Firefly Rain

by Richard Dansky

  Not a good idea, I’d have been the first to admit, but an idea just the same.

  I made my way back to the bedroom and to the drawer I’d set the box of soldiers in back before I’d gone chasing my car out into the rain. It was still there, but I could see proof that it had been moved and then replaced. Wrinkled clothes, curled corners, that sort of thing. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  Wasting no time, I emptied the box out on top of the dresser. The little men spilled out, their clatter the loudest thing in the house. “Sorry, boys,” I told them as I sorted one from the other, “but you’re going to have to work together for a little bit.”

  Like I said, it was a damn stupid idea. I didn’t think it was going to work; hell, I didn’t even know what half the idea was. But doing something felt good, and doing something to watch my back felt even better.

  Even if the ones doing the watching were little lead toys.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said, picking up one blue soldier and one red. “You’re going to watch out for me. I’m going to put you where you can keep watch, and you stay there, you hear me?” A few steps, a turn into the bathroom, and I found myself in front of the window that had caused me so much trouble. Carefully, I put the soldiers down on the sill, facing out. “Don’t you let anything in, neither.”

  They didn’t say anything, nor did they suddenly snap to attention, salute, or do anything else a lead soldier was supposed to be unable to do. They just stood there, facing out, and a great peace came over me.

  Sometimes a man needs his old friends to look out for him.

  With those two in place, I went back for another handful, and then another. They were placed around the house, on windowsills and facing doors and one in front of the fireplace on general principle, in case Santa came early and in a bad mood. Like I said, I didn’t actually think this would do anything, but I felt better for doing it, like I was staking out my borders. They marked my fence, sure as wood and stone would have, and stood as a warning to anyone who’d cross it.

  The only door I didn’t place one in front of was the one in the mudroom. I’d be going out that way to fetch the laundry, and I didn’t want to risk stepping on anything I ought not to. It didn’t bother me much, though, to leave that place unguarded by tiny painted eyes.

  After all, it was just the damn mudroom, and once I finished with the laundry, I’d take care of it, too.

  A wind came up around ten, howling around the house while I sat in the kitchen reading one of the books off Father’s bookshelf. It was some two-fisted detective novel, a Hammett or a Chandler or someone who wanted to be like them. There were plenty of mean streets and meaner people walking down them, some shooting and some tough talk, and not a whole lot of decency or human kindness. It was a good read, but not the sort of thing a man would necessarily want to live, I decided, putting it facedown on the table as the wind shook the windows.

  A few minutes more of listening told me that it was time to bring the laundry in before it all flapped away down to the Thicket. I put my shoes back on—I’d slipped them off when I’d sat myself down at the table—and went out back, trusting there’d be enough moonlight for me to see by.

  There was, more or less. With the moon looking down and the wind picking up, I gathered my things and brought them in. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking. I cursed the sort of cruelty that would leave a dog out in bad weather, and then I went back inside.

  I shut the door, blocking out all sound except that of the wind, then took myself to bed. For once, dreams didn’t follow.

  fourteen

  The wind left and morning arrived, and I got myself up and ready to go to town. The lead soldiers were all where I’d left them. So was the laundry, which I rectified after getting a cup of coffee and some cereal in me.

  By ten o’clock I was ready to go. More than ready, really, which meant I was banging around the house like a lizard in a jar. “Calm yourself down,” I said. “It’s just a trip to town.” But I wasn’t listening. For one thing, it looked less likely I’d run into Carl in Maryfield than on my own property. For another, there were things in town that I missed, that I’d wanted to do and hadn’t yet. Pieces of childhood were waiting to be revisited, and I’d been tardy.

  A quick check of my watch told me that I had maybe five minutes before Sam arrived, so I quickly scooped the gun out of the kitchen and shoved it under my bed. No sense having it be the first thing he saw if he came in, after all. He was a sensible man and would probably disapprove of the way I was handling it. Then it was just a case of grabbing my keys and wallet and heading out the door. I locked the door behind me, and then I tried the knob five or six times to make sure I’d actually done so.

  I was on attempt number seven—just in case, you know—when Sam rolled up. Asa was in the truck bed this time, head hanging over the side and eyes watching me steady. “Come on,” Sam yelled through the open window on the passenger side. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  I gave the knob one last twist, fought off the urge to try once more, and trotted up the driveway to where the truck was pulled in on the roadside. I scratched Asa’s head, which he didn’t seem to mind too much, then hopped into the cab.

  “Howdy,” Sam said, and he shook my hand.

  “Howdy yourself.” I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb. “You didn’t need to get Asa out of his seat for me. I’m just a passenger.”

  Sam made a dismissive gesture, then clamped his hand on the gearshift. “And he’s been wanting some wind in his face for a while now. Had to keep him in on account of the rain, you know. Now hush up and enjoy the ride.”

  “Yessir.” I grinned. “Thank you again for the ride, Sam. I do appreciate it.”

  He snorted and threw the truck into gear. “’Course you do. That’s why I offered.” The landscape started rolling by. “And don’t you worry no more about putting me out or nothing. If I offer something, I mean it. You understand.”

  “I do,” I said, a little subdued. “Just not quite what I’m used to anymore, you know what I’m saying?”

  He nodded, his gaze fixed on the road. “I guess people are a little different where you’ve been spending your time. But you’re here now, and y’all would do best to remember that.” A sudden grin flashed across his face, to let me know he wasn’t disapproving. “Save you any number of fox paws, you know what I mean?”

  I thought about Carl for a minute. “I think I might,” I allowed. “But there is one thing left to say about this.”

  “Yes?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. With Sam watching out of the corner of his eye, I opened it up and pulled out a twenty. “This is for the gas,” I said, and gave him a glare when he opened his mouth to say something. “Uh-uh. You’re doing me a big favor, and the least I can do is chip in a bit.”

  “I ain’t a taxi,” Sam said, and there was genuine discomfort in his voice. “You don’t need to pay me none, and if you insist, I might get offended.”

  Irrationally, I felt hot eyes on the back of my neck. I turned to look for a second and saw Asa staring in through the glass of the back. He didn’t look friendly.

  I turned back to Sam. “If you don’t take it, Sam, I’ll get offended. I ain’t trying to buy your services here. I’m thanking you for a favor and making sure it doesn’t put you out none. If you don’t take it, I feel like I’m freeloading, and I get enough of that from other folks around here. Please.”

  He glanced over at me, his face troubled. “I don’t know. It don’t seem right.” In the back, Asa growled. I refused to look back.

  “Let me save a little pride here, Sam,” I said softly. “Man’s got to have a little pride.”

  “Pride’s a sin,” he answered, but without conviction. “All right, if it makes you feel better, I’ll take it. But don’t be making this a habit, you hear?”

  “I’m hoping not to,” I said, and I meant it. Folding the bill up, I stuck it in the cup holder.

 
; “Fair enough,” Sam said, and he reached over to turn on the cassette player. Toby Keith’s singing started up low, with a faint tape hiss behind it. My arm out the window, I tapped my fingers in time against the metal of the door.

  “Didn’t figure you for a Toby Keith fan,” I said, trying to make conversation. In return, Sam spun the volume up, loud enough to make conversation impossible.

  I stopped tapping my fingers, and neither of us said another word until we got into town.

  Sam pulled in on Main Street, two blocks down from the police station. I looked over my shoulder at it as I got out and caught Sam doing the same.

  “Thanks again for the ride,” I said.

  “As I said, it wasn’t nothing.” He coughed into his hand, then went looking in his pockets for a pack of cigarettes without much success. “Got any plan for what you’re doing today?”

  “Not especial,” I said. “Thought maybe I’d see a few places I’ve been meaning to go back to, maybe pick up a paper and read the classifieds. There might be a car I can get my hands on so I don’t have to put Asa out no more.”

  Hearing his name, the hound began barking. “Easy, boy,” Sam said, and he moved over to scratch him behind the ears. “Ain’t nothing to get excited about.” But the dog didn’t settle down much, keeping himself fixed on me the whole time. His muzzle was practically quivering, and I could hear the scrape of his nails on the truck bed liner as he pawed it. I half-figured that if Sam hadn’t been there, Asa would have jumped out and gone after me, and all for no reason that I could think of.

  I was pretty sure Sam noticed that, too.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he told me. “Well, I won’t keep you here no more. I’ll be heading back in a couple, three hours, and I’ve my own business to tend to. So I guess I’ll meet y’all back here in time? Don’t worry none, I won’t go leaving you here.”

  “No worries on my end,” I said, “and again, thank you. Two or three hours it is.”

  “We’re agreed, then.” He gave a sharp nod, then turned to the dog. “Asa, stay.” Without checking to see if the hound had listened, he turned on his heel and walked off.

  “Good dog,” I said, as much to convince myself as anything else, and chose the opposite direction. I didn’t have a destination in mind, but giving Sam some space seemed like a real good idea, and I was having so few of those lately that when one came along, I’d follow it.

  A half block down, I got an itch between my shoulder blades, the sort of thing a man’s supposed to feel when someone’s looking down a gun at him. I knew that was a foolish feeling, but I stopped and looked back anyhow.

  Asa was staring at me with the sort of intensity you could feel over distance. I was a rabbit to him, that and nothing more, and if he got a chance, he’d be on me. Of that I was now certain, though I had no idea why.

  And Sam was going in the front doors of the police station.

  “Well, damn,” I said softly, and I turned back around. Giving Sam some space seemed like a good idea indeed.

  A couple of blocks and a couple of turns farther on, I finally began to give some thought as to where I might actually be going. Carl had taken care of the most urgent of my needs, and while I did want to get a paper, doing so wouldn’t take a couple of hours. That left me at loose ends, as I didn’t particularly feel like window-shopping, or proper shopping, neither. Asa probably wouldn’t look kindly on my dumping a load of stuff into the truck bed with him, for one thing, and for another, I wasn’t sure if bringing more things into the house was a good idea. Not until I figured out what was going on, in any case.

  That got me thinking about the house, though, and about what had happened down in the Thicket. Carl’s words hadn’t cleared up too much for me, but they had reinforced the notion that there was something in the house—hell, anywhere I went—that just wasn’t right.

  I chewed that over in my mind for a bit, then felt the sun coming down hard on me. It was hot and getting hotter. I looked left and right, and saw I was across the street from Hilliard’s Pharmacy. Next to me was some coffee chain shop or other—what some marketing boy had been thinking when he’d put one of those in Maryfield was beyond me. Given a choice between the two, there wasn’t any. Hilliard’s soda fountain was the mecca of my youth, and part of me still harbored the suspicion that the idea of Vanilla Coke had been stolen from one of Hilliard’s soda jerks. Untrue, I knew, but with a stubborn third-grader’s fury I held onto the notion. You need to defend what’s yours, after all.

  I crossed the street (Maynard, memory told me without looking at the sign; the mental map was redrawing itself nice and easy now), making sure not to jaywalk. No doubt Hanratty would have popped up out of a mailbox or trash can to give me a stern talking to if I had, so I watched the light, waited, and walked over when it was legal to do so.

  Hilliard’s hadn’t changed much from the outside, at least. Its sign, its green letters hand-painted on a field of faded gold, hung down over the door, and the breeze had a hard time convincing it to sway even a little bit. The window was still filled with huge glass vessels of all shapes, loaded with a variety of mysterious fluids in strange, bright colors. The paint on the glass was still gold edged with black, proudly announcing that Hilliard’s Pharmacy had medicines, supplies, sandwiches, soda, and ice cream. Underneath, in smaller letters, were the words I was hoping for: L. HILLIARD, PROPRIETOR. Old Man Hilliard had been called that when I was a kid, and I had a sneaking suspicion Father had called him that in his boyhood as well. He’d been one of the defining figures of my youthful imagination, a big shaggy bear of a man with a white head of hair and a gray beard that hung halfway down his chest. He didn’t look like a pharmacist ought to, according to the television, but he’d been there as long as anyone could remember, and he was as good mixing up medicines and prescriptions as he was at making ice cream sodas. Every kid wanted a job at Hilliard’s after school or come summer, but he didn’t take many, and he expected perfection. Screw up something as simple as a root beer float and you were out on your duff, no questions asked. Old Man Hilliard expected perfection, and by expecting it, nine times out of ten he got it.

  I hadn’t even gotten the chance to fail, but that hadn’t made a dent in my enthusiasm. And when I pushed open the door and heard the familiar bells jingle overhead, for a moment I was nine again and counting my pocket change in hopes of having enough for what my greedy little heart had settled on desiring.

  It was Hilliard himself who looked up when I came in, looking more like a sheepdog than ever. His mop of hair had grown down over his forehead so that his eyes were nearly hidden, and his beard had gone pure white. His hands were still steady, though, as I saw when he reached up and adjusted the spectacles hidden in all that hair.

  “Can I help you?” he asked as I threaded my way through the narrow aisles. The products were new, at least in part, but the layout was the same. Fat men didn’t do well in Hilliard’s, that was for certain.

  “Mr. Hilliard? I think I could go for a vanilla cola, if you’re still serving.”

  “Huh. I know that voice.” He looked down on me over his glasses. “Now let me think a minute… you’re the Logan boy, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “That I am.”

  “Well, then. Vanilla cola it is. You want a scoop of ice cream in that?” He moved over to the soda pumps, as shiny and bright as the day they’d been put in. “That used to be your favorite, as I recall.”

  “You’re good,” I said, grinning. “No ice cream this time, I think, but thank you. I’d hate to spoil my lunch.”

  “That never bothered you before,” he said, and he drew the soda for me with a surgeon’s precision. He set it down in front of me on the counter as I slid onto a stool, resisting the urge to spin around just for the sheer heck of it.

  I said a heartfelt “Thank you,” took a straw from the antique container on the counter, dunked it into the glass, and took a delicious sip. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Two sixty-five,�
� he said. “Prices have, of necessity, gone up a bit.”

  “I can imagine.” I dug out my wallet and slapped a five on the counter. “Up in Boston this would go for four or five bucks, easy.”

  “Good thing I’m not in Boston, then,” he said, and he turned away to make my change. “There’s enough change going on right here for me, thank you.”

  “I noticed.” I gestured in the rough direction of the coffee joint. “When the heck did that move in?”

  “Not that long ago.” Coins landed on the counter, and he shoved the pile across to me. “Folks don’t seem to be taking to it, though, which I find to be a good thing.”

  “Me, too,” I added, and I meant it. The level in my glass, I noticed, was going down rapidly. “So how are things doing? Do all the kids still line up to work here?”

  “Some of them,” Hilliard said with a shrug, and he pulled out a rag to wipe the condensation off the counter. “Most aren’t that interested in hard work and doing things right, but then again, neither were you. So I guess things haven’t changed that much. It’s good to see you back, though. How long are you staying?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, surprising myself by meaning it. “It depends on a lot of things. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.”

  “That makes sense. If you’re back here from Boston now, with all your kin gone, it’s because you’ve got nowhere else to go. Not that I’m judging you, mind.”

  I sucked at the straw, which made crackling noises as it pulled the last few drops of soda up out of the bottom of the glass. “No offense taken. And I’m glad to see you’re still here.”

  He snorted, then he stuffed the rag back in his pocket and went off to fiddle with a pile of papers by the register. “Young Mr. Logan, I ask you where else should I be? This pharmacy is my right and proper place. No matter how many big-city coffee shops they try to install on my doorstep, I am not going anywhere until they carry me out of here on a stretcher. Maybe not even after that.” He suddenly flashed me a grin. “I’d love to haunt whoever bought the place after I passed on. I’d look over his shoulder from the other side, just to make sure he was doing things right. And if he weren’t, well, it would be my bound and duty to let him know, don’t you think?”