Only the Rain(4)

We used the position illustrated in the book, and afterward Cindy laid on the floor for an hour with her legs up on the bed and a fat pillow under her butt. All this was supposed to give the boy swimmers a downhill swim, I guess. We did that two nights in a row and then the next morning Cindy said, “Well, it took. I’m pregnant.” I said she couldn’t possibly know that already and she said, “Trust me. I know.” She was so sure of herself she wouldn’t even let me buy her a pregnancy kit at Walmart. “Waste of money,” she said. “I know what I know. I know I’m pregnant and I know it’s a boy.”

There’s no use arguing with a woman when her mind’s made up, so I just quit trying. Besides, she’s spooky like that sometimes. Seems to know stuff she has no way of knowing. Which only makes matters more worrisome for me since I got into this trouble I’m going to tell you about.

Anyway, it wasn’t two weeks later she was puking before breakfast. So I guess she did know what she was talking about. Whether the book did or not remains to be seen.

The reason I’m telling you all this is so you’ll understand what our situation was when the trouble started. Despite the inconvenience of not having a second car, the situation was full of hope. We were still living paycheck to paycheck but life was really starting to look good for us, and not in a pie-in-the-sky kind of way either. We even picked out a name for our new boy: David Russell. He had Pops’ first name and my name for his middle name. We still didn’t know for sure that he’d be a boy but I decided to think positive and maybe all our good thoughts would work the necessary magic.

I had a new job and a new vasectomy scar, and Cindy and Dani and Emma and Maybe-Davy and me all had a new house to live in. It wasn’t a castoff house either. It wasn’t a hand-me-down. It was brand-new construction, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s only sixteen hundred square feet on a quarter-acre lot in a small development of twelve homes lined up along both sides of a cul-de-sac. I wasn’t crazy about having a house that was exactly like eleven other families’ but Cindy loves it. “It makes me feel normal for a change,” she said. “Like we’re all in the same boat together.”

And then one gray morning my whole world went upside down. If I had let Cindy drive me to work that day instead of riding the motorcycle, it never would’ve happened. Gee always used to say, “God works in mysterious ways.” But as much as I loved her and appreciate all the things she did for me, I think maybe my former staff sergeant might have understood life better than she did.

“If you even once happen to look the wrong way,” you used to tell us, “if you so much as fucking blink out here, you’re gonna find yourself getting raped by an elephant.”

And that’s exactly what happened to me that day, Spence. I looked the wrong fucking way.



I mentioned my motorcycle last time and now this thought keeps interrupting my other thoughts, if you know what I mean. I can’t ever climb onto my bike, or usually even pass it in the garage, without remembering that medic on my, what was it, second or third day in-country. The one who was riding around the FOB on his Honda and got his leg blown off during an attack. There we all were crowding around the medevac bird telling him he was going to be okay, and him pleading and pleading for some drugs to knock him out.

I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t even know the dude’s name yet, so I wasn’t going to ask anybody about it, but I’ve never been able to get him out of my head, not even back here at home. So one day when I was out riding by myself I decided I’d come up with a name for him, and I started running through the alphabet, thinking up every name I could, until I came to one that felt like it fit him. I remember he was sort of thin and had sandy blond hair, and I also remember his eyes being a pale blue that most girls would kill for. And the name I gave him finally was Springer. Don’t ask me why, but when I heard it inside my head I thought, that’s it, he’s Springer.

I dream about him sometimes. I dream about the two of us riding up north into the big forests up there, cruising along in and out of the sunlight and shadows, riding parallel to the river with the sunlight shimmering like silver leaves in the ripples and rapids. He’s got both legs in those dreams, and he’s always got the biggest fucking grin on his face. And his name’s always Springer. I mean without a doubt, I never even question it, he’s always Springer in those dreams.

And we’re riding along side by side on our bikes, not a care in the world. Except that I’m watching him and thinking, the poor sonofabitch doesn’t have clue one about what’s going to happen to him.

Is that a weird dream to be having or what?



Sorry about how short my last e-mail was. Sometimes I get all, you know, emotional when I’m remembering stuff. When that happens I have to just lean away from the keyboard and get my shit together again. Don’t want to rain on the electronics, you know what I mean?

Anyway, I’ll go back to telling you about that morning the real story here actually started, and me riding the bike into work as usual even though a thunderstorm was in the forecast. My boss waited till after lunch that day to call me into the office. For some reason, the moment I heard my name coming through the loudspeaker, I knew it was the voice of doom calling. Truth is I’d felt funny all day, even before I’d left the house. There was a weird heaviness in my chest that morning, like I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs because they were already filled up with something else, with some kind of gray fog maybe that had settled into me during the night. But when I got to the plant that morning without being hit by a single drop of rain, I chalked the feeling up to nervousness about the weather, and told myself it was the air that was heavy, all that damp August air I’d sucked in because Cindy liked to sleep with the windows open.