Midnight Rain

by Newman,James

  My heart skipped a beat. I hit the cold, wet ground.

  I lay like that, prone atop my father’s grave, for what felt like hours before I dared turn my head to look back toward the lot.

  Goosebumps broke out all over my body when I saw it. My heart leapt into my throat.

  “N-n-no,” I whispered.

  It sat at the very bottom of the hill. Long, sleek, flesh-colored.

  KILLER, read the sloppy red logo across both doors on the driver’s side.

  It didn’t move. It just sat there, its low idle sounding like the sated purr of a very large, well-fed feline.

  I gnashed my teeth, let out a little whimper.

  “Kyle!” Sheriff Baker called out to me.

  I gasped.

  His voice echoed among the tombstones, seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  God, how I wished I could sink down into the soft, muddy earth to join my father six feet below. I felt naked. Vulnerable.

  “Kyle!” Sheriff Baker shouted again from the bottom of the hill. “You out there, son?”

  Please, God, I prayed, Please don’t let him get me…

  From the patrol car’s open window, I could hear the bird-like squawk of his radio. The voice of a female dispatcher. “Ten-Four,” she said, and something like “will take care of it.”

  “Come on now, son,” Baker called out again. His voice boomed out across the hillside like the thunder overhead, and for a second or two I was quite sure he had already climbed out of his car to walk up the hillside toward me.

  “It’s been a long day. I ain’t in the mood to play Hide n’ Seek!”

  God, please…just make him go away…

  “Come on out. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. We can talk about this.”

  I shook my head where I lay. No way, man. No WAY…

  Suddenly the bright white glow of a searchlight split the night from his driver-side window. Or maybe one of those long, ultra-powerful flashlights cops carry. I couldn’t be sure.

  I pissed my pants.

  That blinding white light swept across the cemetery slowly, from one side to the other. Three times. To the right, toward the woods, then back to the left. Right. Left. Back and forth. Each time it passed over me I could not only see the beam a few feet above my head—tearing open the night, parting the darkness like a soft black curtain—I could almost feel its evil heat as well. Radiating like an alien invader’s atomic death-ray from some cheesy B-movie Dan and I had laughed at long and loud back when things were good. I closed my eyes, felt so conspicuous clinging to my father’s grave like that. The hill seemed so much steeper, as if it had begun to tilt toward the heavens and any second I would go sliding off, screaming, until I landed with a thump right at Burt Baker’s feet.

  I wondered where I had left my bicycle. Was Burner sitting right out in the open? I couldn’t remember. What if the sheriff spotted Burner lying in the grass somewhere in the middle of those first few graves at the foot of the hill?

  Oh, God…oh, God…

  Then it would all be over for me.

  An ant crawled across my hand as I lay there, but I didn’t dare move even to flick it off. My heart slammed in my chest as I waited for the terrible click-whine sound of Sheriff Baker’s car door opening. I waited for the metallic thunk of him slamming it shut behind him, of change jingling in his pockets and his leather gun belt squeaking and his shoes making gentle whisk-whisk noises in the wet grass as he headed for the grave of his lover’s late husband. Coming closer.

  But it never came.

  A minute later I heard him cough once.

  His radio squawked again.

  He mumbled something that sounded like “sooner than later.”

  And then he drove away.

  I breathed again, though I did not stand for at least five minutes after Baker pulled off. I feared it might have been a trick.

  At last I jumped to my feet, and I wasted no time in finding Burner where I had left him further down the hillside.

  I ran to my bicycle, climbed atop it.

  Before we took off, however, I glanced back toward my father’s grave one last time.

  “I’ll see you soon, Daddy,” I said with a little sniffle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  By the time I returned home, the rain had begun to fall with a fervor unlike anything I had seen for several weeks. Lightning lit up Midnight every few seconds, filling the air with a lingering, electric ozone smell, and thunder crashed all around me as if some invisible war were being waged in the swirling black skies above my hometown.

  The house was dark. Only Mom’s station wagon sat in the driveway.

  I wasn’t surprised, of course. I had known he wouldn’t be there. He was out looking for me. And he would keep looking for me, all over Midnight, until he found me.

  The front door was unlocked. I entered the house as quietly as possible, but every sound I made as I eased the door shut behind me seemed louder than the constant barrage of thunder and rain roaring against the roof and outside walls.

  I ran one hand through my dripping wet hair, bent to remove my tennis shoes. After setting my shoes against the wall to the left of the doorway, I pulled off my soggy white socks. They looked like limp, lifeless things as I threw them into my shoes, like the carcasses of something that had once lived and breathed but had been drained of everything by the violent storm outside.

  “Kyle?” Mom called out to me from the darkness as I tiptoed across the living room. “Is that you?”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Mom? Where are you?”

  “In here,” I heard her say, from the kitchen.

  “Oh.” I frowned. “Why are you sitting in the dar—”

  But when I rounded the corner and entered the kitchen, I knew.

  Mom sat at the kitchen table, a single red candle centered before her. Its flame quivered slightly as it burned, basking the room with its mellow orange glow. Judging from the single drip of wax trailing down its length, the power had not been out for very long. She had propped the candle up in a slim vase to keep it from falling over. Another candle, this one short and fat and green (NOEL, read the logo on its side, the letters shaped like holly leaves and berries), sat in a saucer atop the refrigerator behind her.

  Mom wore a thin blue nightgown. Her long brown hair fell to her shoulders, and droplets of sweat glistened on her forehead. She did not move. Her hands were on the table before her, palms-down. Next to her right hand sat a box of matches and a wrinkled piece of yellow paper. Her face looked almost unreal—like something sculpted out of flesh-colored plastic—in the candle’s flickering light.

  I shuddered when she offered me a sad little smile. But her eyes were not smiling. Her eyes were not happy at all.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you, Kyle,” she said.

  I bit my lip, sat down at the table across from her. “Is everything…um…okay?”

  “It’s been raining cats and dogs out there.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Why do you care?” I couldn’t help it. I had to get one good dig in, just to let her know that I knew: “You had your company…”

  “Oh, stop it, Kyle,” Mom said. “Jealousy does not become you.”

  “Whatever.”

  The rain batted at the windows. The candlelight flickered. Lightning flashed beyond the window over the sink.

  When my mother said nothing for several minutes, I cleared my throat, said, “So when did he leave?”

  She gave a loud, exaggerated sigh. “He’s been gone for a while, son. Jesus Christ, I wish you would quit acting like he’s some sort of monster. He cares a lot about me, you know.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You can’t expect me to be alone forever.”

  “I don’t.”

  “We’re very good for one another.”

  “Right.”

  I ran my hands t
hrough my dripping wet hair again, watched a small puddle collect on the table before me, and fought back tears. I wished I could just leave again.

  “So where did you go?” Mom asked me.

  I looked back up at her. She didn’t seem to be talking to me, though. She seemed to be staring through me, at a place on the wall behind me.

  I could not think of a lie. So I told her the truth: “Dad’s grave.”

  “At ten o’ clock at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged.

  “I just don’t think you should be running around town at all hours of the night, Kyle. That’s all I’m saying. It’s dangerous.”

  “Maybe,” I replied, thinking, You don’t know what dangerous is, Mom.

  “Let me know before you go doing that again, would you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If you’re not…preoccupied.”

  “Don’t be a smart-aleck. You’re not too big for me to bust your bottom.”

  I rolled my eyes. She hadn’t said it with much conviction. And the mood I was in, I almost wanted to tempt her. Just you try it, lady…

  “I only fuss because I love you, Kyle. Because I worry about you.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I worry about you and Dan both. All the time. Sometimes I think I might go crazy, worrying about you boys.”

  She gave a little shrug then, as if deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble trying to convince me of something I steadfastly refused to believe, and she stood. Shoulders slumped, she moved to the cabinet beside the refrigerator, and returned to her place at the dining room table with an empty glass and an unopened bottle of Wild Turkey.

  She sat down again, across from me.

  Suddenly my mother’s body began to hitch with violent sobs. For several long and very awkward minutes she hid her face, and at first I thought she might be having a seizure.

  “Mom?” I said. “Are you…are you okay?”

  I almost expected her to tell me something had happened to Dan.

  “Mom?”

  Her hands came away from her face at last, and in the candlelight her tears glistened on her cheeks like a dozen slimy snail-trails.

  She looked horrible. So worn out. Old and tired.

  “Mom, what is it? What’s happened? Are you okay?”

  “No, Kyle,” she said finally, her voice thick with tears and snot. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all.”

  My brow furrowed. I said nothing, just waited to see if she might explain further.

  “It’s all gone downhill so fast, since that night of the Apple Gala. My God. Everything’s just been building up and building up…I can’t keep it inside anymore…”

  “The Apple Gala?” My jaw dropped. My heart began to race. “Wh-what are you talking about, Mom?”

  “Everything. It’s just turned so bad since that night. Everything. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did. If I’d only known…I never would have…”

  Again I asked her: “M-mom…please…what are you talking about?”

  “There’s some things I have to tell you, Kyle. Some things I’ve…d-d-done…that I’m not very proud of.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, my voice so weak and uneven I barely even heard it myself.

  “I can’t go on like this. I have to tell someone. And who better than my youngest son…my dear, precious Kyle.”

  Her hands reached out to me, but then dropped to the table as if she no longer had the energy to go all the way with her gesture. Her empty glass rattled upon the table. The candle wobbled back and forth. She started crying again, her thick, wet sobs echoing off the kitchen sink, off the refrigerator behind her, off the scuffed tile floor.

  And then she began to let it all flow out of her, as if she knew this was her last chance to confess all of her sins, lest she keep them inside forever…

  “It actually goes back even farther than the Apple Gala,” she told me, though her glassy-eyed gaze seemed to go right through me once again. “I mean, that’s when it all started, but technically it began long before that. The little slut’s death was just the turning point. When the shit really started hitting the fan. But all of it was set into motion…oh, it goes way back to early summer, I guess. May or June, at least, right around the time your brother graduated…”

  “What—” I started.

  “Back when he was with her.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Mom,” I said, urging her to continue although I did not want to hear anymore—I could go the rest of my life without hearing another godawful word of this, if my suspicions were correct as to where it might be leading—but I had to. I had to know what she was getting at even if it killed me. “Tell me what you did…what did you—”

  “Shhh,” said Mom, holding a long skinny finger to her lips. It trembled in front of her mouth like a dying branch in a cold winter wind, but her gesture was nonetheless sincere. “Listen, Kyle. Just be quiet for a minute, and listen. Please.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ve done a bad thing,” said my mother. “It’s something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.”

  “Mom—”

  “Shh,” she said again. She winced, as if my hoarse whisper caused her head to throb.

  I began to gnaw at my nails as she told her story…

  “You know how I’ve always told you that everything I do, I do it for you and Dan? I’ve always meant that, Kyle. I always will. But you see, darling, mothers don’t always make the right decisions. We do our best, but we are far from perfect.”

  I nodded, not understanding at all but pretending I did so she would continue.

  “It’s been like one great big row of dominoes,” she said. “One falls, it hits the next, on and on and you can’t stop it…Jesus…no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop it…”

  “Stop what, Mom?” I said. “Please tell me…”

  “I’m talking about this whole godforsaken mess,” she said. “With the Rourke girl. And Dan. And now Deputy Mike and this Calvin Mooney fellow…I never meant for it to go this far…”

  The temperature of the room seemed to rise thirty or forty degrees. I could feel the heat radiating out from that single candle, could feel its warmth upon my cheeks like the hottest fires of Hell, and I wanted to run out into the midnight rain and let it soak me with its cleansing flood. I did not want to hear anymore.

  But I had to.

  “Dan was involved,” I said, under my breath. A tear ran down my cheek. “Oh, God. I knew it.”

  Mom gave me another sad little smile. I never knew if she heard me or not. She still had not opened her bottle of Wild Turkey, but she kept glancing down at it every few seconds while she spoke as if it held the answers to all of her problems.

  “There used to be a time,” Mom said, and her voice came out gruff, from somewhere down in her chest. She coughed gently, then started over, speaking slowly and carefully, as if she only had one chance to get this right, “There used to be a time…when a girl got pregnant before she was married…she was considered a slut. Having a child ‘out of wedlock,’ they called it. A girl got herself in a predicament like that, she was the talk of the whole town. They called her all kinds of filthy names. She was a whore. An ‘easy lay.’ Good girls just didn’t do things like that…”

  She took a deep breath, said, “I should know. I was Midnight’s own Hester Prynne, at least for a little while. And your brother was my Pearl.”

  I could not comprehend Mom’s analogy at the time. Though I understood what she meant all the same. My eyes grew wide.

  She laughed, a sick wet sound that sent a chill down my spine. “Yes. It’s true. Do the math sometime, Kyle. Your father and I, we were young…stupid…”

  Mom seemed to be lost in her own thoughts for a minute. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, but she wiped them away with the back of one hand.

  “I’ll never forget the look on your father’s face when we decided to
tell my parents. Your Grandpa Ballard, he was as old-fashioned as they come. Always said that any guy who didn’t respect me, he’d be waiting for them with a shotgun. And I believed him. Your daddy was as white as a sheet that day we offered to fix dinner for them. I guess they should have known we were buttering them up for something. They just had no clue we were about to tell them they were gonna be grandparents before they were forty.”

  Mom sniffled a bit, glanced out the window over the sink. The rain batted at the glass like something malevolent. Thunder shook the house, and I could feel it in the ground beneath my feet.

  She said, “Your dad offered to do the dirty work, but I couldn’t let him. They were my parents, after all. And God, he was so scared.” Again with her sick little laugh. I shuddered. “Halfway through dinner—I’ll never forget, Daddy had just asked me to pass the green beans and your father nearly tripped over himself getting them for him—I brought it up. Out of the blue. Because I knew if I didn’t, I might never get up the nerve. ‘Mommy, Daddy,’ I said, as nonchalant as you please, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  “You should have seen your father’s face. He was just as surprised as my parents at first, I think. And then Daddy looked at him. Just turned…real slow…and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Oh, really, now?’ Boy, did your father look like he wanted to cry. Like he would have rather been on the other side of the world than standing over Daddy with that bowl of green beans in his hands. He looked like a lost, scared little boy. But then he just nodded. Said, ‘It’s true.’ And practically ran back to his chair.

  “Your grandpa took it better than we thought he would. Oh, he wasn’t happy. Not at all. But he just calmly asked while Mama looked on and never said a word the whole time, ‘Well, I reckon you’re gonna marry her, ain’tcha, Emmett?’ Daddy was always so Southern, sometimes you could barely understand what he was saying even if you’d grown up under the same roof as him all your life. Your father didn’t hesitate, when Daddy asked him that. He just nodded and nodded and kept on nodding like a damn fool. I had to kick him under the table to get him to stop.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat, tried to imagine my mother as a very scared, very pregnant teenager. It wasn’t easy. I tried to imagine my father as anything but the strong, fearless military hero I had known. And that was even harder.