The Drought Read online

  If she went home, she was a scared girl who couldn’t take a joke—she could already hear Barry mocking her. Determined not to be chased away, she nodded yes to Jar’s request and the three of them, beaten, hot, covered in dirt and sweat, made their way down the trail.

  Graffiti marked the underside of Flatrock Bridge and discarded beer cans lined the grass below. The Llano River ran deep here. In late spring this was Texas Tech territory and it was not unusual to see a row of tanned boys jockeying for a turn to dive or flip from the bridge and the chance to impress the pretty girls lounging in the sun below. The younger kids from Junction were forced to cool themselves down at Scudder's Hole. A year without rain had taken its toll. There were no crowds; no one waiting to jump from the bridge, the water was too shallow.

  Barry eyed the shrinking pool of water, shrugged and waded into its coolness. He sank down. The water came over his head and the heat slipped mercifully away. Aside from the dull ache behind his left eye, he almost felt normal. When he reemerged, he slicked his hair back and called for Jar to join him.

  Unable to take the heat another minute, Jar cast an apologetic look at Suzy and ran into the water. Suzy watched from the edge, splashing water on her feet and arms. She tried to play it cool but her eyes never left Jar. As much as she wanted to convince herself she had stayed because she was strong, the embarrassing truth was she just wanted to spend the afternoon with Jared Riley.

  Belly-crawling through the shallow water, Jar returned humming the theme song from Jaws. Smiling, Suzy kicked water at his face. He gave a loud whoop, grabbed her tan leg and tried to drag her into the water. She squealed when the water hit her jean shorts and begged him to stop. Self-conscious from the incident in the woods, Jar released her legs and swam away, calling for her to join him in the deeper water. She looked on for a few minutes before wading out to the deeper water. They splashed around in the coolness, forgetting for the moment the heat surrounding them.

  Barry kept his distance from Suzy. Occasionally he would glance out of the corner of his eye and catch a glimpse of her nipples sticking out against her white cotton shirt. The sight caused his blood to pulse and he couldn’t suppress the thoughts that overcame him. He didn’t know what happened to him back in the woods. He had felt like he was outside of himself, almost like he was watching it all unfold, instead of being a participant.

  Now he was wondering what would have happened if Jar hadn’t interfered. Unable to stop himself, he pictured Suzy with her clothes off. His body had a mind of its own and he could feel himself getting harder as the image of him and Suzy got more perverse. Barry submerged himself to his neck and reached into his trunks. As he finished, he looked up just in time to see their friend, Luke Casteel, charging down the trail.

  Luke, seeing Barry partially submerged in the water, ran straight for him. When they hit, they spun under the water like two young crocodiles going into a death roll. They emerged from the roll, sputtering and laughing. Luke beat at his chest and dove away from Barry. He swam toward shore intent on taking Barry’s towel for himself. When he grabbed the towel, the baseball rolled onto the ground. Luke picked it up.

  Barry hollered at his back. “Luke, give it back!”

  That was all Luke needed. His eyes lit up at the chance to play keep away. He moved away with the ball, through the mud and under the bridge.

  Barry followed him. He yelled, “Don’t get it wet Luke! Whatever you do, don’t get it wet!” The panic in Barry’s voice contradicted his earlier disdain for his father. If that ball got wet Barry knew his father would come close to beating him to death.

  Jar, hearing the panic in Barry’s voice turned to see what Luke was doing.

  Unaware of the priceless object he was holding, Luke was throwing the ball high above the water and catching it right before it made contact.

  Barry approached cautiously with his hands in front of him trying to stop Luke from doing anything stupid.

  Laughing, Luke called out, “Hey Barry, you want your ball? Catch!” He cranked his arm back and let the ball fly toward Barry.

  Inspired by fear, Barry ran back and jumped. He almost caught it. The ball brushed past his fingertips, flew over the water, and sailed out of sight into the drainage pipe under the bridge. Barry came down from his jump, landed in a crouch and watched in disbelief as his father’s ball disappeared.

  Luke jumped up and down shouting, “Now that’s what you call a hole in one!”

  Fear made Barry’s heart constrict in his chest. It was difficult to breathe. Collapsing inwardly, he walked toward the drainage pipe. A stale metallic odor greeted him and he hesitated, imagining a long slick tongue emerging from the dark moist interior followed by a contented belch. The ball was not visible.

  Easing his upper body into the hole as far as he could, he displaced the thick layer of mud along the bottom of the pipe. Mud oozed through his fingers as he searched but he couldn’t find the ball. When he reemerged his belly and arms were slicked with sludge. He stood for a moment contemplating the hole but all he could see was an image of his father’s angry face. The strength left his limbs. He leaned against the sloped concrete wall and slid slowly down until his butt rested on the ground.

  Why had he taken the ball? He’d fought the urge for weeks, knowing his father had put it there to tempt him. It’s presence in the house was not chance, Griffin Tanner knew perfectly well Barry and Jar had found a clip of the game in the public library last summer. They had become baseball junkies watching the play over and over again until they got to the point they knew every line by heart. Barry had made the mistake of gushing about Carlton Fisk and the Red Sox in front of his dad.

  The ball was a taunt.

  A well aimed, irresistible taunt.

  Barry couldn’t wait to show it to Jar. The brief moment of awe on Jar’s face when he touched Carlton Fisk’s signature was worth the beating he was sure to get when he went home. Only now, he didn’t have the ball or a way to placate his dad. This was a whole new league of crime. In the past he had always been able to return the missing object. If a beating followed a normal transgression what would happen to him when he faced his father empty handed?

  Luke watched his friend slide to the ground. He approached warily; convinced Barry’s stance was a ruse to get him to come closer, only to tackle him in the mud. Hesitating a few feet back, Luke glanced over at Jar and Suzy with a questioning look.

  Jar made his way over. When he reached Luke, he grabbed his arm and pulled him away half expecting Barry to rise up and pummel their friend into the mud.

  Barry didn’t move.

  In a low voice Jar said, “That ball you threw wasn’t just any baseball, it was from his dad’s collection.” He didn’t elaborate, didn’t mention the World Series, Carlton Fisk, or the home run that made baseball history. The fact the ball came from Griffin Tanner’s collection made the point all on its own.

  The jubilation from moments before slid off Luke’s face. “I didn’t know what it was. Jesus, I didn’t know.” Genuine concern covered Luke’s face as he approached Barry. He squatted down, just staring between his own feet as he cleared his throat. “Hey Barry...” He paused and continued in a low voice. “I didn’t know. I know it ain’t gonna do you any good with your old man, but I’m sorry.”

  Barry looked up with red eyes. He wouldn’t cry in front of his friends, but the look on his face caused them all to flinch. He choked out a laugh and said, “That’s great Luke, maybe they can put that on my tombstone. LWS. Luke Was Sorry.”

  A pained look crossed Luke’s face. Luke idolized Barry as much as Jar did, and the tone in Barry’s voice told him he would never let it go. Luke stood up and backed away. Shrugging his shoulders at Jar, he turned to leave. He had gone a couple of yards when Barry’s voice stopped him.

  “You know what you could do for me, Luke?”

  Luke looked back and waited for Barry to finish.

  “Since you’re so sorry, why don’t you crawl in there and get
my dad’s ball?” Barry gestured to the hole with a wave of his hand, never taking his eyes off of Luke.

  Luke flicked his eyes past Barry and stared at the hole. He mulled it over for a minute, and started walking back.

  Suzy, tired of watching from across the water, splashed over to see if Luke would really go into the hole. She offered her opinion, uninvited, to the glares of Barry and Luke. “He’ll never fit in the pipe, he’s too big.”

  Barry threw her a vicious look. “Shut-up, Psycho, nobody asked you.”

  She opened her mouth to retort when she caught Jar’s eye. He shook his head slightly. Suzy hesitated. She closed her mouth.

  Luke was trying to get a good look into the hole, but the light only penetrated a foot inside the pipe before it was swallowed by shadows. He looked over at Jar, hoping for a reason not to go, but Jar looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. He glanced at Suzy, who shrugged her indifference, and then his eyes met Barry’s cold stare.

  “You said you were sorry, Luke. Prove it.”

  Luke’s face, hardened. He stuck his upper body into the pipe, brought his knees up and eased himself into the drainage pipe. As lean as he was, there wasn’t enough room for him to crawl on all fours. He lowered himself onto his belly and pulled himself through the mud in a modified army crawl. Within minutes he disappeared from sight.

  Jar, Barry and Suzy stood in a huddle outside a gaping hole that by all rights should not have been there. The drainage pipe Luke had so boldly crawled into, until recently, had been submerged beneath the overflowing water of the Llano River. Joining the three in their silent vigil was a fourth presence, the heat. Unperturbed by its role in the unfolding events, it stroked their shoulders, leaving its mark against their tender skin, as it had already done along the mud-cracked banks of the Llano River.

  Chapter Two

  Reserve, Louisiana

  The drought entered quietly, wreaking havoc with the spindly fingers of a miser, its magnitude measured in negatives like lack, want and deficiency. Junction was not alone in its battle against the elements. The heat did not stop at the edge of town, or at the Kimball county line, it spread through southern Texas, crossed over into Louisiana and settled heavily over a region unaccustomed to the prolonged absence of rain. In the small river community of Saint James Parish, the heat became a tangible presence, sidling into the nooks and crannies of everyday life.

  Nathan Singer was a predictable man. Each morning he awoke before dawn to watch the sun rise over his property. He drank his coffee black, from a plastic mug stained brown with resin. The catch phrase, “River Road, the best kept secret of St. James Parish!” emblazoned across the front. He drove the same route around town, heading up the east bank, across the Sunshine Bridge, down the west bank and back to the sheriff’s office where he worked until it was time to have lunch which he always ate at Chick’s diner in town.

  As the sheriff of Reserve he was privileged with personal details about most of the residents and this allowed him the ability to foresee trouble and where it was most likely to come from.

  Over the past few weeks his ability to predict trouble had faltered. The frequency of odd behavior around town had started to rise right alongside the climbing temperatures. It started with a few graves being vandalized out at Saint James cemetery—a common enough crime in an area where most graves were in mausoleums above the ground.

  That alone might not have raised an eyebrow especially since nearly a year earlier, before the temperature spiked, his grandmother’s tomb had been forced open and her jewelry stolen. But the rash of graveyard vandalism wasn’t isolated. It was followed by Dale Thibaudeau streaking buck naked down Main Street and a week later a group of teenagers setting portable toilets on fire. Normally, he would have dismissed that as a prank, local troublemakers cutting loose. But Natalie Trosclair was among the group brought in and she was valedictorian of Reserve’s graduating class.

  If he wasn’t down at Moe’s breaking up a drunken brawl, he was being called in to people’s homes for domestic disturbances. And they were odd disturbances. Lionel Breaud’s wife attacked him with, of all things, a hand mixer. He probably would have gotten away unscathed had it not been for the fact he was incredibly hairy, and at that moment, naked as a Jay bird. Mrs. Breaud was apparently not in the mood for a midday romp when he made his advance. His neighbor, Eli Rawls, drove him to the emergency room with the appliance still attached. Eli later said, “She got one of his teabags, a bit of skin and a whole lot of hair tangled up in-betwinxt those mixers.” So far, Lionel Breaud had not pressed charges against his wife.

  Nathan contemplated these events as he drove along the East Bank toward the Sunshine Bridge. A heavy mist hung over the great river as she flowed eastward toward the Gulf and visibility was low. The mist did not concern him as much as surprise him. He hadn’t seen a thick fog in months. It occurred to him a cold front could be coming in and with it the possibility of rain. Rain. Who would have thought the word could become sacred? Or that a common man would spend time studying the skies, wondering for the first time in his life about rain, where it came from, where it went and silently praying for its return. He turned left onto the bridge.

  The seasons affected people. He didn’t need the odd happenings around town to prove his point. He’d lived in the south long enough to know how oppressive long summers could be. By mid-July people were wishing away the days of summer—wishing away precious days of their own life just for a taste of cooler temperatures. Walking bare-foot, going fishing, staying out late, no school, not a single one of those freedoms mattered on a shade-less noon in the middle of July.

  Last year, when the heat had rolled right through autumn, it had been a curiosity. How long could it last? At that point, no one could have guessed what was coming. Winter rolled in and still the high temperatures. People held out hope with the approach of February and the rainy season, the temperatures would start to drop. February came, but the rainy season didn’t, and the heat rolled on. They had come full cycle. Each day the temperature climbed a degree, like a direct challenge to the people of Reserve. How hot can you handle? This hot? Really? What about this? Hotter?

  He was on the west bank heading back toward Reserve, the coffee mug poised near his lips when a dark figure stepped out of the mist and into the path of the squad car. There was literally no time for thought—no time to slam on the brakes. He dropped the mug of coffee and jerked the wheel, hard, to the right. The coffee hit his lap and spread like warm piss across his crotch and down his leg. He tensed, expecting to hear the telltale thump against the side of his car, but there was no thump. It didn’t seem possible but somehow he had avoided the dark, unmistakably human figure.

  In a dreamlike sequence, he turned his head and looked out the window. Through the haze, no more than six inches from his window, his eyes locked onto a familiar face. The black man didn’t budge, didn’t even flinch, as the car came within kissing distance. Instead, standing inches from what could have been his own death, he smiled at Nathan, lifted his large hand and offered a cheerful farewell wave. The tires found the embankment and began to climb. Nathan wasn’t certain but he thought the man standing in the mist was Nute, a homeless man who lived in the swamp. He turned back toward the windshield just in time to brace himself as the car plunged over the embankment and headed down toward the marsh. He was no expert at crashing cars, but he figured if David Lettermen did a top ten on the best places to crash, a marsh would have to be number one.

  Unfortunately for Nathan, his soft, cushy, number one spot to land was already taken. As the cruiser made its descent on the other side of the embankment, picking up just enough speed to deliver a good dose of whiplash, the headlights pinged off something red sitting at the bottom. Nathan identified the “something” right before his car collided with it. It was the taillights of another car.

  Too late, he gripped the wheel, jerked it to the left (no response), stomped on the brakes (still no response), then swore as the sound of m
etal reconfiguring itself filled the morning. When the cruiser reached its final resting spot, the front grill was laying across the trunk of the other car, the front tires were rotating in midair and the rear tires and back end were wedged into the embankment two feet above good ol’ Louisiana marshland.

  Out of habit, he reached for the gearshift, pushed the lever into park and turned off the ignition. His thoughts took two different paths; the first path shot out toward Nute in anger and frustration. What was that old swamp rat doing in the middle of the road? A deeper voice answered the question. He was waiting for you, Nathan. After all, you’re the most predictable man in Reserve. You drive the same route every morning, everyone knows that. The other path of thought, as shallow as any man’s ego, went out toward his deputy. Daniel was going to have a hay-day over this one.

  The front tires on his vehicle slowed before coming to a complete stop. Dreading the call he had to make and the ridicule that would soon follow, he grabbed the CB to call in the accident. “Hey Loretta, I got an abandoned car out here on the West Bank, just past Hymel. I need a wrecker.” Loretta’s voice came through the static, “Roger that Nathan. I’ll pass it to Stan. Out.” Nathan held the key down ready to make one more admission but reconsidered. Once Stan got here the entire town of Reserve would know about the accident. The details of the incident could wait. He lifted his fingers off the mike and let it fall silent.

  The squad car had created a makeshift bridge from the car beneath him over to the embankment. He swung open the door and looked down. The boggy surface of the marsh and his abhorrence of snakes determined his exit strategy. Instead of climbing down he decided to climb up. He looked over toward the embankment. The fog was still present, but starting to thin.