In the Midnight Rain (8 page)

Blue settled her into the carrier, and Pi glared at him through the wire mesh on top, but she seemed to accept her fate. "Did you call them yet?" Blue asked.

"No, but I'll do it now. They'll be gone before long if you don't get moving."

He kissed the top of her white head. "Thanks, Lanie. Go watch your soaps now, all right? I'll take care of my dinner."

"There's a salad in the fridge. Be sure and eat, and don't spend the whole evening sucking on a bottle of whiskey, either."

"Yes, ma'am."

Two hours later, with Piwacket safely hooked to IV tubes in her suite at the vet's—disgruntled but not particularly pissed—Blue finally got to get in the shower. He washed the grime of the day from him, threw on a pair of jeans, and wandered into the kitchen to see what Lanie had left for him. A Cobb salad. He pulled it out, decided he wasn't hungry, and poured a drink instead, bourbon over ice. From Lanie's apartment in the basement, he heard the television, and he eyed the bourbon guiltily for a minute.

Then added a jigger more whisky to his glass. There were days that warranted a good drink, and this had been one of them.

Turning to put the ice tray back in the freezer, he caught a blur of motion from the corner of his eye, and paused to look out the kitchen window. It faced the cabin, the greenhouses, and the open slope of field between them, and it was at the bottom of the slope that he'd seen movement. It was Ellie and her dog.

From this distance, he could make out no details of expression, but the game was as old as time. Ellie jumped and hunched and wrestled with the dog playfully, ducking and turning, running and stopping. April leapt and yipped, raced and jumped. Blue rubbed his ribs, sipping his bourbon, and watched them. In the gathering dusk, the woman's red shirt was bright, her black hair a blur, the dog a smear of black and white.

They both tired, and still Blue stood there, sipping whiskey in his bare feet. April slumped in the small space of grass fronting the small porch, and the woman collapsed beside her. There was more play, more subdued, as Ellie roughed up the dog's fur, then the dog fell against the ground, and the woman fell, too, resting her head on the black-and-white belly. Blue couldn't see her hands, but the angle of the red sleeve was such that he knew she put a hand against April's throat, rubbing distractedly as they lay in the grass. He thought of no-see-ums and mosquitoes, but if she felt them devouring her, Ellie gave no sign. They lay there, woman and dog for a long, long time. And only when they both got up and padded into the cottage did he take a fresh drink and a bag of potato chips into the den.

Automatically, he flipped on the television and fell into his favorite chair, a worn, oversized recliner that had been a fixture of the room as long as he could remember. It had been his daddy's chair.

In the flickering blue light from the television, he fell into a doze, then a deeper sleep. And as it often did when he didn't anesthetize himself, the dream came. A long, dim hall, with closed doors all the way along it. Blue felt a tight, bitter sense of frustration as he stared at all the doors. If he only knew which one to open. He tried one, and there was his brother. "Hey, Bruiser," Jack said, the spikes of his crew cut catching the light from the window.

Blue, with a sigh of relief, settled into a chair by the door. "I thought you were dead."

And then he saw that his brother
was
dead.

He bolted awake, spilling chips in a wide spray. For a long, panicky moment, he blinked into the darkness, the all-too-vivid picture lingering. God, he hated that dream. Every door, the same story. His mother. His wife. He wiped a hand over his face. At least his brain spared him his father.

Through the open French doors came music, floating on the currents of wind that blew up from the river. Without pausing for a second, Blue stood up and followed the sound like a sleepwalker, knowing even as he did it that it was the serenity of Ellie at play with her dog that drew him. He walked through the field in his bare feet, drawn by the mournful sound of a woman's voice, singing the blues. It was the only sound a man could bear at times.

The door was open to the cabin, and through the screen, Blue saw Ellie swaying to the music. She stood in the middle of the room, a piece of paper in her hand, as if she'd stood up to do something and had been snared by the music. And as if she had become part of it, she shaped it with her body, swaying, her shoulders and her head and her arms all moving gently, easily, on currents of dark notes.

He stood in the loamy soil and watched her, his hands loose at his sides, unable to move forward or move away, captured by the music and the peaceful heart of a woman he ought not want, but somehow did.

* * *

Ellie's head was full of images. She stood in the middle of the cabin and swayed with the music, letting the spirit of Mabel fill her. She was no longer herself, but sixteen and black and dancing in a blues club on the wrong side of the river. Her rayon dress brushed her summer-bare calves.

She reached for Mabel's laughter, trying to feel that spark, that vividness, but even with the music, and the dance, it did not materialize. With a sigh, she let her shoulders sag, and became only Ellie, and opened her eyes.

April sat by the counter in the kitchen, head up, ears pricked up, her tail swishing happily over the floor. Ellie turned. Through the time-blackened screen door, she saw Blue. He stood in the yard, an open shirt tossed over his arms, no shoes on his feet. Lamplight illuminated one cheekbone, one high arch of a bare foot. His lost, artless beauty stunned her.

He simply stood there. Ellie moved very slowly toward the door, and gently swung it open in invitation. She said nothing, only waited, until he took a step, then another, pausing at the stair. She nodded encouragement.

On the stereo, Sonny and Brownie's "Sail Away" began to play, smoky and slow, a song about seductive promises that could not be fulfilled. Blue looked behind her, seeming to awaken to where he was, how he stood there. He looked down, touched his stomach with the flat of a palm, looked back at her. "I heard the music," he said, his voice low and rough.

"Come in." She pushed the door wider, so there would be room for him to pass. "I still have some beer. I'll get you one."

"This is when I would go in and write you notes," he said, taking a step up to the porch. "This time of night. I'd go in and see what you'd been talking about and write to you."

Ellie smiled. "I wrote at night, too. I almost did tonight, and then I thought it would be silly for us to talk like that when you're only a little way up the hill."

"It's easier on the computer."

She felt his presence like the first low rumbles of a thunderstorm, a crackling along the hairs of her arms and low on her back. "Yeah," she agreed. "It is."

"Am I bothering you?"

Yes, she almost said. But she only shook her head and gestured for him to enter. He turned sideways to pass, and she pulled back as tight as she could against the doorframe, but his ribs brushed her breasts, one hand bumped her thigh, and he abruptly stopped instead of passing on through.

Acutely aware of the places their bodies connected, of his thumb brushing just below the joint of her hip, she dared not even take in a breath. She kept her head lowered, flooded with a wild sense of danger and embarrassment—why hadn't she told him to come in, like any normal person?—and the awkwardness she always felt when she first realized she wanted something.

The moment stretched, one second, two, five, until she was forced to take a breath, which moved her breast on his skin as she had known it would. His hand turned and his palm was against her thigh. She looked up at him.

He said nothing, did nothing, only stood there, touching her so lightly. A hint of bourbon came from him, and she thought he might be a little crazy. Maybe a lot. Maybe it had been a foolish thing indeed to accept his invitation to stay here, and even more foolish to let him in tonight, when whatever it was that made him seem okay was gone, and he was revealed for what he was: doomed.

Doomed, and he knew it.

She slipped away and left him standing there, and moved toward the fridge. April stood up and went to greet him, as calm as if he belonged here. Ellie opened the fridge and got out two beers. When she turned back, Blue was gone.

Instead of the relief any sane woman would have felt, she was conscious of deep disappointment. In a little rush, she moved toward the door, calling out his name as she went out on the porch.

"I'm here," he said, the voice dark molasses. "I needed a breath of air."

She gave him the beer and he took it, and the strangeness was suddenly gone. "I may not be bothering you, sugar,’ he said. "But I think you're bothering me."

Relief moved through her. "Sweet-talker," she said, and drank gustily, moving over to sit on the step, her back against the post.

He settled a few feet away, his back against the wall, his legs kicked out in front of him. "This used to be slave quarters," he said, and lifted his head as if he were listening. "My mama wouldn't come down here on a bet at night. She said it was haunted."

On the stereo, Sonny and Brownie sang about the seduction of African children to America, a poignant, mournful song that always made her feel emotionally wide open.

"No ghosts here," she said firmly, "but your house looks like it has at least a couple dozen."

"No doubt about that." There was no lightness to the comment.

"Any of them looking for you?"

"One or two. Didn't you see the one chased me down here tonight?"

"Oh, so that's what happened." She smiled through the darkness, and took a deep breath, smelling humus and the coppery hints of river water and a thousand notes of growing things. Overhead the sky was thick with stars, billions of stars that you could never see from the city. She had forgotten so much. "I didn't know I was homesick till I got here," she said quietly.

"Where you from?"

She started to answer, but he held up a hand. "No, let me guess."

"Go ahead."

He pursed his lips. "Can't be too far away. You try to talk real proper, but you can't hide all of it. Not Texas."

"No."

"Mississippi, then. Maybe. . . Jackson?"

"No and no."

"Hmmm." He drank some beer. "Not too much farther east. Unless, one of the Carolinas?"

Ellie laughed. "I notice you haven't been guessing places like Savannah or Atlanta or Charlotte."

"You're a country girl."

She knew he meant more than that—that her accent wasn't genteel enough for those places. For once, it didn't bother her. "That part is right."

"Okay, I give up."

"Sweetwell, Louisiana," she said.

"That's not but a hundred miles." He looked at her and she felt the questions he didn't ask. "So I wasn't too far off, after all. You pretty much are from around here."

"Sort of."

A small silence fell. Ellie listened to a lone cricket, whistling in the dark, and thought she heard water not far away. "Where is the river? I keep meaning to go look for it."

"Right behind those trees to the south. I'm sure April has already found it, but be careful. There's a lot of snakes."

"I'm not a city girl, remember?"

He nodded. "You have family back there?"

"My grandma."

"How about your mama and daddy?"

"Nope. My grandma's the only one left."

"That's unusual."

She shrugged. "I guess. They all died." That sounded so bald she smiled and added, "Happens to the best of us."

"Hmmm." He leaned his head against the wall, showing his throat in silhouette. "My folks are gone, too."

"Are you an only child?"

"Nope. Lost a brother in Vietnam." He drank some beer. "He's one of the ghosts up in that house."

"He must have been a lot older than you." She wasn't always the best with ages, but Blue didn't look to be much more than thirty-five.

"Seven years. We were both surprises."

"And your parents?" she asked. "Have they been gone long?"

"Long, long time." He took some beer and held it in his mouth a minute, pursing his lips around the taste like it held the pieces of a story. "My mama took Jack's death real hard. She had a heart attack the day of his funeral, and never really got over it. She died the next summer, and my daddy—" He sighed. "He didn't take both of them going like that well at all. He put a gun in his mouth the day after Thanksgiving."

His voice drawled out the story as if he were telling her about cutting grass evenly, and it made the horror all the worse. "How old were you?"

"Twelve at the end of it."

A thud bumped in her belly. Another winner here, all right. Her knack for finding wounded men had led her to abused and abandoned, but she didn't think she'd met one with suicidal parents before. "I'm sorry."

"Ancient history, darlin'. I don't even remember them, really. Lanie raised me. I survived." He looked at her. "Did your grandmother raise you?"

"My grandparents did. Grandpa died a couple of years ago, dropped dead of a stroke with his arms greasy to the elbow from the engine of his truck." She grinned softly in memory. "My grandma went out to get him for dinner and he had his cheek right on the carburetor, like he'd just gone to sleep with a lover. Still had a wrench in his hand."

The warm sound of Blue's laughter was more reward than it should have been. "He liked cars?"

"No, honey. You
like
chocolate ice cream. You
like
your children. He had a fan belt in his chest, I swear he did. Never had clean fingernails a day in his life, but he could make just about anything run."

"Definitely a talent worth a pot of gold." He made a sound between a snort and a laugh. "Don't suppose you picked it up?"

"I can change my spark plugs, but that's about as far as I go."

"Too bad." He rubbed his face. "I've had one headache after another with machines lately." He put the empty beer bottle down. "Which reminds me that I have plants to look after. Thanks for the beer."

"You're welcome."