Excerpt - “Downpour” - Winner of the CWA Book of the Year Award for Indie Fiction

By Christopher Hawkins

Wilbur’s head was up, his ears pricked, as he stared out at the gravel road. Scott followed his gaze to the black pickup truck, fresh-washed and gleaming in the sunlight, a cloud of dust trailing off behind it as it trundled its way toward the house. There was no mistaking that it was Ned Colby’s truck, brand-new, with pop-country guitar on the stereo turned up so loud that he could hear it a quarter mile away.

Ned Colby was the last person Scott wanted to talk to right now, but he still held up a hand in greeting and walked out to meet the truck as it turned into the driveway. Wilbur rose with mild interest and padded out to test the limit of his chain before he thought better of it and retreated back into the shade.

“Hey, Ned,” Scott said as the pickup door opened. “Look, now’s not really a great time.”

Ned heard him. Scott was sure that Ned heard him, but he was pretending not to. The big man levered himself out of the driver’s seat, leading with his belly. His boots sent up a little puff of dust as they hit the ground, boots that looked fresh enough that they might have been bought yesterday.

“Heya Scott,” he said, swinging the door closed like a punctuation mark. “Sorry for dropping in like this. I tried calling, but you didn’t pick up your phone.”

Scott knew that if he checked his phone he wouldn’t find any new calls from Ned Colby, and knew that it wouldn’t make one bit of difference if he brought it up. Ned scuffed at the dirt, pulled his cowboy hat off by the crown, and wiped an arm across his hairless forehead. “Hoo,” he said, squinting into the sun. “Shapin’ up to be a hot one today.”

Scott shaded his eyes with his hand, following Ned’s gaze out over the endless fields of soybeans. They were Ned’s fields now, and from the way the big man’s gaze lingered on them, there was no doubt that he wanted to make sure Scott knew it.

“Yeah. Look, Ned—”

“Looks like your lawn could use some doin’,” Ned said, pointing with his hat toward the shin-high tufts of grass that peppered the yard. “I’ve got a guy, I’ll get you his number. Guatemalan fella’. Got all his own equipment. Mows, fertilizes. Does a hell of a job, too. I promise you, in two months you won’t even recognize the place.”

A note of doubt crept into his voice at the end as he surveyed the porch with its peeling paint, the bits of lattice cracked away near the ground. He knew well enough that Scott couldn’t afford a lawn service any more than he could hire someone to paint the house. Scott suspected that, if he didn’t already know all that, he wouldn’t be here at all.

“Course, with the weather bein’ what it is, it’s all apt to break off at the roots and blow away, lest we get some moisture into this soil. I’ve had the irrigation rigs running twenty-four-seven, or at least it seems pretty close to it. Just about cost me my left nut when the water bill come due, but needs must, like they say. Needs must.”

The rows of soybeans just beyond the shed were a sea of lush, green leaves stretching out as far as he could see. Scott had been watching them shoot up all spring, and it would be a good harvest, he could tell. Even with the added expense, Ned’s operation was set to turn a decent profit. Scott felt the heat of the sun on his skin and imagined the whole crop wilting and drying beneath it. Without Ned’s money, there’d be nothing to stop it, nothing but that distant tuft of dark cloud, almost a perfect circle, hovering against the bright blue sky.

“Yeah. Ned. Look, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but it’s a Sunday and I’ve got a lot of things that need doing before I get myself back to work tomorrow. You know how it is.”

Ned dismissed him with a wave of his hat before he set it back onto his head. “Say no more, Scotty. I won’t be but a minute.” He settled back against the side of his truck, getting comfortable. “This lot we’re sittin’ on here. What would you call it? Eight? Nine acres?”

“Twelve-point-six.”

Ned nodded, calculating. “Twelve-point-six. Gotcha.”He made a show of looking out over the place, pretending to make up his mind. “What do you say you let me take it off your hands?”

Scott shook his head, but Ned put up his hands before he could get a word out. “Now, I know what you’re gonna say, but just hear me out, all right?”

He waited long enough to know for sure that Scott wasn’t going to shut him down or run him off. He wanted to do both, but he knew that Ned would find a way to have his say one way or another, so he might as well let him say it.

“Now, way I see it, you’re not gettin’ all that much use out of the place. You ain’t put a crop down in, what? Eight years? Ten? And if you had it in mind to start one tomorrow, I know you don’t have the equipment anymore to get ‘er goin’.”

Ned knew because Scott had sold him most of the equipment his father had left, along with most of what was left of the land. There’d been a broken-down barn to hold it all too, but Ned had torn that the rest of the way down more than a decade ago. Scott could still picture it sometimes, if he stared long enough at the spot where it had stood.

“And that’s all good,” Ned said, “‘cause a crop this small wouldn’t be worth losing time on, even if you could make ‘er work. And not everybody could make ’er work. Ain’t no shame in it, but not everybody’s got it in ‘em to be a farmer.”

His new boots scuffed up a tuft of grass from the dry ground. He kicked it away.

“And I get that this was your daddy’s land. You got history here. I can respect that. But I look around this place and I have to wonder what the hell you’re still doin’ here. It’s twenty miles to get to any place worth gettin’ to. Cell reception sucks. Internet’s worse. Never see a snow plow in the wintertime. And if you ain’t workin’ the land, there ain’t a damn thing to recommend it.”

Ned was right. Scott knew he was right. He looked back out over the patchy grass to the rusty storm cellar doors, to the once-white house now gone over to the dull gray of weathered wood. He thought about what it might be like to not live in this place anymore. He thought of the people inside and for a moment he wondered what it would be like to live without any of it, without any of them.

“I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is, you’ve got nothin’ left to tie you to this place, so why let it keep hold of you?”

The screen door banged and Tallie ran out onto the porch in her bare feet. Dana followed after her, bent over with her hands outstretched, in the middle of some game. She stopped as soon as she saw the two men standing near the pickup truck and straightened, suddenly self-conscious in her faded t-shirt and yoga pants. A guilty heat rose in Scott’s cheeks.

Ned doffed his hat and held it to his chest like he was singing the national anthem at a baseball game. “Well, hey there, Mrs. Baker.”

“Hey there yourself, Ned.” Dana’s eyes were wary, darting from Ned to Scott and back again. “What brings you out this way so early?”

Ned chuckled. If he’d heard the note of reproach in Dana’s voice, he wasn’t letting on. “Nothin’ special,” he said. “Just thought I’d drop by and see how you’re faring in this heat. When are you and the mister here gonna come out for a visit? Angie’s been asking after ya. Wants an excuse to bring out the good china.”

Dana smiled at this. Ned’s eyes dropped to look her over, just for an instant, but Scott caught it all the same. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining Ned’s meaty hand closing over her breast, his finger in her mouth the way his own had been in her mouth not long ago. It hadn’t been Ned. He knew that. But it had been someone.

Again, Scott thought that maybe he could just go. Maybe they wouldn’t miss him one bit.

“Well, that sounds great to me,” Dana said with a smile that only Scott would see was forced. “Just say the word and we’ll be there.”

“I most surely will,” Ned said.

Scott knew that he wouldn’t, that the offer was as much a put-on as his folksy, downstate drawl. He couldn’t fault Ned for it, though. Even if the offer had been sincere, there was no way Scott could have brought himself to go to the man’s house, to see the life that his own father’s land had helped buy for him. On some level, Ned probably knew that, and kept his distance on purpose.

Tallie was at the railing, wedging her foot between the cracked and paint-bare slats, trying to pull herself up, chinning the handrail. “Dana, could you get Tallie?”

“She’s just fine,” Dana said, still watching their visitor.

“I’m fine, Daddy,” Tallie echoed.

“I don’t want her to get a splinter.” The words came out harsher than he’d meant them, and he saw the way they made his wife’s face harden. She recovered her smile quickly and scooped Tallie up to perch on her hip. Tallie squirmed a bit before she hugged on tight, like a koala on a tree branch.

“Now, if you ladies will excuse us,” Ned said, “I’ve just got a little bit more to talk over with your fella here and I don’t want to keep him from you any longer than I have to.” He pressed his hat down tight onto his head. Another punctuation mark, this one a full-stop period.

Dana turned and took hold of the door handle. “Don’t keep him too long, now.”

Ned gave a tip of his hat as the screen door closed behind her. “No ma’am. I most surely won’t.”

Ned took hold of Scott’s shoulder then, turning him around, walking him toward the back of the truck. “Scott, I’ve known you since the second grade, and you know what? I always figgered you’d be one of the first ones to get out of this place.”

Out past the rows of soybeans, Scott watched the single dark cloud hovering in the distance. It seemed larger now, or maybe it was only closer, a rough disc the color of cigarette ash. He could see the soft shadow of rain falling beneath it, too distant to offer any respite from the heat.

“I always thought you’d go off and be an architect or a lawyer or somethin’, not wastin’ your life pullin’ cable for ComEd. This life is fine for a guy like me, barely made it through high school, but you? This could be a fresh start. For you. For Dana. For all of you.”

There was something about the cloud that Scott couldn’t put his finger on, some nagging detail that couldn’t quite find its way to the front of his mind. He watched it hang in the sky, watched the faint sheen of the rain sheeting down underneath it, drifting with the wind.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ned said. “Think it over, and I mean really think it over. Then name your price. And don’t be afraid to go high, neither.”

Scott shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off that darkened patch of sky. “I ain’t looking for charity, Ned.”

“Ain’t hardly charity. That land you sold me backawhen been real good to me, better than I had a right to by a long ways. Way I see it, you gave me one hell of a bargain and ever since I’ve been feelin’ like I took advantage. You’d be doin’ my conscience a courtesy, that’s for—”

“Hey, Ned?”

Ned got quiet, but his eyes stayed eager.

“What do you make of that cloud?”

The big man squinted, considering, before a smile crept its way across his face.

“Well,” he said. “I’d say it looks like we’re finally gonna get some rain. Not a moment too soon, neither. Been a long time comin’.”

“Yeah, but nothing about it strikes you… I don’t know? Weird?”

Ned tilted his head, let the hat shade his eyes. At once Scott knew what had bothered him about the cloud. The wind was taking the rain that fell from it, drawing it out. The rain should have been taking the cloud with it, but the cloud wasn’t moving at all.

Ned thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “Looks angry. I’ll give you that. Little fella, though. Unless it finds a bigger brother, I doubt it’s gonna amount to much. Shame too. We need every drop we can get.” He stepped in front of Scott, his big hat eclipsing the cloud entirely.

“Look,” he said. “All I’m askin’ is that you take a couple days, think it over. You do that and, come next weekend, you want to tell me to shut my mouth and mind my business, then that’s exactly what I’ll do. But if you do think about it, and what I’m saying starts to make sense—and it does make sense, Scott. It makes all the sense in the world—well, you call me, all right? You call me any time.”

He patted Scott on the shoulder, a final punctuation mark before he heaved himself back into his truck and drove away. Scott didn’t turn to see him go. He only watched the cloud, a dark blot in an otherwise perfect sky. The longer he looked, the more he was sure that it was growing.