James Burke - Rain Gods

She propped her forehead against the stall, the jet of shower water exploding on her scalp, the steam seeping into the bedroom where the night chain on the door hung down on the jamb. She had started out the evening thinking about choices. The rain had changed the land, and the sunset had reshaped the mountains and cooled the desert. He who was the alpha and the omega made all things new, didn’t He? That was the promise, wasn’t it?

But when you were in a room that seemed to have no exit except false doors painted on the walls, how were you supposed to choose? What kind of cruel joke was that to play on anyone, much less on those who had tried to do right with their lives?

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and kept her head pressed so hard against the shower wall that she thought her skin would split.

PETE STEERED HIS basket to the deli counter and dropped a rotisserie chicken, a carton of potato salad, and a carton of coleslaw inside. Then he lifted a six-pack of ice-cold Dr Pepper out of the cooler and a half-gallon of frozen yogurt from the freezer and headed for the bakery. He picked up an angel food cake and found a loaf of French bread that was still soft. The baker was working late and was cleaning up behind the pastry counter. Pete asked her to scroll “Happy Birthday, Vikki” on his cake.

“Special girl, huh?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, ain’t none better,” he replied.

He paid up front and, with a grocery bag in each arm, began the one-mile walk toward the motel. The sun’s afterglow had finally died on the horizon, and he could see the evening star bright and twinkling above a rock ridge that looked carved from decaying bone. The wind had stopped completely, and under an overhang of trees, he thought he could smell an autumnal odor like gas and chrysanthemums in the air. An eighteen-wheeler passed him, its brakes hissing, a backwash of heat and diesel fumes enveloping him. He veered away from the road’s edge, walking now on an uneven surface, gravel breaking under his feet, his coned-up Mexican straw hat bobbing on his head. Up ahead, under a chinaberry tree, was a shut-down Sno-Ball stand, a cluster of bright red cherries painted on a wood sign above its shuttered serving counter. In the distance, when a vehicle approached from the west, he could dimly see the abandoned drive-in theater and the weed-grown miniature-golf course and the silhouettes of the Cadillac car bodies buried nose-down in the hardpan. Vikki must be at the motel by now, he thought. Waiting for him, worrying, maybe secretly regretting she had ever hooked up with him.

He thought the word “Vikki,” so it became a sound in his head rather than a word. He thought it in a way that turned the word into a heart with blood pumping in it and curly hair and strangely colored recessed eyes and breath that was sweet and skin that smelled as fresh as flowers opening in the morning. She was smart and pretty and brave and talented and took no credit for any of it. If he had money, they could go to Canada. He had heard about Lake Louise and the blue Canadian Rockies and places where you could still cowboy for a living and drive a hundred miles without seeing a man-built structure. Vikki talked all the time about Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston and the music of the Great American West and the promise the land had held for the generation that came out of the 1940s. Montana, British Columbia, Wyoming, the Cascades in Washington, what did it matter? Those were the places for a new beginning. He had to turn things around and make it up to Vikki for what he had done. He had to separate himself from the nine murdered Asian women and girls who lived in his dreams. Didn’t all dead people grow weary and eventually go toward a white light and leave the world to its illusions?

If it cost him his life, he had to make these things happen.

He shifted the sack that was cupped in his right forearm so he wouldn’t bruise the cake inside. Behind him, he heard the tires of a diesel-powered vehicle pulling off the asphalt onto the gravel.

“Pete, want a ride?” the driver of the pickup said. He was grinning. A felt hat with a wilted brim hung on the gun rack behind him. He wore a print shirt that was as taut on his torso as his sun-browned skin.

“I don’t have far to go,” Pete replied, not recognizing the driver.

“I work with Vikki. She said y’all are cooking up a meal tonight. Special occasion?”

“Something like that,” Pete said, still walking, looking straight ahead.

“That sack looks like it’s fixing to split.” The driver was steering with one hand, keeping his pickup on the road’s shoulder, tapping the brake to keep the idle from accelerating his vehicle past Pete.

“Don’t remember me? That’s ’cause I’m in the kitchen. Bending over the sink most of the time.”

“Don’t need a lift. Got it covered. Thanks.”

“Suit yourself. I hope Vikki feels better,” the driver said. He started to pull back on the asphalt, craning out the window to see if the lane was clear, his shoulders hunched up over the wheel.

“Hang on. What’s wrong with Vikki?” Pete said.

But the driver was ignoring him, waiting for a church bus to pass.

“Hey, pull over,” Pete said, walking faster, the bottom of one bag starting to break under the weight of the damp six-pack of Dr Pepper. Then the bottom caved, cascading the six-pack and a box of cereal and a quart of milk and a container of blueberries onto the gravel.

The driver of the pickup pulled his vehicle back onto the safety of the shoulder, leaning forward, waiting for Pete to speak again.

“Vikki’s sick?” Pete said.

“She was holding her stomach and looking kind of queasy. There’s a nasty kind of flu going around. It gives you the red scours for about a day or so.”

“Park up yonder,” Pete said. “It’ll take me a minute.”

The driver didn’t try to conceal his vexation. He looked at the face of his watch and pulled into darkness under the chinaberry tree and cut his lights, waiting for Pete to pick up his groceries from the roadside and carry them to the bed of the truck. The driver did not get out of his vehicle or offer to help. Pete made one trip, then returned to pick up the bag that had not broken. The back window of the truck was black under the tree’s overhang, the hood ticking with heat. The driver sat with his arm propped casually on his window, rolling a matchstick on his teeth.

Pete walked to the passenger side and got in. A pair of handcuffs hung from the rearview mirror.

“Them are just plastic,” the driver said. He grinned again, his pleasant mood back in place. He wore a brass buckle on his belt that was embossed with the Stars and Bars and was burnished the color of browned butter. “You got a knife?”

“What for?”

“This floor rug keeps tangling in my accelerator. It like to got me killed up the road.”

Pete worked his Swiss Army knife out of his jeans and opened the long blade and handed it to the driver. The driver started sawing at a piece of loose carpet with it. “Strap yourself in. The latch is right there on your left. You got to dig for it.”

“How about we get on it?”

“State law says you got to be buckled up. I tend to be conscious of the law. I did a postgraduate study in cotton-picking ’cause I wasn’t, know what I mean?” The driver saw the expression in Pete’s face. “Ninety days on the P farm for nonsupport. Not necessarily anything I’d brag to John Dillinger about.”

Pete stretched the safety belt across his chest and pushed the metal tongue into the latch and heard it snap firmly into place. But the belt felt too tight. He pushed against it, trying to adjust its length.

The driver tossed the piece of sawed fabric out the window and folded the knife blade back into the handle with his palm. “My niece was wearing it. Hang on. We ain’t got far to go,” he said. He took the gearshift out of park and dropped it into drive.