The Scent of Rain and Lightning (9 page)

H
UGH
S
ENIOR WATCHED
his wife drive off, and he wondered what took her away in such a hurry that she didn’t even say goodbye. He licked icing off his lips and then said, “All right, everybody. We sure do appreciate your help today. Now let’s saddle up and get this over with, so you can get back to your own work.”

“You call the sheriff about this, Hugh?” a neighbor inquired.

Hugh Senior nodded. “He’s coming.”

“Dad,” Chase interrupted, looking toward the sky. “So is the rain.”

That got the men, and Red, moving toward their horses again.

“Not you, Billy,” Hugh Senior called out to his back. “You ride in the truck with me. I’ve got a special job for you.”

Billy Crosby turned around to stare at him.

“What job?” To the ears of the other men who heard it, there was an edge to the question. Some would later remember it as disrespectful, others said it sounded nervous, but every man who was there that day agreed that the statement that followed it was downright cocky.

“I’m better on horseback than them other boys.”

“Well, I’ve got a job just cut out for you.”

Hugh Senior’s voice sounded hard.

“I’d rather work cattle.”

“Oh, you will, Billy.”

The neighbors and the other hired cowboys listened to the tense exchange while trying to appear not to. Some of them exchanged covert glances. All of them remembered yesterday and the ugly scene at the cattle pens.

Hugh Senior pointed at his son Bobby and then at Hugh-Jay. “You two get on your horses.” Then he pointed at Chase. “You stay here, so if your mother sends the sheriff out here you can tell him where we’ve gone.”

“Where are you going, Dad?”

“To separate the calves from their mothers again.”

When Hugh Senior drove into the next pasture with Billy, he pulled up beside the dead cow. “This job’s for you, Billy. Use the heavy-duty winch in back and haul her into this truck.”

From the driver’s seat, Hugh Senior could smell his passenger.

Billy’s sweat and breath smelled like beer, a sure sign of being an alcoholic—just like his parents, Hugh thought.

Billy pulled his cap brim over his eyes and obeyed without objection.

That, of itself, was suspicious, the rancher thought.

Billy didn’t ask “Why me?” he didn’t whine for help, and he didn’t complain. He just trudged off to do as he was told, with a strange, nervous grin playing around his lips.

To Hugh Senior all those facts indicted him.

Maybe jail would straighten him out.

The rancher sat in his truck long enough to watch Billy scratch his head over the already rotting carcass. It looked to Hugh Senior as if Billy wanted mightily to kick it in a fury of resentment and frustration but knew he didn’t dare while he was being watched. Hugh got out of his truck and called the boy Red Bosch over to help with the dragging and lifting. Cheerful as always, the teenager took his place behind the wheel of the truck and maneuvered it backward to winch up the dead cow. When he saw they might be able to manage it by themselves, Hugh Senior walked off to supervise the other work.

A little later he waved his eldest son over and told him, “We’ve got enough hands for this. You get going to Colorado.”

“Billy rode out here with me,” Hugh-Jay reminded him.

“You won’t need to give him a ride back today.”

“Why not?”

“Because he already has a ride.” Hugh Senior pointed to the road where the sheriff’s sedan was coming up, followed by two deputies’ cars, all of them raising long trails of dust.

A
FTER IT WAS DONE
, and Billy was carted off and all the cattle were settled in their proper pastures, and everybody else had departed for home, Hugh Senior stood alone in the pasture and looked west and up toward the storm clouds. They were bringing dramatically cooler temperatures, which meant that when the cold front hit the very hot temperatures ahead of it, violent weather was likely.

There could be torrential rain, hail, high wind, tornadoes.

They’d finished up their work just in time to escape being out in that.

“Get a move on,” Hugh Senior ordered himself, with another glance at the storm that looked like a dark gray wall moving toward him. He saw telltale vertical streaks of rain in the distance, heard rumbles of thunder, saw flashes of lightning still a few miles away. The rain they’d had earlier was only a preamble. Now the real thing was coming, and it looked as if it meant business.

He worried for the sake of local farmers whose crop fields were so hardened by drought that rain of the sort that was coming would make things worse, not better. What they needed were days of light, steady rain that gave the rock-hard ground a chance to soften and absorb it.

That’s what Billy is: rock-hard ground.

What they were going to get instead was runoff, erosion, and flooding.

If he hurried, he could get Hugh-Jay’s lame horse to town before the veterinarian closed up for the day and before the rain hit Rose, though he might have to drive back through the storm to the ranch. Their vet made house calls, and night calls, and came on holidays and any other time they needed him, but the Linders didn’t like to ask him to make the long trip out to the ranch for just one animal, not if they could take the animal into the veterinary clinic on the outskirts of Rose.

The ranch seemed still and silent, as if it were waiting for the relief of rain.

Hugh Senior felt almost nothing but relief himself.

The culprit was in custody. Billy had gone in handcuffs, protesting, “I ain’t done nothin’!” But he had gone, nevertheless, without getting himself into more trouble by resisting arrest. The other men had watched wide-eyed, but without any real surprise. They accepted as reasonable Hugh’s explanation of keeping it a secret so Billy wouldn’t know it was coming. The sheriff had confided to Hugh Senior that they hadn’t found any evidence at Billy’s house, “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Don’t you worry, Hugh. We’ll get the little bastard to tell us what he’s done.”

That promise gave Hugh the feeling his world was turning right-side-up again.

The worst was over now.

There had been a satisfying irony in watching Billy Crosby mend the fence lines he’d gone to so much trouble to cut, and even more satisfaction in making him pick up the cow he’d killed. Revenge was a vicious cycle, Hugh Senior mused as he stood in the field with the rain falling a little harder by the minute. The cycle never stopped turning unless somebody made the decision to stop. But then he assured himself that his own words and actions weren’t about revenge. He was taking sensible, businesslike precautions by moving quickly to excise a cancer from his ranch.

He got into his truck and headed for the barn to pick up the lame horse. Doing anything less would have made him a hypocrite in his own eyes. He couldn’t condemn Billy Crosby for mistreating animals if he didn’t care enough about a horse he owned to relieve its pain.

My oldest boy is a better man than I am, he thought, not for the first time.

He felt his heart swell with love for the boy, even if that was a sentiment he might never speak aloud.

“Going on five o’clock,” he said to himself.

If he was going to get that horse in to the vet, he’d better get going.

It had been a bad day, but it was already better, or it was if you weren’t trying to grow corn.

O
N HER DRIVE
into Rose to try to salvage her son’s marriage, Annabelle realized she might need to slide in sideways rather than launch a frontal attack. She needed to dangle a lure in front of her daughter-in-law in the same way she offered apples to her horse to get him to come to her from far out in a pasture. As she drove through the flat landscape, for some reason it made her think of mountains, which gave her an idea, an expensive one that she thought might work with Laurie—especially with luxury-loving Laurie.

Feeling hopeful of her bright idea, she stopped first at Belle’s museum in the former bank to use the phone to call ahead. As she stood in front of the nineteenth-century limestone building and glanced up at the corner gargoyles, she realized she might use this opportunity to mend fences with her grumpy daughter while the men mended fences at the ranch. The gargoyles looked no more welcoming than Belle was likely to be, but she loved them, just as she loved her most difficult child—just as she loved
all
of her currently difficult children.

She raised an eyebrow at a stone gargoyle that glared back.

“Oh, come on,” she said to it, “look on the bright side.”

Since the ugly old thing presided over a failed bank, that seemed unlikely.

She pushed open the elegant front door, with its huge brass knob and murky leaded glass panes.

A brass bell rang over her head, announcing her arrival.

“Who’s that?” her daughter’s voice called from the back.

“Your mother! Are you in the vault?”

“Yes,” came the unwelcoming response.

She walked past the line of filigreed teller cages that lined one wall, wonderful remnants of bank transactions of old, now waiting for Belle to figure out how to use them in her museum. She inhaled, imagining she could smell old money, hear the bustle of commerce, the voices, the clink of coins, the slap of cash on marble.

On her way toward the cavernous bank vault that Belle used as her office, she glanced at black-and-white photos of sod houses, cattle drives, oil wells, stone fence posts, the pictures all lying on tables until Belle could frame and hang them. Despite her own and Hugh’s skepticism about the enterprise, she found herself drawn to the photos. When she stopped to look more closely at one, she found herself wanting to look at the next one, leading her to wonder if maybe, just maybe, other people would find them fascinating, too. She looked up at the molded tin ceiling. It really was a wonderful old building.

Tell her so
, Annabelle reminded herself.

She hoped she wouldn’t have to ooh and ahh over a long-dead, flea-bitten buffalo, but she was willing to do it, willing to murmur, “Oh, what a handsome buffalo,” if there was any chance it would please her daughter.

Maybe she and Hugh were too critical; maybe more praise and interest would oil the squeaky hinges of their relationship with their only daughter. If that didn’t work, Annabelle knew what would, though she was a little ashamed of herself every time she did it. There was one subject on which she and Belle completely agreed and that was about the young woman who was daughter-in-law to one of them and sister-in-law to the other. Laurie—
bless her heart
, she thought wryly—had a bonding affect on her female in-laws.

She walked into the vault and the sound of typing.

Belle sat at an ancient rolltop desk that she’d scooped up from a farm sale, clattering away on an old typewriter. She wrote articles about local history, geology, and archaeology and shot them off to dozens of different magazines hoping to be published. Now and then she got an acceptance and earned a little money.

“Can you stop for a minute, honey?”

Belle typed a bit more and then halted, making a show out of slowing and then stopping one reluctant key at a time.

She turned in her old leather and wood swivel chair.

“I’m pretty busy, Mom.”

“You look good sitting there, Belle. You look like a real writer.”

“I am a real writer.”

“I know, I didn’t mean—those photos out front are fascinating.”

“Which ones?”

“The sod houses?”

“They’re the weaker ones. I’ve got better.”

“Oh, well …” She resorted to her strongest weapon. “I don’t want to interrupt you. I just need to use your phone to call Laurie.”

“Why?”

Annabelle battled inwardly with her scruples and then brushed them aside in favor of coaxing warmth from her child. “I’m worried about her and Hugh-Jay, Belle. I don’t like the way she flirts with Chase.”

Belle’s eyes got big. “You noticed?”

“Who could miss it?”

“It’s ridiculous. I don’t know how Hugh-Jay stands it.”

“It’s got to stop.”

They looked at each other in pleasant agreement, but then Belle looked doubtful. “Shouldn’t Hugh-Jay be the one to stop it, Mom? And anyway, it’s not like she flirts only with Chase.”

“Who else?”

“Who
doesn’t
she?”

“I’ve never seen her flirt with Bobby. Oh, I hate even saying that!”

“She’s got her ways.” A look of disgust crossed Belle’s face. “She picks on him and insults him. That’s as good as flirting to Bobby ’cause it knocks him down and keeps him interested.”

She stared at her daughter, impressed at her perception.

“Has she ever flirted with Meryl?”

“Not when I’m around,” Belle said with an indignant and proud lift to her chin. “But Meryl says she tries it at other times.”

“Oh, honey.”

Her daughter’s face was flushed. “Don’t worry, Mom. Meryl always makes sure she gets the message that he’s not available, not even to
her.
”

She felt a rush of compassion for her daughter who had spent her whole life in the shadow of a girl whose pretty face and vivacious manner got her everything she ever wanted. She remembered times when Belle looked as if she’d been crying after parties and other events when she was the wallflower to Laurie’s popularity. She recalled Belle’s barely hidden unhappiness when her oldest brother started dating, then got engaged, and then married Laurie.
Thank God for Meryl Tapper
, she thought, because he was the best revenge—a boy as nice as Belle’s own brother, and one who liked her exactly as she was, which wasn’t nearly as prickly when he was around to smooth her edges. When Meryl was with her, Belle was almost pretty, too, and her lovely complexion glowed with the pleasure of his attention. If Laurie ever did anything to threaten that happiness, Annabelle thought she would kill her.

Feeling guilty because Belle looked upset, she changed the subject. “Where
were
you last night, dear daughter?”

“Here.” The lift of Belle’s chin changed to a stubborn tilt.

“Not out with Meryl?”

“He was working.”

“That boy is always working.”

“Don’t patronize him.”

She sighed. “I didn’t mean to.” She and Hugh both had their fingers crossed for the match between Belle and the boy they loved like a fourth son. They’d helped send Meryl to college and law school and were the first to throw work his way when he hung out his shingle. Hugh liked to joke that maybe they could get a good son-in-law for their money even if he didn’t turn out to be a great lawyer. But it was beginning to look as if they had a chance of getting both—a fine lawyer right in the family. “After Belle,” Hugh liked to say, “a judge or jury will be a piece of cake for that boy.”

Rather than take the chance of falling into other conversational traps, she reached for the phone on the desk and called Laurie. When that was done and she was properly invited over, she gave Belle a long, somber look.

“What, Mom?”

Belle reached over to touch her mother’s knee.

“Something bad happened at the ranch last night, honey.”

She blinked back tears prompted partly by the wickedness of Billy Crosby, but mostly by the warmth of her daughter’s touch and the expression of concern on Belle’s face.

A
FTER LEAVING THE BANK
, she girded herself for her upcoming visit to the other challenging young woman in her family. Alone in her car, she closed her eyes and prayed for her eldest son’s marriage. Then, sending waves of love ahead of her toward her granddaughter, she prayed for Jody to always stay as sweet and happy and
easy to get along with
as she was now.