First the Thunder Read online

  “Can’t say I blame you,” he told her. “You want me to come over and get it out of there?”

  “That’s exactly what I want,” she said. “But I don’t want you to get bitten either. Do you have the right equipment for it?”

  He envisioned the job: crawling into the dark, tight space on his belly, his naked face an easy target. “Do you have any qualms about extermination?” he asked.

  “Not in this case I don’t. Would fifty dollars be sufficient?”

  “Should be,” he said. Then, with a little laugh, “I might have to charge a few dollars more if I get my face bitten off.”

  22

  Laci didn’t often have the luxury of lying in bed alone in the morning, thinking her own thoughts. Usually the alarm woke both her and Will at seven, and he, still groggy, would roll up close to her, his hand sliding onto her shoulder, then down to her breasts. She would either be sleeping on her back or on her left side, facing the edge of the bed. He always awoke with an erection, and even half-asleep wanted to slide it into her. Sometimes she was in the mood and sometimes not, but if he was patient and took a few minutes of touching and stroking to get her ready, she would accede to his desire and allow him to enter her from behind. His movements were always slow and gentle in the morning, which she found endearing, as if even semiconscious he was aware of their daughter sleeping not far away. Occasionally they made love in the afternoon when Molly was at school or with her friends, and then their lovemaking was more vociferous, with both of them groaning and talking and urging the other on. She would straddle and ride him until she fell moaning and spent atop his chest. He would stroke her back for several minutes, and when she was ready she would slide to the edge of the bed and lay on her left side so that he could stand behind her and finish. It was hard, delicious, delirious work for both of them, and after they showered and Will returned to the bar she would often nap until Molly came home or called for a pickup.

  But this morning the alarm had not gone off. Will left early to talk to his brothers.

  She could smell the fresh pot of coffee he had made, and hoped he had left enough in the pot so that the bottom didn’t burn.

  It troubled her a little that he had not awakened her that morning with his erection pressing against her; obviously Stevie’s little escapade had him more worried than usual. And Will was a worrier. Every little misfortune became another hole in the dike for him. If he didn’t learn to relax once in a while, he was going to drive himself crazy, and drag her along for the ride. Still, she could have used some comforting herself. Some reconnection and grounding.

  Last night’s job had taken a lot out of her. This morning she felt achy all over. Her eyelids didn’t want to open the whole way, and her eyes felt scratchy and red. Images of the crime scene kept flickering through her head, the wet blood and shattered glass on the highway, the boy sitting beside the gurney, his face buried in his hands.

  In hopes that sexual arousal would chase the images away and clear her head, she thought about Will touching her, his hand between her legs. But sometimes Will disappeared and Trooper Wilson took his place. And sometimes she saw the black tarp and the form of a body beneath it. She kept jerking her thoughts back to sex but this time it wasn’t working. She couldn’t make herself aroused and there was nobody around to lend a hand.

  She turned her thoughts to her own situation and the possibility of improvement. What if Kirby’s plan for a digital magazine really worked? Odds were against it, Kirby being Kirby. But what if? How long could she keep Kirby at arm’s length? And was it even worth the effort to try?

  She had to be a realist. Had to think in terms of debits and credits. Kirby wasn’t Alex Wilson, a man she’d admired and with whom she shared a strong physical attraction. Kirby was just a pampered rich boy with soft hands and a soft body. If she gave him what he wanted, in exchange for what she wanted—a better job, more money, more security for her family—what would that make her? She might as well dress in a miniskirt and boots and parade her pretty little butt all up and down the street.

  On the other hand, women had been using their charms for self-promotion since the beginning of humanity. How many housewives despised their husbands yet tolerated their grunts and groans in exchange for food, shelter, college tuition for the kids? Wasn’t that prostitution too? If you stop to think about it, she told herself, having sex and getting nothing from it, as she had done with Alex, is way less intelligent than doing it for a better job.

  Heck, she might even enjoy sex with Kirby.

  Then she told herself, Ugh. Don’t even think about that.

  Besides, the online photo magazine was probably bullshit. But the teaching job . . . That one just might be legit. Would she really have a shot at it?

  Nothing to do but find out.

  She slid her legs over the side of the bed, stood, and had a rush of dizziness that made her sit down. She thought about falling back onto her pillow and going back to sleep, letting everything just go to hell and fall apart. But she couldn’t.

  She pushed herself up slower this time. No dizziness. Then went to her dresser, found a pair of baggy shorts and a T-shirt and pulled them on, and padded lightly into the kitchen. Molly was a sound sleeper, but Laci took no chances. She was careful getting a mug out of the closet, careful getting milk from the refrigerator, even careful opening up her laptop on the coffee table in the living room.

  Before starting her search of local college websites, she took a long sip of coffee. So good in the morning. Will always made the coffee too strong for her taste, so she drank it lukewarm with lots of milk. She never complained to Will about his coffee, it was such a tiny thing, not worth mentioning. In every other way he was the perfect husband, a hard worker and attentive father. He just wasn’t very good at making coffee. Or making money. That was no reason not to love him. He was doing his best. He always did his best. It was his brothers that were dragging them down right now, not Will himself.

  Maybe if she could get the teaching job. Then, with income from that and working for the paper and the police department, she could convince him to sell the bar, find himself another job. Maybe even move to another town. The college town maybe. More opportunities for Molly, for Will, for all of them.

  Damn it, she needed that job. But first she had to find out if it was real.

  23

  Will turned to look when he heard Jennalee coming down off the front porch, moving carefully in her white block-heel sandals. The moment the sun hit her face she slipped her sunglasses on. Still twenty feet from where Harvey and Will stood with their heads under the Infiniti’s upraised hood, she said, “What are you boys cooking up this morning?”

  Will turned to face her, though Harvey did not. As always, Will felt a little catch in his chest at the sight of his brother’s wife: blonde hair perfectly styled, her pretty face and pale red lipstick, white shorts and long legs and red painted toenails, the light-blue silky top against her breasts. If she wasn’t the prettiest woman in town, he didn’t know who was. “Morning, Jennalee,” he said.

  She smiled in return, and now, wedging herself between the brothers so that Will had to move aside, she put a hand on each of their backs. “Get me all fixed up?” she said to her husband.

  “Good for another three thousand miles,” Harvey answered. He stepped back and reached for the hood, waited until Jennalee and Will were clear, and pulled the hood down.

  Will said, “Well, I guess I better be on my way.”

  “Don’t leave on my account,” Jennalee said. “I left the coffee on for you boys.”

  Harvey said, “He’s got a business to run.” Then he turned to Will and said, “Talk to you later.”

  Will nodded, gave Jennalee a parting smile, and turned away.

  Harvey waited until Will was out on the sidewalk. “You be home for lunch?” he asked his wife.

  Jennalee said, “Well, I need a new pair of cross-trainers for the classroom, and then I thought I might get my nails done. An
d then I might stop and chat with Mom awhile.”

  Harvey turned to face her, but stood looking away, squinting toward the sun. “You just saw her last night, didn’t you?”

  “Do we have to talk about this again?” she asked.

  “How about spending some time with your husband now and then?”

  “Such as?” she asked. “Stand here with my head under the hood of your truck?”

  “There’s lots of things we could do together.”

  “Okay. Give me a couple of examples. Ones that don’t include sex.”

  He said nothing. Stood breathing shallowly through his nose, his muscles stiff.

  “Sweetie,” she said, and rubbed her hand against his back, “if you’re feeling neglected, just tell me what you want that I’m not giving you.”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “I do mind. I don’t like you being this way. Tell me what I’m not doing for you.”

  He gave her a look, then turned away and crossed to stand in front of his truck. He put his hands up on the edge of the hood but did not pull it down.

  She followed to stand beside him. “Really,” she said. “What am I not doing? I make all your meals, right? If we don’t eat together, your dinner is in the oven or the slow cooker or the refrigerator, isn’t it? Have you ever had to make your own dinner? Do I keep the house clean? This house is immaculate. Do I neglect my wifely duties in the bedroom? You can’t possibly say that.”

  “You do everything,” he said. “You’re the perfect wife.”

  “Now you’re going to insult me with sarcasm?”

  “The point,” he said, “is that you do all that stuff just so you can feel free to take off again. What do you do over there all the time anyway? Do you play cards, watch movies? What do you do?”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t have to watch your parents grow old.”

  “Oh boy,” he said.

  “I mean it. She’s changing. Getting sad. I think she’s becoming aware of her own mortality. Like she knows she’s going to die one of these days too. She’s being so sweet to me lately.”

  Harvey grunted. “Your mother sweet? I sure haven’t seen any of that.”

  “Well, you should pay more attention, because she is.”

  “That still doesn’t mean you have to . . . Listen, I get weekends off. Two days a week. We should be spending that time together.”

  “If there’s something you want to do together, just let me know.”

  “Anything. I don’t care what.”

  “Well, that’s just vague enough that we’ll sit around all day asking each other, ‘What do you want to do? No, what do you want to do?’”

  “All right,” Harvey said. “Let’s drive down to Pittsburgh and go to a ball game.”

  “In this heat? You want to sit out in this heat for four or five hours?”

  “Then we’ll go to a museum or something.”

  “You hate museums. You’ll just walk around saying, ‘That’s not art. How is that art?’”

  “I don’t care what we do! We can go to a movie, for God’s sake. Sit in an air-conditioned movie house.”

  “And listen to you complain about people eating popcorn too loud.”

  “Then you think of something.”

  “That’s the problem, my love; I already made plans for the day. I told Mom I would stop by. She’s expecting me.”

  “She expects you all prettied up with your makeup and hair all done?”

  “Now you know I refuse to leave the house looking like a mess. You know that. So don’t start this nonsense, because I know where you’re going with it.”

  “Yeah, well . . . it just seems awfully suspicious to me.”

  “That I want to look nice walking around the mall?” she said. “You find that suspicious? You want me to throw on some sweatpants and flip-flops from the Dollar Store? Will that make you happier?”

  “Just go,” he said. “Just go.” He pulled the truck hood down partway, waited until she stepped back, then closed it as softly as he could.

  She said, “You want us to do something together tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay. You come up with a plan. Anything you want to do, we’ll do it.”

  He said, “We could drive up into the mountains. Take a picnic lunch with us.”

  “Whatever you want,” she said. “Just make sure we have a gallon or so of insect repellant.”

  “Then forget it,” he told her, and pulled away. “Just forget it.”

  He strode into the garage, into the scent of shade and cool concrete and tools and paint cans and things he understood. He stood facing the workbench and hoped to hear her heels clicking softly as she came up behind him. Instead he heard her car door opening and falling shut. Heard the Infiniti’s engine growl to life. Heard the tires whispering across the pavement as she backed out onto the street and drove away.

  24

  Will pulled out his cell phone to check the time. He had to turn his back to the sun and use his body to shade the screen. Twenty minutes after nine. The bar was fifteen minutes away. He would need another twenty to get everything in place so he could unlock the door. But Harvey’s adamancy worried him. Harvey wanted rid of Kenny so badly that he was willing to risk losing Jennalee? Something wasn’t right about that. What wasn’t Harvey telling him?

  Will asked himself, What if I have another talk with Kenny? See if I can’t get this settled somehow.

  Old Ralph and older Eldon, father and son, one in his late sixties, the other ninety-two, would be his only customers until noon or so. They would probably be waiting in their ancient pickup truck when Will arrived, listening to some country-western song with the windows down, the radio so loud Will would hear it from a block away. They had lost their farm back in the eighties and hadn’t sobered up since. Not long after the bank’s auction of all their farm equipment, Ralph’s wife packed two suitcases, and off she went to live with her sister in Myrtle Beach. Less than a year later, Eldon’s wife “took the easy way out,” in his words, by swallowing a handful of Prozac and half a bottle of chardonnay. Now the men lived together in the old farmhouse, slowly rotting along with the roof and boards, both men as unkempt as their remaining acre of weeds and grass.

  They can wait a few extra minutes, Will told himself, and turned left at the corner, returning to the house he had visited only nine hours earlier.

  The moment Will knocked on the doorframe, Louise’s frenetic terrier started yipping. He raced down the carpeted stairs and into the foyer and up to the screen door, where he stood on his front paws, stubby little claws and blunted snout pushed against the screen. To Will the little dog always reminded him of a big rodent fetus of some kind, looking cartoonishly stupid with its squinty eyes void of lashes, its nose void of whiskers. Every time the dog got excited, as it was now, it sported a bright-red erection.

  “Hey, boy,” Will said, though he found the dog mildly repulsive.

  “Who’s there?” Louise said, invisible at the top of the stairs.

  “It’s Will,” he answered. “Is Kenny home?”

  How many dozens of times had he said those words? As a child he’d been Harvey’s errand boy, always running over to the Fulton house at his brother’s behest, fetching Kenny or something Harvey had left behind there the day before, his ball glove or Frisbee, or, when he grew older, a tool of some kind, or the wallet that must have fallen out during Harvey’s turn in the back seat with some girl.

  Louise’s reply was a groan of annoyance. She came heavily down the stairs, one plodding step at a time. Halfway down she came into view. Everything about her seemed soft and bloated to Will, from her fat swollen feet in their translucent compression stockings to the corpulent body beneath a brightly flowered muumuu to her flabby arms and thick crepey neck and broad, scowling face.

  She was unrecognizable from the attractive Louise Will had known as a boy. Never a small woman, she had played a lot of tennis in her younger years to maintai
n what was then called “a statuesque figure.” She had been flirtatious with all of Kenny’s friends, even on occasion with Will once he entered pubescence. But now, Will noticed, she seemed as asexual as a flatulent cow.

  She came to the door and silenced Tippy by shoving him aside with her foot. “What do you want with him?” she asked through the screen.

  “Just want to talk to him about a couple of things.”

  “That idiot brother of yours should be in jail right now,” she said. “If it was up to me, he would be.”

  “He, uh,” Will said. “He made a mistake, that’s for sure. And he’s very sorry for what he did.”

  “What good is that supposed to do?”

  Will blew out a breath; looked off to the side. Through the foyer he could see part of the spacious living room, the long red sofa, the stuffed chairs and paintings and expensive tables and lamps.

  He said, “Is Kenny around?”

  “That’s bullshit what Harvey’s saying about a will,” she said. “Pure unadulterated bullshit. I don’t appreciate him going around lying about that.”

  “Harvey doesn’t lie,” he said quietly, straining to remain calm. “Mrs. Fulton, that’s your son-in-law you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t try blaming that on me,” she said. “I was against that marriage from the start.”

  Will felt his eyes begin to sting; felt the skin of his face tighten. “We need to get something worked out here,” he told her. “Jake promised that motorcycle to Harvey. Harvey did all the work on it. He deserves some consideration.”

  “Jake made a lot of promises he never intended to keep. What’s done is done. And it’s going to stay done.”

  “Could you tell Kenny I would like to speak with him?”

  “I already told you he isn’t here.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well how many times do you have to be told?”

  Again Will released a slow breath. It was the only way to keep himself under control. Talking to her was useless.