Nancy Pickard - The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“That’s right,” Chase said, seeing her skepticism.

He sent up an order to God: no tornadoes.

That storm came and poured, boomed, and flashed, with no damage done.

Jody sat on Chase’s lap on a couch against a wall far from the windows and watched it with him. “Do you have your gun?” she asked when a crash of thunder scared her.

“Of course,” he said, and lifted the next cushion to show her where he’d tucked it underneath. Jody nodded, reassured, and resumed watching the rain come down.

“What’s that?” she said at one point, huddling into his chest.

“Hail,” he told her. “You know what hail is. You’ve heard it before. It’s just ice, like we put in iced tea.” It was, thank God, only pea-sized, and not the softball-size stones that had taken roofs apart a few years ago. As the storm was easing down, Chase lifted his niece in his arms and strolled casually to a window, and they stood there looking out together, her cheek pressed to his, her arms wrapped around his neck.

“I like rainy days,” she said, as if remembering a forgotten fact.

“You’ve always loved them.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. Personally, me, I like blizzards.”

She poked him with a finger. “No, you don’t! You hate snow.”

“You remember that?” The previous Christmas break from school he’d cursed at all the times he had to drive out to break ice in ponds so the cattle could drink. “You were only two.”

“I ’member lots of stuff.”

I hope you don’t, Chase thought.

“Let’s go outside and smell the rain, Josephus,” he suggested.

“That’s not my name!”

“It is now.”

“Rain doesn’t smell!”

“Oh, yes it does.” He didn’t try to explain ozone to her, or how raindrops hit rocks, releasing the fragrance of oils that plants had rubbed on them, or how spores in the ground give up their own earthy scent in the rain. He just took her out and let her sniff and sniff until she admitted that, yes, it smelled good outside after a thunderstorm. Then he removed Jody’s shoes and socks and set her down so she could run around in the wet, golden grass.

“You do it, too, Uncle Chase. Come on!”

“My feet stink in these old boots.”

She giggled and then ran circles around him yelling, “Uncle Chase’s feet stink! Uncle Chase’s feet stink!”

And that was mostly that, when it came to storms.

There were either good or bad storms now, depending on whether the weather service said they were going away or coming toward. Chase continued to shoot the bad ones away from the house, while Jody agreed to allow the good ones to approach and bring their rain as long as they behaved themselves, and so long as Chase kept a gun nearby in case they acted up. She began to be able to bear them, even enjoy them, without hiding in a bathroom or clinging to a grown-up.

Other fears started to fall away then. The little girl they used to know began to reemerge, the one who chased rabbits and lay down in the hay with dogs, who ran out into the yard by herself, who wanted to be swung “higher!” who giggled when a calf slobbered on her arm, and who didn’t cover her ears at the sound of fireworks. On the day she asked her grandfather when she was going to get her pony, they knew that at least in some ways Jody was going to be okay.

FOR A LITTLE WHILE after the scene in the grocery store when she was three and he was seven, Jody took peeks at Collin whenever she saw him, and sometimes it turned out that he was peeking at her, too.

When that happened, they gave each other shy, secret smiles.

Then they’d quickly look away as if it had never happened.

But then, “Who is that boy?” she asked her grandma one time after they’d been in the grocery store and had seen him at his homework table again.

Annabelle decided it was best to tell the truth.

“That boy’s name is Collin Crosby, sweetheart.” She took a deep breath. “It was his daddy who killed your daddy.”

Jody looked at her with horror.

Annabelle nodded. “That’s why it’s best for you to stay away from him.”

Jody looked at Collin differently then, as if he’d all of a sudden grown horns.

“I hate him!”

“Oh, honey, that little boy hasn’t done anything wrong. You shouldn’t hate him. It’s not his fault that his daddy is a bad man. You should feel sorry for Collin, and try not to hate him.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be awful to have a father like that, wouldn’t it?”

Jody nodded slowly. It was awful not to have a father at all.

When she was a little older she wondered if he missed his father like she missed hers.

She wondered if he loved his daddy.

If he did-if he loved that terrible man, even if it was his father-then she would hate Collin Crosby and she would always hate him, no matter what her grandma said about being feeling sorry for him. She tried to stop peeking at him after that when she saw him in the grocery store or other places around Rose, but her eyes kept looking. When he caught her staring-or she discovered he was looking at her-she didn’t smile even the teeniest smile at him.

Collin stopped smiling at her, too.

And still she couldn’t help sneaking glances through the years.

“Do you like him?” a middle school friend asked her one time, looking shocked.

“Collin Crosby?” Jody was mortified that she’d been caught staring. “Gosh, no!”

It wasn’t that he was cute, although he was.

It was his eyes. His eyes looked serious and kind and somehow gave her the impression that they knew each other better than they did-which wasn’t true at all. She didn’t understand how he made her feel like that. They were the last people on earth who could be friends. Collin Crosby couldn’t possibly know anything about her except for the terrible truth of what his father had done to hers.

When she entered high school and was old enough to entertain the thought, she decided Collin held a creepy fascination for her like a snake, and that it was sick and she should be ashamed of herself and never look at him again.

Soon after that, she turned her head one day and he was looking at her.

Jody whirled around, putting her back to him, but she couldn’t seem to make her curiosity about him stop so easily.

AS THEY GREW OLDER, they navigated around each other with the help of friends, who whispered, “We can’t go that way. Collin Crosby’s over there.” Or, in Collin’s case, “Don’t turn around. Jody Linder’s by the wall.” They averted their eyes when they had to, walked around corners to stay invisible, never joined the same clubs or activities, tactfully slid past each other in school hallways. Jody got tired of always needing to look down rows in auditoriums, gymnasiums, and football bleachers to make sure she wasn’t sliding in near him with her bag of popcorn or her soda pop, but that’s the kind of vigilance it took to keep from causing trouble.

She didn’t know what kind of trouble there might be.

It just felt as if trouble might happen if people saw them together.

He wasn’t popular like she was in her grade, but she could see that he had friends of his own, he wasn’t one of those loners who might show up and shoot off a gun and kill everybody in school, starting with her.

At least, she hoped he wasn’t.

Other people weren’t so sure.

Jody had a feeling that Collin Crosby got watched pretty closely by the adults in town, as if they were all afraid he’d end up like his father. She knew what it was like to be watched all the time, because everybody watched out for her to make sure “the Linder girl” was okay. It was nice, even if it sometimes drove her crazy. But that was different from how they watched him.