I Will Send Rain (24 page)

Ashes to ashes. Pastor Hardy could barely bring himself to say dust.

Birdie had the chickens now and she didn't care about them the way Fred had and they knew it. They scratched and rooted at her ankles when she filled the water. She wanted to kick them because he was dead.

Somewhere west the colors were bright. Green like she hadn't seen in forever.

Fred won't wait for the bus with me, she thought, won't bounce along on those terrible wooden benches nailed into old Farlow's truck as he picked up every last farm kid. Fred won't be an uncle. Fred won't stumble and right himself and smile, always smile, even when kids teased him, even when he couldn't breathe.

Now they were less. The hole was filling with dirt. Someone had taken the shovel from her hands.

*   *   *

J
ACK LOWERED HIS
hand. What he had meant by the gesture he wasn't sure, but now it seemed a wave goodbye. The window to Annie had been shut, he knew, and he would never know if there truly had been a way in. He could not offer comfort. He could not offer escape now.

'Tis better to have loved and lost, he thought, though he couldn't remember who had written it. Some poet who didn't know a thing. He watched her walk, her beat-up shoes against the scabrous ground, her arms wrapped around herself. He couldn't go after her, he knew that much.

Samuel insisted on lifting the coffin down by himself. The awkward weight and angle of the box made a corner drop hard into the hole. But leave it to Bell to have made a solid and handsome vessel for his son. Samuel climbed out and shoveled in dirt with his bare hands until Hardy helped him to his feet.

Jack knew it was all over. There was no reason to delay. He would leave for Chicago this afternoon. He would get in the car and drive away.

*   *   *

M
C
G
UINESS COULD SEE
the funeral from where he sat in the shade of a scrub juniper. The sad lot of stooped figures reminded him of toadstools. His jar of corn whiskey—Ruth had cut him off—was down to its fiery dregs. It was radiator distilled, probably full of lead, but McGuiness didn't bother burning it to find out. Since Joe had told him about the kid dying, McGuiness had drowned himself in hooch.

That serves you right, Bell, how do you like your great God now?

But he felt pity deep in his gut, like a quivering mound of gelatin. That poor son of a bitch with his conviction.

A prairie falcon circled above, eyeing a jackrabbit twice its size.

Fuck it all, he said. Everybody dies. Everyone's children die. Life goes on. He emptied the jar down his gullet, sediment and all, and came up wheezing. He coughed and spat. Now was the time to rob the old broad's place. Hurl the jar right through the window, make out with at least two fists of whiskey, if not the till.

But he'd gotten too drunk and had let himself feel bad for Bell and now he'd lost sight of the anger that usually pushed him to do such things. The falcon dove, and its beak speared the rabbit's neck just as its talons grabbed hold of skin and fur. The bird rose, unsteadily, its muscled wings working fiercely against the weight of its prey whose legs thrashed against the air.

And then there was Bell's wife—too skinny, but a looker nonetheless—no more than fifty yards off, walking toward him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but his boots skidded in the dry dirt and he fell hard, his back against the rough bark of the tree as he slid down. He was only up on his unsteady knees by the time she was upon him. She really was a waif of a thing—her black dress hung off her bony shoulders. McGuiness's swimming head kept him stuck there in his ridiculous prostration, afraid if he got up now it would frighten her.

“I'm sorry,” he said, looking at the ground, his words thick and growly.

She looked at McGuiness for the first time, her faced scrunched, eyes vacant. She stopped walking.

“Can you drive me someplace?” she asked.

 

CHAPTER 14

McGuiness eyed his vehicle: the fender gone, the door rusted through and secured with rope. How long had it been since a woman had been in his truck? The seat was strewn with the evidence of his life: bits of copper pipe, an oily crowbar, wire cutters, an empty whiskey bottle, a filthy towel. How did he smell? Not good, he was sure.

“Let me just move some of this,” he said, pushing it all onto the floor. “Okay. There you go.” He thought he should help her so he stood with his hand out, but she didn't acknowledge it and climbed in, tucking her skirt under her as she sat.

Annie wanted to be away from that terrible digging. Away, away. From convention and expectations and everyone she knew. No one else's sorrow mattered. She focused on the crack in the windshield and then beyond to a vacant field where dust swirled in small billows, back to the broken glass, and then the distance, again and again. She would not allow herself to see her son's face.

McGuiness felt oafish and self-conscious, neither sober nor drunk enough, as he passed around to the driver's side. She bounced as he heaved himself behind the wheel, and he was hit with his own sweat-and-liquor stench. The funeral service had not yet concluded and here was Bell's wife beside him. He could think of nothing to say.

“Ma'am?”

She stared ahead, her gaze glassy and unfocused. He wiped his palms against his trousers and cleared his throat.

“Mrs. Bell? Did you have someplace in mind?”

She shook her head, so he started the engine with its chug and roar and pulled out slowly toward town.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” he said, barely recognizing his tight, formal voice.

She turned away, unable to be polite, unable even to ask this brutish man's name. When Eleanor had died, Annie thought grief would snuff her out, thought it would close in like a sodden blanket, heavy over her face until she could no longer see or breathe. But her body didn't give in. She kept waking up. Her lungs took in air and let it out. Her heart went on with its callous rhythm. So here she was again with an ache and anger that pulled her skin taut. She knew better than to think death might relieve her. She would live on and on.

McGuiness drove past town, glancing at his passenger, checking to see if she might come to and ask him to stop.

“Time will pass,” he said, trying again.

“I don't want to go home,” she said.

Just drive, she thought. She didn't want to go anywhere. She didn't want to be seen. Where was there to go in a town where everyone knew you? She wanted to be swallowed by the open plains, the bitter glare of late sun, the inexhaustible sky.

“Oh, okay.” He slowed the truck and spun around in a U, the rear tires dipping into the ditch until he gunned it back onto the road. He looked at her, waiting, but she still did not speak. He drove west because he liked it better.

They drove and drove, a brown expanse in every direction, the truck rumbling, the wind loud through the open windows.

McGuiness sniffed. “Fall's coming,” he said. He'd forgotten for a minute about the boy and then remembered and shook his head. He needed more whiskey.

“You're not a farmer, are you?” she asked.

“I ain't a farmer, no.”

And then Annie was quiet again for miles. Fields gave way to ranchland, and flatness to small rises. Dried-out thistles, stubborn wild sunflowers, and soapweed yuccas held ground along the road amidst the grasses not broken out by plows. She had never heard Fred say her name, but it didn't matter. It had always felt to her as if she knew his voice in her head. Mama, the moths are buzzing in the yuccas. Let's take a lantern and go out and see them tonight. Yes, my love, let's do that. She ground her knuckle against the corroded door of the truck, the sting quick and sharp.

They came to a small sign with an arrow pointing the way to Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma.

“You ever been up there?” he asked, slowing to a stop. She didn't answer. “Want to see it?”

It was a nod, he thought, the slight bob of her head, so he turned north, hoping there was enough gasoline in the truck, the gauge long busted.

As they drove, small buttes began to interrupt the open plains, and groves of cottonwoods appeared, the most trees Annie had seen in years. Prairie dogs scooted into holes, a fat bullsnake lazed in the sun. The road looped and turned; down and then up again they climbed, surrounded by canyons carved deep into the sandstone. Annie had seen this place from afar, the high mesas in the distance, but there had never been reason to see it up close, and now it seemed the only place she could be, lost in this strange wilderness that went up and up. McGuiness jerked to a stop at the base of a steep slope, the truck's tires spinning gravel, until all was quiet except the scolding call of the chickadees in the juniper trees.

“Can't go no further,” McGuiness said. “Except on foot. Must be five miles or so to the top.”

Annie unknotted the rope holding the door closed and felt the marked coolness of the air, tufts of grass at her feet. She started walking.

“Mrs. Bell?”

McGuiness spilled out from behind the wheel, sober enough, and ran his hands through his greasy hair. Even he knew it was not a good idea to set out this late in the day—What about water? What about snakes?—but hell, here was a woman, a fine woman.

“Wait up,” he said, as he hitched up his pants.

She didn't wait, walking fast, her mourning dress like a ghostly shroud ahead of him. He was soon winded, but he pushed on, keeping her in his sights. He wondered if his hands could fit all the way around that slender little waist.

It seemed the temperature fell with every step up, every step away from Mulehead. Annie felt she would never stop walking, no matter how many hours it took to reach the top. My child, my child, my child. All alone. And where was I? Her foot slipped on a crag, and her ankle twisted at an odd angle, but she didn't stop. A coldness had come into her. Her limbs, her head. Cold like the marble floor of her father's church. Her ankle hurt but she wanted it to hurt more. Nothing, she feared, would ever be enough to distract from her despair. She deserved everything.

“Hey,” McGuiness said. “Sun's dipping. Don't want to get caught too high in the dark now.”

“It's no matter to me,” Annie said, surprised by the sound of her own voice, gravelly and low.

“Hard to tell how much longer to the top. With these steppes and ridges and all.”

Her ankle was hot and wobbly. Annie paused to turn it this way and that, before taking in the man's dirty girth, the missing part of his tooth, his huge pawlike hands. A current ran through her, a quick and uneasy zip. She deserved whatever came next, too.

“Whew. You like a man to chase you, huh?”

She stared back blankly, her eyes puffy and gray. I should be afraid, she thought, as though she were watching herself from far away, but fear had lost its power. There was little left of her to take.

“Why don't we have a seat on that outcropping,” he said.

Then his hand was on her back and he was guiding her off the path, into the scrub, and Annie knew things had taken a turn. She could run, she thought, or call for help, not that anyone would hear her, but she walked on. She would not scream, she knew. Do what you will with me, she thought. Make me disappear.

McGuiness wiped the dirt from a stone ledge, clearing a place for her to sit. Even he could be a gentleman, he thought.

Annie sat, her hands gripping her knees, every muscle as stiff and brittle as kindling. He scooched closer until their thighs touched, but she didn't move away. What awfulness happens next, she wondered. Disgust rose up in her at the man's smell, his dirty pants. He draped his arm over her shoulders and she had to brace herself for the weight of it.

He leaned into her. It felt so easy and right, as it had never felt for him, and he thought maybe this was what he needed all along to make a real go of it. A woman by his side.

“I'll take you for a steak later,” he said.

She felt herself get smaller and smaller, a cold hard pebble. She wouldn't flee but neither would she make it easy for him. He rubbed her shoulder, but she sat still, watching the pale sky, the clouds going pink, wishing it were a week ago, a month, years.

She did not soften and McGuiness couldn't even feel her breathe. She was stone, and he felt like a dog sniffing after something and that familiar shame, that fury came creeping back into him at this woman who would not yield. We'll see, he thought. He twisted toward her, so he might squeeze both of his meaty hands around the delicate bones of her deserted face.

There was a clattering above them and two khaki-clad figures stepped down from a ledge. McGuiness dropped his hands, startled, and then he lumbered to his feet.

“Howdy, folks,” one of them said. “Surprised to see anyone up this way.” His glasses were dusted and he carried a small box under his arm. The other man held a burlap sack straining from the weight it held.

At the sound of voices, Annie felt a trickle of relief from some distant point outside herself for just a moment until Fred, oh Fred.

McGuiness spat into the dirt. “Who are you?”

“We're up there digging,” one said.

“We're the dinosaur people,” said the other.

“The fuck you talking about?” McGuiness said.

The man pushed his glasses up, looking from Annie to McGuiness and then back to Annie.

“Found a tibia,” he said. “Looking for the rest of her. Forty feet long. From the Jurassic period.”

“Bones,” Annie said.

McGuiness relaxed his stance a little at the sound, at last, of her voice.

“Bones?” he asked.

“That's right. Dinosaur bones, fossils,” the other man said.

“What kind of fool job is that?” McGuiness asked.

“You can see footprints,” the man in the glasses said. “Not far from here. From an
Antrodemus
. Preserved in the creek bed about ten miles west.”