Only the Rain Read online

  But then I thought of Cindy and the girls and that was all I needed. I pulled away from her and said something about putting her in the shower. Then I yanked open the plastic curtain to the shower stall, and in there’s a stack of four cardboard boxes of slightly different sizes. Men’s boot boxes stacked up over the drain. All but the top one has duct tape sealing them shut. And I think, shoeboxes in the shower? So I lift the lid off the top box. And the dizziness that hits me when I see all those neat bundles of cash inside is enough to make me stagger.

  I’m out of breath suddenly and my knees are wobbly. When she stands up and puts her arms around me it’s all I can do to pull both dirty towels off the rack and sort of press them into her hands. I look around for more towels but there aren’t any, so I scoop her up again and stumble back to the bedroom where her clothes are, and I kick the clothes out of the way and lay her down on the mattress and tuck the two dirty towels around her.

  “You need to get yourself dressed,” I tell her. She keeps saying things like, baby I’m cold, baby fuck me, and she’s touching herself and trying to touch me and my head is spinning and my ears are buzzing like a band saw. I’m, I don’t know . . . stunned, I guess, by what I’ve stumbled into. And I can’t breathe. I’m sucking air but it’s not doing me any good. I feel the same way I did when the propane tank exploded in Mahmudiya and the ringing in my ears started and all I saw was people bleeding, and for a few moments I think, I’m back there again, that there’s some weird kind of juxtaposition of time going on, and when I take a last look down at that naked, muddy girl, I honestly don’t know if it’s mud or blood all over the mattress.

  I do know that I got out of that room and pulled the door shut behind me. And then I’m back out on the porch again, trying to fill my lungs and my head with something I can understand. There’s still a light rain coming down, and the pit bull starts into his barking again the moment he sees me. But there’s my bike out there at the end of the yard. The rain is falling and the leaves on the trees in the background are a dark, shiny green. I’m thinking to myself that it must be after five by now and in twenty minutes or so Cindy will be home with the girls. And that brings the whole day back to me then. That brings back all the fear and near panic I’d been feeling on my ride away from the plant.

  I turned and went back into the house. Got as far as the hallway, then turned around and went back out onto the porch.

  Thinking about that now, me knowing what I should do but not wanting to do it, just standing there sort of paralyzed on the porch, reminds me of the day I left for basic. I was barely eighteen, a month out of high school. Pops and Gee drove me to the bus station. And just before I climbed up onto that bus, after we’d already told each other goodbye a half-dozen times, Gee reaches up and lays both hands on my cheeks and pulls me down close to her. She was just a little woman but so serious sometimes, with this life-or-death look in her eyes that almost made me want to laugh at her. “‘Watch and pray,’” she says, quoting from the Bible, “‘that you do not fall into temptation.’”

  That’s from Matthew somewhere. It’s when Jesus comes back from praying and finds the disciples all asleep and bitches out Peter for being careless. “The spirit is willing,” Jesus tells him, “but the flesh is weak.”

  He might as well have been saying that to me. I wish he’d shown up and joined me on that porch. Because that was my moment, years and years after Gee warned me. I was weak in both spirit and flesh.

  The thing is, I couldn’t get myself to go down off those steps, no matter how much I knew that’s exactly what I needed to do. I couldn’t force myself to go back out into the rain and climb onto the bike and take all my fear and . . . what’s the word for it . . . uselessness back to Cindy. Not when I had another option.

  “Fuck your pride,” Jake had said. “You have a family to think about.”

  “You just do it,” is what Pops used to say. “You do it and then you live with it.”

  And you, Spence . . . the guy who kept me alive all those months, the guy who got me back home vertical, I could hear you too. I swear I could hear you standing there on that porch and whispering in my ear. “It’s all about survival, man. Priority one. Don’t you ever forget that, soldier.”

  So I went back inside. I peeked into the bedroom where the girl was, and she was laying there on her back with her eyes closed, waving her hands in the air and singing, which when I think about it was that same Jackson Brown song you and me used to listen to in the afternoons sometimes when it was too frigging hot to move. I honestly don’t know if she was really singing that song or not. Maybe it was only inside my head.

  Anyway, I went back to the bathroom. I grabbed one of the taped-up boxes. Then I went out to my bike. I don’t know if the girl was still singing or not. I don’t know if the dog was barking or if the rain was falling or anything else that happened.

  The fog of war, they call it. And I took a long ride home through that blinding fog of war.

  When I got home that night with the box of money in my saddlebag, I didn’t know what to do. My mind was racing with all kinds of thoughts. Cindy had put my garage door up after she pulled the pickup in, so I drove into my stall and parked the bike half-turned toward the door the way I always do. What little of me had dried out inside the naked girl’s place was soaked again, and I was shivering with cold and a confusing mix of fear and excitement. I regretted what I’d done yet I couldn’t wait to see how much money was in that shoebox.

  I shut off the engine and sat there on my bike for thirty seconds or so trying to get my thoughts together. That’s when the door into the kitchen opened and Cindy looked out.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I called you twice wondering what had happened to you.”

  “Rain happened,” I said. “Lots of it.”

  “So I see. You want me to get you a towel and some dry clothes?”

  “A towel and my robe, I think. Do I have time for a hot bath?”

  “I’ll get it started,” she said. “I’ll feed the girls while you’re soaking.”

  “Thanks, baby.”

  “I kept praying you hadn’t wrecked somewhere.”

  “Must have worked,” I told her. She gave me that smile then that always made me feel better than any I love you could. It was 30 percent mouth and 70 percent eyes, and what that smile said was I need you so so much, Russell. I need you more than I need myself.

  I tried to give her the same kind of smile back and said, “Hit the garage door button, will you, baby?”

  The door grumbled and clanked down to the concrete, and only then did I start to get some breath back. How could anybody know it was me? I kept asking myself. The girl didn’t know me and I didn’t know her. The dog didn’t know me. The only question was, had somebody come along while I was in the house who recognized my bike? I figured that was the only thing I had to worry about. That and what was going to happen to my soul. I prayed that Gee might be able to pull some strings from her end.

  I finally managed to haul myself off the bike and peel off my top shirt. It was a short-sleeve chambray and felt like it weighed five pounds. The T-shirt underneath was plastered to my skin, and every time my icy fingers touched some other part of me I winced. Cindy came out then with a beach towel and the gray fleece robe the girls gave me the previous Christmas. She set those things on my workbench and grabbed the back of the T-shirt and dragged it up over my head and then wrapped the beach towel around my shoulders. “Go sit on the step and I’ll take your boots off,” she said.

  “Sweetie, I’ll do it. You don’t need to be out here.”

  “You’re practically blue,” she said.

  “Who knew rain in August could feel so cold?”

  “It’s the wind chill,” she said. “Where’s your raincoat? Didn’t you even put it on?”

  “Stupid, I know. I started out under a patch of blue sky.”

  “Did you think it was going to follow you the whole way home?”

  I grabbed her in
both arms then and pulled her close, held her to me tighter than I had in a long time. When I finally kissed the top of her head and let her go she looked up at me and said, “You almost wrecked, didn’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re still shook up about it.”

  She turned to the bike then and went over to it and started studying it up close.

  I said, “What are you looking for?”

  “It doesn’t look like you laid it down.”

  “I fishtailed once is all. Some idiot in a big black Land Cruiser pulled right out in front of me.”

  “You let him have it?” she asked.

  “I was too busy trying to stay upright. By the time I got steadied, he was nothing but a couple of taillights.”

  She came away from the bike then, back to me, which made me feel a little easier. “Aw babe,” she said, and laid a pair of warm hands on my waist. “I’m sorry you had such a nasty ride home. How was the rest of the day?”

  “Good,” I told her. “No problems.”

  She wanted to help me get the rest of my clothes off but I finally convinced her to go back in the house and let me do it. Then I sat there on the top of the three concrete steps that go up from the garage floor to the door into the kitchen, and with fingers that were still stiff and stinging I unlaced my boots and wiggled them off. My feet were the only part of me still dry.

  Ever since I came home from the service I’ve been wearing my tan desert boots whenever I rode the bike. I told myself it was because they were a lot more comfortable than the heavier and stiffer discount-store bike boots I had, and that was true, but I think another reason they feel so right on my feet is because they keep me attached to that other time. I hated nearly every minute of my time in the Army, yet I’m grateful for it too. You can’t endure as much discomfort and downright pain as a soldier does, and you sure as hell can’t witness as much violence and stupidity and cruelty as we did, without it leaving its mark on you. Wearing my boots while doing one of the things I love best is my way of saying thanks to the Army, I guess. No, not to the Army really, but more to the things I experienced in the Army. I came across so many people a lot worse off than me. A world of suffering, but goodness too. A way of life I’d never imagined existed when I was growing up in Pops and Gee’s house.

  And that day as I took my boots off in the garage, as I held onto my dry socks with both hands and looked over at my bike dripping onto the concrete floor, it was like a switch clicked in my brain and I was looking at the cement porch of that house we searched in Iraq—the one with the boy chained up outside, same as that pit bull at the house I’d just left. He was maybe twelve, thirteen years old. Man, we talked about that boy for days afterward, always questioning ourselves. Down’s Syndrome, you said. I can see him as plain as day right now, that goofy, crooked grin when he saw us coming into the yard, like we were the most exciting thing he’d ever seen. That rusty chain, maybe fifteen feet long, fastened around his ankle on one end, around a porch column at the other end. The way the chain had worn away the bottom of the column till it was nothing but a thin spindle, and us wondering how long it would take before it wore through completely, either through the column or through the poor kid’s leg.

  I can still see that little bed the boy had up against the porch, made from a couple of dirty blankets. And those dark eyes of his watching us coming and going—eyes full of expectation, I think.

  And then we finished the search and walked away and left him there. And couldn’t stop talking about him. Should we have taken him to that dilapidated hospital down the road, where he probably would have been locked in a room and forgotten about? At least he was being fed where he was. I wonder if he’s still there. I wonder if the column finally wore through, and he did what? Just walked away with that chain dragging behind him?

  Christ, life is hard. I wish we had set that kid free. I wish it so bad, like it could’ve been the best thing I did over there. But I didn’t. None of us did.

  And I sat there on my garage step, Spence, remembering that kid chained up like a dog, remembering that I was now no better than a common thief, and I sobbed like a baby.

  The only thing that got me to stop finally was knowing Cindy or one of the girls could open the door any minute, and if they saw me sitting there crying they never would have understood why. And how could they, really? How could they know that in all my time growing up without a father and with a mother slowly dying, and in all my time in the military swallowing sand and bullshit, and in all my time in college feeling out of place and destined to fail, I had never once realized the way I did in that garage how beautiful and fucking ugly the world outside can be.

  Anytime Cindy lays her hand between my legs while we’re watching TV in bed, I know what it means. It doesn’t happen very often, what with us cleaning up after dinner, then getting the girls their baths and playing with or reading to them until they fall asleep. By then we’re both exhausted and know we have to get up and start again at sunrise or earlier, so the sexual part of our life usually only happens on weekends, and especially when we get the girl down the street to take our girls to a movie or the skating rink or something. In which case, I’m usually looking at Cindy a certain way long before she has to lay a finger on me.

  But that night after the naked girl we were both sitting up in bed with the little TV on, and underneath the sheet she slid her hand over and laid it on my thigh. I knew if I sat there and did nothing, after a few minutes or so she’d move her pinkie finger a little, enough to touch me where it counts. In most cases, though, about thirty seconds of her hand touching my skin is enough for me, and before you know it she can tell how interested I am. And I’m always interested.

  This night, though, she didn’t get any reaction whatsoever when she first touched me. My head was pounding with too many thoughts, all of them bouncing around inside my skull like billiard balls. Why did I take that money? And what was I going to do with it now? I couldn’t hide it from Cindy forever. And what if somebody at the bank said something to her about the plant closing?

  Silence is the same as a lie, Gee used to say when she was trying to get me to confess to some little thing. Like who ate the candy bar supposed to be in Pops’ lunch. Who left the cap off the milk bottle. Stuff that in the end was pretty easy to confess to.

  But there wasn’t going to be anything easy about these new confessions. I should have come out with it all right then and there. I just wasn’t thinking straight. She had a hand on my thigh and I knew what she was leading up to, and I also knew I couldn’t sit there and wait until she made the next move either, because she’s the kind that always takes even the smallest rejection personally. I have to be very careful when it comes to that. I mean, even something like, “Honey, I’m too busy right now to listen to what your customer did today” will bring tears to her eyes. So I had to find some way of tiptoeing around letting her know I was in no mood for making love.

  “We have any flu medicine in the house?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you feeling good, babe?”

  “I’ve had the chills ever since I got home. And my body feels like somebody’s been punching on me all day.”

  “There’s Children’s Flu and Cold,” she said.

  “Will that work on me?”

  “I don’t see why not. Maybe double up the dosage. You want me to get it for you?”

  “Stay in bed, I’ll get it.”

  I went into the bathroom and made a little noise and then I went back into the bedroom making a face and smacking my lips. She said, “What did you do, drink out of the bottle?”

  “Out of the cap,” I said.

  “Which is now on top of the bottle.”

  “We’ve all got the same germs, baby.”

  “Except for the new ones you put in the medicine.”

  “Isn’t that medicine supposed to kill those germs?”

  She looked at me and shook her head but she couldn’t hide the little smi
le.

  I told her, “I’m going to make a cup of tea, see if that will warm me up while the medicine goes to work. You want one?”

  She shook her head no and said, “Get something to wrap up in.”

  “I’ll get my coat out of the closet. Is it only me, or are you cold too?”

  “I’m fine. The air conditioner is set at seventy.”

  “It’s only me then.”

  “Get the thermometer and I’ll take your temperature.”

  “Watch your show. I’ll be okay.”

  That money in my saddlebag was all I was able to think about. One minute it seemed like a birthday present waiting to be unwrapped, and the next minute like a ticking time bomb. I kept asking myself, what kind of a person are you to have done such a thing? I’d think, that girl probably can’t even remember what you look like. Then I’d hear the house creak and I’d go stiff and sit there waiting for the door to be kicked in.

  Plus I kept wondering about whose money it was I’d taken. I knew that girl wasn’t in charge of the place. She was there to keep watch over things, her and the dog. And I guess maybe she kept watch a little too closely, so close that some of the stuff she was watching got inside her.

  I’d never thought of myself as a thief before. Sure, every now and then when I was a teenager I’d sneak a couple dollars out of Pops’ change jar, but I was relatively sure he knew I was doing it. He even said to me from time to time, “If you’re short on jingle, go grab yourself some out of my jar.” Taking ten dollars one time was probably the worst I’d ever done.

  But I’d taken a lot more than that this time. And without anybody giving me permission to do so. I didn’t like what that said about me. But what I didn’t like even more was not being able to take care of my family.