First the Thunder Read online

  She said, “You want to hear about my little talk with Kirby?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “So his idea is to go completely digital with the paper, which will eliminate a lot of the operating expenses.”

  “I wish I could go digital,” Will said.

  “He also has some cockamamie idea about starting a kind of visual magazine. Mostly photos and short videos. Hardly any written text at all. Just captions mainly.”

  Will listened to the fan whirring. Then said, “Okay. Any particular kind of photos?”

  “Different categories for different interests. News, fashion, food, sports, et cetera. Whatever the zeitgeist demands, he says.”

  “And a zeitgeist is . . . ?”

  “Whatever’s hot and trendy.”

  “And he expects you to take all these pictures?”

  “He wants me to be the director of photography. Said there are tens of thousands of photographers all over the world who will jump at the chance of having their work in an international magazine.”

  “International?”

  “Pictures are a universal language, he says. And the internet goes everywhere.”

  “He has the money to pay all those photographers? I know his old man is loaded, but . . .”

  “According to Kirby, he’ll use amateur photographers at first. Thanks to smartphones, everybody’s a photographer now. He says he’s already getting hundreds of submissions a day, just because of the buzz.”

  “There’s a buzz?” Will said.

  “Who knows? With Kirby, everything is seventy percent bullshit and fifty percent lies.”

  “Does he really think people will pay to look at pictures?”

  “The magazine will be free. He says we’ll make our money through the advertising.”

  The words we’ll and our made him wince. “That would be like me giving away drinks and charging Budweiser and Jack Daniels to hang up their signs.”

  “I know. It sounds crazy to me too.”

  “So you told him no?”

  “I’m going to play along for a while. See if this idea goes anywhere.”

  He took her hand in his then, interlaced their fingers, and held their hands atop his chest. And wondered if she could feel his heart racing; if she could feel the heavy air settling into his lungs.

  “The more interesting thing,” she said, “is a college teaching job he says I could get.”

  “Teaching photography?”

  “Apparently he has some connections.”

  “Which college?” Will asked. “Is it close?”

  “He’s being a dick about it. Won’t tell me which one unless I agree to take the other job too.”

  A minute passed in silence but for the hum of the fan blades. “I don’t know,” Will said.

  “You don’t know what, babe?”

  “Molly says he’s skeevy. I get the same feeling about him.”

  “Molly said that? About Kirby?”

  “Yeah. Just watching him, you know?”

  “Hmm,” she said, and Will waited for more, waited for agreement or affirmation, but neither came.

  Laci said, “So you heard about Molly’s new boyfriend.”

  “You knew about him?”

  “Not till after we got home from the Marriott. I could tell there was something going on between you two.”

  “There’s no way she’s going to date a senior,” he said.

  “Dating to Molly is hanging out at the library.”

  “If they stay in the library,” Will said. “But how long do you think that’s going to last?”

  “She’s growing up, babe. I agree that we have to be cautious with this. But we also have to trust her. She’s a sensible girl.”

  “And he’s an eighteen-year-old with his brain swimming in testosterone. He’s a loaded revolver. Cocked and loaded.”

  “Ha ha,” she said.

  “I’m serious about this,” Will told her.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to have a nice long talk with her tomorrow.”

  He said nothing. By now his body was stiff and hot. He could feel how tight his hand was around hers, the stickiness of the sweat on his skin.

  “She cares about what you think,” Laci said. “You just have to be careful how you talk to her. You frighten her when you get angry.”

  “She never has any reason to be frightened of me.”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Laci said.

  Will opened his hand and extended his fingers, slid them out from between hers. Then flexed his hand a few times.

  “Speaking of anger,” Laci said, “what’s the story with Harvey and Kenny?”

  “Kenny reneged on a deal for that motorcycle Harvey restored. He won’t honor the old man’s intention to give the bike to Harvey.”

  “It takes an honorable man to honor something,” Laci said.

  “This is true.”

  “Did you talk Harvey down? I hope you’re not going to lend him that gun of yours.”

  “No way,” Will said. “He’ll cool off in a day or so.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “What choice does he have?”

  In truth, he wasn’t sure about anything. He wasn’t sure that just talking to Molly would keep a pretty girl and a horned-up boy apart. He wasn’t sure that Kirby hadn’t been putting the moves on Laci at the Marriott, or that she had been totally unresponsive to his enticements. And he wasn’t sure that his .357 revolver should stay locked in its case, because maybe the world was changing so fast, spinning so out of his control, that the only way to slow it down might be with a few well-placed shots.

  14

  Stevie stood beside a large trash container at the corner of somebody’s driveway, and looked up at the light in the veterinarian’s window across the street, saw the way the light sometimes flickered, grew brighter or dimmer, and knew that she was watching television, just as he often did late at night. Then he thought of himself up there with her, beside her on the bed, and then it was too late to stop the other thoughts from coming, the need to slip his left hand down inside his jeans. He could smell the trash in the plastic container, the greasy rotten food odor, and thought about moving away from it, but liked the concealment it provided.

  It was only a few minutes later, while leaning against the trash container for support, his knees weakening as he imagined the softness of Dr. Victoria’s skin beneath her black panties, that the trash container jerked away under his weight and capsized, spilling its refuse across the driveway. He stumbled and came down on one knee atop the container, said “Shit!” as he caught himself from falling onto his face.

  Instantly a large dog inside the nearest house began to bark, and then the porch light snapped on, and Stevie was up and sprinting hard to get into the shadows again. A man’s voice from the porch shouted, “What’s going on out there?” And Stevie kept running, veering off the street now and into a side yard, across an alley and through a second yard, dodging a swing set and ducking under a clothesline, just running and running, left then right then left again until he was out of breath and far enough from the veterinarian’s house to pause and double over, sucking air and listening, listening.

  No footsteps following. Nobody in pursuit. His pulse hammered in his head.

  He straightened up now so as to better catch his breath. And found himself in the side yard of Kenny Fulton’s house.

  15

  Will had only begun to succumb to sleep when a muted ringtone roused him. Laci lay sleeping on her side, her hand still atop his chest. He slid away, knelt beside the bed and found the phone in the pocket of his khakis. The number was local, but not from his address book.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “I just caught your asshole brother breaking into my garage,” Kenny Fulton said.

  “Excuse me?” Will said, and thought, Harvey. I hope to God he didn’t have a gun.

  Will felt himself doubling over, all the strength and air draining out of
him. “Put Harvey on,” he said.

  “It’s Stevie. And he’s got nothing to say. I have him on my security camera, trying to pick the lock on the side door.”

  “Jesus,” Will said, and felt Laci sitting up in bed now. “Did you call the police?”

  “I’m about ready to,” Kenny said.

  “Can you hold off till I get there?”

  “If you weren’t my brother-in-law, he’d be in jail already.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Thanks for calling.” Will closed the phone but remained kneeling on the floor, unable to move.

  “What’s wrong?” Laci asked.

  Now he straightened, took hold of the waistband of his khakis, stood and began to dress. “That was Kenny. Apparently Stevie broke into his garage.”

  “Unbelievable,” Laci said.

  Will sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and shoes. “Is Kenny my brother-in-law?” he asked. “I thought only the husband of his sister would be his brother-in-law.”

  “What?” Laci said.

  “He called me his brother-in-law. Is that technically correct? I’ve never thought of myself as his brother-in-law. Jennalee’s, but not his.”

  “Babe,” Laci said, and laid her hand on his shoulder, “what difference does it make?”

  “It just bothers me,” he said.

  16

  Will had been to the Fulton house more than a few times before, both before and after Harvey’s marriage, but he had never felt comfortable there. With its wide covered porch on three sides and its Victorian turret, the house seemed twice as big as the six-room house he’d grown up in.

  Behind the main house sat the carriage house, which had been converted into a small apartment where Kenny had stayed during college breaks, but was now stuffed with old furniture and other castoffs Louise refused to give away. Adjacent to the house, where the cement driveway flared into a half circle, sat the three-stall garage. Louise’s car, a 2015 Camry she no longer drove, was parked against the far side of the garage, covered by a huge blue tarp now nearly black with years of dust and pollen and decaying leaves.

  Kenny sat on a wicker wingchair on the side porch, smoking a cigar, a glass of lemonade on the small wrought iron table beside his chair. Stevie was seated hunched over on the top porch step, looking forlorn and ashamed, his lemonade glass empty against his hip. The only light came through the kitchen window and door and from the bug zapper hanging from the porch ceiling. The air was thick and heavy and smelled like rain. Deep rolls of thunder were moving in from the west.

  Will walked in from the darkness beyond the porch, came in as close as Stevie, looked down at him only once, then paused with a foot up on the first step. To Kenny he said, “So what happened here?”

  Kenny took a drag from his cigar, then blew out the smoke. “I was down in the game room watching TV. Then the security alarm went off. I came upstairs, looked around, checked the windows, and what do I see but this character trying to jimmy the lock on the side door of the garage.”

  “I was just checking to see if it was open,” Stevie said without looking up.

  “You had something in your hand,” Kenny said, “which is now, I’m betting, in your pocket.”

  “There’s nothing in my pocket,” Stevie said. “I just wanted to have a look at that bike Harvey built.”

  “My father built,” Kenny said.

  Stevie started to turn, but Will placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Will asked, as calmly as he could, “Do you want to call the police?”

  “I should,” Kenny said.

  “Well, you certainly have that right. But I’m going to ask that you please don’t.”

  “I’m sitting here trying to think of one good reason not to,” Kenny said.

  “You know the reason. That’s why you didn’t call already. The strain it would put between our families.”

  “Our families never have been all that close,” Kenny said.

  “Between Harvey and Jennalee then,” Will said.

  Kenny dragged on his cigar. Blew the smoke toward the blue light of the bug zapper. He said, “If I see him skulking around here ever again . . .”

  “You won’t,” Will said.

  “I better not.”

  Will waited a few moments before he spoke. “Then he can go?”

  Kenny waved his hand through the air; the cigar glowed red and trailed a wisp of smoke.

  Will slid his hand over Stevie’s shoulder, pushed forward. “Go home,” he said.

  Stevie stood, still looking at the sidewalk. Then he lifted his head as if he were about to speak. Will said, “Go to bed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Stevie stood motionless for a few seconds, then lurched forward, and hurried away into the darkness, with both men watching after him.

  When Stevie was out of sight, Will faced Kenny again. “Thank you,” he said.

  “If it wasn’t for him falling off the garage roof that day,” Kenny told him, “I wouldn’t even have hesitated to call the police.”

  Will nodded. “You know we had him tested. There was no neurological damage.”

  “And how long ago was that? You need to have him tested now.”

  Will felt in no mood to defend his brother’s behavior. He said, “Can we talk about that bike for a minute?”

  “So Harvey’s been shooting off his mouth to everybody? What’s he saying—that I cheated him?”

  “He says Jake promised it to him. And we both know that he did ninety percent of the work on that bike.”

  “And we both know that he didn’t pay for the bike in the first place, did he? Or for any of the parts. And if there had been a will, Dad must’ve destroyed it. Because it’s nowhere to be found, I can tell you that with absolute certainty.”

  Will put a hand to the back of his skull, tried to rub away the tightness, keep his anger at bay. “Look at it this way, Kenny. You got everything else Jake ever accumulated. And Harvey wants to pay you a fair price for the bike. It has meaning for him. All the time he spent working on it with your dad, that’s what it’s all about.”

  “Well,” Kenny said, “maybe if his own father hadn’t been such a hard-ass all the time, Harvey would’ve spent some time with him instead of sucking up to my old man.”

  And now the anger broke through, too strong to contain. “And maybe if you hadn’t egged Stevie on that day, calling him a chicken if he didn’t jump over to the garage with us, maybe when he fell you wouldn’t have gone running home to hide like a scared little girl.”

  Kenny stood abruptly then, and Will felt his own body flush hot, felt the eagerness wash through him, the readiness in his fists.

  But Kenny came no closer. He took another drag from his cigar, then tossed the cigar into the grass at Will’s feet. Then turned away and reached for the door.

  Will said, “Any one of us could have ratted you out. Harvey or me or Stevie. But none of us did. Think about that for a while, why don’t you?”

  Kenny stood with his hand on the door handle, unmoving. Will expected Kenny to say more; Kenny Fulton always had something to say.

  But this time he didn’t. He opened the screen door, opened the kitchen door, stepped inside and closed both doors behind him.

  Will did not move until the kitchen light went dark. And then the bugs that had been clicking against the lighted window came off the glass and toward the bug light, their tiny bodies crackling and snapping from the electrical charge. Will watched the massacre for a full minute before turning away, and then walked blindly toward his car, the bug light’s blue afterglow still lingering in his vision.

  The sky ripped open during his slow drive home, heat lightning turning into fierce, startling splinters, the thunder so loud that he could feel it booming against his eardrums, could smell the electricity in the air and could feel it on his skin and surging into his blood.

  17

  An hour later, still wide awake as he lay beside his wife in bed, Will heard Laci’s phone ring
beneath her pillow, and he shook her awake. She grabbed the phone, said hello, listened for a few seconds, said, “On my way,” and ended the call. She rolled away from him, stood, and started pulling on her clothes.

  “Two-vehicle accident out on Connor Flats,” she whispered. “Sounds bad.”

  He rolled onto one elbow. “Be careful,” he told her. “It’s wet outside.”

  “It finally rained?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t hear the thunder.”

  “I was really out,” she said.

  He nodded, said nothing more until she headed out of the bedroom. “Be careful,” he told her again. “Love you.”

  “Love you,” she said without turning. And a minute later went out of the apartment and softly down the stairs.

  He climbed out of bed to sit in his boxers between the fan and the open bedroom window. The night had grown warm again, despite the light rain that continued to fall, and through the screen the scent of the street was even stronger than it had been before the storm, as if the rain had merely stirred up the ugliness instead of washing it away. The air smelled of road oil and dirt, of the garbage in the dumpster in the alley. No stars were visible now, not even a dull smoky glow of moon.

  We can’t steal the bike, he told himself after a while. We can’t beat up on Kenny. We don’t want to do anything that might give Kenny’s mother a heart attack. Or anything that Jennalee will find out about and divorce Harvey over. We have to be clever about this, he thought. I have to be clever. This is my role in things. I am not bold or fearless but I can think things through. I’m nobody’s genius but I can figure this out.

  He turned away from the window then and looked toward the bed. The slight indentations where Laci had lain were still visible. As were his own. For some reason the sight of those indentations filled him with sorrow. She should have been lying there peacefully, not having to scurry away in the middle of the night to take pictures of strangers.

  He rose from the chair and walked around the foot of the bed and eased himself down into her space, his head on her pillow. He could smell the scent of her hair, her skin, and those scents aroused him, the image of his wife lying naked beneath him. His erection pressed against the mattress, and he imagined her small hands on his back as they pulled him closer.