The Drought (7 page)

Contemplating the picture, he poured himself a cup of coffee before heading out to the front porch. When he was a child visiting for the summer his Grandma Anne would wake him up and beckon him outside. “Wake up, Nathan. Come see what God’s got in store for you today.” The porch was east facing, offering a front row seat everyday to a beautiful sunrise.

In many respects Nathan’s return to Reserve was the act of a coward. He had never come to terms with the death of his three-year-old daughter or the failure of his marriage which quickly followed. News of his grandmother’s death had given him the excuse to leave. He left Atlanta like a thief in the night, the letter an alibi in his pocket, the truth a stone in his heart.

Staying in his grandmother’s house brought back a flood of childhood memories. The thought of selling the place, the thought of strangers living within these walls making memories he would covet was too much for him. After weeks of indecision, he decided to quit his old life and move into his grandmother’s house. Once he made the decision, he had felt a sense of peace he hadn’t known in years. He also felt his grandmother’s approval and imagined her spirit was still hovering, ready to fuss at him for the slightest misstep.

He sat in the silky darkness savoring the smells of morning: the dew clinging to the grass blades, the damp night soil, the pulpy smell of trees. Tendrils of light crept over the horizon. The dark canvas shifted. Slowly the landscape took shape. Trees appeared where before there was only the smooth surface of emptiness. The sky shifted again, its velvety depths unfolding into a myriad of colors. Black, purple, lavender, balmy rose edged in shimmering white. Light danced across the grass, tiny bursts of sunshine reflected in the dew.

He felt his grandmother’s presence in the soft radiance. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and tried to catch her scent. Cinnamon, she had always smelled like the spices she used when she baked. When Nathan’s granddaddy had been alive, he would sneak up behind her and nibble at her neck and whisper, “Ninon, you smell good enough to eat.”

He breathed the endearment into the morning air, “Ninon.” A soft wind stirred the trees and a shape emerged from their depths. Agador bounded through the dew-covered grass, cutting a swath of darkness from the woods to Nathan’s porch.

Junction, Texas

Beth Riley knew grief was an odd thing and it affected people in different ways. For two weeks she watched her son struggle with the tragedy at the drainage pipe. Instead of talking about his fears, Jared had become preoccupied with the weather reports being broadcast on TV He didn’t go outside. On more than one occasion she awoke from a tangle of sweaty dreams to the sound of running water. In the kitchen she could hear her son muttering under his breath, “Just in case. One more gallon just in case.”

He was filling old milk jugs with water and stockpiling them out in the shed. Although she couldn’t see the link, somewhere in Jared’s mind he had connected the unrelenting heat with Luke Casteel’s disappearance. These actions alone wouldn’t have worried her. The dark circles under his eyes and his gaunt features made her realize he wasn’t sleeping. At the end of two weeks she’d had enough. She gathered every piece of dirty clothing she could find and loaded it into laundry bags.

Jared was on the couch watching the morning news. She stood behind him for a moment, leaning on the couch for support. She’d already taken three aspirin to fight the headache squeezing the front lobe of her brain like a vice-grip but she was still in pain. Her eyes flicked toward the television where the baffled weatherman pointed to a red screen. She waited for a commercial break. When it came, she announced, “I need you to take the laundry into town.”

Jared looked at her like she was insane. “Mom, it’s over a hundred degrees outside.”

“I know, but we still need clean clothes. Use the baby buggy, you can pull it all out in one trip.” She didn’t wait to hear his argument. She walked into the kitchen, leaned against the counter and fought off the rising nausea. One of her favorite movies was Shawshank Redemption, and one of her favorite lines from the movie was, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” She’d been living that motto since her husband disappeared ten years ago.

The laundry was her way of saying to Jared, “Get busy living.” She knew he was going to be angry with her, but she wanted him to get off the couch and stop watching the weather. If he needed to focus his anger, he could concentrate on her, and maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be so preoccupied with Luke’s disappearance and Barry’s prolonged absence.

She moved slowly and cleared the few dishes from the table. Normally she would have hollered at Jared to come put his cereal bowl in the sink, but today she did the task willingly. She was trying to keep her mind preoccupied until the Advil kicked in.

She wiped the table thinking about Luke Casteel’s mother and her hands shook as she wrung the dishcloth in the sink. Just the thought something could have happened to Jared made her heart twist painfully in her chest. She whispered under her breath, “It could have been Jared.” She twisted the cloth again, and the last drops of water fell into the sink. She would have lost them both, father and son to the hands of a Tanner.

And it could have been Jared. That’s what really shook her up. He worshiped Barry Tanner. There was no doubt in her mind Barry could have turned on the charm and convinced any one of those kids to go in there and fetch the ball. She closed her eyes against the steady pressure in her head. She didn’t understand how fate could be so cruel as to draw these two boys into a friendship.

She remembered the first time Barry showed up at her door. She had been half tempted to slam it in his face. With all the charm of a grown man he’d asked, “Is Jar here?” She had hesitated at the shortening of her son’s name, and before she could make up a lie, Jared was behind her, his voice raised in an excited pitch usually reserved for Christmas morning. Before she knew what was happening, a Tanner was in her house and her son was happier than she’d ever seen him.
A Tanner has come for my boy
. As ridiculous as it sounded, the thought kept going through her head.

She couldn’t believe in such a small town, neither boy had been exposed to the rumors that had once swirled savagely through the town unhindered by truth or fact. Most people believed Robert Riley had run off with Barry’s mother. A twinge of pain just under her chest bone accompanied the thought.

She picked up the damp cloth and began re-wiping the already clean counters. While the rest of the town gossiped over the two ex-lovers disappearing on the same day, Beth grieved. In her heart she knew Robert was dead. He was not the type of man who would abandon his wife and son. Over the past ten years she had never wavered in her conviction or her belief Griffin Tanner was responsible for the disappearance of her husband and Dora.

She moved from the counters to the kitchen table, the dishrag never resting. It was at this table she had come to accept Barry’s presence in her home. He and Jared had spent long nights sitting at the table, playing cards. She had taught them to play Canasta and for an entire summer they were consumed by the game. She had seen Barry cheat on more than one occasion and waited to see if Jared would ever catch on.

Realizing he was being watched, Barry would wink at her and in this way she became an unwilling co-conspirator against her own son. Jared was so involved in his own cards he didn’t notice until one night he pulled two red threes out of the deck and Barry already had three. Instead of assuming Barry was cheating, he’d said, “Hey, there are five red threes in the deck.” Barry had almost peed in his pants he was laughing so hard.

Jared had leaned forward and saw the red two. Stunned, he said, “You’re cheating.” Unfazed, Barry threw down his cards and said, “You must be cheating, too.”

“What?”

“That’s right, I’ve been cheating all night and you’re still winning, so you must be cheating.”

Jared’s face had turned red with disbelief, but even Barry’s most deceitful behavior did not alter their friendship.

A slight tap of a horn brought her out of her thoughts. She smiled and sent up a silent prayer of thanks for her friend, Elsie Palmer. Unable to afford a car, she had always walked the two miles into town insisting the exercise helped keep her trim. In truth she didn’t like being beholden to anyone, not even her best friend. When the temperature spiked over 100, Elsie started showing up and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She paused on her way out the door, casting one last worried look in Jared’s direction.

Jared, still angry over laundry duty didn’t acknowledge his mother’s soft, “Goodbye,” or her exit.

*

Jar rode his bike up highway 377 and took a right onto Main Street. It was a ride he took almost every day, but today he was pulling a baby buggy full of dirty laundry. The buggy alone could get him beaten up if he ran into the right kids, but the dirty laundry would be absolutely humiliating. He knew for a fact the Crawlie twins, Mike and Jason, had a thing for picking on middle school kids, and he was praying he wouldn’t run into them on Main Street.

The thought of them flinging his clothes onto the street caused him such a panic a mile back he had pulled to the side of the road and stuffed whatever underwear he could find to the bottom of one of the bags.

He didn’t mind helping his mom, but she was a person of habit and she usually did the laundry on Tuesday nights with her friend, Elsie. Tuesday nights were nickel nights on the dryers and the women would all get together and make a social event out of doing laundry. Today felt like a punishment, only he couldn’t figure what he’d done wrong, and it wasn’t like his mom to leave him guessing.

Main Street was deserted. Jar sent up a silent prayer of thanks as he made his right and rode past the Junction National Bank. The large sign out front flashed its mortgage rates, 4.5 %, the time: 10:30 a.m., and the temperature: 108 degrees. The last number caused him to miss a stroke on the pedals.
That can’t be right.

He stopped the bike and looked back at the sign. The numbers flashed again, only this time when the temperature flashed it was: 109. Jar stood, straddling his bike, his eyes locked on the sign. He waited through the revolution again, 4.5%, 10:33, 109.

He half expected the temperature to climb another notch, but this time it held.
It knows I’m watching. That’s ridiculous, it’s only a clock. It knew I would stop. That one degree was a wink. “Hey Jar, just between you and me, it’s gonna get mighty hot around here. Mighty fuckin’ hot. Things are gonna start sizzlin’ and crackin’. Yes sir, we like our meatloaf and taters well done. Served up pipe’n hot.”

Across the well-manicured lawn that resembled dried up hay, Frank Taylor watched the boy from inside the bank. He kept the Venetian blinds parted with two, chubby, white collar fingers. Those fingers attached to equally soft, chubby hands stood out in stark contrast to his normal clientele.

The ranchers, who came in clutching worn hats to their chests and asking for extensions on past due loans, had long sinewy fingers. Had he been the kind of man to notice, he would have seen the strength in those hands and in their eyes. But he wasn’t that kind of man. He didn’t take pride in the land, he just took the land back when they couldn’t make the payments.

At first he expected some type of vandalism and half hoped for it
, love to catch one of you little fucks in the act,
but then he recognized the boy. It was Beth Riley’s kid. Frank knew who the troublemakers were around town, and Jared wasn’t one of them.

Jared shook his fist and shouted something up at the sign. Frank moved to another window to get a better view. He still couldn’t see what was making Jared Riley so angry and he couldn’t hear what the boy was yelling. Then Jared made the universal sign, recognized worldwide. That one Frank could make out even from this distance. The kid didn’t just flick it out real quick, like he was afraid to get caught, he held up his middle finger with a vengeance, his arm extended to the point his shoulder must have been popping at the joint.

Frank laughed out loud. That was one for the books. He’d never seen anyone flip off the bank clock. “I can’t wait to tell Marcy about this one.” He made a mental note to check and see if they had recently declined Beth Riley a loan. When he looked outside again, Jared Riley was gone.

Frank Taylor wouldn’t get the chance to tell Marcy his funny little story from work. While he was checking on Beth Riley’s file, his wife of eleven years was streaking through their quiet subdivision, buck-naked. Neighbors would later tell him she was screaming the same thing over and over again. “It’s going to get mighty hot, mighty fucking hot.”

Marcy’s mad, naked dash ended on Woodlawn Street, when fate, taking the shape of a black Dodge Durango, with out-of-state plates, mowed her down. The woman who was driving the Durango was in Junction gathering research on droughts. She had simply been tooling around town, going up and down the different streets, and trying to get a sense for the place and the people. She held Marcy Taylor until she took her last breath and was the only witness to the dying woman’s last words. “Yes sir, we like our meatloaf and taters well done. Served up pipin’ hot.”