Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Joe nodded, raised his good hand and pointed. Across the highway, toward town, a small, single-engine plane took off, banked, and headed east.

Dale shut the front door and went into the small bathroom next to the office and inspected the toilet to see if the smart-ass little kid had left any unpleasant messes. She hadn’t. So he washed his face and brushed his teeth and gargled with Scope. Then he took a moment to study his reflection in the mirror. His teeth were normal and healthy but his gums were slightly oversized and made his choppers look slightly like lingering baby teeth.

At rest, Dale was plain. In motion, he tended to look deliberate, the power in him deep, hard to see. Clothes never meant much to him. But he wore a heavy leather belt; keeping himself real tucked in and tightly cinched. If you had stuff you had to keep inside, every little bit helped.

The way his life had worked out he wound up uncomfortable with his body. He had always suffered from a debilitating shyness, and now he went to great lengths to avoid looking at himself disrobed. If he used a public restroom on the highway he made sure the door locked. Then he’d turn out the lights and do his business in the dark.

Dale was a big man with a layer of fat on the outside. But he was solid on the inside. Years spent working around the big iron had given him a hefty core of muscle.

Sometimes he snuck looks at his brother, Ace, and had the impression that there had been a screw-up. Ace, with all his flaws, should have this awkward tub of guts. He should have Ace’s body.

As it was, he was just over six feet tall and weighed 240 pounds, with sloping shoulders and a longish neck. His skin was smooth and white. He wore wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts. This habit struck people as odd in a farming community. “Dale, he avoids the sun,” people said.

That wasn’t it. Dale was hiding his body. Even from himself.

Everywhere he looked he was reminded of his grossness. The images of little-bitty tanned bodies shrieked at him from magazines, TV commercials, and especially the hours of “paid commercial programming” on cable-all those bikini babes demonstrating exercise equipment.

His face was the polar opposite of his older brother’s; as if Ace’s handsome face had been turned inside out. Where Ace’s cheeks were smooth and defined, Dale’s were lumpy with moguls of persistent acne. Where Ace’s nose was straight, Dale’s was thick.

Being plain and naturally reticent, his quiet voice had grown softer and softer over the years.

His hair was dirty blond, unruly even when short, as it was now. It sprouted from his scalp like a neglected lawn taken over by weeds. His eyes were pale blue and flat, without sparkle.

And now he was ready. So he stepped out into ninety-two muggy degrees wearing distressed Levis, steel-toed work shoes, and a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt buttoned to the neck and to the wrists. A broad straw Stetson perched at an angle on his head.

He looked to the east, at the ambiguous sky. According to the Weather Channel the rain had finally tapered off in Minnesota. But the solid cover of clouds remained.

He locked the door to the office and motioned to Joe, who pushed upright in the lawn chair on the concrete apron in front of the office.

“Let’s go have a look,” Dale said.

Joe squinted and said, “I just was over there. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“C’mon,” Dale cajoled and Joe grunted, reluctantly heaving to his feet. And so they walked across Highway 5. When Dale was little, the Missile Park had smelled like a saloon early in the morning. Sawdust and soap covering a deep underscent of alcohol and tobacco smoke. He remembered the morning sun catching fire in all those bottles behind the bar. Now the bottles were gone. Now it just smelled musty, like what it had become, an empty warehouse.

They stepped inside and saw the woman sitting at Ace’s table at the back of the room, next to the pinball machine.

Gordy was standing at the front window, sipping on a Coke. Without turning, he said, “Christ. Here come both of them.” Then he spun on his heel and went past her up the stairs.

She heard them before she saw them; heavy footfalls on the porch. Then the creak of the screen door, the two men coming into the bar. The big one came in first-a Yogi Bear ramble of a walk, heavy in the middle, a long neck. Grinning. This would be Dale, Ace’s odd brother. She was prepared for him being a little off. But not the way he wore his shirt buttoned up to his neck and down to his wrists on such a humid hot day. At the moment, however, she was more interested in the Indian, Joe Reed.

He took her in as his eyes swept the room; dark eyes doing that cold burn. They shot a fast dagger thrust. Quick, sharp, and deep. Too quick to read, but Nina thought she felt contempt in his eyes, maybe even hatred.

She didn’t know a whole lot about the social range of disfigured Indians. She’d only had one acquaintance with a Native American for any length of time: Ranger Sergeant Norby Hightower, a Cheyenne from Wyoming. Nina worked with Norby in Bosnia. Strong as a bear, Norby’s handshake was child-soft, a dissimulation of his true strength. His whole style had been probing, cautious, indirect.

Not point-blank and icy, like this guy’s.

Joe peeled off, walked behind the bar, opened a cooler, and took out a can of Mountain Dew. He popped the top, shrugged at Dale, and walked out the front door.

It bothered Dale deeply that she was more interested in watching Joe than him. But he brushed the slight aside for the moment.

She was pretty.

Maybe not as pretty as Ginny Weller had been-she was older and she’d had a kid. But still pretty.

As Dale walked down the length of the barroom toward the table, she looked up. When he felt her eyes he knew she was acting. The lazy, slightly vague, expression on her face was a mask. Behind that pretend mask she was watching Joe go around the bar, get a can of pop.

Dale swallowed and stared. He could hear Gordy and Ace talking upstairs. Joe got his look and now he walked back out. They were alone.

He was close enough to smell her now; a clean, rain-in-the-forest scent, distinct in the musty air. He knew he should look away, look down, be humble, or at least polite, but he stared. Starting at the top of her head, where her short red hair was carelessly combed by her fingers, then her face.

Her coloring, freckles, the strong cheekbones, the shamrock eyes. The red of her lipstick, hair, and freckles brought to mind images of a lake trout-smooth and supple, but also spiny with fins and stinging to the touch.

She crossed her legs and, staring at the flash of thigh, he had the powerful recollection of holding a struggling fish, feeling its life squirm against his encircling palm, peering into the red spasm of the gills.

As this sensation shuddered inside his bulk his gaze dripped down over her body like greasy water, gathering in her hollows, racing over her curves, marking every detail. Her strong body promised a lot of struggle.

She oozed confidence, like she wouldn’t bat an eye at the dirtiest joke. Like she’d seen it all before. She watched him walk up with a neutral expression in her eyes. She smelled like the Herbal Essence shampoo Ace kept in the upstairs bathroom.

She had this body that clothes always looked good on, lean and long-legged, but sinewy too. She was wearing a casual cotton-print dress with a green-and-amber pattern creasing down into her lap. The rounded neckline dipped low and he could see a only a suggestion of the firmness of her breasts, but what he saw looked more taut than soft. As Dale’s eyes drifted up, he mentally diagramed the apartment upstairs, all the rooms she had moved through, until he came to the bathroom shower stall. He imagined her naked up there, drawing a sponge across her stomach. “Hi,” he said, inhaling her.