Call Down the Thunder by Dietrich Kalteis

Author:Dietrich Kalteis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

. . . Twenty-Seven

“What took you?” Handy said, filling the Zephyr’s tank.

Sonny walked to the Conoco, the carbine in his hand. “Got to dickering,” Putting the Winchester in back.

Locking the garage doors, Handy got in and started the car, the two of them driving off.

Sonny asked him to pull in at the stone orchard, and Handy steered the Zephyr between the double row of trees of heaven, waiting in the idling car while Sonny paid his respects, keeping his ears on the symphony of the cylinders.

Kneeling by Orin’s plot, Sonny tugged up some new weeds, telling the old man he got another line of trees in, still had the west side to plant. Brushing sand from the cross, going on about the land being as dry as a nun’s gusset. “But the rain’ll come, and we’ll get in some seed this spring.” Then he turned and brushed sand from his ma’s grave. Knowing she wouldn’t like what he was getting himself into. Robbing a bank and hiring out as a tough, butting heads with the White Knights of the Great Plains.

They rode the 24 east past Tasco and Hill City and Stockton, that stretch of road tabletop-straight out to the skyline. Both looking out at the road that ran along the Solomon River, low on its banks, the road veering to the south after they passed Cawker City. A truckload of Okies passed them, hands waving as they rolled west. Swerving his wheels, Handy missed a gopher snake sunning out on the hot road, said it was bad luck hitting them. Sonny said Indians figured everything was good or bad luck. Handy saying it was about honoring the four-legged along with the two-legged, something a white man wouldn’t understand.

“You know a snake’s got no legs, right?”

Handy shook his head and said Sonny was just plain ignorant. The Zephyr passed a road crew, Handy taking the posted detour around the section the crew was cobbling together, the interstate expansion part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. A mile farther, drifted sand crossed the lanes like dunes. Handy slowed and wheeled to the shoulder and made it around a felled utility pole without getting stuck, the wires knocked off its cross-members.

A road stand as neglected as the land stood abandoned next to the highway. A line of shelterbelt saplings lined the opposite slope coming off a ridge. Looked like the same green ash Sonny had been planting. He took his makings and rolled a smoke, saying, “The new boss’s got every man jack planting government trees and fixing holes in roads.”

“And yet the shit keeps happening.” Steering with his knees, Handy took the makings and rolled his own, Sonny striking a match off the dash.

A billboard came into view, both men dragging on their smokes. A smiling gent telling them it was cider time, holding up a bottle of the stuff. The sign’s upper corner was peeling, the sun and blowing sand had dulled its color. Past the billboard, another windbreak of trees stood a half dozen rows deep.

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