When It Rains

by Joel Shaw

Not only there, but in every other concrete structure in town that I’ve passed by. They’re moving into concrete buildings to protect themselves in the event of fire and other unnatural disasters. You would be surprised to see how many folks are still in town. The good news is that everyone who has stayed is probably more interested in saving whatever remains of this town instead of destroying it. But all it takes is one mental midget to start a fire.”

  "How do you know all that, Milt? About the people, I mean?”

  "While you have been hustling Faye, I've been out on my scooter checking things out. I guess that’s a carry over of my military training. Kinda patrolling, if you know what I mean. I like to know what's going on around me; especially now. I started seeing a lot of activity back in July, shortly after news came over the short wave radio that Sioux Falls, South Dakota was burned to the ground. Everything was destroyed except the concrete buildings. That's what got me thinking, too. We don't have any thing to worry about out here, but Faye does. She’s in a bad location, you know what I'm sayin'? Her restaurant shares a common wall with the building to the south. Those buildings have brick walls, but they have a wood frame on the inside, the wood will burn and the brick will crumble. "

  "I hear you Milt. I wish you had brought this up earlier. It never crossed my mind. Now you've really got me worried. I'll have to ask Faye if she has a plan in the event of fire. Shit. What if Leland was there when it started."

  Harold wanted to leave for town immediately. Leland had been regularly spending nights in town with Faye. He thought them secure until Milton mentioned fire. He felt the paralyzing grip of an oncoming anxiety attack begin to fixate his thinking. He tried to calm himself. He knew Faye was preparing for all eventualities. Her restaurant was becoming more fortress-like as she continued to add reinforcements to doors and windows; she would have an escape plan in the event of fire. Wouldn’t she?

  He looked at Milt. "I'll ask her about it tonight. I like your idea about making the pumper available. Let's fill the water tank and throw on a few hoses. I guess we are the new volunteer fire department."

  He tried to laugh, but the vision of an out of control fire consuming the town extinguished his attempted levity.

  "What are we going to do when we've finished covering our tracks to the quarry, boss?"

  "Rest, Milton. We'll get some rest."

  "Sounds good to me, man."

  CHAPTER 7 - Five Years Later - March 7

  Ethan rolled over, left eye fluttering like a broken winged moth, groping for his vibrating phone on the nightstand. He focused on the bedside clock, it read 2:32 AM.

  “What the hell?” He looked at Jade, she was sound asleep. Ethan exited the bedroom, flipping his phone open and pressing the Talk button while he walked quietly down the narrow hall-way to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He lowered the toilet seat and sat before he brought the phone to his ear.

  “This is Ethan.”

  “Ethan, this is Katie, I need your help.”

  He suspected as much. “What’s happening, Katie?” He guessed John was drunk. She soon confirmed his suspicion. John had been getting drunk regularly, using most of his water ration to make beer while he and his new best friends, Juan and Emilio Vazquez, took to building a still in John and Katie’s car port much to the chagrin of Katie who had threatened on several occasions to call the Sheriff.

  “Did you call the Sheriff?”

  “Hell yes I called the Sheriff. I want those Vasquez boys out of our lives’. They’re nothing but trouble for John and, for some reason, John doesn’t care, but I do. I want them gone.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “They’re tearing up the fence. ”

  “Goddamnit,” was Harold’s reflex comment. Any and all assaults on the fence, no matter how insignificant were met with the full force of the law. The law might take some time to arrive at this remote scene, but they would eventually show up.

  “That’s not all, Ethan. They’ve got guns. Juan Vazquez said he was going to kill the first cop what showed up.”

  The mention of guns was worrisome. Shit, those boys had done a lot of stupid things together lately, but this was the first time they had bothered to bring weapons to their party. He thought it best to downplay the significance of the guns.

  “Don’t worry Kate. I think the guns are just for show. Juan likes to show off, you know. I’m sure nobody will be doing any shooting tonight.”

  “I pray you are right about that, Ethan.” Katie said. She wasn’t convinced. Her voice was shaking.

  “Stay inside, Kate. I’ll be over as soon as I get dressed.”

  “Hurry, Ethan.”

  Ethan returned to the bedroom. Jade was sleeping, still. She had been feeling weak for several weeks now, and he thought it best not to disturb her. He slipped on his pants and loosely laced his boots before quietly slipping from the bedroom. If he were lucky, Jade would sleep through till morning and he could downplay the event as a minor inconvenience when he told her about it over breakfast.

  Amber was awakened by her father’s voice in the hallway and quickly pulled on shorts and a sweatshirt when she heard him mention leaving the house in the middle of the night. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want to miss it.

  “What’s going on Dad?” She stood by her bedroom door, blocking the narrow hallway.

  “Never you mind, young lady. I have to go out for a few minutes.” So far, he didn’t have a plan, only a destination.

  “Come on, dad. It’s the middle of the night. Does mom know you’re going out?”

  “She’s sleeping. I don’t want to disturb her. I’ll be right back, honey. Go back to bed.” He visualized his role as peacemaker. Nothing to it. Get the guys to calm down, take a break, get some water in them and suggest that they quit disturbing the neighbors who, he would remind them, are their friends. Worse case, I’ll be back in the sack in a half-hour or less.

  “Not until you tell me where you are going. Mom will want to know,” Amber said.

  “Please don’t wake your mother. I said I’d be right back and I will. Go to bed.”

  “I won’t wake her up if you tell my where you are going.”

  “All right. I’m going to Katie and John’s house for a few minutes.” He hoped Amber would tire of the game and return to her room. As Amber pressed him for more information, he felt blood pressure rising and he wanted to remain calm before confronting the stupid bastards who were disrupting his slumber.

  “Why?”

  “Dammit girl, leave me be. I answered your question. I have to go now.” He would have to talk to John when he sobered up. He was spending too much time with the Vazquez boys. All they did was get in trouble when they got together. And now he had to deal with them. This was it. He wasn’t going to put up with this shit.

  “Why?”

  “Huh? Because they asked me to. Katie called and said John was...doing something that could get him in trouble.”

  “He’s drunk, isn’t he?”

  “Amber, you are starting to piss me off.”

  “He’s drunk and doing something stupid, isn’t he? What’s he doing, tearing down the fence?”

  “How did you know that?” Now, every kid around will be trying to cut a hole in the fence surrounding the reservoir.

  “He’s always talking about doing that, Dad. Every time he get’s drunk, and that’s most every day, he complains about that fence and threatens to tear it down. You’ve heard him. He’s full of you know what.”

  “John is a friend of ours, Amber. He’s had a rough couple of years and if he blows off a little steam every once in a while, that’s to be expected.”

  “Whatever. I’m going with you.”

  “The hell you are. You are going back to bed, young lady.”

  “I’m going to wake up mom right now.”

  “Dammit, Amber. Who taught you to behave like this?”

  He didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “You...and mom. You two do
n’t back down. Why should I?”

  “Is that what we’ve taught you?” Not a bad lesson to learn in this day and age. He wondered what other lessons she had learned. He needed to spend more time with her. She was growing up during hard times. What would she be like ten years from now?

  “Am I going with you?” She took a deep breath, as if she were about to holler for her mother.

  “You are incorrigible young lady.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means ... never mind. I don’t have time to explain. Go back to bed, and don’t you dare wake your mother. She needs to rest. You hear me young lady?”

  “Yes.” Amber scowled and tried to slam her bedroom door, hoping to wake her mother, but it caught the edge of the carpet stopped short of the jamb leaving a crack through which to peer. She watched her father exit the trailer and rushed to the kitchen window to make sure he wasn’t going to double back and try to catch her out of her room.

  She watched him. His long strides carried him quickly down the driveway and into the darkness of moonless night. As soon as he was out of sight, she quietly opened the door, stepped out and closed it softly behind her. She was grinning and shaking a bit as adrenaline coursed through her body. She was thrilled to be out late and alone on an adventure. She chose to follow the fence instead of following her Dad along the road. She ran now, hoping to arrive at the Robison’s before her Dad.

  The Robison’s house was located two long blocks to the east. As Ethan approached the house, he could hear the roar of a laboring diesel hard at work. As he rounded the house, he could easily see the ragged hole that had been torn in the fence illuminated by several floodlights perched on the roof of the house powered by a large generator also on the roof. Empty beer bottles littered the ground around a vibrating boom-box pumping Allegro riffs from Los Tigres Del Norte into the early morning air. Co-vandals John and Emilio who were busy pulling strands of chain link fence out of the path of a front-end loader piloted by Juan Vazquez, that tore at the fence using the ill-suited bucket like a boxing glove.... A roundhouse to the left, a roundhouse to the right... all truncated and arthritic movements.

  Ethan stopped in the shadows, uncertain about how to proceed. Katie hissed at him through the back door screen.

  “What the hell is the matter with you, John? Amber shouldn’t be here.”

  “She isn’t.”

  Katie jerked her thumb in the direction of the neighbors house. “She’s right there Ethan.”

  “Where? She better not be.” Ethan scanned the shadows. “Amber, are you out there?” No reply. “I don’t see her.”

  “Course not. She don’t want to be seen.”

  “Dammit Kate. She shouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I know. I know. If you can see her, go get her and keep her with you. OK?”

  “Oh, I’ll get her alright.” And she marched off into the darkness, returning shortly with Amber in tow, breathing hard and red faced.

  Katie clenched Amber’s forearm with a vice-like grip. Amber didn’t resist. She was content now, able to see all the action.

  “She can stay with me,” Kate said resolutely.

  “Make sure she does.” Ethan gave his daughter a foreboding look before turning his attention to the unfolding chaos near the fence. They were obviously having a good time, laughing and carrying on like teenagers drunk on Friday night. He looked back at Katie. “How long have they been going at it?”

  “Couple hours, they got started around midnight. I couldn’t stop them. I guess they had this thing planned. That’s that way it sounded to me when Emilio and Juan got here. You know they drove that damn loader over here from Gun Barrel City?”

  “That must have been a rough ride. No wonder they got started so late.”

  “They got started long before then. John’s been drinking since he got off work. He’s wasted, and I mean wasted.”

  Ethan watched his long time friend stumble toward the fence, cable cutter in hand, attempting to sever the remaining links that connected the fence to the eight-inch diameter posts. The front-end loader lacked jaws to grasp and rip the flexible fence. Instead, Juan was attempting to collapse the fence by positioning the bucket over the top of the fence and pulling down and backward at the same time using the two-hundred and thirty pound counterweight attached to the rear of the articulating loader to maintain traction. The lawn had been plowed from one end to the other by twenty-five inch tires, the deep tread ripped the sod like a zipper under the weight of the twenty-seven thousand pounds of steel.

  Ethan was shaking his head, he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled at Kate over the roaring diesel. “I don’t know what the hell I can do,”

  “Stop him.” Was all that Katie could think of to yell in reply.

  “How?” Ethan yelled. More to himself than to Katie. Even if he got Juan to stop long enough to talk, how would he diffuse the situation? What if Juan attacked him with the loader? How would he deal with that? Run? Where? How would he handle him if he refused to stop? I can’t handle him when he is sober. Let him be, don’t risk it. Juan was a powerful man, as was his brother, Emilo. They each outweighed him by a hundred pounds or more; he wasn’t about to take them on. He had to somehow disable the loader before somebody got hurt - or worse - run over. He knew he had to act. He couldn’t stand there and watch. Ethan looked at Katie who was crying now, clutching Amber with both arms. Amber’s eyes were wide with fear and anticipation. He motioned with his thumb. “Take Amber inside,” he yelled.

  Katie nodded, pulling Amber toward the back door. “Hurry,” she mouthed in desperation as she watched her husband stagger dangerously close to the rolling machine. At any moment he might loose his footing and be crushed.

  Ethan looked around for something that would extend his reach, like a lance, a pipe, a fishing pole ... there had to be something. If he could poke Juan with the spear to distract him, maybe he would stop long enough for Ethan to talk to him.

  He grabbed a nearby garden rake and took off running across the lawn like a horseless knight with his garden variety lance at the ready, intent on piercing the John Deere knight. He waited until Juan slowed the machine to change gears before thrusting the blunt end of his lance in Juan’s ribcage. He took another poke at Juan, jarring him slightly, then retreated milliseconds before the loader’s rear wheel crushed his foot. The loader slowed as Juan hesitated. He lifted his foot from the accelerator and gave Ethan the ‘what the hell do you want look’ emphasized with raised eyebrows and a stream of mint-flavored tobacco juice that peppered Ethan’s face.

  “Stop,” Ethan yelled from a few feet away, moving his finger across his neck signaling Juan to kill the engine. He wiped his face and waited for a response.

  Juan gave him the middle-finger salute and stomped the accelerator, a maniacal grin spread across his face as spun the wheels in Ethan’s direction in an attempt to run Ethan down. Ethan did a quick two-step in the opposite direction barley dodging the wheels as he briefly lost his footing on the rutted ground. He righted himself and turned around ready to dodge and run again if need be, but Juan had abandoned his attack and was now racing toward the fence, raising the loader’s bucket in preparation for swing at the wire.

  Ethan contemplated throwing something at Juan. Something lighter than the rake. He spotted a soft-ball sized piece of broken paver on the patio. He picked it up and advanced toward the articulating machine and stopped. He was distracted by flashing lights. He spun around as two Sherrif’s deputies and a Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper pulled into the yard jockeying for position as close to the cavorting drunkards as possible before dismounting and swinging out their doors with weapons ready, boots on the ground evaluating the situation as they advanced through the glare of spotlights toward the offenders before taking defensive stances. Ethan made a half-hearted wave toward them, hoping they would understand that he was not party to this act of destruction.

  Deputy John
son pulled his service pistol and fired a round in the air, the report got the attention of the demo crew. John immediately fell to the ground exhausted and happy to take a break. Emilio dropped his cable cutters and adopted an aggressive stance, trying to remain balanced, hoping for a fight.

  Juan took a last jab at the fence before revving the diesel and driving the teeth of the steel bucket into the ground with a seismic whump, causing the tripod lights to tumble from the roof, crashing on the concrete patio in a flash-bang of glass splinters and twisted metal. Juan smiled as though he had calculated that outcome and took a long draw from his bottle of Jack Daniels before throwing it in the direction of Deputy Johnson. He stumbled from the saddle of the loader, lost his footing and fell between the loader’s wheels, cursing loudly as he recovered. Ethan started moving the moment Juan fell to the ground. The Deputy yelled at him to stop, but Ethan was committed now. He hoped to prevent Juan from climbing back on the machine. He grabbed Juan as he got to his feet and tried to hold him in a bear hug. Juan immediately ducked under Ethan’s arms and spun behind Ethan overpowering him, lifting him off his feet, pinning his arms at his sides like a shield. Juan hesitated a moment then began running toward the trooper who had his sidearm drawn.

  “Stop,” the Trooper yelled. He was aiming now. It was an impossible shot and he knew it. Juan, six inches shorter than Ethan was barley visible. Fear gripped him momentarily as his mind race through the scenario. He would have to shoot Ethan to get Juan. Hit tissue, no bones, the bullet would go right through the first guy and hit the second guy in the chest. Aim for the shoulder. That’s it. What else could he do. The kid was in the way. Don’t hit the kid.

  “Get down on the ground,” the Trooper screamed. It was clear that Juan had no intention of stopping or getting down on the ground. It was too late for talking or yelling. The trooper began a slow pull on the trigger, aiming at Ethan’s shoulder.

  Amber was intently watching her father. He was in trouble. She could save him. Katie relaxed one arm for an instant and Amber broke free smashing open the flimsy screen door, she ran screaming “Let go of my father,” into the heart of the assault, she wrapped her arms around Ethan’s waist and was herself propelled forward by the momentum of the bundle. She kicked Juan in the shin several times without effect. She wrapped her arms around her father’s waist a bit down hard on Juan’s hands drawing blood in an attempt to loosen his grip.