First the Thunder Read online

  “That’s the one,” Laci said, then leaned forward to pick up a slice of pizza.

  A minute or so later, Harvey said, “So can somebody tell me the rationale behind the stupid trench coat?”

  “To hide his wings,” Stevie said.

  “Leave it to Hollywood,” Harvey said. He turned to face Will. “You going to lend me that .357 or not?”

  Will winced at his brother’s carelessness. Then said, as if Harvey had made a joke, “Tell me how it would be in either of our best interests for you to shoot your wife’s brother.”

  Laci smiled too. She asked, “What did Kenny do that’s got you so fired up?”

  Kenny Fulton, Jennalee’s brother, used to be Harvey’s best friend in junior and senior high school, every bit as wild as Harvey, though circumspect whereas Harvey was overt and bold. At the age of eighteen, however, less than two weeks shy of September, Kenny announced that his father was insisting he attend a college three states away, and that Kenny sell his half of the modified Chevy to Harvey. And just like that, their fledgling painting business dissolved. Six years later Harvey was still churning up dust clouds and scraping paint but Kenny with his brand-new master’s degree was hired as the assistant principal at the junior-senior high school from which they had all graduated. By the time he was thirty he was the principal, and five years later he was made the superintendent of schools. Though Kenny and Harvey remained friends through the years, the bond grew ever more tenuous.

  Still, it was Kenny who talked his sister, Jennalee, by then a third-grade teacher, into going out on a date with Harvey, who, from skinned knees to sausage truck driver, had been reduced to a shivering puppy whenever in the presence of Kenny’s little sister. And against what Harvey thought of as all the laws of probability, she then went out with him a second, a third, and a fourth time—went out with him so many times that he finally asked her to marry him. When she said yes, he had to get away from her as quickly as possible so she would not see him quivering again, this time from the utter wonderment and thrilling mystery of life.

  Initially Kenny had been slated to be Harvey’s best man, but one day not long before the wedding, Harvey asked Will to be his best man instead. When Will asked why him and not Kenny, all Harvey would say was, “You’re my brother. He’s not.”

  Now, in Will’s apartment, Harvey stood with his fists hard and pressed against his legs. He ignored Laci’s question and spoke directly to his brother. “You think I’m fucking kidding here?”

  Then, an instant later, a bit more softly, he said, “I’m sorry for the language, Laci, but I am not kidding. I am seriously going to blow that, that . . .”

  “You can say asshole,” Laci told him. “I prefer that you avoid the f-bombs, but asshole is okay as long as Molly’s not here. Especially in regards to Kenny Fulton.”

  “I am seriously going to blow that asshole to kingdom come.”

  Will turned to his wife. “Since when don’t you like Kenny?”

  “He’s tolerable. But he’s an asshole all the same.”

  To Harvey, Will said, “Have some pizza and a beer, why don’t you? You’re making us all tense standing there like you want to punch one of us.”

  Harvey opened his fists. Flexed his fingers a few times. “Fine,” he said. “All I’ve got are deer rifles and shotguns at home, but don’t you worry about it a bit, little brother. Don’t worry at all about me having to jam one of them down into my trousers and hobble across town without anybody suspecting what I’m up to. You don’t want to lend me your .357? Fine. I understand. Just because I’m your older brother and by all the laws of the universe you should cut me some slack here, fine, who gives a shit? I’ll strangle him with my bare hands if I have to.”

  With that Harvey turned and strode to the door, yanked it open, strode out, and slammed the door shut. His footsteps pounded down the stairway.

  Laci said, in her flat, sarcastic way, “He seems upset about something.”

  “He’s always upset about something.” Will wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, dropped it crumpled onto the coffee table. “I better go talk to him,” he said as he stood.

  Stevie asked, “You want me to come too?”

  “Stay and eat your dinner,” Will said before going out the door.

  Alone in the room now, neither Laci nor Stevie spoke for a while. Both pretended to watch the movie. Then, during a Visa commercial, Stevie asked, “You got any of those little hot peppers left you had last time I was here?”

  “The pepperoncinis? Look in the refrigerator. Side shelf.”

  And she tried not to wonder about this life she had married into, these brothers and the secrets they shared, the secrets they kept to themselves. She wondered instead how many car accidents and other tragedies she would have to photograph before she could squirrel away enough money for an air conditioner. Or, better yet, for an escape.

  5

  Downstairs, Harvey stood behind the bar and stared down into the beer cooler but otherwise did not move. He could feel his insides quivering but thought that if he stood motionless he could maybe keep his hands from shaking.

  Soon Will came up behind him. Will picked a glass off the rack and drew himself a few inches of beer and drank it in one long swallow. He glanced around the bar. Merle sat primly at the end of the bar, but the golfers had departed, leaving several bills beneath an empty glass on their table.

  And Harvey said, still staring into the beer cooler, into the cold dark bottom, “I feel like I’m going under, Will.”

  Will was startled by the unexpected nakedness of this confession.

  As was Harvey, who added, with a soft laugh, embarrassed by his admission, “Whatever the hell that means.”

  Will didn’t want the rare intimacy of the moment to slip away. “What do you say we get ourselves a little air.”

  Harvey remained motionless. Will moved away a couple of steps, and smiled to his only customer. “You doing okay, Merle?”

  “Doing fine, thank you. Doing fine.”

  “I’m going to step out back for a minute or two. If you need a refill, the pitcher is here behind the bar.”

  Merle looked at the inch or so of liquid in his glass. “I imagine this will do me fine,” he said.

  Will smiled, returned to stand beside Harvey, and, for just a moment, laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Then he crossed into the kitchen and out the rear door.

  6

  Will waited in the middle of the alleyway, breathing the dusky air. He used to love this kind of sultry evening, and wondered when the heat had started to bother him so much, wondered when it became so oppressive and such a chore just to take another breath. The air seemed to pulse with heat like an overpressurized boiler about to blow.

  He used to love these summer evenings because they smelled like baseball. All through Little League and Pony League and American Legion ball, that was how every summer night smelled to him. The soft leather of his glove. The cool dirt of the infield. From his position six feet off third base he would watch between batters as the moths flung themselves at the powerful sodium lights, and their passion mirrored what he felt inside but never showed—unbridled life, an exuberance aching to burst free.

  These days the town’s Little League program could not field nine players and had been forced to merge with a team several miles away. The Pony League and American League divisions had disbanded. Scrub grass grew on the local infield now. People in passing cars tossed bottles at the backstop.

  Will stood there in his alleyway and gazed into the narrow space between the buildings, the thick gray clouds overhead. He tried to remember the last time he had looked into a clear blue sky like those of his youth, a sky that seemed endless and bright, just like a twelve-year-old’s future. He thought again about how nice it would be to have a house with a yard and a real piece of sky overhead.

  Each time he looked at Molly and noticed how tall she was getting, how quickly she was growing up, he wondered again if maybe he should sell
the bar and go back to working on a dragline. He could work weekdays in West Virginia and come home on weekends. He liked having the bar and having nobody to answer to but even with Laci working as a photographer for the local paper and the police department, they could barely keep their heads above water.

  The door banged open behind him, and Will remembered why he was standing in the alleyway. He didn’t turn around, but waited until the door had fallen shut. Then he asked, not loud, “So what’s this all about?”

  Harvey came forward to stand beside his brother, then put his back to him. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Will looked at the side of Harvey’s face. “What did he do?”

  Harvey hooked his thumbs over the pockets of his jeans. Then withdrew his hands and held them below his chest. Then dropped his hands to his side and patted his thighs three times. “You remember that motorcycle Jennalee’s father had?” he asked.

  “The Indian, sure. You and Jake were restoring it a while back, as I recall.”

  “We worked on it for most of three years. Turned it into something beautiful again. Then he had that stroke.”

  “That bike must be what—thirty, forty years old by now?”

  “It’s a 1948,” Harvey said. “Sweeping fenders front and back, a studded leather seat . . . A classic.”

  Will nodded. He knew to wait now. If he tried to rush things, Harvey would clam up. Would revert to that silent, angry boy who would stand glaring at their father when the belt came off and lashed hard across Harvey’s backside.

  “I’m the one scrounged the one fender plus the leather for the seat,” Harvey said. “I’m the one sanded everything down and laid the five coats of paint on it. Jake mostly just supervised.”

  “I remember,” Will said.

  “And when they stuck him in that nursing home, he promised that bike to me. Said he’d put it in his will. Said it would be mine the day he died.”

  “Which wasn’t long after that, as I recall.”

  “I wish the old guy had lived forever. He’s the only one in the family ever treated me like a human being.”

  “You’re not including Jennalee in that, of course. You’re talking Kenny and his mother, right? Louise still have that yippy little dog?”

  Harvey nodded. “He would’ve given me that bike back when we finished it, he said, except that he enjoyed just looking at it so much. He kept it covered up and safe in his garage all those years. Told me once how he’d take off the cover sometimes and just sit on it. Pretend he was way out west somewhere, cruising through the hills of South Dakota or some such place.”

  Will nodded in return. Waited for the rest. When it was not forthcoming, he took a chance and said, “I’m not sure what you’re telling me here, Harvey. Was Kenny jealous of the relationship you had with his old man?”

  “Kenny hated him. And Jake, I don’t know. I don’t think he had much fondness for Kenny either. More than once he referred to him as a sissy. Said how he’d never done an honest day’s work in his life.”

  “A lot of people think that.”

  “It’s pretty much true,” Harvey said. “On the other hand, why work when you don’t have to?”

  Will didn’t know what to say next. Keep bad-mouthing Kenny, or agree with Harvey? He lifted his gaze to the sky. Saw nothing but a deepening darkness of charcoal gray moving in.

  Harvey said, “I guess Jake and Louise used to fight about that a lot, how she spoiled Kenny all the time.”

  “I wonder what that’s like,” Will answered. “Getting everything handed to you, I mean.”

  Harvey responded with a little shrug, a shake of his head. He scuffed his boot atop the dirty pavement. “Ever wish you had a son?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Will said. “You?”

  “All the time. Or a girl. I wouldn’t care which.”

  “You still have time.”

  Harvey raised both hands to his face now and rubbed his eyes. When he lowered his hands, he said, “You think we’d have screwed them up the way our old man did us?”

  “You think he screwed us up?”

  Again Harvey shrugged. “You remember any times he’d sit and talk to us about stuff? Lectured, yeah. All the time. But actually sit and talk without getting pissed off about something? That’s what I miss about Jake. We talked about everything.”

  Will looked toward the mouth of the alley. A pickup truck went speeding past, its stereo’s bass thumping so loudly that Will winced until the noise eased and finally disappeared. “He taught us to hunt, though,” he said.

  “And that turned out to be a useful skill, hasn’t it?”

  “I thought you enjoyed getting out in the woods together.”

  “I do,” Harvey said. “I’m just . . . I don’t know.”

  Will leaned forward just slightly so as to look at his brother’s face now. Harvey continued to stare at the pavement, at a spot maybe five feet from where he stood.

  Will sensed a deep sadness in his brother and wanted to say something funny to push it away, but his own dissatisfaction with life had rendered him humorless. Only Molly and Laci could bring an honest smile to his face these days, and even then he would be quickly reminded of how he had failed them, how close he was to having to shut down the bar and give it back to the bank. His few regular customers spent barely enough to pay operating costs. If not for Laci running off with her camera at all hours of the day and night, they could never make ends meet. And Molly would be headed off to college in exactly four years. Where was he going to get the money for that? What kind of a father and husband was he if he couldn’t even—

  Harvey said, “You’d have been good at it, you know?”

  “What’s that?” Will asked.

  “Raising a son. I’ve watched you with Molly. You just sit there and smile and nod while she goes on and on about something. It makes me feel good just to see it.”

  “It’s easier with girls, I think. I don’t know why.”

  “I know why. We don’t try to turn them into miniatures of who we are. We let them be their own person.”

  And again they both fell silent.

  This time Will was the first to speak. “So that bike you fixed up. I’m guessing Kenny won’t let you have it now.”

  Harvey breathed in through his nose. “Turns out it wasn’t in the will after all. Or so Kenny says. Says how is he supposed to know whether his dad promised it to me or not?”

  “Like that’s something you would lie about.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What’s Jennalee have to say about it?”

  “According to her it’s up to her mother. And what Louise says is that since Kenny’s the oldest child and the only son and all . . .”

  “That’s bullshit,” Will said.

  “You got that right.”

  Will let a little time pass, slow time, as tired as the night. “Somehow I just can’t picture Kenny on a motorcycle.”

  Harvey grunted, an animal sound rich with contempt.

  “He never even drove that Chevy you two used to own, did he?”

  “Never drove it, never worked on it. All Kenny wanted was to brag about how he owned half it. He still has half the damn trophies I won.”

  “So maybe he’ll sell the bike to you.”

  “Oh, he’ll sell it, all right. Didn’t you see the ad in the paper?”

  “I don’t read the classifieds unless there’s something I need.”

  “Ad says $6,500. Right there in black and white. So okay, that’s a fair price. More than fair. So I go on over there today, checkbook in hand. I even had the check made out already.”

  Will wondered what it would be like to have that much money in his checking account. “The bike’s already sold, or what?”

  “It’s still setting there in the garage! But now he says he wants fifteen thousand for it. Said he did some research, found out it’s worth a lot more than he thought. Fifteen thousand dollars for a bike I practically built myself!”

  “You
think he raised the price just to keep you from getting it?”

  “He doesn’t care whether I have the bike or not. He just wants to screw me one way or the other. Anybody else shows up, offers him nine, ten thousand for it, you think he’s not going to take it? Little pasty-faced weasel. No way I’m going to let this one pass.”

  This one, Will heard. He studied the tension in his brother’s face, the hard line of his jaw. “So what is it about you two anyway? He was supposed to be best man at your wedding, for chrissakes.”

  Harvey raised his finger in the air, was about to speak, make an important point. But then he backed off, shook his head, bit back his words.

  “Okay, so he’s a prick,” Will said. “Fine. But you’re not going to kill him over a motorcycle.”

  “What’d I tell you already? This thing with the bike is just the last in a long line of things.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “Like none of your business, okay?”

  “You made it my business when you asked to borrow my gun. Which isn’t going to happen. So just tell me what this is really about.”

  “Just one thing after another,” Harvey said.

  “Give me a couple of examples.”

  “Why can’t you just trust me on this? Why can’t you just believe me when I tell you I have ample cause to despise that slimy asshole with every bone in my body? Am I your brother or not? Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?”

  To Will’s ears there was less anger than desperation in Harvey’s words. There was a degree of pain that perhaps even he had never felt.

  “Fine,” Will said. “I believe you. That still doesn’t mean I’m going to help you murder him.”

  “Then don’t,” Harvey said. “Go on back upstairs to your fucking little sauna and eat your pizza and watch your TV. I don’t need your help or anybody else’s.”

  The men stood side by side but did not look at each other now. Will could feel the night simmering. He could smell the stale compressed heat in the long narrow box of the alleyway.