The Thunder Rolls

by Bethany Campbell

  Dottie put her hand to her forehead. “What good would it do, Gordon? You always believe exactly what you choose.”

  “You’d rather have her mess with Bubba than come back and be my wife again. You would, wouldn’t you? You know what you are? You’re unnatural.”

  Dottie’s patience was stretched too far. “Yes,” she snapped, “I would rather see her with Bubba than you. I’d rather see her with anybody—”

  She heard the sound of Gordon’s receiver crashing down. Oh, Lord, thought Dottie wearily, her eyes still closed. Why did I say that? What a stupid thing to say. Now he’ll think Nora’s interested in Bubba. Lord, forgive me; I can’t think straight.

  She stood, her eyes squeezed shut, the receiver held to her breast. A small, cold, logical corner of her mind told her that what she had said didn’t matter.

  Today he might hate Bubba. Tomorrow he would hate someone else—whoever was the first to raise his ire. Tomorrow he might even forget about Nora completely—who knew what direction his thoughts might take?

  In the meantime, it was better that he fume over imagined slights by Bubba than know the truth about Ken. Who knew how crazy a real rival might make him?

  She had meant what she told Shirley about Ken and Nora: Leave them be. Let them discover each other in peace. Nora deserves a little happiness, God knows. Let her enjoy it.

  “Dottie?” Shirley’s voice pierced her consciousness. “Are you all right, honey? You don’t look well.”

  Dottie forced her eyes open. The room seemed a bit blurry, a bit unsteady. She hung up the phone, then firmly pulled its plug from the jack. There, she thought. Gordon can’t reach us now.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.” But she knew she wasn’t.

  “Was it Gordon?” Shirley pried. “What did he say? What does he want? What does he—”

  “Hush!” Dottie commanded, cutting her off. “I told you—don’t say a word about this. Here comes Nora.”

  Nora came in the door, smiling, but with a slight furrow in her brow. The conflict in her expression rent Dottie’s heart. It’s so hard for her, learning to care again, Dottie thought. I won’t let Gordon spoil it for her. I won’t.

  IN LUBBOCK, Gordon was so angry his hands shook as he redialed the coffee shop. He got a busy signal.

  He smashed the receiver down, then picked it up, dialing the number for the third time. Another busy signal—she’d really done it, he thought in fury. She’d unplugged the phone on him. His own mother.

  And she’d flaunted Bubba in his face—fat, old, foolish Bubba. What could Nora see in such a man? How could Dottie tolerate it? Money could be the only answer.

  Gordon took another tranquilizer and washed it down with a swallow of warm beer. Was money the tune that made those women sing? Well, soon he’d have plenty of money. Charlie’d told him how much it was worth, running guns over the border. A fortune.

  Tomorrow he would start. And when he got back, his pockets jammed with money, he’d confront Nora. He’d punish her, of course. But he’d take her back. As for Bubba, he’d beat the old man senseless if he got the chance.

  He drained his beer and felt so nervous that he popped open another one. He had all day Monday to himself because of the long Fourth of July weekend, and he was frustrated and sick with a sense of betrayal.

  How could Nora even think of Bubba Gibson? It made Gordon’s flesh creep. She just had to be leading him on, that was it. Leading him on to make Gordon jealous. That was it—she wanted him jealous.

  Gordon took a long drink of beer and thought of all the things he’d like to do to Bubba Gibson. Starting now—starting right now. He would make the old man live in terror of him. He’d show Bubba. He’d show them all.

  He dialed information. His hands still shook, but not as badly. He asked for the number of the Gibson ranch and wrote it down on the cover of a matchbook. Then he finished his beer, opened another and dialed Bubba’s number.

  The phone rang three times, then, as if three were a magic number, Bubba answered. “Hello?” he said.

  “Stay away from my wife,” Gordon said in his most menacing tone.

  “Say what?” Bubba sounded truly perplexed.

  “Stay away from my wife, you bloated old toad. She ain’t no Billie Jo Dumont. You mess with my woman, and I’ll string your innards from Austin to Lubbock and back. I’ll dance in your blood, old man.”

  “Who the hell—?”

  “I mean it. I’m gonna find you alone. You don’t know who you’re dealin’ with, mister. I’m a dangerous man.”

  “Gordon? Is that you, you damn fool? What in hell you talkin’ about, boy?”

  “I’m talkin’ about vengeance,” Gordon said, sick with hate. “I’m talkin’ about honor. I’m talkin’ about what’s mine.”

  “You’re crazy. I shoulda throwed you in jail years ago, when I had the chance.”

  “You listen to me, you old—”

  Bubba swore and crashed down the receiver so hard that it hurt Gordon’s eardrum. Gordon swore, too, and hurled the phone across the room and against the wall. He kicked the leg of the table. He was so angry that he shook.

  You can’t get away from me, he said to himself. You can’t. I’ll win, goddammit.

  He picked up the phone from the floor and listened at the earpiece. The dial tone still hummed. “I’ll make your life hell,” he promised Bubba as he dialed again. “Living hell.”

  ON THE GIBSON RANCH, Bubba stood in the living room, glaring at the phone. Gordon had called so many times, Bubba’d unplugged it. He was pale and breathing hard.

  “Whatever’s going on?” asked his wife, Mary. She’d come creeping into the room as silently as a mouse. Their tall daughter, Sara, was right behind her.

  “Who’s been calling? Why did you unplug—” Mary asked timorously.

  “Some nut. Leave it unplugged,” Bubba replied harshly, then turned away. He couldn’t stand the worry in her eyes. The whole long weekend Mary had been looking at him with martyrdom written all over her face, driving him crazy. His daughter, too. Both women looked at him sadly, as if his infidelity had turned him into some kind of monster.

  Mary usually kept her chin up and her feelings hidden, but now that she had her daughter home and on her side, she was making him as nervous and guilty as hell. Good Lord, couldn’t she understand? He wasn’t going to leave her or anything. Billie Jo Dumont was just something he had to work out of his system.

  “Have you gone and got yourself in some kind of trouble, Daddy?” Sara demanded. All weekend she had taken that tone with him, self-righteous and holier-than-thou. “What have you gone and done now?”

  Bubba sighed heavily. “I ain’t done nothin’. It’s crank calls, is all it is.”

  Sara gave him a cold look. She took her mother’s hand. “Come on, Mama,” she said. “Or your brownies will burn.”

  Mary nodded sadly, and Sara kept staring accusingly at Bubba.

  Bubba’s head hurt. He watched stonily as Sara and Mary left the room. Damn, but it was awkward, and he was having a terrible time with Sara and the kids home, and the irony was that Billie Jo was mad as hell at him for spending the entire holiday with his family. His family—in its overly polite and ladylike and long-suffering way—was making his life sheer, hellacious misery.

  Bubba glanced at the phone as if it were an instrument of torture. Why, in the name of all that was holy, was Gordon Jones calling him? That boy was crazy. Always had been.

  NORA WAS WORRIED. Dottie was acting funny, not at all her usual self, and for some reason she kept the phone unplugged. She’d made a hurried excuse that some children kept calling up as a prank, and she’d finally lost patience. Nora didn’t believe her.

  She took Dottie aside after the noon rush was over. “Dottie, what’s wrong? Has Gordon been calling? If he is, you should tell me.”

  Dottie shook her head. She reached up and smoothed a stray curl of Nora’s back into place. “Don’t worry,” was all she said. Then she got
a distracted look in her eyes. “Oh, heavens—I forgot to defrost the cherries for the cherry pie.” She hurried into the kitchen.

  Nora looked after her, her face shadowed by trouble. Since she’d awakened, her emotions had gone up and down and back and forth and around and around.

  She’d vowed not to go out with Ken again, but her resolve had melted at her first sight of him. She’d promised herself to break their date, but she was still going to see him again—tonight, after Rory was in bed.

  She’d stood, like a love-struck teenager, holding his hand and staring up into his eyes—in public!—for all the world to see. It was insane. It was wonderful. It was insane.

  Since she’d seen him this morning, strange, irrational waves of happiness had been sweeping over her, making the day shimmer with brightness. Then the happiness would vanish, chased by a cold and shadowy foreboding. Something was wrong, something was badly wrong. She could see it in Dottie’s strained face.

  Only Gordon could upset Dottie like that. The thought frightened Nora. Was Dottie worried about what Gordon might do if he found out about Ken? Nora, herself, did not know how Gordon would react. If she gave him grounds for jealousy, who knew what terrible and punishing force she might set into motion? She did not dare do such a thing; she must not.

  She shook her head sadly. Rory came bursting in the door, excited and calling for a jar because he had caught a little gray lizard. She welcomed the distraction. She gave him an old gallon jar that had once held pickles.

  Rory put the lizard into the jar and regarded it with satisfaction. “I’m gonna make a terray—terray—terrarium,” he said. “And I’m gonna name this lizard Pickle.”

  “Pickle it is,” said Nora.

  He looked up at her, his face suddenly going sober.

  “Are we gonna go to the ranch again? Back at that pond? I could get some mossy rocks. It had good mossy rocks.”

  Her smile died. “I don’t think so. Don’t count on it.”

  “Why not?”

  Nora swallowed hard. “Well, Mr. Slattery took us there. And maybe he won’t ask again. I—just don’t think so.”

  Rory chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. “If you marry him, would we all live at the ranch? Grandma, too? Could you stop working here?”

  Nora stiffened in shock. How, in so short a time, had Rory come to think of marriage? Had someone been talking nonsense to him? She could think of nothing to say. She stared at him, her mouth slightly open.

  He set his jar on the table and put his hands into the back pockets of his denim shorts. “Well?” he said, studying her face, his expression solemn.

  “Well—you surprised me. Those aren’t questions I’ve ever thought of. No. Nobody’s getting—married.”

  Rory cocked his head and chewed on his lip again. He traced an aimless design on the floor with the toe of his sneaker. “Well—if you got married, would he be my father, then? Instead of the one I got?”

  Nora shook her head helplessly. “Rory, why are you asking these things?”

  He looked away and shrugged. He kept tracing his toe across the floor, back and forth, back and forth. “Because,” he said and shrugged again, “I wouldn’t mind it if you got me a different father. I—don’t much like the one I got.”

  He paused and looked up at her with eyes that seemed too old and too worried for a child. He shrugged for the third time. “He’s scary,” he said quietly, then looked away.

  “Oh, Rory,” Nora said, kneeling and pulling him into her arms. She hugged him fiercely, almost convulsively, and tears burned her eyes. “Oh, Rory,” she said, and buried her face against his warm, sweaty little shoulder. “Don’t be scared. Please don’t be scared, sweetheart. Please, sugar. Don’t. Please.”

  But deep in her heart she wondered how she could comfort the boy, when she herself was so unsure and so frightened.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KEN TALKED a reluctant Nora into returning to the pond where he had taken Rory fishing. Once there, he feared it was a mistake.

  Last night she’d seemed happy to be with him. Tonight she was abstracted and uneasy. She told him that she didn’t want to see him again.

  The words struck him like nails hammered into his heart, but she looked so unhappy when she said them that he found himself reaching to her, wanting to comfort her. Then somehow, she ended up in his arms. She felt right there, and he wondered if it felt as right to her.

  There was lightning in the distant sky, but it was only heat lightning, and no true hint of rain stirred the sluggish summer night.

  A thousand reflected stars danced on the pond’s surface as they stood beside it. Ken held Nora, who was crying against his chest. Her body shook with each sob, and every time it shook, his heart contracted so painfully he had to fight against wincing.

  He held her more tightly. “Nora,” he said against her hair, “you are the most up-and-down woman I ever saw.”

  Nora cried harder, so he gathered her still more closely to him. “Oh, Lord,” he said with a helpless sigh. “Hush, darlin’. Hush, sugar. Hush, love.”

  His words seemed only to upset her more. She pushed away from him and stuggled, briefly, to extricate herself from his embrace. “I’m not your darling. I’m not your sugar. I’m not your love. Oh! Why can’t I tell you goodbye for once and for all?”

  “Because you ain’t hardly said hello. I mean, you haven’t hardly said hello. Why do you want things to be over before they’re started?”

  “Nothing’s started,” she protested, “nothing can be started.” But she was lying, and they both knew it. She collapsed against his chest again.

  “Oh, Nora,” he said, folding her into his arms again. “Nora.”

  Although she’d said she didn’t want to see him again, paradoxically her arms were now around his waist, and she held him almost as tightly as he held her.

  “Come on,” he said, his lips against her ear. “Sit down. Talk to me.”

  He led her to the limestone slab where they had sat the first time he’d been with her. It was blue-white in the starlight. Behind them, from the pond, the frogs sang, the crickets whirred.

  He lowered her to the stone, then settled beside her, taking her in his arms again. “Shhh,” he said, and smoothed her tumbled hair. His shirtfront was damp with her tears, and when he saw the streaks on her face glinting in the starlight, he felt a terrible wrenching within him, as if his ribs were being broken from the inside.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to want you,” she said, her voice ragged. “I only came with you to tell you—no. That it’s impossible. I don’t want to want you.”

  He kissed her behind the ear. She shivered, and the shiver ran through him, too. “But you do,” he said. “You do.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not. Look me in the eyes and tell me that. It’s not.”

  She drew back and stared up at him, her lips trembling. They were such soft, beautiful, vulnerable lips he wanted to kiss them until he died of making love to her, but he held himself back. He only allowed his hand to move to her face, his thumb to stroke away a tear that shimmered in the starlight.

  “We can’t—” she said. “We don’t—we’re not—”

  “We can. We do. We are.”

  He couldn’t help it. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her until she kissed him back, her lips answering his: yes, yes, oh, yes.

  He lay back against the stone, drawing her with him. She gasped against his mouth, and once again his heart lurched hard enough to crack his ribs. He felt her shudder again, and this time he knew the shudder was fear, not desire. He forced himself to slow.

  “I’m sorry,” he said brokenly, drawing back. “It’s just—I love you.”

  “No.” Her voice was as strained as his. She put her finger against his lips and held it there. “Don’t say that.”

  “I love you.”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t.”<
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  “I do. You know I do.” He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. He kissed it long and lingeringly, the way he wished he could kiss every part of her.

  “No,” she breathed, pulling away and sitting up. “No!”

  He raised himself and took her hand again, pressed another kiss against her palm. “I’m not sure this is something you have a choice about,” he said, looking into her eyes again. “It happens or it doesn’t. It’s happening.”

  She drew back from him. She put her arms around her legs and hid her eyes against her knees. “I only came here to tell you goodbye,” she said miserably. “That’s all. And to get some—some mossy rocks. For Rory.”

  “I’ll get him all the mossy rocks in the world. All the tadpoles and toad-frogs. Whatever he needs—I’ll see he has it.”

  “Oh,” she said, hugging her knees tighter. “Why are you so good to me? Why do you do it?”

  His chest tightened, and he fought the urge to take her in his arms again. “I told you. I love you.”

  She refused to look at him. She kept her face hidden. “No.”

  He said the only thing he could think of. “I love you.”

  “Don’t say that.” Tears quavered in her voice. “I can’t get involved with anybody. There’s—there’s Gordon. He’s already driving Dottie crazy. She won’t admit it, but he is. I know.”

  Gordon, he thought blackly. Is she still afraid of Gordon? Jesus, how long does Gordon have to shadow her life? He wouldn’t tell her what Cal had said about authorities asking about Gordon. He couldn’t stand for her to worry any more than she already was.

  “Look,” he said, his voice suddenly harsh, “he’s hurt you enough. He’s taken up enough of your life. Don’t let him take any more.”

  She turned to him, her chin lifted. “That’s easy for you to say. I don’t know what he’d do—if he found out about—this.”

  “What this? You keep tellin’ me there’s no this.”

  Nora shrugged in frustration. She pressed her lips more tightly together.