Thunder and Rain

by Charles Martin

  Fifteen minutes later, the ice cream dripped off his chin. His tongue made the circuit around his face but smeared more than it mopped up. He looked like a puppy chasing peanut butter around his muzzle. Light blue and pink coated his fingers.

  “You saving that for later?”

  He was licking the rim of the cone, but it was dripping faster than he could keep up. “Uh-huh.” He stared at me out of the corner of his eyes, nodding at my chest. He spoke while looking at his cone. “You wearing it?”

  I pulled on a snap in the center of my shirt exposing the giant blue and red “S” beneath. He smiled. He’d given it to me. He liked it when I wore it. His mom thought it ridiculous.

  He dropped the paper from his cone in the trash. I pulled a wipe from my pocket and bathed his hands and face. He squirmed. “You ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I handed him my hat and he put it on his head where it swiveled loosely on the crown. I lifted him, raising him above my head and rested him on my shoulders. He locked his hands around my head, covering up my eyes. I laughed. “Hey, big guy…” I groped like a man in the dark. “I need those things if we’re going anywhere other than right here.” He locked them under my neck, nearly choking me. “Much better.” He rested his chin on my head and we walked down the street. I’m six-two, which made him about eight feet atop me. We walked a block and when I purposefully missed the turn, he pulled on my right ear and then “spurred” me with his right heel. I turned, staring at our shadow. Him wearing my hat and towering over everyone in town. We walked straight down the sidewalk so he held his arms out and made propeller sounds with his mouth. Mornings with him made all the world right.

  We passed a lady carrying a shopping bag and shuffling on flat feet. She was short, stocky, black as night, and had purple eyes. He tipped my hat and spoke. “ ’Day, ma’am.”

  She smiled. Stopped. Tugged on my arm. “You’re that boy. The one I been reading about.”

  I held out my hand. “Tyler Steele, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Thought that was you. Recognized you from your picture. You caught that murdering killer. Put him in jail. Glad you did. Hope he stays there. Hope they hang him for what he did.” She shaded her eyes. “That’s a handsome boy you’re carrying up there.”

  He held his hand down. “I’m Brodie.”

  She stood on her toes and shook his hand. “You gonna grow up and be like your daddy?”

  He nodded. The shift in weight told me he stuck his chest out. “Yes, ma’am.” Another shift told me he sat up straight and lifted his chin. “Planning on it.”

  She patted his legs. “You do that.”

  She gritted her teeth and patted my arm. “You keep doing what you’re doing. We need more just like you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She turned and waddled down the street.

  He spoke down over me. “Daddy?”

  “Yeah, big guy.”

  “How come you and Momma don’t sleep in the same bed?”

  “Well, we do it’s just that you been sleeping in there and there’s just not room for all three of us.”

  “That’s not what Mom says.”

  “Yeah? What’s Mom say?”

  “She says with you working late, you don’t want to wake anybody up so you just sleep on the couch. Is that it?”

  How is it that someone so young can pick up on pain so deep? I tried to sound convincing. “Yep.”

  “You can wake us up, you know. I asked her. We’ll snuggle with you, too.”

  I didn’t answer. He was tugging on both ears. “Hey, big guy, left or right. Not both at once.”

  He tugged left, spurred me twice. Three blocks to go.

  Rock Basin, Texas, sits north of Abilene. Wide expanse, big skies, rolling dust clouds, it is everything West Texas. On a clear day, from most anywhere in town, we can look due west and see the Llano Estacado. We call it the Cap Rock. It’s a tabletop place of earth that rises up several hundred feet like the Great Wall of China and runs north, to Canada. It marks the end of the Great Plains and was, at one time, covered with over a million buffalo. Now, it’s covered with nearly a thousand windmills taller than many buildings. If you stop the truck and roll down the window, you can hear the propellers whipping through the air. Rain and snow up on the Cap Rock drains down into the Brazos, then runs eight hundred miles to the Gulf of Mexico. That’s tricky, too, ’cause rain up there don’t necessarily mean rain down here. No, sir. Not at all. So, flash floods aren’t uncommon.

  Rock Basin was once an oil-boom town. Brick-lined streets, gas lamps, oil derricks on every corner, three restaurants, two banks, and a railway station. In some parts of town, folks drilled so many wells that the derricks crossed neighbors’ fences like they do east of here over in Kilgore. The mayor used to brag that a squirrel could scurry across town jumping from derrick to derrick and never touch the ground.

  An old Ford F-100 rattled down Main pulling an empty cattle trailer. Closed shops, FOR LEASE signs, empty factories, broken glass, boarded-up windows, faded signs, tumbleweeds, and unmoving derricks tell the story of a boomtown that dried up. Across the street, a clothesline stretched between the rusty legs of two unmoving derricks. I stopped before the bank window and stared at our reflection. I watched him. Pure promise, boundless possibility, limitless hope.

  George Vickers ran the five-and-dime. His son, George Jr., got kicked in the head by a mule when he was young. Scrambled him. He’s thirty now. Acts like he’s five or six. Happiest kid I’ve ever known. Stepped out of the store, aimed his Polaroid at us, clicked the picture. Handed it to us. A voice sounded above me. “Thanks, George Jr.” Brodie looked at the Polaroid, then stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He loved that picture. He was so proud. “Look, Daddy, I’m taller than you.”

  I glanced down the street to the beauty parlor. I could see her shadow moving in the window. She was getting her hair done. Wanted to look nice for another weekend out with the girls. Vegas this time. Last month was New York. Or was it San Francisco? He tugged on my left ear. Dumbo wearing boots and jeans. Another glance at the beauty parlor, then him in the window’s reflection. She was right. He was the glue. Or, had been. Sometimes when the earth quakes, it’s the tectonic plates several thousand feet down causing the damage on the surface.

  I slipped on my Costas. Four blocks up, a Monte Carlo turned onto the street. Tinted windows. Riding low. Shiny chrome wheels and spinners gave the impression of forward movement when it had little. I’d seen it before. Seeing it here surprised me. It crept toward us. Deep bass from the speakers rattled the license tag. The passenger was looking through binoculars, pointing. I jogged slightly. Brodie tugged on my right ear, laughing, unaware.

  I reached the far side of the street and the bed of my truck. I lifted him off my shoulders and set him in the bed. “Hey, big guy, I want you to lie down.” I patted the bed and kept my eyes trained up the street. “Out of sight. Right now.”

  “But—”

  “Nope, lie down.” I pulled my hat down tight. “Now.”

  He did. Three blocks up, she appeared on the porch, shading her eyes from the sun. I needed distance between me and the truck. I climbed up the curb, walked four stores down and stood in the shadows. The car approached. Smoke wafted from inside. Shiny black hair. Shoulder-length ponytails. Hands covered in tattoos. Beady black eyes sat perched atop blue bandanas that covered their faces. One of them tossed an empty malt liquor bottle into the back of my truck, then spotted me and pulled ahead. There were five of them. Twelve feet separated us.

  The FBI will tell you that gunfights are statistically short in time. But, that’s little consolation when you’re in one. The first round entered my right leg, spun me and knocked me against the brick wall of the five-and-dime. The next four rounds impacted my vest, slamming me through the glass and spreading my body across what was once the display window. I glanced at the car and something shiny came spinning out. A flame twirling on one end. It spun slowly. Like a
punted football, tumbling end over end. I knew what was coming next. The adrenaline dump was total. Tunnel vision. Auditory exclusion. Gross motor movement took the place of fine. The blast occurred about the time the bottle hit the ground, not too far from me, showering me in flaming goo and slivers. The pain in my ears was intense but then the whole world went mute.

  When I looked up, a man stood over me holding my Smith & Wesson model 327. The eight-round .357 I carried on my ankle. Just before he squeezed the trigger I remember thinking, “This is going to hurt.” He said, “Cowboy, this is from José Juan.” Then he calmly placed five rounds into the “S” on my chest.

  Standing there beneath that kid, I had three distinct thoughts that I can’t explain. Maybe four. The first was, “I hope this vest holds.” Second, my skin was on fire and I did not like it. Third, despite the emotional distance and the angry shouts and the months that had passed since we’d touched—I didn’t want her to see this. I’d tried so hard to protect her from this side of me but this was one mental picture that would not fade. Pictures like this are seared into the backs of eyelids. Lastly, I remember hearing his voice, afraid and alone, screaming my name over and over and over.

  I don’t remember much after that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I woke naked on the table.

  I blinked. My eyes fought to focus. I stretched my fingers. They curled. The skin felt raw and taut across the knuckles. I wiggled my toes. The right side wiggled back. The left was slow to respond. I tried lifting my head. A wave of nausea followed.

  Fluorescent white showered down. Clear fluid dripped from a bag above my head. A plastic line led from the bag to my right arm. Voices were muted. Mouths moved but noise was sporadic. My eyes detected motion. Shadows crossed me. A woman in white hovered above me. Sweat dotted the fuzz above her lip. She was squeezing the bag and barking at other people.

  The right side of my face and chest was on fire. My left leg felt heavy and numb. I was sweating and cold. I touched my right cheek and felt slivers of something sticking into my skin.

  I pulled up onto one elbow. There was a hole in my left thigh. I looked down at my arm. Liquid dripping in. The bag above me was almost empty. I looked at my leg. Liquid dripping out.

  Strange.

  The area around the hole in my leg was that weird yellow iodine color. Evidently, they were prepping me for surgery. The memory returned. I wanted off that table.

  The nurse pressed me back down. I managed a broken whisper. “Brodie?”

  “Sir, please lie back down.”

  I pulled myself up on an elbow. “Where’s my son?”

  More hands appeared pressing me down. It was Andie. Tears streaked the black soot on her face. Like she’d been fighting a fire. She pressed her palms on my chest. She was crying. “Ty. Ty, lay down.”

  “Where—?” She broke, pounding my chest with her fist. “Did they take him?”

  She was screaming. “They took him. Those—! They took him. They—”

  I sat up. The nurse cradled me. Urgent voices sounded over the intercom. Shuffling footsteps in the hall. I dropped one leg off the bed. The doctor appeared in the doorway, his hands wet and held above his heart. He looked at me. Surprised. He spoke from behind a mask. “Where you going?”

  I steadied myself. There were two of him. “To get my son?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t recommend that.”

  One ear was not working. I turned my head. “Say again?”

  “That’s not a real good idea.”

  “I know, but—” I looked at him. A wedding ring on his left hand. I tugged on the plastic line leading into my arm but it was taped. I asked, “You got kids?” He nodded. “Would you?”

  Andie lay in a pile on the floor. Stomach-deep sobs cut the air. I’d never heard that sound. Her head swayed slightly. Her hair brushed the floor.

  He pulled down on his mask, wanting the truth. “Have you got it left in you?”

  I nodded.

  He wiped his hands on his pants, and helped me up. The world was spinning. I leaned on him. “Doc, I need you to help me make it through the next hour.”

  The nurse held a wad of gauze to my leg while he wrapped it in twenty circles of tape. He slid the IV from my arm and spoke to the nurse. She walked to a counter and started loading a syringe.

  The tattered and burnt remains of my clothes were in a heap on the counter. My vest sat upright, five slugs embedded in the plate in the center. That would explain the problem I was having taking a deep breath. I lifted the remains of my shirt, found my belt, and hung it around me.

  My boots lay on the floor. Burnt leather. Slit down the side. Crusty with blood. I sized up the doctor. Then his feet. He was wearing Crocs. “You mind?”

  He kicked them off, slid the syringe into my arm, and shot me full of something.

  The full-length mirror, opposite the nurses’ station, showed my reflection. I was not a pretty sight. Charred skin, much of it cracked and peeling, boxer shorts, green Crocs, black leather belt, holster, magazine carrier, tape and gauze the size of a VW, blood trickling down my leg and out both ears. The doc handed me a water bottle. “Drink this while you drive.”

  “Thanks.”

  My truck sat just outside the door. The driver’s side window was blown out. Evidently, Andie had followed the ambulance. “My keys?”

  She tossed them at me. Something smelled like lemon and Pine-Sol. I caught the keys and walked toward the parking lot. When the automatic doors opened, the sunlight blinded me.

  I let my eyes adjust, and cranked the engine. Mashing the clutch was excruciating and I almost passed out. When I got it to the floor, I threw the stick into first and shoved the accelerator as far as it would go. The diesel wound up and whined. By the time I exited the parking lot, I was in third gear. I ran three stoplights, slid sideways onto the highway, and when I looked down, the needle was pegged somewhere above a hundred.

  I kept it there and fought the desire to close my eyes.

  I had a hunch that they’d make one stop before they disappeared. A dog always returns to its vomit. I had put their boss in jail and I felt certain they’d make a visit to their clubhouse before they slipped back across the border. I parked in the trees, grabbed what I needed out of the back of my truck, and bled my way through the pasture, the planted pines, and down the bank to the river. Whatever the doc had shot into me had started to work. Good stuff, too, but if it played out I’d be in trouble. Waist deep, shotgun above my head, I waded across. I walked up the bank, pulled back on the slide of the 870, inserted a Brenneke slug into the chamber, slammed the slide forward, pressed the muzzle of the shotgun against the lock, and pressed the trigger. Brenneke slugs have been known to shoot through engine blocks. The lock disappeared. I didn’t bother with earplugs. They were still ringing from the last explosion. I stepped inside two tractor-trailers welded together end to end. A laboratory, of sorts. I pulled the door behind me, stuffed a piece of paper in the clean shotgun hole, and stood in the dark. I knew if I sat down, I wouldn’t get up so I leaned against the wall, pressed up on my eyelids, and counted the drops on my foot. Blood was puddling inside my left Croc so I took them off and stood barefoot. I trained my eyes on daylight breaking through the crack at the far end.

  There have been a multitude of changes in handguns since John Browning created what became known as the “1911.” Many good. Glock. Springfield. A host of others. But, nobody yet has made a weapons platform better than the 1911. Many have tried. None succeeded. In the annals of weapon craft, it’s known as the perfect fusion of function and form.

  I unholstered, depressed the magazine release button, and dropped the magazine into my left hand, feeling the top with my fingers and pressing down. Eight rounds. Capacity. Chances were good I’d need it. I replaced it, clicking it shut, then press-checked the chamber—letting my index finger tell me the same thing it told me when I put it on this morning. A total of nine. An extra magazine on my belt. Plus six rounds in
the shotgun. I didn’t know how long the fight would last—nobody every does—but I doubted it’d last much longer than those twenty-three rounds.

  My chest was tender. Any expansion was painful.

  I heard the hum of the motor, the sound of tires on gravel. The pounding of deep bass from the speakers. When the Monte Carlo came to a stop just outside the door, I’d venture that no one in the car was thinking of me. I was counting on that. It might have been my only advantage. The car door shut and I told myself, Slow is fast… shoot slow. My adrenaline was playing out. The world was a tunnel and the sides were closing in. I shook my head.

  I don’t remember all that happened next. Most shootouts take less than seven seconds in a space smaller than the average bedroom and I suppose all that was true here. I remember them shuffling in. Cocky and carefree. I remember letting the third get through the door before I pressed the trigger on the shotgun. I don’t remember it running empty but it did. I do remember that the third guy was fast but not faster than the last round in the shotgun. I remember men shouting, I remember seeing a flash, feeling searing pain in my right rib cage, falling backward and then getting up. I remember walking out the front door—sort of—dragging my leg. The fourth man turned and tripped trying to get out the door. Oddly, all the world was quiet. He tumbled down the steps and ran toward the river. The shotgun empty, I dropped it, drew the 1911, dropped the safety with my thumb, and pressed the trigger when the front site settled on the naked woman in the center of the tattoo on his back. He was knee deep in the river when the bullet did what bullets do. The fifth man turned to me, a dog I’d backed in a corner. He came fast, too, and while the .45 ACP is a subsonic round flying at best 950 feet per second, it is still faster than any man that ever lived.

  But none of that is really important.

  The smoke cleared. Muffled cries rose from the car trunk. I punched the latch and he cowered, whimpering, covering his head with an arm. I reached in. He fought me, then opened his eyes, climbed into my arms, and latched hold. I needed a place to lie down so I stumbled a few feet into the river. Shin-deep, I set us down next to a tire-sized boulder. The water soothed my skin. My strength was gone.