Read After the Rain for Free Online

and a grin, “A Volvo, huh? Boy. They’re lost for sure.”
    “I hear you. Jeez, busy day—old Chevy truck just pulled in, too. Arizona plates.”
    “So what are they yelling about? The women.”
    “Ah.” Gordy craned his neck closer to the window. “Sounds like one of them wants to use the john and the other one ain’t buying it, says it’s just an excuse to have a drink. Now the other one and the little girl are trying to talk her out of it.”
    “What’s she look like?” Ace asked.
    “Which one?”
    “The one who wants a drink.”
    “Ah, she’s a redhead, not bad; kinda tough-looking.”
    Ace came forward off his stool. “How do you mean, tough?”
    Gordy grinned. “Tough like the grim-fucking-reaper. She’s got this skull-and-crossbones tattooed on her shoulder.”
    Ace nodded. Gordy would like that. Like it better if she had a Harley logo tattooed on her ass.
    Just then the door opened. And Ace expected to see a tough redheadwalk through. Instead, it was a leather-tanned older guy wearing this flowery, flowing orange and red Hawaiian shirt, with a full head of hair going white. Ace sat up and took notice. You don’t see that many older guys with forearms like that, who walked so light on their feet. Who came into a room checking everything with those pale quiet eyes. Ace had seen eyes like that on serious lifers during the month he spent on orientation in the Bismarck state pen before they sent him out to do the easy time on the farm.
    “I’d get near a phone if I was you, call nine-one-one,” the guy said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “Got a cat fight goin’ out there.” He walked to the bar, sat down, and stared at the wall full of pictures.
    Gordy came up. The guy said, “You serving any lunch?”
    “Sorry, the kitchen’s closed. We’ve sort of gone out of business,” Gordy said.
    Very clearly Ace heard one of the women yell, “Yeah, well, I didn’t drive all the way out here to watch you crawl into a bottle in Nowhere, North Dakota, goddammit.”
    Gordy and the guy drifted to the window and stared into the parking lot.
    “Which one’s that?” Ace asked.
    “The other one,” Gordy said.
    The guy nodded, “The dark-haired, dikey-looking one.”
    Ace and Gordy perked up and raised their eyebrows thoughtfully. The dikey one. Uh-huh.
    The guy shrugged. “Minnesota plates. That’s a dead giveaway. Twin Cities is a regular dike pit. I feel bad for the kid.”
    Ace and Gordy nodded again, thoughtfully.
    “Aw, screw lunch, gimme a beer,” the guy said.
    “All we got left is Old Milwaukee,” Gordy said.
    “That’ll do.” When he had a beer he gestured at the walls of an alcove to the right of the bar. The framed pictures, newspaper articles. A military unit flag. “Yeah. This is the place.”
    “How’s that?” Gordy said.
    “I was here once, back in the seventies. Came to visit my brother when he was in the Air Force, in the 321st Missile Wing. Was stationed down in one of those control pods, tending to ten of those big mothers, the Minutemen. We sat in this bar and had a beer.”
    Ace smiled. And Gordy said, “Sure, during the Missile Time.”
    The guy nodded. “Usually I take Route 2 across, but, hell, thought I’d swing up through here, not in a big hurry. So when did they pull the missiles out?”
    Ace stared at his coffee cup. In the shadow of those missiles he’d had something like a happy childhood. Whole damn town had…
    “You fucking bitch! You are not going to pull this shit after all we been through… ” The angry voice screeching through the front door. The floor snapped back on its hinges, rattled off the wall.
    Then, “Mommm…”
    That was the kid. A wail full of shattered innocence that got to Ace like a dentist’s drill—kid suddenly figuring out, hey, my world is falling to shit here. That nothing’s for sure anymore. Something kids shouldn’t have to bend their minds around. Ace understood it perfectly from arguments in the house back