I started telling myself I could end it all right then and there. As if the McClaines were some kind of weird extension of Iraq. As if it was all the same fucking war.
On the narrow end of the building, I eased open the metal door a foot or so, then slammed it shut as hard as I could. While the boom was still echoing inside, I raced around to the identical door at the front, grabbed it, pulled it open, and banged it shut.
This time a bullet came ripping through the door. But I was already running back to the narrow end. I figured I had them off balance now. Counting the bay, there were three entrances: Where would I appear next? They couldn’t keep their eyes on all three entrances at the same time, and I was hoping either Phil or Bubby would be watching the open bay, and the other one would be watching the door he’d just now put a bullet through.
I yanked the other door open, dropped down low and fired into the nearest body, which was Bubby’s. I caught him in the ribs, which left him staggering to his right. Phil was facing the front door but immediately spun toward me. Luckily Bubby was between him and me now, so Phil’s first shot went wide. I put another bullet into Bubby, who crumpled to his knees, and then went down onto his hands as well, with blood spurting out of his chest and onto the concrete floor.
With Bubby down, Phil and I had open shots at each other, except that now Phil slid over for some cover behind Pops and the I-beam. But instead of shooting at me, Phil hunkered down low and put his gun to Pops’ head and said something to him. But what Phil didn’t know about Pops was that this old man could still walk so fast that his grandson couldn’t keep up with him. This old man could shovel snow for three hours without a pause, long after his grandson petered out and had to take a break. This old man had been put together with baling wire and fence posts, and he loved me more than anything else in the world.
That old man balled up a fist and drove it hard against the inside of Phil’s knee, and then, like a tenth of a second later, leaned sideways and pushed his head and shoulders between Phil’s legs, driving him into the open. I aimed for his head but missed, and put the next one in his shoulder. His gun arm went limp and he went down onto one knee while trying to switch the gun into his left hand. But Pops made a grab for it, twisted hard, and wrenched the gun free. He stood up, breathing fast and standing a little bit crooked, and aimed that chrome pistol at McClaine’s head. But McClaine wasn’t going anywhere.
“Go get your truck and pull it inside here,” Pops called to me. “It’s parked on the other side of the office.” He handed me the 9 mm. “Take this,” he said. “It’s got more shots left. I’ll take the revolver.”
I said, “What do I need more shots for?”
“You don’t know who else is out there,” he said. “They might not’ve come alone.”
So I switched weapons with him and went running out into the rain. As soon as the rain hit me I started to shake and felt like I couldn’t get any air into my lungs. I was cold as hell all of a sudden, shivering like a drenched cat. McClaine’s Avalon was parked behind the office too, but I had all I could think about trying not to freak out while I climbed into the truck and drove back to the bay entrance.
Pops was waiting there for me, and waved me to a stop before I turned inside. I put down the window and looked out. “I changed my mind,” he said, and handed me a set of keys. “Leave the truck here and bring the car in instead.”
He didn’t want any blood in my vehicle. Didn’t want my muddy tread marks on the concrete. But what were we going to do with the McClaines? I was pretty sure Bubby was done for, but Phil only had a shoulder wound.
Anyway, I climbed out of the truck and hustled back toward the Avalon, hoping Pops had a plan of some kind. I had a strange feeling running through the rain and the dark, I’m not sure how to describe it. My body felt heavy, but I was also tingling all over, and my movements all seemed to be in slow motion, but not hard or difficult, just kind of dreamlike.
Then I unlocked the Avalon and climbed inside. It smelled like cigarette smoke and air freshener. As soon as I turned the ignition, the music came on. McClaine had Sirius Radio, and it was tuned to a classic rock station. That guy with the really high voice, Christopher Cross, he was singing about sailing away somewhere. It was all just too surreal. I wanted to break out laughing but I also couldn’t stop shivering.
I heard what sounded like a single muted pop a couple seconds before the Avalon turned the corner into the building. My breath caught and I wondered if Pops was okay, but then I turned the car into the bay and there he was in the headlights, holding the revolver and looking down at Phil McClaine laying belly-down on the floor.
I pulled up to within ten feet of them, put the car in park and then felt like I couldn’t move. If I moved, all of that mess in front of me would be real.
Pops came walking toward me then and laid the revolver on the hood. Then he pulled off his T-shirt and motioned for me to put down the window. I did, and he handed me his shirt. His body was white and his chest sunken. He looked so small and weak to me then, and he was walking sort of lopsided, holding his left shoulder higher than the other one.
“Wipe the steering wheel, the keys, anything else you touched. Leave the keys in the ignition.”
I did what he told me, then climbed out. I couldn’t help staring down at Phil and the puddle of blood around his head. Pops struggled to pull his shirt back on. “You know this is the only way it could have ended good for you,” he said.
“I didn’t expect it to end good.”
“I did,” he said.
I kept standing there, feeling sort of like I wasn’t even in my body anymore. Like the real me was over in the corner somewhere, watching it all.
Pops gathered up the box of money, then the revolver off the hood of the Avalon. With his foot he nudged the chrome pistol across the floor so it lay closer to Phil. “Let’s go,” he said.
“We’re just going to leave them here?”
“They’re a Chinese problem now, son. Let’s go.”
We walked out toward the bay door. I turned around to take a last look inside. And that’s when I saw them. All those muddy footprints.
I bent over and pulled my shoelaces loose. Pops said, “What are you up to now?”
“Look inside.”
He did, and it took him about five seconds to understand. “Good thinking,” he said. He bent toward his own shoes, but then he winced and kind of moaned “Ahh” and put a hand up to his chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. A little pinch is all.”
“Go get in the truck, Pops. I’ll take care of this.”
“Why not,” he said. “I guess I wiped up after you a good many times when you were little, didn’t I?”
“You always have. Go take a rest.”
I pulled off my socks then, set my shoes around the outside corner and off the concrete, and held the socks in the rain till they were soaking wet. Then I went inside and crawled around on my hands and knees, smearing every one of my and Pops’ prints into a pale brown circle. It wasn’t a perfect job but perfect wasn’t necessary. It was quick and it was enough.
I put my shoes on again and went back to the truck. Pops was sitting in the passenger seat, so I tossed my wet socks onto the floor, climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. I needed the headlights to get back down the slippery road safely. Pops told me how the moment he’d pulled the truck up alongside the Avalon earlier, Phil McClaine was at his door with a gun pointed at his head. “If you’d kept the revolver like I wanted you to,” I said.
He shook his head. “Could’ves and would’ves never accomplished a thing. We got it done. That’s all that matters.”
We were maybe ten yards from the bottom of the lane when a figure came out from the side darkness to unhook the chain.
“Who the fuck is that?” Pops said, squinting through the windshield.
“Donnie,” I told him.
“Son of a bitch.”
“What do I
do?”
“Look at him grinning. He thinks it’s a McClaine boy driving.”
“Should I drive through?”
“Pull on up beside him.” Pops laid the revolver atop his leg, ready to put a bullet through the window if he had to.
I did, then held the brake down. Donnie walked up to the window, grinning all the way. He had to get his face right up to the side window to recognize me through the film of rain. Then his grin disappeared, kind of twitching a little and fading away as sure as if the rain had washed it right off his face.
He turned back the way he had come, taking long strides at first, then breaking into a run. I drove out to the end of the lane and there was Bubby’s pickup parked along the shoulder. Donnie hopped into the passenger side, and within seconds the pickup was squealing away.
“Better follow them,” Pops said.
Following Donnie and the truck wasn’t so much a follow as a chase. The moment the other pickup’s driver saw my headlights turn their way, they floored it.
Pops sat up close to the windshield, still holding tight to the revolver. “This is no time to drive like your grandmother, son. Keep up.”
The driver turned off the main road at the first left. After that we flew down black asphalt single lanes, squealing and sliding through turn after turn. Sometimes we lost sight of their taillights, then picked them up again and tried to close the distance. We were maybe four miles out in the country when the driver took a left turn too sharp, fishtailed and overcorrected. I saw the taillights turn over in a circle and a half before they both blinked out in pink puffs of glowing smoke.
“Pull over here,” Pops said. We were maybe fifty feet back from the upside-down pickup truck. “Keep your headlights on. But if you see a vehicle coming up behind or toward you, kill the lights and lay down on the seat.”
He sprung open the door and climbed out, taking the revolver with him. I watched him walking that fast short-legged walk of his, but there was something not right about it, something a little lopsided, almost as if he had to shove himself forward with every other step.
He went to the driver’s side first, knelt down in the gravel and looked inside and then put his hand in. Then pulled it out again and walked around to the other side, which was in the grass over top of the drainage ditch.
He didn’t even go the whole way up to the window, but stood there about three feet from it looking at something in the grass. Then he looked back at me. I thought about climbing out and calling to him, but before I could, here he comes back my way.
He comes right up to the window. “If I ask you to do something for me, Rusty, will you do it? One last thing, no questions asked?”
“Pops, what are you—?”
“Russell. One last thing. Last thing I will ever ask of you.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that.”
“And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. And do it gladly.”
“I know.”
“I want you to lay down on the seat now and not look up till I come back.”
“Pops, no. I’m not going to do that.”
“Goddamn it, son. One last thing, that’s all I’m asking of you.”
“Who was driving the truck?”
“Shelley.”
“She’s dead?”
He nodded.
“What about Donnie?”
“Whyn’t you cut your lights, all right? Then wait here till I get back. Is that too much to ask?”
“Tell me why, Pops.”
“Damn it, Russell. Do you love your children?”
“You know I do.”
“You want to be able to look at their faces and not see anything except those beautiful smiles? Not see all the shit that’s taking up all the space in your memory right now? Do you want that or not?”
“Of course I want that.”
“Then cut your lights, son.”
So I did.
Pops reached in and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back. You lay down now and sit tight.”
I leaned down on the seat with my face to the beat-up old leather. It was still warm from where Pops had been sitting. I laid there tense and waiting for a gunshot, but all I heard was the rain on the roof and hood.
Then his footsteps crunching back over the gravel. And then the side door popping open. “Sit up and start driving,” he said.
He climbs in breathing hard, and I can see him wincing when he twists around to pull the door shut.
“Where’s the revolver?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Pops, you can’t leave it there.”
“It’s unregistered, son. Now get us the hell out of here.”
On our way back through town, about ten minutes from his apartment, he had me pull to the curb about a block from a 7-Eleven. “I’ll walk home from here,” he said.
“It’s still raining pretty good.”
“I get a hot chocolate and a Slim Jim here every night. One for me and one for Margie at the front desk. Rain or no rain, it makes no difference to me.”
“Yeah but at close to midnight? Without a hat or an umbrella or anything?”
“Anytime between ten and four. Old men don’t sleep much. Don’t pay much attention to the weather either. I expect you’ll find that out yourself someday.”
He reached for the door handle then, but I reached out too and put my hand on his arm. “Why were you walking like that?” I said.
“Like what?”
“Back at the wreck. And even before it. Like you’re hurt or something.”
“I don’t know, Rusty. Arthritis, sciatica, Parkinson’s—take your pick.”
“Yeah but you didn’t walk like that till tonight. It’s even worse than when we left the plant.”
“I’m getting older every minute—what can I say?”
“Donnie was still alive, wasn’t he? What did you have to do?”
He looked up through the blurry windshield awhile, just sat there staring at the darkness and the watery neon lights. The rain kept drumming down and I realized suddenly how much I liked the sound of it. How grateful I was for the sound itself and the coolness of the air and the fact that Pops and I were sitting there together listening to it.
And I couldn’t help myself, Spence, but I started crying. And I started shaking. And I kind of collapsed up against the steering wheel and felt these rolling bubbles of pain coming up from my chest and out with every sob.
This went on for maybe thirty seconds or so with Pops not saying a word. Then he leaned toward me and pulled me away from the steering wheel. He clamped my cheeks in those thick, rough hands of his. And he put his face close to mine.
“Cindy,” he said.
“Dani,” he said.
“Emma,” he said. “And one more on the way.” Then he looked at me and asked, “You need to hear those names again?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t.”
He gave me a little pat on the cheek and smiled at me. “Just go on about your business like nothing’s happened,” he told me. “We’ll talk after all this blows over.” Then he climbed out and walked his crooked walk straight up the sidewalk.
I let him get inside the store before I drove forward again. I drove real slow, barely moving, and watched him give a little wave to the guy behind the counter. Watched him cross over to the hot chocolate machine and put a cup under the spout. Watched the guy behind the counter talking what looked like a blue streak, and Pops standing there nodding and smiling with his back to him, watching his cup fill up to the brim.
Back home a little while later, I parked in the garage and used the remote to put the door down behind me. What I wanted was to just sit there awhile by myself. My clothes were soaked and I was shivering again despite having the heater on. But I knew that if I stayed in the garage too long, and if Cindy had heard me pulling in, she’d be out to check on me. So I grabbed up my wet socks and tiptoed inside as quiet as I could. In th
e kitchen I wrung my socks out over the sink, then went to the girls’ bathroom, stripped down naked and toweled off. I stuffed my wet clothes in the girls’ laundry hamper, tiptoed into my bedroom, and thank God Cindy was sound asleep. I slipped a drawer open, got out a pair of underwear and a T-shirt. Cindy didn’t wake up till I was crawling in beside her.
“How’s he doing?” she said.
For a moment my mind went blank and I didn’t know who she was talking about. Then I said, “He’s okay. Just needed some company for a while.”
“That’s good. Night, babe.” She reached out to lay her arm across my chest. I was afraid she might feel how cold I was, but she didn’t. She went right back to sleep.
I have a question for you, Spence.
Wherever you are these days, do you ever feel alone?
If you do, you know what an awful feeling it is. It’s the absolute worst. I remember feeling it when my mother died, and for a long time afterward. Then one day I woke up happy to be with Pops and Gee, happy to have the life they were giving me, and after that I didn’t feel alone anymore. And thought I never would again.
Lots of times in Iraq I felt it too. Despite the closeness of our unit, despite the friendship I felt with you, it was easy to feel alone over there too. At night in my cot. On patrol. In the latrine. First thing in the morning when I’d wake up to the heat and noise and remember where I was.
Then I came home to Pops and Gee, then Cindy and the girls, and suddenly it seemed like I didn’t have the time to be lonely anymore. Except at night sometimes, like when I was dreaming I was awake and the air was too hot to breathe and I thought I could hear somebody creeping around outside, looking for a way to pitch an IED inside.
Then things finally smoothed out for me around the time I got my degree. I never told anybody, not even Cindy, but that graduation meant a lot more to me than being out of college. It was a turning point, I guess. I walked across that stage, then down onto the floor, then outside into the cool spring air, and I felt like I was finally back. Like I had left all that awful loneliness behind.
Only the Rain Page 16
