Hard Rain

by Peter Abrahams

  Bare hills rose on Jessie’s right. She took the next exit and followed a narrower highway up into them. The wind blew harder; the sky grew grayer. Now, off the turnpike, Jessie had her first close look at New England countryside: rocky meadows, a piebald herd of holstein cows in the lee of a spruce grove, a big Rockwell-red barn with a roof that read: ANTIQUES BOUGHT AND SOLD. FLEA MARKET EVERY SATURDAY. MAJOR CARDS.”

  She entered Bennington a few minutes after three and almost went right by Buddy Boucher’s dealership, just inside the town limit. Buddy Boucher had red, white and blue plastic pennants, a big sign with a smiling lumberjack, and a small lot with about a dozen shiny cars on it. She parked in front of the office, swept her eyes over the cars. She didn’t see the blue BMW, but there were more cars parked around the building, where the sign said, SERVICE. Jessie went in.

  A chocolate-colored sedan with white tires and wire wheels took up most of the showroom. Along the back wall were three-sided offices, the size of cobblers’ stalls in an Oriental market. All but one, slightly bigger than the others, were empty. In the occupied cubicle a man talked on the phone. He had swept-back silver hair that needed washing and a face as busy as a B-movie actor’s.

  “Hey,” he was saying, “we’ll work something out. That’s what we’re here for.” He nodded a few times, smiled, winked, raised an eyebrow. “Darn tootin’,” he said. “Darn tootin’.” He hung up. His face relaxed. Then he saw Jessie and got back to work, a little distractedly at first; he reminded her of a singer given an unexpected curtain call. “Hi there,” he said, coming to her. “Nice little automobile, huh?” He patted the chocolate-colored roof. He glanced past her, toward the lot. “What’re you driving?”

  “I’m looking for Buddy Boucher,” Jessie said.

  “You found him.” Buddy Boucher puffed on the spot he’d been patting, buffed it with a handkerchief and said, “What can I do you for?”

  “I spoke to you yesterday,” Jessie began. She told him who she was. His eyes shifted when he heard the name Rodney. “Has my husband come for his car yet?”

  Buddy Boucher cleared his throat. “Well, Mrs. Rodney, I’m not sure what to tell you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “See, the fact is, the car was on the lot when I locked up last night. Right over there beside the green Charger. But when I came in this morning it was gone.”

  “Do you mean it was stolen?”

  “That’s what I don’t know. It might have been stolen. On the other hand, your husband had the keys. So he could have come after we closed and just taken it. I wisht he’d left a note, is all.”

  Jessie gazed for a few moments at the empty space on the lot. Red, white and blue pennants snapped in the wind. “What were the exact arrangements?”

  “He said he’d be back at the end of the week. He didn’t make it more exact than that.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Not yet. I was kind of waiting to see if he came in over the weekend.”

  Jessie nodded. “How was he when you saw him?” A clumsy question: she regretted it the moment it passed her lips.

  “How was he?”

  She stumbled again. “I’ve been a little worried about his health, lately.”

  “Well, I don’t know. As I said, he was only in here for half an hour, tops.” Buddy Boucher screwed up his eyes. “Seemed okay, I guess. Tired, maybe. Kept a close eye on the little girl. Never let go of her hand. Well-dressed—had on a suit and tie.”

  “Tie?”

  “Yeah. Tan suit and a tie with sailboats on it.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  “I’ve got an eye for clothing, Mrs. Rodney. Got to, in this business.” He couldn’t stop his eyes from giving her outfit a quick once-over.

  “What was the little girl wearing?”

  “Didn’t notice. Kids don’t write the checks.” He started to laugh, stopped when he saw she wasn’t. “Just joshin’. I love kids.” He thought. “In fact, she had on a Coca-Cola T-shirt.”

  It was a T-shirt Jessie knew well. “Did she … seem all right?”

  Buddy Boucher took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Are you sure there’s nothing, uh, wrong between you and Mr. Rodney?”

  “I told you—an investment opportunity’s come up. It’s urgent that we talk.” He was watching her closely. “We’ve had an offer on the house,” she added.

  He nodded. Had she finally spoken his language? “The girl. She was okay, I guess. Didn’t say boo, like I told you.” His gaze rested on Jessie’s face. “She’s your girl, all right. Doesn’t take after her old man much.”

  “It’s just the coloring, really. Take away his blond hair and they resemble each other a lot.”

  Buddy Boucher blinked his little eyes. “Blond hair?”

  “Pat’s,” she explained. “Mr. Rodney’s.”

  Buddy Boucher stepped back. Exit Animation Face. Jessie awaited the entrance of Flaccid Face. It didn’t appear. Instead a shrewd small-town face, economical in its movements and not very friendly, put in its appearance. “Would you mind explaining what’s going on here?” Buddy Boucher said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your husband doesn’t have blond hair, lady. At least he didn’t when he came in here.”

  “What color was his hair?”

  “You tell me.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Buddy Boucher’s thin lips parted, pressed together, parted again, very narrowly. “I’m not getting at anything.”

  “Maybe we’re having a misunderstanding, Mr. Boucher. Pat’s hair isn’t light blond. It’s a dirty blond: maybe you could call it brown.”

  The thin lips parted again. “I’m not arguing about the color. This guy was bald.”

  “How—” Jessie heard the word jump out of her throat, an octave higher than nomal, and began again. “How do you know he was Pat Rodney?”

  “He had ID.” Impatience roughened his tone. “I saw his driver’s license, his social security. I get that from everyone who buys here.”

  “Even a cash sale?”

  “Even a cash sale.”

  “Did you write it all down?”

  “I did.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  Buddy Boucher took her into his cubicle. He had Dale Carnegie diplomas on the walls and pictures of a round wife and three round children on the desk. He showed Jessie what he’d copied. The address and birth date on the driver’s license were right; Pat’s social security number she didn’t know, so couldn’t verify.

  “Was he bald in the photograph on the license?”

  Buddy Boucher thought. “I don’t remember.” The admission pulled a plug somewhere inside him; his impatience drained away. “I’m not sure I really looked. I was just taking down the numbers.”

  “What kind of baldness was it?” Jessie asked. “The natural kind with a fringe or the shaved kind?”

  Buddy Boucher stared at the pictures of his round family: on skis, under beach umbrellas, behind birthday cakes. “The shaved kind, I think. I couldn’t swear.”

  Jessie wished she had brought a photograph of Pat. She did have one of Kate. She took it out of her wallet: Kate at the beach, making a silly face and standing like a stork.

  “That’s her,” said Buddy Boucher.

  The phone rang. Buddy Boucher’s animated face reasserted itself. “Hello. Hey, where you been?” Jessie leaned forward. The small-town face peeked out for a moment, as Buddy shook his head at her. “You’d best get your butt down here. I’ve only got one left on the lot, and a fellow from Putney’s coming to see it Monday.… Air, AM-FM cassette, power everything.… Can’t tell you over the phone. Right. Bye.” He hung up, looked at Jessie, changed faces.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he wanted?”

  “Wanted?”

  “By the cops.”

  “Why do you ask that?”

 
; He held up his fingers and folded them back one by one: “Paid cash. Shaved his head. And you looking for him with a story about an investment and all kinds of questions like you don’t know him too good.”

  “You think I’m with the police?”

  “It’s hard to tell these days.”

  “God. Look, Mr. Boucher. He’s my ex-husband. He has my daughter illegally. I want her back. That’s all. The police have nothing to do with it.”

  “Why don’t you call them?”

  “It’s hard to get them interested in something like this. And I’d prefer to resolve this peacefully, if I can.”

  Buddy Boucher looked her in the eye. He might have been making up his mind about something. Or he might have been plotting to sell her the chocolate-colored sedan. Jessie waited. “Tell you what,” Buddy Boucher said at last. “You going to be around?”

  “For as long as it takes,” Jessie replied. She realized the truth of her words as she spoke. “For as long as it takes.”

  “Give me a number. If he comes in, I’ll call you while he’s here. Then you can sort it out, the both of you.”

  “That’s very kind.”

  “I’ve got kids of my own,” he said, glancing at the photographs. “And I love kids—I told you that.”

  “Thank you,” Jessie said, wondering if that love was something unimpeachable for Buddy to cling to in a tricky world, like a cathedral to the burghers of a grubby town.

  “But no rough stuff on the premises.”

  “There won’t be. It’s not that kind of thing.”

  Jessie held out her hand. Buddy Boucher shook it. “If,” he said.

  “If?”

  “There’s no guarantee he’ll call.”

  Jessie had a thought. “Do you know the license number of the car you sold him?”

  “Better than that. I’ve got a Polaroid of the van itself. It’s got a temporory license because he’s from out of state.”

  He gave it to her: a black van with opaque side and rear windows and red flames, more discreet than some she’d seen, painted on the side. But still, red flames. “What about his friend?”

  “Like I told you on the phone, I didn’t really get a good look at him. He stayed outside in the BMW. A little rocky, your husband said.”

  “A little rocky?”

  “Stomach flu.”

  “The little girl wasn’t sick, was she?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  Jessie turned to leave. “Did Pat say why he wanted another car?”

  “Nope. And I didn’t ask. My Pop brought me up smarter than that.”

  Jessie went out into the cold. She didn’t go to her car right away. Instead she walked to the space beside the green Charger. It was just a rectangle of asphalt, swept clean except for a broken piece of plastic comb. Jessie picked it up: part of a barrette, the color of a turtle shell. A few frizzy dark hairs clung to the teeth: just the right darkness, the right tightness of frizz. Jessie held it close to her nose and sniffed: no smell. She put it in her pocket. My Mom is like a turtle shell.

  A few minutes later she checked into a motel, called Buddy Boucher and gave him the number. Then she sat on the bed. The mattress sagged and she sagged with it. She stood up. She hadn’t come all that way for a nap.

  Jessie went into the coffee shop, had coffee and a tuna sandwich. The coffee didn’t make her more alert; it just made her stomach nervous. The tuna rolled up in a hard ball and got stuck in it. She put on her blue sweater and walked to the car. The thick wool, worn at home only on the coldest nights, didn’t warm her at all. She got into the car, turned on the heat and started driving. She didn’t go fast, her eyes were too busy looking for a black van with discreet red flames on the sides.

  But she didn’t see it. She saw few cars of any kind. There wasn’t much to buy in Bennington; few people were shopping for what there was. Hardly anyone was driving through the countryside, either. Maybe they were all at home, chopping firewood, putting up jam, ordering from L. L. Bean. After a while, Jessie parked in front of a diner on the main street, had another cup of coffee and called Buddy Boucher.

  “No cigar,” he said. “And I’m getting ready to close. I’ll be in at ten tomorow.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Jessie stepped outside; still afternoon, but the air already had a nighttime bite. Hands deep in her pockets, Jessie walked along the street, glancing at the parked cars. She saw bumper stickers for and against abortion, nuclear war and secession from the Union. She didn’t see a black van with flames.

  As she turned to go back to her car, Jessie noticed a sign around the corner on a side street: FOOD OF LOVE, it said, RECORDS AND TAPES. Jessie moved toward it, thinking of Spacious Skies and the man who had stayed in the BMW: a friend of Pat’s, an old friend perhaps, possibly old enough to have known him on the commune. Then she had another thought: what if Pat hadn’t shaved his head, as Buddy Boucher had suggested? What if the friend was bald, and it was he who had gone into the showroom, taking Kate and Pat’s ID? Jessie couldn’t think of any reason for that; but neither could she explain why Pat would shave his head.

  The record store occupied the bottom floor of a narrow two-story building made of unsandblasted bricks. Yellowed shades were drawn behind the small windows of the second story. The store’s windows, not much bigger, were thick with dust. They displayed a psychedelic mural of lovers reclining on a giant mushroom and, in front of that, dusty album covers: Surrealistic Pillow, Strange Days, Disraeli Gears, the White Album. Jessie didn’t know much about Pat’s life in those days, not even where in Vermont the commune had been, but she thought some town had been named in the lyric of his song. She opened the door and walked in.

  Music played inside: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Rows of record bins extended into gloom at the rear of the store. Posters hung on a wall: an embracing couple at a rock concert, John and Yoko in a bag, Jim Morrison without a shirt, Jerry Garcia with a fat joint stuck between the tuning pegs of his guitar, the Freak Brothers salivating over a girl in a miniskirt, men in berets—Che Guevara, Huey Newton, Eric Anderson. Jessie smelled incense. She saw no customers, no staff, heard not a sound but those made by Bob Dylan. She might have been in a museum after hours, a museum dedicated to 1968.

  Jessie moved along the record bins until she came to V. There he was: van Ronk—a thick section. She was still flicking through the albums when she heard a door open at the back of the store. She turned.

  A man walked out of the gloom, but he didn’t break the mood. How could he? He was perfect in his embroidered jeans, plaid lumber jacket, granny glasses and long ponytail. Jessie hadn’t seen a ponytail on a man in some time; once they’d been common, even in Santa Monica.

  “Hello,” the man said, waving to her, or had he actually flashed the peace sign? It was too dark to tell. The man had a long, loose stride; he came closer, into the light. Then Jessie saw the lines on his forehead, the gray in his hair. “Can I help you?” He had a soft voice and soft, bloodshot eyes behind his granny glasses. He brought smells with him—wood smoke and stale sweat.

  “I’m looking for a song Dave van Ronk recorded,” Jessie said.

  He looked her up and down, but very quickly and furtively. “You like brother Dave?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Far out.”

  “But it’s a particular song I want.”

  The man made a loose-jointed gesture at the bin. “I’ve got everything he ever cut. Maybe not in mint condition, but it’s all there. I mean he’s seminal, right? What’s the name of the song?”

  “‘Spacious Skies.’”

  “Travelin’ Light. Vanguard R143. Side two. Cut three.” He moved past her, pulled an album out of the bin and handed it to her. Jessie flipped it over. Side two, cut three: “Spacious Skies (Artie Lee).” Artie Lee was Pat’s nom de plume—something to do with a tax scheme Norman Wine had set up, he’d told her.

  “Can I hear it?”<
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  He tugged at a loose strand of hair. “That’s a sealed record. Like I’d hate—”

  “I’m buying it anyway.”

  “Okay. Eight ninety-five.” Jessie paid. He tucked the money in his jeans. “I’ve got a turntable in back.”

  He led her into the gloom and through a doorway. On the other side lay an all-purpose room: desk piled with business papers in the center, boxes of records along the wall, wood stove in one corner, unmade bed in the other. The turntable rested on an empty crate within arm’s reach of the bed. A record was spinning. The man took it off, opened the van Ronk and placed the disk on the turntable. opened the van Ronk and placed the disk on the turntable, handling the records as though they were made of glass. Lowering the tone arm, he paused and said, “Like some tea?”

  Jessie didn’t want tea. She wanted to listen to the lyrics and get out of there. The man watched her with his soft red look, the needle hovering over the vinyl.

  “I’m having a cup,” he said, swinging the arm back onto its cradle.

  “Okay,” Jessie said, feeling suddenly like a foreigner negotiating for something in an Oriental bazaar. “Thanks.”

  He took a kettle off the wood stove and filled two lopsided ceramic mugs. Then he opened a desk drawer and removed a plastic bag. “Herbal,” he said, sprinkling green leaves into the mugs. He handed her one. She smelled dandelions. “Sit,” he said. The only place for sitting was the bed.

  “I’m fine,” Jessie replied; she leaned against the desk. The man sat on the bed and lowered the tone arm. Dave van Ronk played a little intro and started singing:

  I dreamed

  I dreamed a dream of dreams

  And woke as Sergeant Pepper.

  All wrapped in light

  And feeling right

  And high, high, high.

  Higher than mountains

  And higher than air

  It was all so fine

  Under Spacious Skies.

  I dreamed

  I dreamed a dream of dreams

  And woke as just plain me,