Nancy Pickard - The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“No shit? Who’d do a thing like that?”

“Dad doesn’t know.” Hugh-Jay glanced at him. “Sure it wasn’t you?”

Billy laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I walked all the way out there. You forgot you took my truck?”

“I’m going to need to get that second pair of keys from you, Billy.”

There was a sudden tense silence from the passenger. “Val tell you that?”

“What? That you’ve got extra keys? No, I just assumed. Who doesn’t have extra keys?”

“Me. I don’t. Never have. You can ask her.”

“Maybe you forgot. Maybe she’s got them in her purse.”

“She never had any. I never gave her any. I had the only pair. Now you’ve got them.”

Hugh-Jay sensed the unspoken curse words: goddamn you.

Billy said, “Does your dad know you hired me today?”

“I told you, this was his idea.”

Out of the corner of his eye Hugh-Jay saw Billy relax a little and even smile, close to a smirk.

“Don’t make him regret it,” he advised.

“Who you think did it?”

“Cut the fences? I told you, Dad doesn’t know.”

“How you gonna catch somebody like that?”

“Might be hard to do.”

“Prob’ly never will catch ’em.”

Billy slumped down in the seat, pulled his cap fully over his face, and either napped or pretended to.

Hugh-Jay turned the radio on.

The sweet voice of Dolly Parton singing about a coat of many colors filled the cab with haunting melody.

As Hugh-Jay drove and listened to the music, he thought about how some things are easy to prove: like the amount of mileage that got put on a truck between the last time it was driven and now, and how that mileage matched the distance to the ranch. He’d made a note of Billy’s mileage last night after Chase walked off to Bailey’s Bar & Grill. It had occurred to Hugh-Jay as he watched his brother stroll down the broken sidewalk that although you took a man’s truck, you might not keep him from driving it. In his right jeans pocket he now had a note with two numbers on it: one was the mileage he’d written down last night, and the second number was what he’d written down a few minutes earlier behind his garage where the truck was parked. Now he was going to have to break the news to his father that Billy didn’t deserve any more chances, and that the only thing he deserved was jail.

He glanced over at the supposedly sleeping man.

Billy didn’t have a clue, Hugh-Jay marveled, that he was now in the worst trouble of his worthless life. He thought he was getting away with it. Billy didn’t even sense how deeply offensive it was even to have to sit in the same truck with him. Billy Crosby. Drunk. Wife beater. Fence cutter. Cattle abuser, and now cattle killer.

Or, as Bobby might say in crude summation: Billy Crosby, asshole.

Hugh-Jay’s jaw locked, holding in his outrage.

He hadn’t lied to Billy. He’d only said, “Dad doesn’t know.”

That was true; his father didn’t know that Billy did the damage.

Hugh-Jay recalled how he’d nearly pulled four strangers out of their car over a tossed cigarette, and how he had threatened to pitch Billy out of the truck for throwing a beer can out the window. That sin was nothing compared to cutting fence lines and killing cattle as an act of cruel revenge. For that, Billy deserved to be thrown out and run over a few times.

And yet, Hugh-Jay was nearly grateful to Billy for distracting him.

Nothing Billy did could hurt as much as what was happening at home.

“Home,” Hugh-Jay murmured, moving his lips over the bittersweet word.

Billy stirred a little, as if he’d heard, but then he snored.

Tired? Hugh-Jay thought, glancing at him. You had a busy night, Billy.

The cemetery and the bison herd rolled by.

Hugh-Jay fought to keep his feelings of despair, loneliness, and anger bottled up inside of him so he wouldn’t slam his hand against the steering wheel, or beat up on Billy, or worst of all-cry. It was awful when people you helped and people you loved betrayed you and let you down. It made him feel like doing things he never wanted to do, hurtful, violent, shameful things. Hugh-Jay turned into the main gate of the ranch and prayed that the hours of hard work ahead of him would cleanse him and turn him back into the man he wanted to be.

IN THE LIVING ROOM of the big stone house, Laurie sat with her back against the frame of a window seat with Jody slumped asleep in her arms. The child had cried after her father left, and then finally gave in to the hot and humid day, to her tears, and to the accumulated exhaustion of a morning spent being a three-year-old who loved to hop up and down stairs, and twirl until she fell down, and run a groove into the carpet around the big walnut dining room table.

Long after Hugh-Jay’s truck turned the corner, long after her arms went numb from holding Jody, long after the telephone rang repeatedly and she didn’t answer it, Laurie continued sitting in the window seat, staring outside. She was furious and anxious about Hugh-Jay’s surprise visit home, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She wanted to throw things. She wanted to run out the door and keep running until she was far away from him and Rose. She wanted to scream. What she didn’t want to do was have to sit still to keep Jody from waking up, even though the quiet was a relief.

Why had he come home? It was so unlike him. Was he checking up on her?

Even on such a hot day, she felt chilled and ill at the memory of his voice behind her in the kitchen.

The way he’d grabbed her…

She shuddered, which made Jody shift in her arms.

Laurie forced herself to sit perfectly still and barely breathe.

She didn’t want to have to deal with a child’s wants and needs, but then the truth was, she never did want to play mommy. That’s what it felt like to her. Pretend. Not real. Only, it was a joyless game that never ended-like Monopoly, which Chase and Belle loved and played as if the fate of the ranch depended on which one of them got Park Place. She hated that stupid game, because she thought it was stupid to care so much about plastic houses, and because she wasn’t accustomed to competing. But at least with Monopoly she could cash in and walk away. With the game of being a mother, she could never win and she could never quit.

She stared down at the sleeping child, feeling resentful and trapped.

Nobody had ever warned her she might feel this way toward her husband or her own flesh and blood. That was a nasty surprise. A child was a whole lot of work and trouble, she was finding out, just like marriage had turned out to be. A baby-like a husband-always had to be considered, even if all the mother wanted to do was take a nap. And God forbid she should want to talk on the telephone or take a leisurely bath or take a few hours off when there wasn’t anybody around to babysit.

At least her daughter looked like her, thank God for that much of a blessing.

If she’d had an ugly child, Laurie thought she’d have hated it.

Her child was beautiful, and she lived in the biggest, nicest house in town, and her husband was rich, or would be someday. People thought he already was, just because he was a Linder, but all Hugh-Jay made was a salary like any other ranch employee. He made more than his brothers because he was older and had more experience and responsibility, but still, it was just a salary, as if he was a janitor’s kid instead of the oldest son of the wealthiest people in town. In a few years they could share in the ranch profits, but not yet, because his parents didn’t believe in giving their children too much, too soon, or too easily. Laurie wanted to shake Annabelle and Hugh Senior for being so selfish! It would be so easy for her father-in-law and mother-in-law to let loose of a few more dollars so that she and Hugh-Jay could have some fun instead of only work.