Once I felt like I could move without falling down, I turned to leave.

  “One last thing,” he said. “I need you and the other fellas to keep this under your hat for a while. I know you got to tell your wives but don’t be spreading it all over town just yet. The new owners think there might be protests or something once the word gets out.”

  “There ought to be protests,” I said.

  He didn’t like hearing that. “It’s business, Russell. Don’t be pretending you wouldn’t do the same fucking thing if you was in my position.”

  I didn’t want to get into it with him. It wouldn’t have done any good. Besides, I needed to get some air into my lungs. I needed to get outside and find a private place to sit down for a couple minutes. So that’s what I did.

  I know how Gee would have handled that situation. She would have sighed and stopped knitting for a minute or two. Then she would have said, not to me or anybody else but
more to herself, and not with any measure of happiness as you might expect from someone counting on an eternity in Paradise, but more like a kind of moan with words added to it, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

  And for some reason these days, every time I think of what Gee might say in a certain situation, I also think what you might say, Spence. I swear to God I can hear the words coming right out of your mouth. “Life’s a shit pie, soldier. But when that’s all you’re given to eat, you better learn to like the taste of it.”

  The thing that sometimes has me thinking our lives might really be controlled by the stars and planets and birthdates and such, or else by malicious gods or spirits, or by anything other than coincidence and chance, and sure as hell not by a god that wishes us well, is the fact that bad things never happen one at a time. And when they do happen, they seem to pick the very worst minute for it.

  Take the rain, for example. Even before I left the house that morning, I’d been expecting one of those August cloudbursts that starts with a thunderclap and then keeps on hammering down until there are little rivers and lakes running through the streets and yards. If the rain had hit in the morning, it would have been an inconvenience but not much more. If it had hit during working hours, the rain would have tamed the ferocious heat and kept the dust down. But of course neither of those things happened.

  The first thunderclap shook the tiles while I was standing there in the shower, with the cool spray pelting my head while I leaned against the wall and wondered what the hell I was going to do for a job. I knew I had to start looking immediately. In ten days I would be without an income. Cindy was only bringing home a little over a thousand a month, and our mortgage alone would eat up most of that.