Only the Rain Page 3

In my head I started running through all of our other expenses, and with each one my legs got a little bit weaker, and my chest hurt a little bit more. Pretty soon the water hitting my head and shoulders felt like a thousand little fists pounding me down. There were the utilities, meaning cable and Internet and sewage and water and electricity and gas. Plus insurance on my truck and bike and on the house. The real estate and school taxes. A family of four to feed with a baby on the way. Dani would be starting first grade after Labor Day and needed clothes and school supplies. And Jesus, health insurance. I was carrying everybody on my policy because the one Cindy had at the bank was virtually worthless. How the hell were we going to pay for all that?

  In the blink of an eye we’d gone from being secure and hopeful to being one step from homeless. Except that I was the only one who knew it.

  And oh yeah, the rain. By the time I dried off and dressed, the rain was coming down in buckets. The gravel parking lot looked like a steaming island about to go under. I had my rain gear in the saddlebags, but by the time I got the cover off the bike I was already soaked to the skin, plus so weak with fear that I figured, what good is rain gear? So I jammed my helmet on and swung my leg over the wet seat and fired up the engine.

  Then as I’m pulling around the corner of the building, there’s Jake standing outside his door, holding a magazine over his head against the downpour, and yelling at me to put the bike in his truck, he’d give me a ride home. I just kept on going. The sky was black as pitch except for the occasional lightning. Even my high beam had to struggle to make a difference. The long gravel lane down to the highway already had two little rivers gushing down the ruts the trucks had made, so I was forced to ride the hump down the middle in first gear, tapping the hand and foot brakes all the way and dragging my feet for balance.

  The highway wasn’t much better. Two-wheeled vehicles have a tendency to slide on wet pavement. When that wet pavement is also coated with a fine layer of grit from a thousand little streams of runoff, the highway can be deadly for a biker. So, whether I wanted to go slow or not, I was forced to cut my speed to half what it would have been on a dry day. It was cut by half again by the nervous nellies in their cars. Once I hit town, traffic was moving at a crawl. And then it came to a complete halt. I was stopped dead in a downpour, still a mile and a half from the blacktop road that would take me the last few miles home. I just wanted to lay down in the ditch and cry.

  I considered riding the shoulder up to my turnoff, but wanted to see what was causing the traffic snarl. If it was something I could drive around, I’d give it a try. So I shut the bike off and parked it right where it sat, then started walking up the side of the road. It wasn’t long before I saw the red and blue lights up ahead, two squad cars parked one behind the other on the shoulder. That was when I also saw the tow truck in the other lane, blocking the oncoming traffic as the driver tried to maneuver close enough to get a hook on an SUV broadside on the road. The SUV driver had apparently attempted a U-turn only to be slammed into by oncoming traffic. I couldn’t make out the kind of vehicle that T-boned the SUV, but I could see a cop with a flashlight waving my lane of traffic back, trying to make room for the tow truck.

  By now I’m maybe twenty feet from my bike, and the cars in front of it are slowly inching backward. I turned and sprinted back to my bike and got there just in time to pound a fist on the trunk of the car in front of me. I caught him maybe two seconds from running over the bike—an accident that, in the long run, would have produced a better outcome than the one that lay ahead.

  I hopped on the bike and got it turned around, and then I backtracked to where there was a one-lane blacktop I thought would probably get me close to home again. I’d been down that particular road only once I could remember, one of those Sundays in spring when the world seems a wide-open place full of warmth and sunshine. Cindy and the girls were at a birthday party that day, so I was using my free time to take the bike out on a shakedown cruise.

  One of the things I liked to do best back then was to find an unfamiliar road and explore it, just to see where it might take me. I would turn this way or that, taking any stretch of blacktop that promised new scenery. And somehow I made it onto SR218, a narrow piece of road flanked mostly by fields or hardwood forests, full of tight turns and a couple long straightaways. That was all I remembered about the road, except that it ran basically north to south and joined up with Route 62 at the Get-Go station. Route 62 junctioned with Route 7, my usual road home.

  I wasn’t on 218 more than a few minutes before the rain let up to a drizzle. I was able to loosen my death grip on the handlebars, and some of the tightness in my back and shoulders lightened up too. I was still getting drenched, not that any more rain could get me wetter than I already was. Still, I started breathing a little bit easier. A ride on the bike always does that for me once I get away from the traffic. And I couldn’t have been more alone on that back road. Plus, still having to keep my speed down to forty or so, I could smell the wet fields and trees now. The fields were thick with either corn or soybeans, two shades of green both darkened by the gray sky, but the air was sweet and cool, and even the water shining on the blacktop made it all look cleaner.

  And then I passed the house off to my right at the bottom of a low hill. I saw the girl from maybe fifty yards away. She was dancing in the yard and she was as naked as the day she was born. At first I assumed she was a little kid, but that impression didn’t last. She was a long way from being a kid, in her midtwenties probably, maybe even closer than that to my own age. And I will admit that the moment I saw her I started slowing down. A fine young girl dancing naked in the rain is not something you’re likely to see every day.

  This one was making slow turns with her arms held out at her sides. Sometimes she’d be looking up at the sky, sometimes down at the muddy ground, weaving and swaying. It kind of reminded me of some scene from a movie, like a pagan rain dance, you know? In the background the thunder was still rumbling now and then, but getting farther and farther away from us.

  Between the rumbles I could catch bits of what must have been very loud music coming from inside the house, which was a run-down kind of place with a couple of blue plastic chairs on the front porch, another chair holding open the door. I can still hear that music in my head, though I didn’t hear it clearly that day until I shut off the bike. But every time I hear it these days I can still picture her dancing, still see her long mud-splattered legs, her small breasts and the hair that I thought then was brown. I saw her afterward, in drier times, and that was when I realized her hair was strawberry blonde. It was the rain that made it look darker. So now every time I hear Gregg Allman singing “Someday Baby,” whether I hear it on the radio or in one of the dreams I sometimes have, I see her and I see the brindled pit bull pulling at his chain, barking and wagging his tail like he’s going crazy wanting to dance with her. But she always keeps a step or two beyond the reach of his chain, which is looped around a big black oak to the side of the house.

  So I go riding past her house as slow as I can without coming to a stop. If she sees me, she gives no sign of it. I’m still taking quick looks back at her even after I pass the house. And that’s when I see her go down in the mud. I see one bare foot slip out from under her, go up in the air, and then she goes down hard on her back.

  I come to a stop as fast as I can on the slippery road, turn around on my seat and wait for her to get up. But she isn’t moving. The dog is straining at his chain harder than ever and barking like he’s possessed. I keep waiting and waiting, because the one thing I do not want to do is to be caught leaning over a naked woman who is not my wife. Make that two things: I also do not want my throat ripped out by a pit bull.

  But in the end I have no choice. I sit there watching for what seems at least a couple of minutes but is probably less. She’s as motionless as a doll laying there in the mud. I can’t just ride away and leave her there.

  “This is where a guy gets himself into trouble,” you said
one time. “Helping somebody that don’t want help.”

  You were saying it to that guy Keith who nearly got himself—

  Gotta go. I hear Cindy in the bathroom.

  Sorry about bailing last night, brother. Turns out Cindy had too much iced tea before going to bed. But I made it back under the sheet before she even knew I’d been gone. Not that it would have been a big deal or anything; she’s used to waking up and finding my half of the bed empty. But she worries when that happens, you know? Always wants to talk it out. Which is the last thing I want to do with a civilian. Wouldn’t do either of us any good.

  So back to what I was saying last night about helping somebody who don’t want help. I remember you warning that big goofy guy from Ohio named Keith. He was standing there shaking like a leaf beside an Al Jubouri woman on her hands and knees screaming over the body of a guy who turned out to be her husband. Before this our platoon had been standing around the outdoor market that morning, keeping an eye out for anybody looking out of place, the gunners behind their .50 cals in the HMMWVs, same old same old. The woman had been doing her damnedest to raise one of those pull-down metal covers on a shop front, but the thing was stuck and the man with her never once offered to help, just stood there chattering away in Arabic. I could tell by his tone he was criticizing her, maybe even threatening her. That was when Keith broke away and walked over to her and bent down and put his hand on top of hers to help lift the cover.

  I remember Keith being one of those guys who’s always smiling and nodding, always agreeing with everything you say. But if you looked into his eyes, you could tell he didn’t really comprehend most of what was going on. The kind of guy who never should’ve been in the military in the first place. Should’ve been on a playground somewhere teaching ten-year-olds how to play checkers and badminton, things like that.

  Anyway, the Al Jubouri guy obviously doesn’t like his woman being touched, and truth is Keith should have known better in the first place, he had the same training all of us had. But it was what it was, and before you know it the husband pulls this long skinny knife out of his pants and is moving in on Keith. And of course now, at the worst possible moment, Keith’s training kicks in and bambambam the guy is on the ground, motionless as a stone. Only thing moving is the smoke rising out the barrel of Keith’s M4. I remember the smell too, that stench of burned propellant, and how for a few moments it’s the only smell in the air, stronger even than the sewage stink. And then all of a sudden the wife’s throwing herself down on top of her husband and wailing while he bleeds out on the ground, and the next instant there’s people running and screaming and cursing all over the place.

  The only thing that saved Keith’s skin was that all of us immediately surrounded the scene with weapons at the ready so nobody would come along and attempt to swipe the knife. We got photos of the guy laying there with the knife still in his hand.

  After the investigation, when Keith spent the rest of his tour manning a radio back at the FOB, I told myself it was the best place for him. Probably where we all should have been.

  I’m guessing incidents like this one kept playing over and over in your head same as they do for me now. That’s why you never got tired of preaching at us, every time we’d go out on patrol. “We’re here to protect these people, not kill them. Kill one of them, and next day six of their relatives join the insurgency. Next day there’s more bombs on the road. Then it’s gonna be some of us bleeding out on the ground.”

  I can’t tell you how many times in the past months I’ve wished you’d been around last summer the day I lost my job. Wish you’d been standing there in that soggy yard when I climbed off my bike. “You turn your ass around, soldier,” you would have said. “You get back on your pony and ride.”

  In some ways, I guess, I have a lot in common with Keith.

  Because there I am running over to the naked girl, splashing up muddy water with every step, that pit bull going absolutely foaming-mouth berserk at the sight of me, and me leaning over to ask if she’s all right only to see her laying there all spacey-eyed and giggling as if the rain on her face is the funniest thing she’s felt in her entire life.

  “You okay?” I ask her. “You took a pretty hard fall.”

  She reaches up and puts her wet hands on the back of my neck and sings along with the music coming out of the house. And stupid me, I can’t help but smile at her. Even with that pit bull barking and snarling a few inches from my face, all but spraying me with his saliva, I thought she had a really sweet voice. And what man isn’t going to smile when a pretty, naked girl is singing to him with her arms around his neck?

  “Listen,” I told her. “You need to get inside. You’re all goosebumpy. Plus, if somebody else comes along and sees you like this . . . this isn’t the smartest thing for you to be doing.”

  She raised herself up then like she wanted me to kiss her, but then she winced and moaned and tightened up for a second. I said, “Tell me where it hurts. Does it hurt in your back?”

  “Mmmm,” she said, so I slid one hand under her shoulders and the other to the small of her back, trying to feel if anything was broken. Not that I would have known anyway. They don’t teach you that in business administration.

  All I really accomplished was to give her a chance to roll over into my arms. That’s when she stopped singing and said, “Carriemeehin.”

  It took me a few seconds to decipher that, what with her slurring her words together. I couldn’t smell any alcohol or weed so I figured she was high on coke or ecstasy or something like that. I was just guessing, though, since I’ve never gone beyond weed myself, and that stopped the day I met Cindy.

  “You want me to carry you inside?” I said to the girl, and she said, “Mmm.”

  I looked up and out across the yard then, because I was thinking what if somebody drives past and sees me carrying her into the house naked? I’d passed only a few houses on the way here and they were Amish places set way back from the road, but I wasn’t worried about the Amish. I was worried about somebody calling Cindy and saying, “Russell rides a Road Star, doesn’t he? With a blue metal-flake paint job and leather saddlebags and no windshield?”

  Truth is I was kind of frozen there in indecision for a while, my hands on her wet skin and my knees in the mud. If that dog hadn’t jerked itself an inch closer to me, I might still be in the same position.

  So then I’m carrying her up onto the porch and she’s hugging up against me and moaning every now and then with her mouth pressed into my neck. I stop outside the open door and call inside a couple of times. “Hello? Anybody in here? Hellooo? Anybody home?”

  I get no answer from anybody, not even Gregg Allman. The music has stopped and there’s this three-way conversation going on between that crazy dog and the pattering rain and my heart thumping like the wings of a flushed grouse.

  I say to her, “If I put you down, can you walk inside?”

  Her grip around my neck tightens and she pushes herself up tighter against me. “Um mm,” she says. “Doan’ pu’ mee down.”

  This whole description I’m giving you is probably coming off a lot funnier than it actually was. Truth is I was scared to death. Either that pit bull was going to rip its chain loose and come flying at me, or some burly boyfriend was going to appear with a shotgun in his hands, or somebody who knew Cindy was going to drive by and think, isn’t that Russell there with that naked girl in his arms?

  If you’d ever been married, you’d know which option I feared the most. Which is why I went ahead and stepped over the threshold and off to the side of the doorway.

  So I’m standing in the living room now, bare plank floors and a ratty old couch and matching chair and a coffee table covered with water rings and cigarette burns and empty beer bottles. The only thing out of place is the sixty-inch plasma TV and surround-sound speakers.

  “I don’t want to put you down in here,” I told her. “You’ve got mud all over you.”

  This was where she spoke her f
irst real sentence, the first one I heard clearly anyway, even though she was doing her darnedest to shove a wet hand down inside my pants. “Lemme suck your dick,” she said.

  I have to admit, that gave me a few moments pause. Then I told her, “Sweetheart, I’m a married man with two and a half kids, and you are high as a kite on who knows what. Tell me where to put you down and I’m outta here.”

  She giggled a little bit, and then she said, “Bathroom.”

  I’m thinking, good, she wants to get warm and wash off the mud, so I’ll dump her in the tub and be on my way. I carried her down the hall, glancing into the rooms as I passed. I had already seen the kitchen from the living room, and I didn’t like what I saw. Compared to the living room it was all too orderly and clean, no dishes in the sink, not a damn thing on the counter or the little table. And by now I’ve also noticed that every window is covered with black poster paper, the kind I buy at Walmart for Dani to draw on with her colored chalk. And the whole place has a vague ammonia stink to it, like some cat’s been pissing in every corner, except that there’s no cat to be seen, only that brute of a dog outside with the most evil of intentions.

  The other two rooms I pass are almost empty, bare to the walls except for an old mattress and pillow on the floor in each of them. Laying on one of the mattresses is what must be the girl’s clothes, a pair of cut-off jeans and a yellow T-shirt. Then finally I get to the bathroom, which has this little claw-footed tub filled with plastic buckets full of rags, plus the toilet and sink and a shower stall covered with a blue plastic curtain. The girl’s still holding around my neck with one arm but her right hand is digging around in my pants, and I can’t tell if she’s breaking out in head-to-toe shivers because she’s so horny or freezing to death.

  I tell her, “You need to get warm. Tub or shower?”

  “Gotta pee-pee,” she says.

  So I set her on her feet beside the toilet. Her hand slips out of my pants but then she grabs my dick from the outside. She sits there and starts to tinkle, all the time grinning up at me and shivering and squeezing my dick, and yeah, I should’ve pulled away from her right then. I should’ve run for my life. But I just stood there for half a minute or so and enjoyed it.