The Thunder Rolls

by Bethany Campbell

  “It has,” she agreed. Both she and Ken kept watching Rory and did not so much as glance at each other. She found herself shy with Ken Slattery.

  “Thirteen years ago,” he said. He plucked a spear of Johnson grass and chewed it meditatively. “That’s when you first moved here.”

  She was amazed he would remember such a trivial fact. Although polite, he’d always stayed somewhat remote from most people. He had worked at the Double C ever since Nora came there as a little girl.

  Briefly his eyes met hers, but he looked away immediately, and, confused, so did she.

  She thought back to her childhood and how exotic he had seemed to her then: a lanky, hard-muscled young man with ice-blue eyes. He’d moved in a natural aura of control and isolation.

  Nora’s older brother, Herv, had gone to work for the Double C when she was nine. She’d come to live with him and his wife, Marlene, in one of the small clapboard houses that the McKinneys provided for their tenant ranch hands.

  She was with Herv and Marlene because her mother had died. Her father, a cowhand like Herv, said Nora needed a settled home with a woman in it. His woman was gone, and without her he felt too restless and lonely to stay put.

  Herv accepted the situation cheerlessly, and Marlene grumbled. But Nora had had no choice but to move in with them, and her father went drifting on his way. He promised to write and send for her when he settled down and found a suitable place. He never wrote, and he didn’t send for her.

  She missed her mother terribly, and she felt unwanted in Marlene’s house and out of place.

  She’d never seen a ranch so large and prosperous as the Double C. To Nora’s childish eyes, the McKinneys’ main house had seemed like a palace and the McKinneys themselves glamorous creatures out of a fairy tale.

  Ken Slattery had not seemed an ordinary person either, like the other cowhands and their wives and children who lived in the tenant houses. No, Slattery was a mysterious link between the two worlds, her drab one and the impossibly privileged one of the McKinneys.

  He seemed to have no family of his own. But she remembered he had been surprisingly kind to the rabble of children who came and went with the cowboys who worked the ranch. To their wives he was quietly courteous. With the hands themselves he was stern, but fair.

  Nora was surprised he remembered her at all; she had always felt like a nobody. Her single distinction had been that she got excellent grades. Nora’s high school English teacher, Miss McDuff, said that Nora should go on to the university and become an English teacher herself.

  Nora had meant to do exactly that. She’d wanted, in fact, to be like Miss McDuff in every way. She would know all about books, she would be brisk and independent and confident, and she would wear pretty suits with high-heeled shoes that matched them—oh, how Nora had admired those matching suits and heels. She yearned to be a teacher and be somebody.

  But then, in Nora’s sixteenth year, her life had fallen apart so swiftly that it still stunned her to remember.

  Her brother Herv said he was leaving the Double C. He was moving on to a different ranch in the fall—far away in Oklahoma. And, he said gruffly, he and Marlene wouldn’t be taking her.

  He and Marlene had taken care of Nora long enough, he said. They had never had a life of their own together, and it was time they did, and that they started raising their own children, not Pa’s.

  “You got to go back and live with Pa,” Herv had said harshly, not looking at her. “He’s married now. He’s been livin’ down ’round El Paso two years now. He’s got him a widder woman with a couple girls of her own. Your place is with him. God knows I done my bit.”

  The shock dazed Nora. Her father was married? And hadn’t even told her? No one had told her? He was settled? He hadn’t sent for her? That could only mean one thing: he didn’t want her. And neither did Herv and Marlene. Nobody wanted her.

  She could stay with Herv and Marlene until fall, but that was it, Herv told her. If Pa wouldn’t face up to his responsibilities, it was out of Herv’s hands. He’d turn the problem over to a social worker.

  It was at that dismal point that Gordon Jones entered Nora’s life. Home from his second year in college in Texas A&M, he chased her and flattered her and wheedled her, wanting to make love to her. And Nora let him.

  She had felt as if she were falling off the edge of the world, and she desperately needed someone to hold her tight, to keep her from disappearing into the black emptiness of space. There was no one except Gordon to hold her.

  The result was that she found herself sixteen years old and pregnant.

  She married Gordon Jones in a judge’s chamber in the Claro County Courthouse. Both Marlene and Herv refused to attend. Only Dottie Jones stood by Nora, and in fact, it was Dottie who’d had to give her away.

  If Dottie hadn’t been so kind, Nora would have died of shame over what she had done. She bit her lip now, remembering. Even when Gordon failed her, Dottie was always there for her. She helped Nora reach for her dreams.

  “You want to finish high school—you finish high school,” Dottie had said, even though Gordon had sneered.

  “You want to go to college? Do it,” Dottie had said. “We’ll find some way.” Gordon had sulked and gone off to work in the oil fields as a roughneck. He’d done so poorly in college that he’d been glad to marry Nora for one reason: it gave him an excuse to quit.

  Now Nora found herself back at the Double C again after all these years. She sat in the shade of the mesquite tree, tracing an aimless design on the limestone with a twig, remembering.

  “You still goin’ to college?” Ken asked, startling her so much she dropped the twig. It was as if he’d seen into her reveries and followed her train of thought.

  She’d been taking all the courses she could in Austin during the school year. Of course she’d also been helping Dottie and taking care of Rory. It would be another year before she finished, but she was determined to do so. She had a straight B average, one of the few things in her life she supposed she could be proud of.

  She nodded in reply, feeling shyer than before. She never spoke of her ambitions to anybody but Dottie and Rory.

  “Still goin’ to teach?” he asked, squinting at the horizon.

  “Someday. I hope.”

  He smiled as if to himself. “I came on you one day, when you first moved here. You were standing alone down on the road where the school bus stops. You were saying sevenses.”

  She blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “Sevenses. You were all alone saying ’em to yourself. ‘Seven times five is thirty-five. Seven times six is forty-two. Seven times seven is forty-nine.’ Like there wasn’t anything in the world except you and numbers.”

  She laughed, half pleased, half embarrassed. “How could you remember that?”

  “You were different. I always figured you’d amount to something.”

  She shrugged unhappily. “But I didn’t. I’m just a waitress.”

  “Not for always. What’ll you teach? English?”

  She nodded and hugged her knees, watching Rory recast his line. “English. Like Miss McDuff.”

  He fell into silence, as if contemplating her words. She took a furtive glance at him. He had an austere face, but she was growing to like it. His cheekbones were high and finely cut, his nose strong, his jaw lean, and his eyes serious. The silver touching his sideburns made him look thoughtful, distinguished.

  “Never had a good deal of book learning, myself,” he said. “I suppose you read poems. And fancy stuff like that. Hard and fancy.”

  She picked up the twig and traced a crack in the limestone. “It’s not so hard. Once you get used to it.”

  He nodded, his face serious. He still didn’t look at her. “Can you say me something in poetry?”

  “A poem?”

  “Can you say me one?”

  “I—I don’t know what kind you’d like.”

  “Whatever. Just say something in poetry.”

  She alm
ost smiled at the way he put it. “Something in poetry?”

  “I never knew anybody that could do that. Except maybe Beverly Townsend. But she could never say it…real, like. She’d put on airs. Like she was in one of her beauty pageants.”

  Nora did smile. She had never imagined anyone thinking she could do anything as well as Beverly Townsend, who was both bright and beautiful. “All right—I’ll try to say you a poem.”

  She touched a clover blossom growing out of the cracked limestone. She took a deep breath and began. “This is about a flower like this one. It’s called ‘The Rarest Bloom.’

  In a sultan’s tended garden—

  A thousand flowers grew,

  Fragrant, fresh, and fragile,

  Bright with every hue.

  But I passed by that tended garden—

  I rode to rocky land—

  No rich earth to feed blossoms,

  Only stone and sand.

  But one humble flower grew there,

  Untended and alone—

  And I loved it best, that flower

  Its brave root struck through stone.”

  He turned his gaze on her and stared thoughtfully at her for a long moment. “You say that nice,” he said simply, and kept staring. “Mighty nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling another frisson of embarrassment. Absently she tried to pick the clover blossom, but the whole small plant came with it, for its roots had made little purchase in the rock.

  “Oh,” she said in disappointment. It was impossible to cram the delicate roots back into the crevice; now the whole plant would die.

  She set it down gently on the limestone. Ken picked it up. It was a small plant, stunted and unprepossessing. He put it into his shirt pocket. She couldn’t understand why and so looked away from him again.

  “You—you’ve been nice. Very kind.” She gave a helpless shrug. “You didn’t have to buy Rory all those fireworks. He loved them, though.”

  “He can make all the noise he wants out here,” he said. “Won’t bother anybody.”

  She smiled ruefully. Her eardrums still tingled from the din of the firecrackers and bottle rockets and cherry bombs. “I like it better quiet, like now. With only the wind and the birds.”

  “Me, too,” he said, then fell silent. The breeze stirred the mesquite branches and the meadowlarks trilled sleepily in the late-afternoon sun.

  Rory, tiring of fishing, had taken off his shoes and was stalking frogs at the pond’s edge. He liked nothing better than being outdoors, studying nature. He could amuse himself so for hours.

  Maybe, Nora thought with a swell of pride, he would grow up to be a scientist, an educated man. Not like her father or Herv. And not like Gordon, who had dropped out of college, and was now driving trucks in some fool scheme in Lubbock with his crazy friend, Charlie. She didn’t like Charlie or trust him.

  “You know,” Ken said, pulling down his hat so it shaded his eyes, “excuse me for saying it, but I know that things—have been—tough for you in the past. I’m glad they’re better.”

  “Things are fine. I’ve got everything I want. Thanks to Dottie. She’s been a pillar of strength for me.”

  Ken took off his hat and ran his hand through his straight blond hair. He nodded solemnly and stared at the horizon. “You and Dottie are like those two women in the Bible. Ruth and Naomi. The daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. Close.”

  His words touched her more deeply than she would have thought possible. She remembered the Bible passage in which Ruth vowed to stay by her mother-in-law. It was beautiful:

  Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge, thy people shall be my people….

  “Yes.” Nora nodded, feeling an odd knot throbbing in her throat. “We’re close. I’d have never survived without her.”

  He looked at her again. “And you’d never let anything hurt her?”

  “I’d try not to,” she said with honesty. Once more she was disconcerted by his gaze. It was a gaze that all cattlemen developed eventually—steady, narrowed, marked by lines at the corners of the eyes. And his eyes were so blue, as blue as the shimmering July sky behind him.

  “Do you ever tell her you’re still scared of him?” he asked. “Of Gordon?”

  “Oh,” she said, and looked away. She didn’t want to talk about Gordon, or even to think of him.

  “I reckon I can guess what he’s done in the past,” Ken said slowly. “It’s nothing you should be ashamed of. He’s the one who should be ashamed.”

  She raised her chin to hide how vulnerable she felt.

  “You’ve never told anybody all of it, have you? Not even Dottie.”

  “I don’t talk about it.”

  “Maybe you should,” he said quietly. “Talk.”

  She swallowed hard and remained silent. I’ll pretend I’m not here, she thought. I’ll pretend this conversation isn’t happening. I’ll pretend it never happened at all.

  Ken spoke again, almost reluctantly. “I watched your face today,” he said. “When his hand reached out, it was like you saw a snake strikin’at you. You shouldn’t have to live like that.”

  Nora hugged her knees because they had started to shake, just a little. Unexpectedly tears stung her eyes. “I said I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Stop.”

  Ken bent closer. He put his hand under her chin and turned her face to his. “I’ll stop. But I still see it in your eyes. I don’t want to see it. I want it to go away.”

  She was surprised at how gently his big hand touched her face. “See what?” she asked, struggling to blink back the hot tears. “Want what to go away?”

  “Fear,” he said. “He’s hurt you before this—and he’s hurt you worse than this. Hasn’t he?”

  “Look,” Nora said, trying to escape his touch and turn her face away again. “This isn’t your problem. Leave me alone. I can handle it.”

  “Can you?” he asked, quiet challenge in his voice. “What about the boy? Can he handle it, too?”

  She stared at him, more alarmed than before. “What do you mean?”

  “Your son—he’s scared of Gordon, too. He doesn’t want to show it, but he is. He shouldn’t have to be.”

  “Gordon would never hurt Rory,” she said in horror. “No—he wouldn’t. I’m the only one he’s ever—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  A tear spilled onto her cheek. She scrubbed it away furiously, hating that he’d seen it. “With me it was different,” she insisted. “I mean, I’m an adult. Rory’s only a child. They’re flesh and blood. He’d never hurt Rory.”

  “Why’d he hurt you?” Ken’s thumb caressed the spot on her cheek where the tear had been. Then his fingers moved to a strand of her hair that had come loose. She made a gesture to tuck it back, but he blocked the movement and did it for her.

  His touch filled her with confusion. Mixed with the confusion was a longing for something she didn’t even want to name. This isn’t happening, she told herself again, with greater desperation, greater vehemence. None of this is happening.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said. “Do you really think the two of you are safe from him?”

  Nora’s chest constricted, making it difficult to breathe. “I—I’m different,” she insisted. “Gordon used to say mean things to me—you know—hurtful things. I got tired of it, so I talked back. He—wasn’t used to that. So he started—” Again she couldn’t finish. She looked down at her bruised wrist, marked with the deep scratch of Gordon’s nail. “I fought back,” she almost whispered. “That was why.”

  “You think that kid won’t fight back one of these days?” Ken demanded, leaning closer. “That boy’s got the same fight in him you do, the same spirit. You think if Gordon’d hit a woman, he wouldn’t hit a child? He’s a bully. I knew him when he was a kid, and he was a bully back then. Dottie doesn’t think you’ll take him back, does she? She’s got too much sense for that
.”

  Nora shrugged, wondering why he looked at her the way he did, and why his quiet touch was creating such unquiet within her.

  “Of course not. She never—mentions such a thing—she knows—” She let the sentence die away, unable to finish it.

  “You never see any other men.”

  “I don’t need any other man,” she said with conviction. “I’ve got Rory, I’ve got Dottie, I’ve got a job, I’ve got school to finish, and someday I’m going to be a teacher.”

  “I know,” he said, stroking her cheek. “I know. You used to say that when you were no bigger than a minute. Once I stopped by to check on your brother, when he had some stove-in ribs. It was summer. All the other kids were outside playin’, but you were inside. Readin’. I said, ‘How come you’re not playin’?’ And you said, ‘I’m readin’ because I’m goin’ to be a teacher someday.’ Remember?”

  “I remember,” she said, upset by his strange intensity. “But how do you remember? And why?”

  “I remember. Because that kid grew up to be you.” He paused, staring at her lips. The line of his own mouth had gone rigid with control. “What would Dottie say if I came around to see you?”

  “See me? No—I don’t think so. Gordon would hear about it. He gets jealous. It’s crazy, but he does.”

  “You’re not married to him anymore. And I’m not askin’ about him. I’m askin’ about Dottie.”

  “I—don’t know how she’d take it.”

  “What about you? What do you want?” He had both hands cupped around her face now, and she felt dizzied by the steadiness of his gaze. She feared he was going to kiss her. Although the idea gave her an unexpected rush of pleasure, she feared the thought of his lips touching hers.

  With dismay she realized that she had never kissed any man except Gordon, and she’d learned to hate his touch with all her being. She was frightened of ever letting any man that close again.

  “My God,” he said softly. “You’re shaking, Nora. Is it that terrible, what I’m thinking of doing? Because to tell the truth, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Even when I shouldn’t have.”