I Will Send Rain (5 page)

Fred heard an engine outside. The wheeze of creaking metal car doors.

Birdie stood in the doorway of the other bedroom, which must have been where the children slept, the cradle left behind along with a torn mattress on the floor. She imagined being here with Cy, how they could pretend they were in a house of their own. It would be better than the barn, romantic and dangerous at the same time.

Fred raced back in and pulled her arm.

“What is it?”

From the window she saw two men she didn't recognize in dirty clothes and leather gloves, one carrying a crowbar, the other a hacksaw.

“Hey, McGuiness. What about the tin up here?”

“Can you get an edge? Yeah, let's pull it.”

Birdie held Fred's shoulders, unsure whether to run or hide. Fred covered his ears against the terrible shriek of nails giving way as the men peeled a sheet of tin from the front of the house.

“Let's go,” Birdie whispered.

McGuiness stepped inside just as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He laughed a little, and Birdie was close enough to smell his beery breath. He was missing half his front tooth.

“Well,” he said. “Looks like we was beaten to the punch.”

“We're going,” Birdie said. She tried to walk around him, but he stood his ground, sucked his teeth at Birdie. She felt he could see through her pale pink dress and knew all that she and Cy had done together. Shame felt like thousands of tiny needles pressing on her skin.

With an exaggerated bow, McGuiness moved to let them pass, and Birdie and Fred ran, leaving the scavengers to take what they would.

*   *   *

B
IRDIE DIDN'T WANT
to go home—the run-in with that man too fresh—so she followed Fred, who tugged her hand. He seemed to have something he wanted her to see. They walked north on Gulliver Road into the land vacated by the suitcase farmers, men who used to show up once for planting, once for harvest. Rain follows the plow, everyone said so. Tractors ran all through the night, disk plows slicing through the prairie. But the rain had stopped, the fields left fallow, and now it was a wasteland of bitten topsoil and sand dunes, the road itself barely discernible. It was early in the day but the eroded earth was hot underfoot. Birdie ran to catch up with Fred, who had scampered down an embankment into an irrigation ditch.

“You're not taking me to see some silly animal bones or something, are you?”

Fred turned and pointed, and she could see something glinting in the sun, up high in the remains of a sun-bleached cottonwood tree. They crossed the dead field and Birdie squinted up at a mass of tangled metal in the skeletal tree.

“What is it?” she asked.

Fred flapped his arms like wings and grinned.

She looked again.

“Crows?”

He nodded.

With nothing growing, no hay or twigs or leaves lying about, the crows had chosen the most plentiful resource: barbed wire, which littered the landscape, poking up through the drifts or hanging from buried posts. A giant barbed-wire nest.

“Isn't that something,” she said. Why it made her feel better to see the nest she couldn't say, but she liked the stubborn way it looked. “Thanks, Freddie.”

He raised his eyebrows together in quick succession until she laughed. He'd first noticed the nest months ago, and he sat out here every so often at the base of the dead tree, motionless, until a crow flew in. After the men had bombed the skies and killed the birds, he was relieved the nest was still occupied.

“I'm thirsty,” Birdie said. “You coming?”

He wanted to hold her hand the way he used to, but he knew he was too old for that.

*   *   *

“T
HE RABBITS,”
J
ACK
said. He smoothed his hand over his folded napkin, a faint brown stain on its corner.

“The rabbits,” Styron said, taking a bite of a donut, the sugar coating the top of his lip. “The little critters are everywhere.”

Styron had been fascinated by the overrun of rabbits, the plaguelike nature of it. Only out here. But it was more than that. In those quiet dark moments before the sun came up, he knew the Panhandle had changed him and he couldn't imagine going back to East Coast life. What would he do, wear a suit and become a banker like everyone he used to know? He was different, wilder. The land was huge, the sky unpredictable, the elements punishing, and he had come to believe that it was good to feel small against all that. He could see opportunity even if no one else could.

“So they are.”

Jack sipped his coffee and glanced around at the empty tables. Ruth's was the name of both the restaurant and the bar next door, where old Ruth herself, all four feet ten of her with her white bun and red lipstick, tended bar. Her daughter, Jeanette, ran the café, always ready with a caustic laugh and an easy sway of her hips. Jeanette's husband, Dwight, worked at the grain elevator; he was a charmed fiddle player who, when drunk, would often let his fists loose on Jeanette. Jack had seen the black eyes from under her heavy face powder.

At the counter, Jeanette drawled mm-hmms to two farmers as she dried cups and saucers.

“What did they have to lose?” he heard her say. “I mean, good Lord. The whole sorry bunch of them.”

Half the town had a crush on Jeanette. Jack wished Samuel Bell wasn't such a goddamn upright citizen. If you were going to covet your neighbor's wife, it sure would feel better if your neighbor was a son of a bitch like Dwight.

“Boss?”

Jack focused on Styron. “There are a lot of rabbits, yes.”

“And people eat them, right?” Styron said.

“Yes, Styron, people eat them.” Jack didn't have the patience for Styron's antics today. He felt sluggish, the coffee not yet kicking in. “You have sugar on your lip.”

Styron wiped his face with his napkin, and still the sugar clung. “So I was thinking…”

Jack clunked his forehead down against the table. “Just get on with it.”

“Come on, hear me out,” Styron said.

Jeanette sauntered over with the pot of coffee. She was pretty, still, despite years with Dwight.

“More for you, Mayor? Or something to eat? You look a little pale.”

“I feel a little pale,” he said. “I'll have a bowl of chili. And more coffee.”

“You ever serve rabbit here, Jeanette?” Styron asked. His voice came out too high, like a boy's, and he reached quickly for his coffee.

Jack shook his head. “Don't you mind him.”

“Well, no, Mr. Styron, no, we don't. You don't see something you like?” She cocked her hip and Jack felt sad for her then, for the gesture of her younger hopeful self.

“Just thinking about our current abundance is all,” Styron said stiffly.

“Plenty of people skinning and eating what they catch these days,” Jeanette said, nodding hello to the fellows who walked in. “Just not sure they want to see it on the menu.” She walked away calling back, “I'll get that chili to you, Mayor.”

“Out with it,” Jack said to Styron.

“Okay. People are angry about the drought, and here are these little animals multiplying, hopping around destroying gardens and what little crops are growing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And people are struggling. Rabbits are meat.”

“Styron—”

“An event. A roundup.”

“A roundup?”

“We round up all the rabbits. Pen them in.”

“We?”

“Divide up the meat at the end. Make it festive. It'll be a sporting event. A hunt.”

“It's not a hunt if they're in a pen.” Jack was already unsettled by the idea.

Jeanette returned with coffee and a small chipped bowl of chili.

“Don't worry, I'm not listening,” she said.

As Jeanette walked away, Jack leaned in and lowered his voice. “You're talking about a bloodbath.”

“Rodents,” Styron said.

“Hares,” Jack said.

“Pests. Whatever they are. Besides, it's not a big deal for these folks to kill animals.”

“Jesus, Styron.”

Styron lifted his hands in defense. “I bet people would come from all over the county for it. All's I'm saying.”

Even though he usually drank it black, Jack dropped a sugar cube into his coffee. He pushed the chili away, the smell turning his stomach.

And then there she was. Annie Bell. Walking down First in a blue dress and matching hat, her eyes cast down but her pace brisk, a paper sack in her arm. As she neared Ruth's, she looked in and caught Jack staring. With a curious tilt of her head, she smiled back.

“I'll see you back at the office,” he said to Styron, surprising himself as he sprang up from the table.

“Wait, what? What about the rabbits?”

Jack clumsily counted coins and spilled them onto the table.

“Do whatever you want.”

*   *   *

A
NNIE NEEDED WHITE
thread, pins, lard, and cornmeal. Or so she'd told Samuel. She did need those things, but not today, not enough to make a separate trip into town. But standing in her hot kitchen, having swept the floorboards again, and put the bread to rise and chased grasshoppers from the windowsill, and snapped the beans, she thought about the Woodrows on a road to where it was green. Sure, there was no perfect life waiting for them in the West. She imagined them foraging for grubs and weeds in a highway ditch to fill their bellies on the way. But there had to be relief in leaving the drought behind. She wiped the hair from her face and felt a soft itchy flutter in her chest, like the beating wings of moths trapped in a lantern. I must get out, she thought. And once she had thought it, she couldn't shake it. She waited until Samuel had finished his lunch.

“Do you need anything while I'm out?” she asked, trying to slow her breath.

“I'm all right for now,” he said. He licked peanut butter from his fingertips. “Oh, you know what? I need some stamps. If you could swing by the post office. You might ask after Edward's wife. Her joints are bad again.” He pushed away from the table, rubbed his hands together and stretched his arms overhead. “I'll see you later.”

Samuel felt himself pretending. All he could really think about were the dreams that visited him almost nightly now, the dreams of ferocious rain.

*   *   *

A
NNIE HAD RUSHED
to clear his plate and it clanged against the sink as the door swung shut behind him. He hadn't noticed anything. She ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. She splashed water on her face and washed under her arms and changed into a navy blue dress, one she hadn't worn since the Judson wedding two years ago, its sailor collar still flattering when she checked in the flecked mirror above her dresser. And she opted for a cloche hat, reddening some as she put it on. She was older than pretty, she knew, yet that didn't help temper the longing for something just outside of her periphery, something she could not yet name. Annie licked her lips. She had never in her life worn lipstick, but she wished she had some now, a little pink.

Samuel was out in the field tending to fragile shoots, which should have been heading but were barely jointing. There wasn't much to do, but he was still out from dawn to dusk every day. More and more, he saw the drought as a test of faith. More and more, she feared the drought would free this tight coil of restlessness in her, expose her as someone less than steadfast.

Annie had stuffed the hat into her handbag and skittered to the car. The tires spun and dust rose up around her until she jolted forward, onward, toward town.

*   *   *

A
NNIE WALKED QUICKLY
along First, as if she had somewhere to be. She felt the McCleary brothers watch her as she passed, even though that was sort of the point. What was she doing, anyway? Trying to be different from the farm wife that she was? Her head was roasting in her dark hat and there was a pebble in her shoe cutting into her heel. The afternoon was hot and quiet. Her errands were done, all her purchases made in fifteen minutes, so she walked, the grain elevator looming at the end of the street. Ruth's was the last place on the block, and she considered stopping for an iced tea and an oatmeal cookie to resurrect her mood. But she couldn't stop, because of how it might look—dressed up and whiling away the afternoon alone—not to mention the fifteen cents they couldn't spare.

When she glanced in the cloudy front window, there, not for the first time, was the mayor looking right at her. Jack Lily. She smiled without showing her teeth, and kept walking.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Bell,” he said.

She stopped and turned, shifting the paper sack to her hip as if it were a baby.

“Oh. Hello, Mayor,” she said, registering how quickly he had managed to make it out to the sidewalk. She wished she'd had a chance to blot her face with a handkerchief.

“Solving all our problems?” she asked, nodding toward Ruth's.

He chuckled and crossed his arms. “Trying to rein in my deputy. He thinks everything deserves a plaque or a parade.”

“Nothing wrong with a parade,” she said. She should have kept going then, but there she stood, a tension between them both awful and delicious. “You can call me Annie.”

“Can I carry that for you? Help you to your car?”

No one who saw them would have thought anything of it, and yet Annie knew different. What could people see anyway? They couldn't see the weight of a glance or the impurity of a thought. They were in plain view, but the town might just have easily fallen away. “No, no. I'm all right,” she said. But she didn't move on.

“I don't mean to keep you.” Jack glanced at the towering grain elevator at the end of the street. “Where are you headed?”

Annie could feel sweat above her lip as she looked both ways and then back to Jack Lily, his pale, smooth hands. Even after years out here, he hadn't lost the refined city way about him, an imprint of his old life in Chicago.