Chuck Logan - After the Rain

“Yeah, yeah, for weddings, funerals, or unless their job sends them here,” Dale said. He smiled at Gordy’s consternation. “So you think she’s working, huh?” If Gordy was worried, it could only be about one thing. “Some kind of snitch? Cop maybe?”

Gordy shrugged. “Maybe the Canadian excise people are bitching about the whiskey again.”

Dale’s smile broadened, enjoying Gordy’s discomfort. “Ace don’t ship that much. It’s the meth has everybody riled. More likely she’s after you .”

Gordy was not amused. “Ha ha. But that ain’t the point. Ace’s thinking with his pecker. I mean, c’mon, at the very least she’s a lush. And he’s drinking.”

“Think of that: the two of them shacked up in the back room. They’ll drink up the inventory.”

“I’m serious here. They catch him driving and drinking one more time, he’ll be eating takeout pizza in county. Walking the halls for exercise, on one cigarette a day.”

Dale shrugged fatalistically. “It’s because of Darlene and the kids leaving. The divorce.” He made a sympathetic assay with his flat blue eyes. But behind his expression he hid a swell of satisfaction. Ace was finally falling back to earth in flaming, whiskey-soaked pieces, spiraling so low he was almost taking orders from this piece of shit, Gordy, who’d had a D average, who had to go to summer school to graduate. Who had to get special permission from the principal to go on the Senior Trip.

“So what do you say? Have a talk with him.”

Dale nodded without enthusiasm. “He don’t listen to me, you know.”

“At least try.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to him.”

Gordy nodded, looked around. “So, ah, where’s our favorite funny fucking Indian?”

Dale settled back into his desk chair and took his time reaching into the refrigerator, taking out a Coke, popping the top. Gordy called Joe Reed the “funny fucking Indian” because Joe had this very un-Indian habit, according to Gordy, anyway, of always being strictly on time.

So that’s why he’s here. He wants Joe back. Dale jerked his head north. “Went over the border yesterday. Don’t know why. He don’t exactly leave detailed trip tickets. Guy like Joe, I don’t really want to know.”

“I hear you. Well, when he gets his sneaky blanket ass back here, tell him to drop by and talk to me,” Gordy said.

“You ain’t got the balls to say that to his face,” Dale said.

They stared each other down. Gordy broke first, laughed, and said, “You’re absolutely right. But like I said, ask him polite to drop by.”

“I don’t think he’s into running your dope across the border anymore, Gordy,” Dale said.

“Yeah, right. He’s got such a future here, huh?”

“Hey.” Dale brightened. “I just sold off two of my last three machines, Irv Fuller bought ’em. He’s in the big time now. Got that construction outfit outside the Twin Cities, just won the bid on a big job.”

“Irv Fuller.” Gordy made a face.

“Yeah, Irv Fuller,” Dale said. Irv had been Homecoming King. And Ginny Weller had been Homecoming Queen.

“Did Irv pay you?”

“Put some money down,” Dale said.

“That’s Irv. Be twenty years getting the balance.”

Dale shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I gotta feeling this deal is going to work out for me.”

“Yeah, right. So whattaya say, talk to Ace, will you?”

“I told you. I’ll try.”

“Good. So, ah, what are you going to do?”

“Sell off the last machine and lock the door. You know anybody needs a cheap 644 front-end loader?”

“That one?” Gordy pointed to the big yellow tractor sitting deeper in the shed. “The wheels are bald.”

“That’s why it’s so cheap.”

Gordy shook his head. “Then what? Go down to Florida with your dad?”

Dale grinned broadly. “Probably.”

“Well, good luck, Needle-Dick.”

Dale stood up and placed his hands on his hips. “Don’t call me that ever again.”

Gordy laughed and held out his hands and wiggled his fingers in a mock fright. “Oooh.”

“I mean it, I’m giving you fair warning,” Dale said calmly.

“Needle-Dick.” Gordy grinned, flipped Dale the bird, and walked out of the office. Dale watched him swagger back across the road, go up the porch, and disappear into the Missile Park.

Dale held his fists tight against his chest. Ten years Gordy had been picking on him.

He had lost his focus and now he had to get it back.

He took a couple of cold Cokes from the small refrigerator and tossed them in his backpack. People used to ride him about the pack. Just a tiny thing in his huge hands, the seams parting, yellow with a little blue butterfly on the flap. It had been his schoolbag in elementary school. Just room for two Cokes and a sandwich.

Methodically, he shut off the lights, locked the door, and walked to his ancient Grand Prix. Getting in, his boots poked around, stirring through a compost of hamburger wrappers on the floorboards.

The windshield was clouded with grime. Dale paid no mind. He started the car and drove north along the grid of roads through wind-rippled fields that were mostly empty. Here and there he saw a huge-wheeled tractor. The skeletal rails of a hay wagon. They were waiting on the crop to ripen. Waiting on the custom combiners to come through.

He poked the radio and KNDK came on with the weather for the Drayton, Walhalla, and Langdon area: cloudy and humid, ninety-two degrees. Legion baseball tonight, Langdon at Grafton. First pitch at 5:45, weather permitting. Dale turned it off when the Successful Farmers’ Radio Magazine theme music started up.

He thought of the deserted homes that dotted the fields. Successful farmers, my ass! The houses were just hulks, long since abandoned; the farm families who used to live in them had been torpedoed by consolidation and had sunk out of sight beyond the sea of wheat.

Finally he pulled into an overgrown driveway. He shut off the motor and listened to the buzz of the cicadas. The damp ferment of sodden crops rolled over him as he looked up the drive at the house. He had fields of his own in his chest. He could feel the waves of sadness rippling off to the horizon.

He heaved out and walked toward the peeling farmhouse. Every year it looked more tiny and more run-down. The wind had finally stove in the north end of the barn and now it sagged in on the foundation. The once vibrant red lumber had faded to gray splinters. The old pasture and truck garden were long since plowed up and put into wheat.

He heard a rasp of steel-sheets of rusty tin that had come loose on the Quonset shed in back of the house. A death rattle in the wind.

Hard to believe a family of five had lived in this tiny place. Two bedrooms upstairs, an alcove downstairs with a curtain on a runner for his sister. The old Fisher woodstove.

He stopped and stared at the blister packs of Sudafed torn open and littered on the steps. Rage stirred in his chest as he kicked through the wrappers that dotted the steps and the mud porch. Fuckers. They snuck in here and cooked meth.

He trudged up the stairs and into the room he’d shared with his brother until he was seven. The springs from his old bed lay in a rusted tangle next to the window. The springs creaked as he lowered his weight down on them.

Funny how he remembered this cramped house feeling so clean. Hell, the wind would sift the dust right through the walls. No way to keep the dirt out of the kitchen. But field dirt was different from town dirt. Dad used to say dirt with sweat in it wasn’t really dirty. Dale’s chest fluttered. Last time he remembered being happy was sitting here, looking out the window facing east, watching the sun rise over the fields.