Nancy Pickard - The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“Out of jail, you mean? Why would a man who didn’t do nothin’ be in jail in the first place, Chase?”

Bobby was standing by then, too. “Answer the question, Billy.”

The other man laughed in his face. “No evidence, Bobby. You can’t hold a man when there’s no evidence. Not even in this county named after your goddamned grandfather, or whoever it was.” Billy looked all puffed up with victory and with drink. “There’s still some justice in this world!”

“Take it easy, Billy,” Chase said in a low voice.

“Ain’t nothin’ easy, Chase,” Billy retorted. Holding a long-necked beer bottle in his right hand, a drink he appeared to have brought in with him, he was swaying on his cowboy boots. “But I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you? Everything comes easy for you Linders, don’t it?”

Bobby pushed back his chair.

Chase shook his head at his brother, to head him off.

“You got all the money you’ll ever need,” Billy went on, while the women stared at him, and the men waited tensely to see what might happen next. “Everything you ever want. College, all paid for. Even you, Meryl. They never offered me that-”

“You never got straight A’s,” Bobby said sarcastically.

“Neither did you,” Billy shot back. “But that don’t mean you don’t get everything all paid for by your mommy and daddy. You just got nothin’ to complain about in this life, do you, Chase? Do you, big Bobby? Or you, either,” he said, looking straight at Belle. Then he stared at Laurie. “Smart of you to marry a rich rancher, Laurie, instead of some poor-ass county lawyer like Belle’s gonna do. Or maybe you’re marryin’ Belle ’cause you don’t wanna be a poor country lawyer, is that it, Meryl?”

Meryl let go of Belle’s hand and got out of the booth.

“Time for you to take a nap, Billy,” he said.

Bobby grabbed the back of Billy’s shirt collar.

“Take your fuckin’ hands off me, Bobby!”

“Shut up, Billy,” Chase snapped.

“What’s wrong with you?” Laurie said, looking with disdain at Billy.

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Billy said, staring first at her breasts and then at her face. “What’s wrong is how some people treat other people like shit-”

“Nobody has treated you like shit, Billy,” Meryl said. “Haven’t you had lots of regular work from them? Haven’t they paid you what they owed you, and probably extra over that? Haven’t they given you the only real chances you ever had? People like Hugh and Annabelle Linder don’t come along in every man’s life, and you ought to recognize how lucky you are that they came along in yours. Seems like if anybody has treated anybody else like shit, it’s you who’s treated them-”

“You can’t goddamn prove that!”

“I don’t hear you saying that you didn’t do it, Billy,” Meryl observed.

“Why should I? Are you saying any of you’d believe me?”

The bar’s owner stepped into the scene again, this time saying, “What’s the matter here, Chase? Is he bothering you people?”

“He’s drunk,” Belle said, stating the obvious.

“I got good reason to be drunk,” Billy shot back at her. “Your dad’s never going to hire me again, and he’ll tell everybody else not to hire me. I got no job. I got a wife and kid and no money. I got no wheels.” He glared at Chase. “I got nothin’, and you people got everything. What am I gonna do ’cept get drunk? What am I supposed to do?”

“Go to hell,” Laurie suggested in a cold voice.

Billy shocked them all by taking a wild swing in her direction.

Bobby’s arms came around him so fast and hard that it knocked his fancy straw hat onto the floor and also knocked the wind out of the drunk man. He struggled for breath and gagged, nearly vomiting.

“You’re disgusting!” Laurie looked nauseated herself.

Bailey and Bobby hauled him away from the booth.

“Did he hit you?” Belle asked, breathless with shock.

Chase slid back into the booth beside Laurie and put a hand on her shoulder.

Looking half scared and half excited now that Billy was gone, Laurie shook her head no. Chase didn’t move his hand, and she didn’t brush it off.

“My God,” Meryl said, looking stunned. “I can’t believe he’d do that.”

“Hit a woman?” Chase turned to stare after the other men while they made their way to the front door. “Why not? He doesn’t mind hitting his wife. Why would he mind hitting somebody else’s wife?”

Belle muttered something.

“What, Belle?” her brother asked her.

“I said, at least he didn’t hit on someone else’s wife.”

Chase took his hand off his sister-in-law’s shoulder.

The whole restaurant and bar had gone quiet, all other conversations ceasing as diners and drinkers watched Billy Crosby being thrown out.

“You going to put him out in this weather?” a man at a front table asked.

At that moment lightning flashed, and the electricity in the bar flickered again, causing a murmur of disquiet to go around the restaurant and bar.

“He’s not staying in here to bother anybody else tonight,” Bailey informed everybody who was listening. “Maybe some nice cool rain on his face will cool him off.”

“I don’t think you ought to put anything out there tonight,” a woman said.

“Not even a drunk,” somebody else called out.

“Not even Billy!” a man said, and a few people laughed.

Bailey ordered, “Open the door, Bobby.”

They threw him outside into the pouring rain.

The storm, already loud enough to cover conversations, sounded like kettle drums when Bailey opened the door, and when he shut it again, the interior of the grill seemed silent by comparison until a few people broke into applause.

Bailey turned around, his hands on his hips, and looked at some of his customers who weren’t clapping. “Don’t be mad at me,” he advised them. “Billy started it, like he starts any trouble he gets into. I’m just ending it. Everything bad that ever happens to Billy Crosby? You can bet he caused it, and it’s about time he suffered some consequences for it.”

A LITTLE LATER, after Bobby had returned to the booth and the restaurant settled down, Chase turned to his sister-in-law. “Did you drive over? I didn’t see your car outside.”

“I walked.” Laurie raised her right hand and put it palm up to the ceiling as if to catch some of the raindrops thundering on the tin roof. The din was now so loud that she had to raise her voice so they could hear her even just across their table. “So who’s taking me home?”

“We can’t,” Meryl said, glancing at Belle. “I’ve got my backseat full of files.”

“I’m too drunk,” Bobby said. He was too young to drink legally, but that hadn’t stopped him from guzzling what his brother provided when Bailey wasn’t looking.

“Oh, all right, I will,” Chase volunteered, with a feigned sigh of resignation.

On the way out, Laurie noticed they hadn’t tossed Billy Crosby’s cowboy hat out with him. It still lay where it had fallen on the floor, where it had been trampled in the melee. Serves him right, she thought, remembering the nasty way he had looked at her chest, to say nothing of the swing he had taken at her. Serves him right if it was ruined and he never got it back. She grabbed it from the floor and carried it with her outside to make sure it got soaked in the rain.

IT WAS 10:00 P.M. when they ran through the rain to their vehicles.

Meryl let Belle off at the bank and then left to check on the power situation at his office.

Chase chauffeured his sister-in-law to the big stone house.

When they were inside, dripping all over the kitchen floor, he went upstairs, after saying he would gather up a change of clothing to take over to the motel with him. Laurie stood in the kitchen for a few moments, listening to the thunder and lightning and the powerful downpour that sounded as if it might batter down the walls and wash them all away. She was chilled and shivering and longed to strip off her wet clothes and get warm. Hot shower or bare warm arms-either sounded delicious to her at that moment. Both at the same time would be even better. When she realized she still held Billy’s ruined hat, she contemptuously tossed it aside. She followed her brother-in-law up the stairs, trembling from cold and desire, trailing her wet fingers along the banister.