July Thunder (10 page)

Such things happened everywhere, but in a small town everyone was aware of them. And most of the local people shrugged it off, or found it good for a laugh.

But finding his father there…well, it hadn't put him in a good mood. Although he had to admit that Elijah's little sermon on the street had sounded more temperate than those he remembered from his youth. In fact, Sam hadn't found a thing to disagree with, which nagged at him. Had Elijah lost some of his self-righteousness? Or had Sam exaggerated what he'd heard as a youth?

He didn't know what to make of it. And, like most
people, he wasn't comfortable when things fell out of their tidy mental niches.

Then he remembered what his father had said after Beth's funeral. That phone call hadn't displayed either temperance or love. Punishment for his sins. Right.

Sam didn't know what had hurt him worse that night, the revelation of how Elijah viewed Sam's character, the fact that Elijah clearly didn't give a damn for his feelings, or the inevitable sense of guilt that he might somehow have been responsible for Beth's death.

The memory did its work, though, reinstalling the anger and ice in Sam's heart.

By two that afternoon, however, he was ready to turn in his badge and join a monastery of any brand other than his father's. There was something mightily depressing about being called out on domestic disturbances that involved your friends and neighbors, people you actually knew.

The Tenants, Foster and Pat, who lived just four doors down from his own house, got into it over their burned-out yard. Their raised voices drew the attention of a neighbor who called the sheriff. By the time Sam arrived on the scene, they were in the front yard, threatening each other with garden implements and screaming at the top of their lungs.

Sam pulled up and climbed out. Neither of them noticed him, so he slammed his door as hard and loud as he could. That got their attention.

“We don't need you, Sam,” Fos said flatly. “We're just arguing.”

“I know.” Sam was careful to amble slowly in their direction. “It would be kind of nice if you'd put down the rake and the shovel, though.” Pat, who was holding the rake like a baseball bat, and Fos, who was holding the spade like a battering ram, seemed to jerk awake.

“Oh, jeez,” Fos said, tossing the spade aside. “I was just going to dig up the dead shrubs.”

Pat lowered the rake. “Like hell you were. You said you were going to dig up every inch of the sod.”

“The damn stuff's dead anyway! I told you not to buy it. Damn it, four thousand dollars on grass! I told you it was too dry.”

“How was I supposed to know they were going to tell us we couldn't water? What am I, a mind reader? Besides, you signed the check.”

“Only to shut you up!”

They were getting into it again, and Sam deftly inserted himself in the middle. “You know,” he said with a smile, “I could sure use a cold drink. Pat, you got any of that great ice tea of yours?”

A minute later they were in the house. Sam made them sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table and mediated as best he could. It took a while, but they calmed down. Pat and Fos, as far as he knew, got along pretty well most of the time. Whatever had set this off wasn't usual for them.

He'd hardly left the Tenants imitating reasonable domestic bliss when he got a call that Ike and Marcia Leip were at each other's throats. He knew Ike and Marcia from the community theater, where he occasionally helped build sets and props. They were both a little freaky, given to extravagant “artistic temperament,” but they'd always seemed to get along well.

That afternoon they weren't getting along well at all. In fact, they had devolved into throwing things at each other. Sam was past caring what had started it; he basically gave them a choice: solve it, or somebody was going to jail.

They solved it. In fact, they both seemed pretty embarrassed to have Sam involved, even though Marcia had been the one to call the police.

It was a weird world. Stepping back outside, though, Sam had an idea what was getting to people. The smoke was a constant irritant now, making eyes and throats burn. The sky to the west was a deep gray, fading away to a bluer color overhead, but even so, the day looked hazy and dark. The sun, now in the west, was a dulled, dirty yellow.

Last night's storm apparently hadn't helped at all.

And he found himself thinking of Mary again. He wondered if she'd ever been married, and, if so, had her marriage erupted the way he'd seen today? He and Beth had fought at times, but nothing so loud or violent as what he often saw in his job. He
couldn't imagine Mary screaming at anyone, let alone throwing things.

But he didn't know Mary all that well. In fact, he reminded himself, all he really knew about her was that she seemed gentler and quieter than Beth. Not that there had been anything wrong with his late wife. Nothing serious, at any rate. Nobody was perfect, and everyone had to overlook things with their partners. That was just life.

But an almost traitorous thought wormed its way into his brain, asking him if he would have married Beth again if he met her today.

And worse than the question was the answer that came unbidden: He didn't think so.

That hurt, really hurt. His heart squeezed so hard he had to pull his car over to the curb and wait for the pain to pass. Had he really loved her?

Of course he had. Completely. Totally.

But maybe…maybe he just wasn't the same person anymore. That wasn't a flaw in Beth or his feelings for her. That was just an inevitable fact of life. Time had changed him, and Beth hadn't been there to change with him.

But the time they'd had together, well, that had been just about perfect. Maybe not what he would want now that he was older, but certainly what he had wanted then.

And that was okay, wasn't it?

But guilt settled over him like a cloud of doom. It just wasn't right to be thinking this way.

Maybe his father had been right. Maybe he
was
being punished for his sins.

 

The wind and lightning from the night before had spread the fire. The valley was now dotted with spreading flames. Every firefighter they could find was desperately digging firebreaks and creating back burns, trying to corral the worst of it in the north end of the valley.

In the late afternoon, something went awry. The wind suddenly picked up, and the back burns shifted direction. Instead of the man-made fires being sucked toward the already burning acreage by the fire's own draft, the wind twisted them around. With heart-stopping speed, a wall of fire ignited south of the firebreak, sandwiching in the firefighters. The only choice they had was to get out of there as fast as they could.

And not too far away, a man drove toward his house, unaware that the fire was racing toward him on gusts of dry wind.

“D
inner tonight? At the Steak Place?”

Sam's voice coming over the telephone was like a balm to Mary's fatigue. Elijah had been good to his word, and his church members had taken over delivering and serving food to the fire crews, so Mary had stayed at home running a sandwich assembly line. The thing was, it was hot today, and she'd had to keep the windows open or suffocate. Now her house smelled of wood smoke and her lungs felt as if she had bronchitis. That had worn her out more than standing on her feet in the kitchen for so many hours, something that wasn't all that different from her teaching job, although the endless repetitive motions and boredom took their toll, too.

A dinner out sounded like heaven. “Are you sure you're not too tired?” she asked Sam.

“Me? Nah. I got to play cop today. We're shorthanded. No fire fighting for me.”

She hoped he could continue playing cop, because
she didn't at all like the idea of him being down there in those growing flames. The cable news had picked up the fire as a major story, and she'd spent all day glancing at her TV set to see the frightening pictures of flames reaching sixty to eighty feet into the sky, and the puny, exhausted, blackened firefighters who were too close to them for comfort. Now they were saying a group of firefighters had nearly been trapped between two walls of flame. She didn't want Sam out there. She didn't want
anybody
out there. “What about tomorrow?” she couldn't help asking.

“Same thing. Although, to tell you the truth, I don't know what's worse, fighting forest fires or fighting domestic fires.”

She almost laughed, then realized it wasn't funny, even if he was trying to sound light about it. “Oh, Sam.”

“It's okay. Nobody bled. So, want me to pick you up around six?”

“That'd be great.”

But when she hung up the phone, she found herself wondering why he'd asked her. And wondering why she'd accepted.

Even on their short acquaintance, she had the feeling that Sam was as ambivalent about getting involved as she was. That he had as many, albeit different, reasons for preferring solitude.

But that didn't keep her from putting on a nice
navy-blue linen dress and red pumps, or from using makeup, or from brushing her hair until it shone.

It felt good. It felt good that a man wanted to take her to dinner. And she assured herself that his ambivalence was even more protection for her.

This was an opportunity to have a friend with whom she could share the semblance of normalcy without all the dreaded complications. It would be good for both of them.

Her doubts thus quelled, Mary was waiting for Sam with a smile when he arrived. He apparently liked what he saw, because a smile creased his face as his gaze swept over her.

“You look really nice,” he said.

“So do you.” And he did, in a white Western shirt, pressed jeans and polished Ropers. Better even than he looked in uniform.

The sun had gone behind the mountains already, leaving the town in a bright twilight that was cooling rapidly. Mary grabbed a sweater and draped it over her shoulders.

Sam was driving his own vehicle tonight, a Grand Cherokee equipped with ski racks on top and a bicycle rack on the back. He opened the door and helped her in, an old-fashioned courtesy that was a rare experience these days. Mary actually appreciated it. Being an independent woman didn't mean she couldn't enjoy the social niceties at times.

Instinctively she glanced over at Elijah's house,
to see if he was watching, but there was no sign of him.

“Is the Steak Place okay with you?” Sam asked as they drove.

“It's great.” There weren't a whole lot of choices in a town this size. The fern bar on the corner of Main, the diner, a burger joint and a chain pizza place. And, of course, the two saloons that also sold sandwiches and wings. The fern bar was okay if you were in the mood for a huge salad topped with alfalfa sprouts, but it wasn't the place to get a full meal. And Mary was definitely in the mood for a full meal.

“It'll be nice,” Sam remarked, “when Witt Matlock gets that new hotel of his done. Hardy Wingate tells me they're going to have a great dining room, and I guess his wife is already on the hunt for a chef who suits her.”

“That would be nice. I don't mind going to the Inn for dinner, but the food isn't…well…”

“It's pedestrian,” he said, giving her an amused look. “I can turn out a better steak in a frying pan.”

She laughed. “So can I. I only go there when I absolutely can't stand the thought of cooking.”

“Well, Witt's new hotel should be better. All we have to hope is that it gets enough business so he doesn't have to cut corners.”

“Somebody said it's going to look like a huge old Victorian resort.”

“Yeah. I've seen the model. Nothing like the
usual Colorado ski-country look. Straight out of the past and the days of the really fancy resort hotels.”

“Maybe it'll be like that hotel in
The Shining.
”

He turned his head and wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Without the evil twins, I hope.”

He was obviously in a good mood tonight, and he was lifting Mary's spirits, as well. As they approached the restaurant on the north side of town, she forgot all about the fire, all about the sandwiches she was going to have to make tomorrow and all about everything else. It was a beautiful evening, if you could breathe the sooty air, and she was in the company of a handsome, charming man. Surely she could be allowed to enjoy herself for a few hours in a fantasy woven from being with an attractive, eligible man.

The restaurant was quiet, serving only one other couple, out-of-towners. The smell of the fire had been kept sternly at bay, and indoors there were only the good aromas of food cooking. It was like another world.

“Ah,” Sam said, settling back in his chair with obvious contentment. “I feel like I'm on another planet.”

“Me, too. It's nice not to worry about the fire for a while.”

“That's what I was thinking all day today. How nice it was to do ordinary cop work again. Except that I knew the people involved in the domestics.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. It happens.”

“It must be difficult to deal with, though.”

“Today I was lucky. It wasn't so bad.”

They ordered coffee, and Sam asked for a seafood appetizer without even looking at the menu. “Do you want any particular appetizer?” he asked Mary. “Or do you want to share mine? There'll be more than enough.”

“More than enough for me. I'll just share, thanks.” After the waiter left, she added, “You come here often, don't you?”

“It's a dead giveaway when someone has the menu memorized, isn't it?” He smiled. “Sometimes I can't stand any more of my own cooking.”

“I know how that is.”

“It's not that I can't cook, I just have a limited repertoire that I'm willing to make for myself. Sheer laziness.”

“I guess neither of us is a born chef.”

He laughed. “It looks that way. Cooking is a necessity for me, not a hobby.”

Sam leaned back to allow the waiter to serve the appetizers and coffee. Talking about cooking…man, he was rusty. All his conversation seemed to revolve around work. He was like a fish out of water when it came to making casual small talk with someone, particularly a pretty woman he didn't know all that well.

And he wasn't especially eager to consider why he had asked Mary to dinner. After spending all day counting all the reasons he didn't want to get in
volved again, on the spur of the moment he'd asked an attractive, single woman out to dinner.

He needed his damn head examined.

Except that he knew what was happening. Something about Mary felt like a cool, refreshing oasis in the midst of a life suddenly full of stress: his father's presence in town, his job, the fire…all of it was weighing on him, and Mary felt like an emotional escape somehow.

So he was sitting there, trying not to talk about the things that were absorbing his attention, namely his father, the fire and his job, which left him with nothing to offer except some inane remarks about cooking.

And Mary seemed to be feeling the same restraint. As if she sensed the boundaries of where he didn't want to go. It was going to make for a pretty silent dinner.

And that made him feel increasingly awkward.

Mary sampled the bacon-wrapped shrimp and pronounced them excellent. Her smile across the table was brighter than the candle that sat between them, seeming to embrace him and warm him. Lord, she was pretty.

“You ever been married?” he heard himself blurt. One of those places he didn't want to venture, so naturally, he'd brought it up himself. He wondered if he could kick himself in the seat, or if that was physically impossible.

Her smile, her beautiful smile, vanished. Appar
ently the topic was as bad for her as it was for him. “Forget it,” he said swiftly. “None of my business.”

She hesitated, a profound sorrow shadowing her face. “No, it's okay,” she said quietly. “I was married. Seven years.”

“What happened?”

“He proved he was the same idiot I married. The going got tough and he got going…far away.”

She'd tried to be light about it, but she didn't succeed, and he wouldn't have been deluded, anyway. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm better off without him.”

She sounded as if she really meant that, but at least he still retained sense enough not to pursue it. There was a disparity between her reaction to the question and the definite way she said she was better off without him. Something else had happened, and while his curiosity was piqued, he knew better than to ask.

Which again left him with little to say. He rapidly sorted through a list of safe topics, discarding them one after another. The weather? Nah. That had been talked to death all over town. The upcoming football season? The current baseball season? Politics? Yeah, right.

But she seemed to feel awkward about not explaining, and before he could think of a way to change the subject, she said, “We, uh, lost our son.
He was only six. And Chet just ran away from it all.”

His heart stopped. He couldn't imagine losing a child; he just knew that it had to be as bad or worse than anything he'd experienced. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Mary.”

“Me, too.” She looked away, toward the window that gave them a view of the dying day and the mountains. “I miss him. I'm always going to miss him. My son.”

He nodded and reached instinctively for her hand, covering it with his, squeezing gently.

He waited, and after a minute or so she visibly shook herself and faced him with a smile. “But we're here to have fun. So let's eat and laugh.”

After that the appetizer disappeared quickly and was soon followed by their steaks.

“So,” she said, after taking a few bites of steak and pronouncing it delicious, “what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you?”

He arched a brow and hurried to swallow. “Weird how?”

“I don't know,” she said, musing. “
Twilight Zone
weird?”

He pondered for a moment. “I guess it was when I was fourteen. Playing out back in the yard. I had one of those pitch-back things, where you throw a baseball into it and it will bounce back to you. So you can play catch by yourself.”

He paused. “I didn't have a lot of friends that
summer. I think we'd just moved. Anyway, I was playing ball, and I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, and there was this old lady walking across our lawn, on the far side, near the woods. I looked at her for a minute or two, wondered who she was, what she was doing there. But for some reason I was too…scared, stunned, I don't know what…to say anything. Then she stepped into the trees and just…vanished.”

He took a bite of baked potato, waiting for a response, but she merely sat and listened. So he continued. “Well, for some reason,
that
was when I got curious, so I ran across the lawn to where she'd walked into the trees, but there was no sign of her. No sound. I walked along all the paths…nothing. The woods weren't that thick, and I hadn't been so far away that she could just have vanished in the time it took me to cross the lawn. But…she did. And for the rest of my life, I've wondered if she was really there at all or if I just imagined her.” He poked at his salad and looked back at her. “So now you
know
I'm strange, right?”

She smiled. He had a lovely voice. She hadn't meant the conversation to go this way, but it had, and it didn't bother her. “Well, no, not strange. Weird things happen.”

“To you, too?”

She nodded. “Let's say the mountains can be very, very disorienting at five in the morning, when the fog is thick and you're camping, and you wake
up needing to relieve yourself and not a single other soul is awake for miles around.”

“You were alone?” he asked.

“No. But my parents were sleeping late. Well, not late…5:00 a.m. isn't late. But…it was just me and the mountainside and the dark fog. And that's when I heard the footsteps, or whatever, something
big
moving in the brush around me. I thought maybe it was a bear, so I ran for the latrine. But it was just…there.” She suppressed a shiver. “It wasn't an animal. Don't ask me why I think so. I just know it wasn't. I'm not sure it was human, either. It was…like I could feel it thinking about me, deciding if I was…the right one.”

“The right one for what?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I did my business and dashed back to the tent as fast as I could. Didn't sleep another wink that night or the next.”

“Sounds like one of those bad teen slasher flicks,” he said, smiling. Then he seemed to read something in her face, and his smile dropped. “I'm sorry. That was insensitive.”