Firefly Rain Read online

  It was nearly suppertime when I finally stepped out the kitchen door and onto the porch to do the day’s labor. It was hot, and the air felt as thick as the cotton ball clouds that lurked in packs overhead. It put a smile on my face—good old North Carolina weather. I’d always laughed when the people I’d known in Boston had complained about the summers there. It was like hearing a rich kid complain about how he got the Porsche instead of the Mercedes. They wouldn’t know real heat if it wrapped them up and squeezed tight.

  I filled my lungs with some good clean country air and started down the stairs to the driveway. Two steps down, my footfall made an unexpected sound. I pulled up short, looking down to see what I’d done.

  An envelope rested there under my toe, now marked with the print of my shoe. The dirt outlined half the imprint of a key, no doubt Carl’s. He had indeed said all he’d meant to say to me, it seemed, so I pocketed the key and crumpled up the envelope for later deposit in the trash. The fact that I hadn’t heard Carl’s truck in the driveway was puzzling, but I put it down to the fact that sound didn’t carry well through Grandfather Logan’s walls. With a shrug, I went back to the business of unloading the car—without Carl’s help.

  Not that I’d actually expected help, mind you, but I hadn’t not expected it, either.

  Most of what was still in the Audi were odds and ends—the bits and pieces I hadn’t trusted to the truck or found a safe carton for. There were more clothes, a few pairs of shoes that I could still wear and several others I didn’t dare try, and more handkerchiefs than one man should probably own. Bookends, desk accessories, and a wallet full of CDs; that was the sort of thing I’d stuffed into the backseat and trunk. Somewhere in there was a box full of papers and a laptop, but I didn’t feel any great urgency to rescue either one. They reminded me of Boston more than the desk lamp or the old Red Sox cap did. So I puttered and fidgeted and took all of the useless stuff in, one small armload at a time. Some of it I found places for, some of it I just dumped in what I pretended was a neat pile in the guest bedroom. There was no need to find a permanent home for anything, so mostly it was just a matter of figuring out new definitions for “not underfoot” and “out of the way.”

  It was getting on nine by the time I’d shifted the piles of goods to my satisfaction. When the last trip had been made, I wiped the sweat out of my eyes, then went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich for dinner. The movers were due to arrive late that evening, and I thought that once I’d finished eating, I’d sit out on the porch and wait for them.

  But as the dark crept up with no sign and no phone call, I got restless. A couple of glasses of water gave way to a couple of beers, which didn’t help my mood any. Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that they weren’t coming and took myself for a walk.

  The property was large enough that a man could ramble a good ways in any direction he chose, though most of the land had long since been left to grow wild and could be tough going as a result. The plot where they’d buried both Father and Mother was about as far back as the cleared land went. The rest was all tall grass clear to the edge of the woods, and if it had been left to me, no doubt the weeds would have claimed the graves as well.

  Carl hadn’t let that happen, though. I walked past the curtain of pines and saw he’d been diligent in keeping the gravesites clear. Green grass cropped close was all that grew there, that and a flowering vine that wound its way up Mother’s stone. There had always been a rumor that Carl had been sweet on her, and I didn’t doubt it, not that I cared. Didn’t do either of them any good, I thought. Instead, I just let myself drift as I walked along, and I didn’t think about Carl or Mother anymore.

  I was almost feeling peaceful when the jangle of my cell phone brought me back to myself. Hastily I dug it out of my pocket and answered “Logan.”

  A woman’s cold voice answered me and let me know I had new voice mail. The light on top of the phone blinked red at me, slow and steady. With a shake of my head, I dialed up the message and put the phone to my ear.

  “You have. One. New message, recorded today at two. Thirty. Five. PM.” That’s what that robot voice said this time, and then it spewed out a gibberish phone number as the source of the call. I took a deep breath and silently cursed the voice-mail system for taking its own sweet time to get the message to me. Then, all the best profanity out of my system, I punched up the message itself and wondered why my gut was suddenly twisting.

  The call turned out to be from the moving company, as I had been hoping, but that was where things turned grim. They had some bad news for me. The truck with my furniture on it had been involved in what the man on the phone called “an incident,” where “incident” meant “getting caught too close to a jackknifing tractor trailer.” The truck, and just about everything on it, had been wrecked beyond any hope of salvage. The man, who gave his name as Jason Proctor, hastened to add that their insurance would cover the value of the goods I had lost, and that I was welcome to drive up to Baltimore, where the crash had occurred, to look through the remains myself. He was, of course, very sorry for the inconvenience. He also left a number I could call any time, day or night, to discuss the matter. A few more apologies followed, and then he hung up.

  Before saving the message, I said a small prayer for the man who had left it. The poor bastard sounded like he was about to start crying by the end of the message. I wondered if he’d had anything on that truck himself, or if he’d just had to deliver the bad news to one too many customers over the years. I resolved to ask for him by name, and I dialed in the number he’d given me.

  Mr. Proctor had gone home by the time my call was finally connected, but I got patched through to a man who sounded almost exactly like him. This was a Mr. Douglas or some such, who apologized twice before reassuring me that a check would be coming soon to cover my losses.

  “How much?” I asked, and he gave me a number, backed by a bunch of gobbledygook about the terms of loss under the contract.

  “That’ll be fine,” I said, cutting him short midphrase. “Didn’t like most of that furniture anyway, to be honest.”

  “It will be?” he said, and he sounded surprised. “I mean, excellent. We’ll need a few days to process things, of course, but hopefully this will be resolved—”

  “Call me when the check is coming,” I told him. “No excuses, no explanations. I don’t care if you have to have it signed by the company president and his sixteen dancing virgins. Just let me know when the check is coming, and if you did manage to salvage anything. Do I make myself understood?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, the sound of a man who’s been interrupted in the middle of a memorized speech and doesn’t know how to get his brain back in gear. “Umm, certainly, Mr. Logan,” Douglas finally said and coughed. “I’ll do everything I can to get that check to you in a timely fashion.”

  “You do that,” I agreed, and I asked after the health of the driver.

  “He should make it,” Douglas said. He sounded surprised that I’d ask, which I regarded as an indictment of his position. It’s common for people to ask after money and not men, I knew, but I wasn’t raised that way. It was a damn shame that most of the people Douglas talked to had been.

  I hung up on Douglas while he was still finding new ways to say he was sorry, then started the walk back up to the house. I could see it from where I stood, a darker shadow against the night sky, long and low against the horizon. Not much of mine would be in that house, not much at all.

  The notion didn’t bother me as much as it might have. Indeed, I was almost disturbed by how little the news had shaken me. The house was already furnished, and Carl had seen to it that everything was in fine repair. I’d slept the night before in my childhood bed, and it had done me the favor of not collapsing beneath my grown-up weight. I suspected that it would be fine for the foreseeable future as well, which was a good thing. I’d long since decided that I’d be sleeping every night in my childhood bedroom instead of the
master. Spending a night in my parents’ marriage bed was not something I could ever do.

  And with that thought, I trudged up the stairs and onto the porch. With one hand I picked up the beer bottles for transportation in to the sink, and then I went into the darkened house.

  There were no fireflies that night, either, at least not that I could see. Lord knows I was looking for them.

  three

  Morning came and went while I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. I’d finally drifted off around five, which is to say just about the time the sun was coming up, and I had slept fitfully at best after that. I’d had dreams, dreams of previous homecomings, and they’d given me a cold fear I didn’t quite understand. None of the dreams had been what you would call a nightmare; far from it. They’d just been flashes of good times had long ago, and of Mother and Father mentioning how good it was to have me home. But each time, I’d woken up with my heart hammering in my chest and sweat dripping off my brow.

  Home. That was the one word that had kept echoing through those dreams, the last word I’d heard every time before my eyes had flown open. And that was just plain foolish. There was nothing here to fear, no history of abuse, pain, or blood. I’m sure my hindbrain had had to work hard to find those good memories, but that was the worst I could say on the matter.

  Besides, this house hadn’t been home in a long time, and I had no intention of letting it become so now. Just a couple of weeks of relaxation and recuperation were all I asked of that building and of the land it rested on. I wanted it to put up with me long enough to let me get my footing back and cash my checks. Then I’d be moving on, my load even lighter than it had been before. Carl could have the place in perpetuity for all I cared.

  With that thought, I lay myself back down and got a solid hour’s sleep before I woke up again, screaming.

  No one heard me, though, and for that I was grateful.

  Midafternoon I finally forced myself out of bed and stumbled around the house. I’d made some vague plans the day before about going into town and exploring a bit, but that seemed pointless now. Instead, I made myself a couple of slices of toast, then sat on the porch and watched the fields until the sun went down.

  This time, I didn’t stay to look for the fireflies that I was afraid wouldn’t come. Instead, I went inside, pulled down the shades, and drank the last of my beer. It didn’t help me sleep.

  I slept late again the next morning, if you could call it sleeping. Around the fifth time I counted to ten and told myself that, yes, it was time to get moving, I finally heaved myself out of bed and got a start on the day. Yesterday’s laziness could be excused as road fatigue or reacclimation, but today there was work to be done. The rest of my life had to come in from the car, the temporary storage solutions I’d improvised needed to be given a bit more thought, and I needed to get myself in gear before moss started growing on me.

  Besides, I was hungry.

  I was mostly done yawning by the time I made it to the kitchen, but there wasn’t much waiting for me in the icebox. Empty beer bottles I had plenty of, but food? Not much, especially not in the breakfast department. Angry with myself, I scavenged what I could and then went stumbling back into the bedroom to get myself dressed for the day. On occasion Father had roamed around the backyard in his bathrobe, but on the off chance that anyone was watching, I didn’t need to add to the Logan reputation for eccentricity.

  My jeans held up to the sniff test well enough, though the T-shirt I’d worn yesterday didn’t do quite so well. I shrugged into a new one, slipped my feet into sneakers without socks, and headed out to the driveway. I was angry with myself. Why was I spending so much time in bed if I wasn’t getting any damn sleep? I pulled out my keys and mentally planned the loads left to take in. It shouldn’t take more than two or three trips, I decided, and then I could get a move on. Put them away, then drive into town for a slightly more efficient supply run—that would be a good day’s work. And in the evening, I could shake the cobwebs off the laptop and start planning my next move. There wasn’t any net access out at the house—hell, there wasn’t even a television in the place—but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would cut out the distractions and let me focus. In any case, it wasn’t as if anyone was rushing to e-mail me these days. At least nobody I wanted to hear from.

  The car was sitting where I’d left it, the paint job trying to shine under a faint coating of white road dust. I made a mental note to hose it clean as soon as I could find where Carl kept the hose, and clicked the door unlocked. With a beep and a flash of lights, it answered the keychain, and I decided that unpacking could wait. Clearly, the car had sat still long enough. It wanted to be driven, and I found myself wanting to drive it, to get away from the house for a little bit and just let myself stretch out. Besides, there wasn’t enough of my gear left in the car to interfere with the supply run. There was plenty of room for everything.

  I slid into the driver’s seat, the leather steering wheel grip cool under my fingers. “That-a-baby,” I told the car. “You’re gonna run a little bit today. Let’s see how fast we can get to town.” Grinning, I put the key in the ignition and turned it.

  Nothing happened.

  “Son of a bitch,” I swore, and tried it again. The engine coughed but failed to turn over. A third try, and it didn’t give so much as a click.

  I sat there a minute, then tried it one more time.

  Nothing. After a minute, the battery just plain gave out, like someone had stuck a knife in its back. The lights dimmed, the indicators keeled over, and that car sat there like very expensive roadkill.

  I swore, then got out. Too late I heard the keys jangle in the ignition as I slammed the car door shut. A quick tug on the handle told me that it was in fact locked, and that I was out of luck. So I swore some more, kicked the car door—gently, on account of the paint job—and sat myself down against the front tire.

  “Goddamn,” I said, and then a few stronger things, and tried to figure out what to do next.

  Angry with myself, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket. There was one person in town I figured I could call for help, though I was sure he wouldn’t exactly want to hear from me. Still, I figured, he couldn’t begrudge me his assistance on this one. It might cost me dear in pride to make the call, but that was the sort of payment Carl seemed to like taking.

  Pride, however, was something I was divesting myself of more or less freely. With just a small wince, I dialed Carl’s number. It rang twice before Carl picked it up.

  “So what do you want now?” he asked without preamble when he picked up the phone.

  “Carl, I need some help,” I said, and I got a cackle for an answer.

  “Of course you do. All alone out there at that great big place and you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m surprised it took you this long t’call me.”

  I felt myself growing angry and swallowed it back as best as I could. Let Carl have his fun; I needed his help, and that was worth a little ribbing. It wasn’t like I didn’t deserve it, either. This time, at least.

  “It’s not like that,” I said slowly. “My car won’t start and I’m out of groceries. I was wondering if you could recommend a good garage, maybe, or come out here to give me a lift into town.”

  “I’ll bring you something t’eat,” he said, and he hung up.

  “That’s not what I—,” I started to say, but he was already gone. I stared at the phone. It blinked a blank screen at me, then went dark. The connection was gone, and so was Carl.

  “That know-it-all son of a bitch,” I said with sudden anger, and I threw the damn phone off into the tall grass like I was tossing Carl out with it. It spun high and caught the light before arcing down behind the green and hitting with a quiet thump.

  “Fat lot of good that did you,” I told myself, hoisting myself to my feet. A quick brush of my backside scared up a lot of dust, and I looked around, as if Carl might already be coming up the road.

  He can’t get here that fas
t, dumbass, I told myself, and you might want to go find that cell phone fast, before it rains or something. But it felt good to just leave it there in the tall grass. It was something I’d done, after all, instead of having done unto me. I could go find the damn thing later. I’d call from the phone in the house and listen for the ring in the yard. I’d find it fast and easy. But I’d do it later, because right now I was just plain pissed off.

  Pissed off, I hiked myself onto the porch and sat myself down. And pissed off, I waited for Carl.

  four

  Like the devil himself, Carl showed up when the sky was turning red just above the horizon. Tall, angular, and weathered, he hopped out of his truck and grabbed a sack of groceries from the front seat. “Can I help?” I asked him, but he ignored me, marching right in my porch door and putting the bag down on the kitchen table.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked, placing myself between Carl and the door. This way, I figured, he’d have to speak to me, if only to ask me to get out of the way. He stopped and stared at me in disbelief.

  “Nothing,” he finally said. “You owe me nothing.” He put a curious emphasis on the word me.“I’m just keeping a promise, that’s all.”

  “What are you talking about?” I took a step back to block the doorway with my body. “We have a contract, and you didn’t promise me anything.”

  Carl shook his head. “Contract’s over with you back in town, but you’re right. I didn’t promise you a damn thing. That don’t mean I didn’t make a promise to someone else.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You’ve got enough there to keep you for a while. I’ll be back with more in a few days.”

  “I’m hoping my car will be fixed before then, so you won’t have to do that, Carl,” I said sharply. “I don’t intend to rely on your help.”

  He grinned at me, his lips thin and set tight against his face. “You can intend anything you damn well please. I just figure I’ll save you the embarrassment of another phone call by telling you I’ll be by presently. Don’t eat it all at once, y’hear?” And with that, he brushed past me and out of the house.