First the Thunder

by Randall Silvis

  “I believe my brother,” he told her. “If he says Jake promised it to him, then that’s what happened.”

  She leaned closer to the screen, almost touched it with her nose. “It’s a Goddamn motorcycle!” she said. “Your brother needs to grow up and get over it. You all do.”

  “I guess that would apply to Kenny too, wouldn’t it?”

  She gave him a long, glowering look. Then jerked away for a moment, reached to the side, and reappeared with a broom in her hand. She banged the straws against the screen. “You get off my porch right now!” she bellowed. Tippy broke into a fury of barking as he jumped and clawed at the screen.

  25

  The urge to break things, to just start smashing and destroying everything in sight, was strong in Harvey after Jennalee drove away. But little in the garage belonged to her. He scanned his tools, the wrenches and hammers and saws, the screwdrivers and shovels, the axe and machete. Even the plastic containers holding oil, transmission fluid, and windshield fluid felt off-limits to his rage—none of them belonged to her but were extensions of his own hands. He had always thought of himself as the kind of guy who fixed things when they broke. This urge to destroy was new to him.

  Then his gaze landed on Jennalee’s golf bag. Pink and white and filled with expensive Ping clubs. Some of the clubs had animal-head covers. A tiger, an elephant, a silly-looking squirrel. Those clubs infuriated him.

  Five or six Sundays every summer Jennalee would play eighteen holes with her brother and mother. Louise couldn’t play anymore but she liked to ride around in the cart, a thermos full of martinis in the cup holder, while her children played. Once, several years back, when Harvey had complained about losing Jennalee on yet another Sunday morning, she had talked him into coming along, but he was no golfer. His body was too stiff for golf; it didn’t flex and turn the right ways. By the fourth hole Kenny was calling him “Shankster.”

  “You’re up, Shankster,” he would say, and everybody, including Jennalee, would grin. That made him even stiffer. He had walked off the fairway after only eight holes. Sat in the clubhouse drinking beer and watching a ball game.

  He fucking hated golf. “Stupid game,” Jake had told him afterward. “Tell you what. Hang around with me on Sundays, okay? I’ve got my eye on a beat-up old Indian bike. What say you and me restore it together? Leave golf to the girlies.”

  And now, standing there in his garage, remembering how Kenny and Jennalee and their mother had embarrassed him, had made him feel stupid and small, the distant rumble in his head took on a low but steady beat. He knew it was probably just the sound of his own pulse, his blood pressure rising, but it was annoying as hell all the same.

  He eyed Jennalee’s golf clubs. He could break one or two, but she would just go out and buy more. So instead he walked up to the bag, lifted the silly squirrel-head cover away. Putter. A very important club for a golfer. So what if he maybe bent the shaft a little? Not enough that she would notice, but enough to make the ball roll cockeyed?

  He drew the club from the bag, carried it to his workbench, fitted the club into his vise. A little push here. A nudge there.

  The work was delicate but forceful. Very satisfying.

  He did the same to the driver and the four wood. Slipped them back into the bag and replaced the head covers. “Who’s the shankster now?” he said.

  It had felt good, but also wrong. Satisfaction was followed by guilt. The drumbeat in his head grew louder. He asked himself, What the hell is going on with you?

  He didn’t want to go back inside the house. Didn’t want to sit there stewing in his resentment, simmering with anger. He walked to the mouth of the garage, looked up and down the street. Yards full of sunlight. Flowerbeds and driveways.

  Maybe he should take a walk. Walk off this uncomfortable mix of feelings. Maybe even jog for a while if the mood seized him. He could walk to the high school, six blocks away, and trot around the track for a while, sweat all the toxins out. But what if Kenny was in his office, catching up on work? He might look out a window and see Harvey plodding around in circles. Knowing Kenny, he would come to the rear door, out onto the parking lot, and call out when Harvey trudged past. “Twenty-six more miles, Shankster, and you will burn off a whole pound of that sausage! Only a hundred and three more laps to go!”

  Fuck Kenny. Fuck the whole fucking family. I’ll walk around town, Harvey told himself. Take my own fucking time.

  Within a couple of minutes he was short of breath. Felt as if he had run two miles. Yet he was moving. Maybe the only thing in the entire neighborhood moving this morning. Where were all the kids that should be outside playing? Back when he was a kid, the yards were full of noise and motion. Now all he could hear was somebody’s lawn mower a street or two away. Sure, it was hot today, eighty-plus degrees already. But was that any reason to hide inside?

  His chest was heavy, skull tight. He could hear his pulse thumping in his ears. Felt a low fire burning his lungs.

  You’re going to give yourself a heart attack, he thought, but not without some pleasure. He didn’t think he would mind being dead. Dead meant either something better, or, more likely, nothing at all. He didn’t believe in Hell, saw too much Hell all around him every day while driving his route from store to store, stocking shelves with microwavable breakfast sandwiches, with eggs and sausage patties and biscuits waiting to be irradiated in the little black boxes in everybody’s kitchens. One hundred and seventeen million pigs consumed every year. Thirty-one pigs per American over the course of a lifetime. Nearly eleven steers and calves. Over two thousand chickens.

  People eat, he told himself. That’s what they do mostly. They eat and shit and sleep and screw. They work too, but only so they can eat and shit and sleep and screw.

  Every weekday he drove over four hundred miles to feed his little slice of America, through neighborhoods filled with every kind of misery, with violence poverty crack heroin homelessness and craziness of every flavor. So why would there be a Hell in the Afterlife? Another Hell would be redundant.

  He used to be happy in this town. Not so much as a kid, when nearly every day brought a smack or two from somebody. But around seventeen or so, when he was big enough to defend himself, that’s when life improved. When he was big enough to get hold of a little money now and then. Enough for him and Kenny to go partners on a car. He did all the work, made all the engine modifications and drove all the races on Friday and Saturday nights. Even won his fair share of them. And afterward, the girls. Kenny had a knack for drawing them in. Those years were the best Harvey had ever experienced.

  He never should have let himself fall in love. That was when all the trouble started. Not right away, though. The first few years were good. Full of promise. Big expectations.

  Then the economy tanked. The town was dying. Friends moved away. Boredom set in. And the resentment with Jennalee festered. Some things could not be forgotten.

  And now he stopped walking. Out of breath, heart thumping hard, a stitch in his side, he realized he’d been staring at nothing but hot concrete as he walked. A stench of melted tar was stinging his nostrils, little bubbles of black oozing up from the street.

  He had walked the whole way across town without knowing it. And now felt like a complete stranger to this town. This miserable little town in Hell.

  Had there ever been a place, or a life, more pointless?

  26

  Not long after Will opened up the bar for the day and served Ralph and Eldon their first cold drafts of the morning, on the house because he had kept them waiting so long, Molly and Laci came downstairs and into the kitchen. Molly, wearing a bulky PINK backpack containing her inline skating gear, grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and, from one of the cardboard boxes against the wall, a bag of nacho tortilla chips.

  “Whoa there,” Laci said, and shifted her camera bag to the other shoulder. “How about a bag of pretzels instead?”

  “What makes you think they’re any healthier?” Molly asked.r />
  “I don’t know. They just sound healthier.”

  Molly turned back to the boxes and rummaged through them until she came up with a bag of pretzels. She read silently from the tables of contents. Then held out the bag of chips. “Corn,” she said. Then the bag of pretzels. “Flour, sugar, and lots of salt.” Then the chips. “Vegetable.” The pretzels. “Tiny loaves of white bread. Almost seven hundred milligrams of sodium in every ounce.”

  “Fine,” Laci said. “Eat the vegetables.”

  Molly tossed the pretzels back into the box, then turned to cross toward the door into the bar, where Will stood watching and smiling. “Good morning,” he told her.

  “You think?” she said, and strode past him to the front door, which she flung open before marching out into the brightness.

  Laci came forward to stand behind the counter with Will, whose smile had gone lopsided. “She’s still mad at you,” she said.

  “So I see.”

  “I’m dropping her off at school for a couple hours while I take some shots around town. We should be back by noon. I was thinking that, if you want, I can watch the bar for a while so you can try to patch things up with your daughter.”

  “Is that possible,” he said, “since there’s still no way she’s going to be dating a senior?”

  “She understands,” Laci said.

  “Does she? Guys like that have a permanent hard-on.”

  “We had a little mother-daughter talk.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Same thing you did, but without going postal on her.”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “She said she thought you were going to hit her.”

  “She did not. She knows better than that.”

  “Just talk to her, okay? Don’t get angry. Keep your voice low. Pretend she’s one of your customers.”

  “That’s not fair, Laci.”

  She stood there at the corner of the bar, watching out the open door. Why was she so irritated with Will this morning? Where had that sudden annoyance come from? Heat washed in from the street, poured over her face and made her eyes sting. Even diluted by the halfhearted air-conditioning, the air felt thick and dirty on her skin. “Okay,” she said.

  Will waited a moment for more, but she said nothing else. “What kind of shots?” he asked. “For the paper?”

  Now she turned his way again; gave him a smile. “Remember that teaching job Kirby mentioned?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Turns out it’s for real.”

  “He called you?”

  She shook her head. “I did a search online. Every college within fifty miles.”

  “And?”

  “Venango County Community College.”

  “That’s only, what, twenty-five miles from here?”

  “Twenty-six point eight,” she said. “So I called them. Talked to the chair of the communications department. Two sections, an hour and a half per section every Saturday and Sunday morning. It’s called Weekend College.”

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  “That’s not the best of it. They have two requirements. First, you have to be a working professional photographer.”

  “Which you are,” he said.

  “And have a strong portfolio.”

  “You must have years and years of photos by now.”

  “Except that they’re top-heavy with tragedy. So I figure I’ll wander around awhile today, take some human-interest shots. Laughing babies, puppies licking themselves, things like that.”

  He said, “Take some in here if you want.”

  Laci glanced down the bar at the two old men leaning over their beers. One was grumbling under his breath; the other stared blankly at the large photo of Ben Roethlisberger releasing a pass while three Ravens hung from his waist and back.

  She said, “Call me when somebody smiles.”

  Will blinked, bit his bottom lip. Then he said, “So Kirby wasn’t full of it after all. You think he can really get you the job?”

  “Screw Kirby,” she said. “I’m qualified. The chair even said he’s seen my photos in the paper. Remember the one from the county fair a few years back? When I caught the knockout blow in the boxing match at the very second it happened?”

  Will nodded. “With one of the ring lights shining like a star right under his arm when his fist connected.”

  “He said he’s used that photo in his classes.”

  “Wow,” Will said.

  “So if I make the short list, I have to teach a one-hour class in front of a few students and the rest of the department, which consists of three other people.”

  “You think you can do that?” Will asked.

  She gave him a long look, and wondered what frightened him more—that she would fail, or that she would succeed.

  Will said, “I just mean . . . it’s not something you’ve done before, is it?”

  “I talk to people all the time. Without drooling or slurring my words.”

  “Then you’ll be great,” he said, and laid a hand on the small of her back.

  “I’ve already planned out a PowerPoint presentation.”

  He smiled. “I wish I could be there to see it.”

  “They might let you. I can ask.”

  “That would be great,” he said. “My wife the professor.”

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I still have to apply and make the short list.”

  “What about that other job,” he asked, “for the online magazine?”

  “I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s bullshit. I’ll just have to wait and see.”

  He held his smile, nodded, and rubbed his hand against her back. She thought he really did look happy for her, sincerely happy. Why would she have thought otherwise?

  Then Will told her, “Somebody’s getting impatient,” and nodded toward the entrance. Molly stood on the threshold, frowning, hands gripping the backpack straps, her body sagging as if from the pack’s enormous weight.

  “Later,” she told him, and kissed his cheek.

  “Have fun,” he said.

  27

  When Stevie came crawling out from underneath his former teacher’s back porch, wriggling feet first into the heat and light, he was so out of breath, less from the physical exertion than from awaiting a guerrilla attack by tiny claws and rabies-dripping teeth, that as soon as his head cleared the last board, he rolled onto his back in the grass and, laying the pistol atop his chest, sucked in a lungful of hot air.

  “You didn’t see him?” Mrs. Miller asked.

  “Nothing in there but dirt and cobwebs.” Then he sat up, flicked the safety on his 9mm Taurus, and ejected the full clip.

  “I don’t see how he could have gotten past me without being seen.”

  “They’re clever little buggers,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry you went to all that trouble for nothing. It was very brave of you to crawl in there.”

  He rolled onto his side, then pushed himself to his feet, and used his free hand to brush the dirt off his clothing. “I couldn’t see any signs of a den,” he said. “He was probably just looking for a quick place to hide.”

  “Well,” she said, “as long as he’s gone. Why don’t you come on in and wash up and I’ll get your money for you.”

  “I can wash up at home. No use tracking this dirt into your house.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You can use the downstairs powder room.”

  Without waiting for his reply she strode past him, onto the porch and inside.

  Stevie went to his pickup truck and placed the pistol in the glove box. Then he spent another minute brushing the dirt from his arms, then again slapped at the front of his jeans and knocked his work boots together. Then he walked up onto the porch, and was relieved to feel the breeze of air-conditioning wafting toward him through the screen door.

  The moment he stepped inside, she handed him a tall glass of iced tea. “You must surely be thirsty after al
l that.”

  “I am,” he said. “Thank you.” He reached for the glass but saw how dirty his palms were. “Maybe I should wash my hands first.”

  “Straight through the kitchen and on your right,” she said. “I’ll put the tea on the kitchen table while I look for my purse.”

  Stevie bent to unlace his boots, pull them off, and set them beside the back door. Then he checked his socks. Dingy but no holes. Thank God for small favors.

  When he returned to the kitchen from the powder room after washing his hands and forearms, then rinsing out the sink three times to flush all the grime down the drain, he found Mrs. Miller seated with her own glass of tea across the table from his glass. Beside his glass was a folded fifty-dollar bill, and beside it a plate of snickerdoodle cookies.

  “Sit down and drink your tea,” she told him. “And help yourself to the cookies. Let’s get reacquainted again.”

  Awkwardly, he took his seat. Scraped the money off the table and shoved it into a pocket. Then lifted the glass to his mouth and drank.

  She asked him then if he’d heard of the accident earlier that morning, and when he said no, she filled him in. “It’s all so senseless,” she said. “I had every one of them in my class. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “About . . . playing chicken, you mean?”

  “About how precious our time is. How we should make the most of every minute of life we have.”

  “That’s for sure,” he answered.

  “I’ve seen you driving around from time to time. But how long has it been since we actually had a conversation?”

  He picked a cookie off the plate. “I don’t know if we ever had one. Unless you count all the time you scolded me for not having my homework done.”

  “You were a time waster,” she told him. “But you seem industrious enough now.”

  “I try to keep busy,” he said.

  She nodded. Smiled. Took a sip of her tea. “I lost my Eddie eight months ago,” she said. “I don’t know if you knew that or not.”

  “I think I heard about that. I’m sorry for your loss.”