Wrapped in Rain(72)

"You sound like you know what you're talking about."

I turned and found her eyes. "Katie, I know what it is by what it wasn't." Mutt tugged on his hose, which made a slapping noise on the wet marble, and circled the side of the house, keeping the spray nozzle pointed at a secondstory window. "We both do."

I walked up the back porch, tripped over Mutt's pressurized hose, and looked at the house. The transformation was startling. As stark as the difference between a screaming infant in the delivery room and a cadaver in the morgue.





Chapter 30


SUNDAY MORNING, THE SKY HUNG LOW WITH GRAY clouds and blocked any direct sun. I was leaning back in my chair, hunkered over a cup of coffee, staring blankly over the front lawn. If Rex had seen me doing this, he would have kicked the chair out from underneath me, slapped me, and sent me tumbling. Which was exactly why I was doing it. If leaning against the back of the house broke both back legs, I'd just work my way through each of the dining room chairs until I had a matching set of twelve.

Mose ambled around the corner, smelling of diesel fuel and freshly cut grass. He took off his hat, wiped his brow, and sat on the brick wall opposite me that framed the porch. He looked out over the drive and spoke softly, so as not to be heard by anyone other than me. `Just came from the far corner of the pasture." Something in his tone told me he wasn't about to tell me a horse story. I leaned forward, all four legs now on the ground. "When I got to the far corner, I smelled cigarette smoke." I leaned closer. "So I hopped off, left the tractor running, and slipped through the woods following the acrid smell." I stood and walked across the porch next to Mose. He looked up at me. "A man sat in a four-door sedan, smoking. Binoculars on the dashboard, a note pad and cell phone next to him, and three empty coffee cups in the back." Mose stood, propped one foot on the brick, and leaned his elbow on his knee. "So I knocked." Mose spat. "He saw me and took off."

"You get his tag?"



"Yeah." Mose spat again without looking at me. "You really think we need to get somebody to run it?"

I shook my head. "Probably not."

Mose pushed off the wall and began walking back toward the tractor. "Maybe you should give some thought to going on a trip." He tilted his hat back and whispered, "All of you."

I nodded and leaned back against the wall, and that's when I heard the approaching vehicle. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I thought about the Greener, but two more seconds convinced me I wouldn't need it. A white delivery truck covered in stickers and a rainbow of paint, with three orange lights spinning above the driver's seat, came rolling down the driveway on four out-of-balance tires. The suspension was shot and the truck rested low on all four tires, white smoke poured from the exhaust, the cracked front glass spiderwebbed across the driver's vision, and the brakes screamed metal on metal. Other than that it was in perfect condition. The truck ambled down the drive, bringing me out of my three-point stance and upright. The sight of an ice cream truck on the Waverly driveway was one thing. The sight of an ice cream truck on Waverly drive at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday was quite another.

The driver circled the drive twice, honking his horn and turning up the volume on his external foghorn speaker, and came to a metal-screaming and horn-honking stop at the steps below me. He lifted the gearshift to park, turned up "The Entertainer," and pointed the speaker toward my equilibrium. He was wearing a clown suit, orange hair, white face, painted-on smile, red nose, and striped pants. If I had been holding the Greener, he'd have made a perfect bull's-eye. He kept the engine running, filling the immediate area with white smoke, and fingernail-on-chalkboard music masked the vague resemblance of nursery rhymes. He sat with his fingers gripped around the steering wheel, expectantly looking at the front door.



I hobbled down the steps to his side window, experiencing a disbelief similar to what I felt the moment after Katie shot at me. The driver saw me coming, hopped out of his seat, straightened his wig and nose, and greeted me at the window. "Hot daw' mighty!" he hollered. "What do you call this place?"

I squinted, looked askance, and yelled back, "Locals call it Waverly. We call it purgatory."

"Well, if purgatory looks anything like this, I'm in. Sign me up."

I leaned against the truck and pointed toward the front door. "You should have seen it when the fire was really burning. That might change your mind a bit."

He rubbed his hands together. "What can I get you?" He was fidgety, not nervous-fidgety, like he was in trouble, but working-fidgety, like every second he spent smalltalking was time he could spend selling elsewhere. He wanted to be nice enough to get my business, or my money, but not so nice as to engage me in any lengthy conversation. His white-gloved fingers wiped the counter again, and he straightened his nose for the third time. I pointed to my ears and squinted. He reached above his head and turned off the music.

This kid was maybe eighteen and had entrepreneur written all over him. Had it not been for the suit, the white face paint, and the out-of-proportion smile, I'd bet there were zits on his face and a night school admission application stuffed somewhere in his back pocket. I wasn't quite sure what to say, so he filled in the space with a prerehearsed sales pitch that I was pretty sure he had written himself. "I got fudgesicles, fudge sundaes, rocket man rocket bars, ice cream bars-with or without and dipped or naked." He looked around the inside of his truck, searching for his visual clues, and kept talking. "I got twenty-seven different kinds of popsicle and fruit juice bars-my most popular item, smoothies, scooped ice cream and sherbet, regular or sugar cones, pop rocks, soda pop with pop tops"-he smiled a real wide smile to let me know he had invented that one himself-"chewing gum, bubble gum, blowing bubbles, and if you're a health food nut-like myself-I got some fat-free yogurt that tastes like something you'd use to grease the axles on a push cart." He rubbed his hands together and his eyes grew wide and more expectant.