First the Thunder Read online

  Tonight he sat with the heels of his cordovan loafers hooked over the barstool’s rung, looking more like a retired jockey than a retired civil servant. It was a steamy Friday night in baseball season but the Pirates were off until Thursday, so the only other customers were four golfers who had come in earlier for burgers and beer. Will was grateful for the golfers because on nights when there wasn’t a televised sporting event he didn’t sell enough alcohol to cover his electric bill. The big-screen TV at the rear of the room was only two years old but still he could not compete with the motel bars out by the interstate. He could not compete with Comedy Night or Karaoke Night or the spacious dance floors and free munchies tables and the college girls in their short skirts. All he had to offer was a clean, quiet place to spend an hour or so with friends without having to shout to be heard, a place where for twelve dollars a man could quietly submerge himself in enough lime juice and rum to soften the edges on some undisclosed misery.

  Not that Merle ever looked miserable. Just the opposite, if contentment is the opposite of misery. Merle was the most contented man Will had ever met. Self-contained, Laci called him. Perfectly happy to sit there quietly sipping his daiquiris, a small smile on his lips as he gazed at the bottles on the shelves or the poster-size photo of Ben Roethlisberger. If not for Merle, Will might not believe that contentment was an achievable state.

  Will looked toward the golfers then and asked with a lift of his eyebrows if they were ready for another pitcher. One of the men grinned and nodded, so Will filled a fresh pitcher from the Coors tap and carried it to the table. The TV was tuned to Fox News but nobody was paying any attention to it. The air conditioner was working hard to counteract the sticky August heat. There was something loose inside the air conditioner and every once in a while Will could hear it rattling around in there like a marble in a tin can.

  Harvey had both hands around his beer bottle when Will returned to stand in front of him, but the bottle remained full, Harvey hadn’t taken a sip. He looked up at his brother and said, only loud enough for Will and maybe Merle to hear, “I swear to God I am going to kill that asshole. You might think I’m kidding but I’m not.”

  Will filled a small wooden bowl with salted peanuts and set it on the counter. “Stevie’s upstairs watching TV with Laci,” he said. “Go ahead and go on up if you want.”

  “I mean it, Will. I am seriously going to do it this time.”

  Will thought he should say something but he did not know what to say. He was two years younger than Harvey and half an inch taller, and he hadn’t been afraid of Harvey since high school, but he didn’t want to anger his brother further or add to his troubles. Will wasn’t sure exactly what his brother’s troubles were and he suspected that Harvey wasn’t sure either. All Will knew was that for the past few years Harvey had appeared to be angry most the time. Even in his lighter moods there seemed to be something eating away at him, some worm of bitterness gnawing at his gut. It might have to do with his job as a truck driver for Jimmy Dean Sausage, but Will doubted it; Harvey had a regular route with regular customers, and there couldn’t be much stress involved in humping sausage around. It might have had to do with Harvey’s marriage but Will doubted that too; Harvey and Jennalee had been married for almost as long as Will and Laci, and Will knew for a fact that his brother was still madly, even desperately, in love with his wife.

  Still, Harvey’s anger, as nearly as Will could calculate, seemed to be of more or less the same vintage as his marriage. Before that, Harvey never took much of anything seriously. Back when Will was working a dragline fourteen hours a day for the coal company, for example, and socking away every spare nickel for that day when he could become his own boss, Harvey was still jumping from job to job like a teenager and spinning a modified Chevy around the dirt track every weekend. Only after Harvey’s honeymoon to the Poconos did he give up racing and take on a regular job.

  “I need that .357 for a while,” Harvey said, this time lowering his voice so that Merle would not hear. But Merle, if he had overheard anything at all, gave no indication. He stared straight ahead at the bottles on the shelves, he sipped his daiquiri and he waited without complaint for a streetcar that would never arrive.

  Will told his brother, “Hold on a minute.” He went into the kitchen, checked the deep fryer, lifted out a basket of chicken wings and another of French fries, drained them, dumped each into a separate wicker basket lined with napkins and sprinkled them with salt. He carried these to the bar and handed them to Harvey. “Take these upstairs for me, will you? I’ll be right behind soon as I check on those golfers.”

  Harvey said, “You going to let me have it or not?” When Will didn’t answer, Harvey said, “And yes, it will come back to you clean. I’ll clean it out with his fucking tongue is what I’ll do.”

  Will said, “Those wings and fries are for Stevie. Laci and me are splitting a pizza, which you’re welcome to share. You want anything else?”

  Harvey stood there holding the food baskets and his beer.

  “Damn it, Will!” he said in an insistent whisper. “I got this damn thunder in my head that just won’t quit. I need that .357 of yours. Tonight.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” Will told him. He turned away then to check on the pizza.

  In the kitchen he tried to get back to Portugal but Portugal was lost to him now. It had been burned away in the sizzle and stink of the deep fryer’s fat.

  3

  In the kitchen in the apartment upstairs, Laci poured ranch dressing into a white ramekin, then set the small bowl in the center of a platter filled with celery sticks, baby carrots, broccoli florets, pickles and olives. She knew that Stevie, watching TV in the living room, was typically a quiet man, especially in his brothers’ presence, but a noisy eater. If she served the vegetables now, he would have his fill of them by the time the other food was ready, and she, in need of a shower, wouldn’t have to listen to him gnawing on raw carrots and celery, a sound that always made her want to scream.

  She carried the vegetable tray into the living room and set it down on the coffee table and said, “Help yourself, Stevie. I’m going to grab a quick shower before Will comes up.”

  She crossed out of the room and turned down the hallway and stuck a finger in each ear until she reached the bathroom. Then quickly stepped inside and closed the door. She did not dislike Stevie, knew he was a kind person, always willing to help out with any task whenever she or Will needed him. But there was also an air of sneakiness surrounding him. Will thought it was because their father had been such a stingy man when it came to doling out compliments. He, like his oldest son, had always seemed angry about something, always simmering with a secret rage. All three sons had tried their best to avoid him.

  “I think Dad’s the one responsible,” Will told her once. “Stevie took the brunt of his anger. He was only five when the old man got cancer. Harvey and me could head outside when we wanted to, but Stevie was more or less stuck at home with Mom. Stevie was an easy target for everybody, I guess.”

  Ever since hearing that, Laci had tried her best to be kind to Stevie. The truth was, she felt sorry for him. But his noisy eating made her want to jump out of her skin. And she had to admit that a part of her resented both Stevie and Harvey; if not for them, Will would never have wanted to move back to this place. Because of them, she and Molly were trapped here. And Will, too attached to his brothers and this nowhere town, was turning into a nowhere man himself. She needed to find some way to make him realize this before it was too late for all of them.

  While in the shower, Laci started thinking about a trooper she used to know. Trooper Alex Wilson. He used to call her Olga because her small body and athleticism in bed reminded him of Olga Korbut, the Belarusian gold medalist who became famous when Laci was still a little girl.

  Up until a year ago Laci would sometimes run into Trooper Wilson at the scene of house fires, car accidents, and other photo-worthy events. And, a total of seven times over three months,
in a room at the Marriott out along the interstate.

  She called it off the night he suggested they pick a specific day and hour to inform their spouses that they wanted a divorce. Because Laci did not want a divorce. She wasn’t sure what she did want except for something different from what she’d had before the affair started. Something that provided an occasional easement of the heaviness of living in a cramped apartment above a bar that had difficulty staying in the black each month, and of chasing one tragedy after another with her camera, and of watching her daughter growing up in a town that, inch by inch, seemed to be sinking ever deeper into its economic and cultural sinkhole.

  In the end, Trooper Wilson left his job with the state police and moved with his children and wife to somewhere in North Carolina. And now Laci stood in her kitchen, wondering about what might have been. A drop of sweat trickled down her spine and made her shiver.

  She had changed into a pair of tan shorts and a pale-green tank top, her feet bare and the hair along the back of her neck still damp from the shower. She had towel-dried her hair and run a brush through it, but didn’t bother to style it. She leaned against the cool edge of the kitchen sink and sipped from a chilled bottle of Corona. The ceiling fan’s hum helped to drown out any crunching noises coming from the living room, but it did little to cool the kitchen or to disperse the scent of grease floating up through the floorboards from the bar’s deep fryer.

  When she heard the thumps outside the door, her body stiffened.

  4

  At the top of the stairs, Harvey kicked the door a couple of times. He wasn’t even sure why he had bothered to come up the stairs. Or maybe he was. He didn’t want to go home, that was why.

  A few seconds later, Stevie yanked open the door from inside the apartment, reached for the plastic baskets of wings and fries and said, “About time. I’m starvin’ to death here.” To Laci he called, “Look who the delivery boy is tonight!”

  Laci blew out a breath, took another sip of beer, and stepped into the living room. “Hey, Harvey,” she said. “How you doin’? Jennalee come with you?”

  Harvey didn’t answer. There was a movie on the television, something with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. Laci’s police scanner on the mantel was crackling softly with static-filled voices, and a floor fan in the corner of the room made a constant clicking whirr. After a moment Harvey asked, “Molly around?”

  “She’s at the library with some friends. I’m picking her up around eight. Why do you ask?”

  Instead of explaining, Harvey glared at the TV. Even with all the windows open and the fan on high, the room pulsed with a damp, suffocating heat. “It’s like trying to breathe through a wet towel in here,” he said.

  Laci crossed to the end of the sofa, smiled up at him. “You ready for another beer?”

  “How do you guys even sleep at night? I can’t breathe in here.”

  “We take the fan into the bedroom. Molly’s got a little one of her own.”

  “Make Will buy you an air conditioner, for chrissakes.”

  Laci blushed and looked away. “The heat only lasts a couple of weeks.”

  Stevie said, “You’re getting soft, brother. Driving around in a refrigerated truck all day.” He finished his first chicken wing, laid the bone in the corner of the basket, sucked his fingertips clean, and reached for another wing.

  Harvey stood there at the other end of the sofa and watched the color in Laci’s cheeks, saw the way the rubied glow spread down the front of her neck. What kind of life is this, Harvey wondered, when Will has to live in a dump like this, but a jerk like Kenny gets anything he wants?

  Then Stevie said, “You ask around for me yet over at Jimmy Dean?”

  “I already told you. Nobody is ever going to hire you as a driver. Not with your record they’re not.”

  “They’re mostly just parking violations,” Stevie said.

  “Because you don’t pay attention. You have to stay alert to be a driver.”

  For most of his adult life Stevie had made his living as the town’s handyman, shoveling snow in winter, mowing lawns in the summer, tilling gardens in the spring, raking leaves in the fall. During all seasons he dug graves for the Cemetery Association, hauled away garbage the trash contractor wouldn’t accept, painted an occasional house, cleaned out an occasional garage. Every Sunday he helped Will haul in the kegs and other supplies. In return he had his dinner nearly every night compliments of Will, either here in Will and Laci’s place or downstairs at the bar. He would have liked to have a girlfriend but understood that he was not anybody’s idea of an eligible bachelor, even by local standards.

  The accident when he was eight didn’t help. Everybody in town knew the story. One day when their parents were absent, the older boys in charge of their little brother, Will and Harvey were taking turns leaping from the front porch roof to the garage roof ten feet away. The trick was to keep running, uphill, when landing on the steeply pitched garage roof, or risk sliding downhill and tumbling to the ground. When they tired of testing each other, they taunted little Stevie to try. Dutifully he climbed out their bedroom window and onto the porch roof, then, after more teasing and cajoling, finally took a fearful run and leaped across the gulf to the garage, where his brothers sat perched at the roof’s peak. Stevie landed with one outstretched foot on the shingles, the other foot trailing. He lost his balance, fell onto a knee, and rolled sideways off the edge of the roof.

  He lay unconscious for an unknown period of time. Harvey and Will agreed it was “less than a minute,” and that Stevie was just fine afterward. But Stevie, who woke up lying on the living room carpet, felt certain he had been out for an hour or more. He remembered wandering around in an immense dark room, walking as if blind with both hands extended before him, the only light coming from tiny flashes of red brilliance popping and fizzing inches from his face. The lights seemed to have an order and purpose, seemed to be trying to convey an important message to him, the way they sometimes came together in small groups, sometimes went careening away from each other, only to return in sinuous, cryptic lines. There had been a comforting familiarity to the lights, a friendliness, which he remembered clearly to this day. He also remembered being very thirsty and tired and wanting only to go home again.

  His parents didn’t learn of the fall until late that afternoon, when they saw the bruises on Stevie’s forehead and shoulder. At first his brothers claimed ignorance, but when Stevie finally said, “I think I fell off the roof,” the full story came out. Soon both Will and Harvey had bruises of their own, but theirs were from their father’s wide leather belt. And afterward, every time Stevie would forget one of his chores, every time he was sent home from school for fighting or for a smart remark to a teacher, his mother would scold the older brothers and say, “You made him this way. You’re the ones who need to be punished.”

  Consequently, everyone in town now treated Stevie as if he were brain damaged. He knew he wasn’t. He was different from his brothers, that’s all. But in a small town, being different was its own kind of damage.

  “I don’t see where it would hurt to ask,” Stevie said in response to Harvey’s comment about his driving record. “I’d even work in packing, I don’t care.”

  “They have your application on file,” Harvey said.

  “But that’s three or four years old. I don’t mind filling out a new one.”

  Harvey crossed to the police scanner and turned it down. “How can you even hear the TV with this thing blaring all the time?”

  “Harvey, please,” Laci said. “It’s hardly blaring. Turn it up again, please.”

  “I can’t even hear myself think in here.”

  “Well, how am I supposed to hear if there’s a fire or a car wreck or something?”

  “You’ll hear the siren, same as everybody else in town.”

  “But I need to get there with my camera before everybody else in town. So if you don’t mind . . .”

  To placate her, Harvey pretended to turn the v
olume up. Then returned to stand by the open window. Laci crossed to the scanner and turned it to its original volume.

  Though nearly forty, Laci was small and still as lithe as a gymnast. Stevie had to deliberately avoid looking at her ass when she passed in front of him. Later tonight, when he was back home at his trailer, he would think about her ass and probably Jennalee’s too, which was even better. And sooner or later he would lock his doors and pop a porn DVD into the player. Afterward he would feel guilty and lonely but he was seldom able to control his thoughts once they began.

  Harvey didn’t look at Laci at all, didn’t see the teasing face she made after turning up the scanner and taking a seat on the sofa. He continued to stare at the TV. Nicolas Cage was standing at the top of a high building, the wings of his trench coat flaring as he peered down at the street far below. Jump, Harvey thought. Go ahead and jump, you idiot.

  Laci said, “So where’s Jennalee tonight?”

  Harvey squinted hard and stared at the television.

  Stevie said, “Another of life’s mysteries, I guess,” and reached for another chicken wing.

  Will entered the apartment carrying a pizza, a six-pack, and a handful of napkins. He deposited them all on the coffee table and sat between his wife and Stevie. They opened beers and stole glances at Harvey, who was staring at the window fan now, its blade slowly turning.

  Laci said, “Have some pizza, Harvey.”

  Harvey ran his palms up and down over the knees of his jeans. To Will he said, “I can’t believe you still don’t have an air conditioner in here.”

  Laci said, “It’s not that bad.”

  Harvey said, “Buy your family a freakin’ air conditioner, Will.”

  “I already told you we have fans in the bedrooms,” Laci said.

  Will added, “The electric bill’s too high with an air conditioner.”

  “You run the one downstairs all day long,” Harvey said.

  Will took a slow breath. Put his hand on Laci’s knee. Gave it a little squeeze. He said, “Is this the movie where Nicolas Cage is an angel?”