K. Weiland - Storming

He needed to talk to Griff now, before any more time passed. Seeing him wouldn’t get any easier, and it might get a whole lot harder.

So much water had flowed under that bridge. When he’d left, Griff had been a skinny twenty-year-old kid, still working the fields beside their daddy. He’d always looked up to Hitch, always backed him—and, in that quiet, intense way of his, always seemed aggravatingly intent on reforming him.

He’d be a man now—and he’d have become that man without Hitch’s influence. It was a strange thought. His kid brother had been making all his own decisions for almost a decade now. And somewhere along the way, one of those decisions had been to send Hitch a letter saying he never wanted to see him again.

And then Griff had apparently made the marvelously intelligent choice to go to work for the one man in this town Hitch would have warned him to stay away from.

Hitch rubbed his shoulder; it got stiff sometimes on account of the crash that had kept him out of the war. “Reckon maybe I’ll walk on over there tonight.” He was stalling, and he knew it. He glanced at Jael.

She had picked the spark plug back up, but she was watching him. “Tonk you.”

He looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “You don’t have to keep saying that. I really haven’t done anything.”

“You have been giving me help. You have been giving me”—she held up what was left of her cornbread—“what this is. In morning, I must go. I must go where Zlo cannot look for me.”

“Yeah, well.”

That probably was her best choice. Like Earl said, she was mightily out in the open here in camp. And the kind of chaos she seemed to trail in her wake wasn’t exactly the sort he was equipped to handle, especially with Rick on the prod like he’d been here lately.

Trouble was she’d still be a sitting duck wherever she went. No job, no place to stay, no friends. And it wasn’t just the language she had trouble with. There was also the little matter of basic, everyday social conventions.

“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to go just yet.” He slapped his leg to Taos. “If they can find this guy and put him in jail, then after that, it should be safe enough for you to go find your folks again.”

A flicker of something kind of like hope passed across her face and almost—but not quite—dispelled the doubt.

He took a breath. “I’ll ask Griff about it.” He started walking before he could let himself change his mind.

*

Hitch wandered up the familiar dirt road, listening to the tree-lined creek that bordered it on the one side. He came around the bend into view of the single-story farmhouse he’d grown up in. Hardly anything had changed. Same white curtains, gone yellow after his mother’s death. Same willow rocking chairs on either side of the door. Same sag in the bottommost porch step.

Lights shone from the kitchen window, so somebody was home. When he reached the black Chevrolet Baby Grand roadster parked in front of the porch, dogs started barking. He stopped at the base of the steps and waited, Taos alert at his side. His heart was thumping harder than it had any right to. He hooked his hands into his suspenders, then put them in his pants pockets instead.

Inside the kitchen, a shadow moved against the curtains, and a voice quieted the dogs. A man’s silhouette darkened the screen door, his face hidden in the shadows.

Hitch’s mouth went dry.

The screen door creaked open, and there was Griff.

“So,” his brother said. The dim light shone against the side of his face. “I’d heard you were back.”

“Hullo, Griff.”

Griff came forward and let the door bang behind him. The skinny kid was indeed gone. His shoulders had broadened, his voice had gotten a little deeper, and, beneath his rolled-up sleeves, his forearms were hard with muscle. Hitch had always favored their father, with his dark curly hair; Griff had gotten their mother’s tawny coloring and that sideways slip of the mouth that could telegraph either happiness or anger.

Right now, it looked like anger.

Quite a few words started running through Hitch’s head. Words like: I’m sorry. I missed you. I should have come back . But none of them quite wanted to surface.

Better to start with business, feel out the water, then see what happened.

He cleared his throat. “Got a problem I thought you could help me with—”

“Nan came by,” Griff said. “Told me you’d flown in for this big air circus.” His tone was tight.

Great. Hitch might not have any of the right words for this. But anything he could say right now would have been a better way to start this reunion than whatever Nan’d had to say. She was scared of something having to do with Hitch, and folks who were scared didn’t always say the most helpful things.

Nothing for it now. He took a breath. Should have started with this anyway.

“I got your letter.” He left his hands anchored in his pockets to keep from uselessly moving them. “It’s been awhile back.”

Griff looked him in the eye. He had always been mild-mannered enough, gentle even. He was the one who took care of the orphaned kittens and calves. He was the follower; Hitch was the leader.

But right now, every muscle in Griff’s body was cinched tight. His cheek churned. “Apparently, it was far enough back for you to forget what it said.” He looked ready to pop Hitch one if he came a few steps closer.

Hitch kept his ground. “I know what it said. I thought maybe it was time to come back anyway.”

“You’re really going to stand there and tell me that? After nine years?”

Hitch dropped his hands from his pockets. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Was a time when people around here needed you.” Griff came forward, the porch creaking under him. “But you weren’t here, and it was pretty clear you had no intention of being here any time soon. So guess what? People moved on. I’ve no doubt that’s hard for you to believe, seeing as you always thought life revolved around you, but that’s what happened. Life moved on.”

A bitter taste rose in the back of Hitch’s throat. He’d been prepared for the anger. He could overcome anger, given enough time. But this was something else again. This was a door, barring him from his own past, from childhood memories, from the only true family he had left.

And like enough, it was his own fault. He’d let people down, no question about that.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “If I could have, I would have come back.”

Griff huffed and shook his head.

“I figured you and Pop had each other. Then when I got word he’d died, so much time had passed. And then… I got your letter.”

“You don’t see it, do you, Hitch? You never have.” Griff turned to the house. “You can’t just dance back in here and expect everything to be how it was. There’s penance to be paid, I reckon.”

If Griff thought staying away from home for nine years had been nothing but larks and laughter, then he didn’t understand penance. Hitch might not have wanted to stay in Scottsbluff. But it didn’t mean he’d never wanted to come back. Likely, he would have come back, if it hadn’t been for the sheriff.

His stomach cramped up. “So I hear you’re working for Campbell now?”

Griff looked back. His frown tilted sideways. “Is that what this visit’s for? I heard about the disturbances at Dan’s cafe and the pilots’ camp. If people want to press charges, don’t expect me to interfere on your account. There’s more important things going on in this town—”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

Hitch cleared his throat. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured out what Campbell is by now—behind all that strength and benevolence and ‘what’s right for the town’ talk? Once he gets his hooks in you, it’s not so easy getting them out.”