A Dry Spell Hardback - 1997

Excerpt

Sometime in the very middle of the middle of the night, Karen woke to a tapping on her window.  She didn't immediately identify the sound, but searched her mind in half sleep.  Bird?  breeze?  vampire...?

"Grange?"

Karen came fully awake.  "Huh?"  She clutched the sheet all the way to her neck.  She turned toward the window, trying to see out.  It was too dark.  Then she saw movement, a hand.

"It's Tom."

"What do you want?"

"Come to the door," he said.  A shadow moved from the window, toward the front of the house.  Karen lay back, still holding the sheet up to her neck.  She shook her head to get rid of the last of the fuzzies and sat up.

She was wearing only a long cotton nightdress.  She frantically searched for a robe.  She had six.  Why the hell couldn't she find one?  She found her slippers, slid them on.  She finally found a robe on the desk, slipped it over her shoulders, and held it closed with one hand.  With the other hand, she removed the chair she had propped under the bedroom doorknob, and wrenched it aside.

She found him on the front porch, waiting for her.  It had cooled off a little, and although there was no breeze, it was nice outside, out of the heat of her bedroom.

"Sorry," he said.  "Did I scare you?"

"What do you want?"

"I didn't come in," he pointed out.

"What time is it?"  she asked.  It was still full dark.  She felt as though she had just fallen asleep, although she had been asleep for hours, a troubled sleep.

"I don't know, late.  I have something to show you," he said.

He reached over to grab her free hand, before she could stop him.  She yanked it back.

"Don't!"

"Hey," he said, softly, raising both his hands to show he meant no harm.  He seemed excited.  "Come with me."

Karen stepped back, away from him.  "No."

Tom went partway down the stairs and turned to her, motioning her to follow him.  "Come on," he urged.  "It's your party trick."  He went down the remaining step and walked toward the back of the house.

Karen stood on the porch for a moment longer, and then followed.



He was leading her to the clearing.  Just as on the night he first came, the headlines roared through her head.

Goodlands Banker Murdered in Orchard.  $2,500 in Stolen Money Recovered from Very Expensive Handbag in Bedroom.  Banker Found in Pieces.  Finally Rains in Goodlands.  Rains Bankers, though.

The sharp, dry grass scratched at her ankles.  It would be worse in the clearing, where there was sharp brush.  While she walked, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of her robe, letting it hang loose in front of her.  She tried to keep Tom in her sights.  He walked on ahead of her, glancing back now and then, smiling when he saw her following him.

Away from the sanctuary offered by the porch, Karen became aware of the darkness, the still night air, the nearly silent sound of him moving ahead of her.

He was walking toward the apple grove.  She stayed a good forty feet behind him, and now and then lost sight of him, though his shirt reflected white in the darkness.

They cut across the backyard, past the gazebo with its gothic lines, past the overgrown rock garden--just a dimly glowing circle in the dark yard--past the tree line that marked out the full of the yard, and then into the first of the apple trees.  Tom disappeared into the grove.

Karen stepped between two tall trees that had been planted too close together, and whose branches had since entwined, and she saw him again.  He stood waiting for her in the center of the clearing.  She stopped and stared, trying to decide: Should she bolt back to the house, or should she step into the circle?

Her heart pounded.  It could have been the utter lack of cardiovascular activity in her life, or it could have been him.

In the moonlight that filtered through the trees, turning their poor, thirsty tops silver, he seemed to glow.  It was his white T-shirt, she decided.  And his eyes.  She could see them, the white showing around blue irises, exaggerating their roundness.  He looked as he had the first time she'd seen him, on the TV, from Winslow, Kansas.  One step and she would be very close to him.

Did she still want it to rain?

Karen stepped through the trees into the clearing.

He held a hand out to her.  "Come here.  Stand with me."  Karen stopped about four feet in front of him, and ignored his hand.  She swallowed.  "I'll stand here."

"Okay, sure."  He chuckled, a grin, which Karen suspected wasn't for her, spreading on his face.  He ran his hands nervously through his hair, pushing it off his face, the way he had in the video clip.  His bare arms reflected the scant light in the clearing.  She became aware of how dark it really was in the orchard.  If she had to run, would she be able to see? she wondered.  Or was she at his mercy?  Gooseflesh rippled up her back.  It wasn't exactly fear.

"Give me your hand," he said, reaching over for it.  She shook her head no.  He kept his hand held out to her.  "Please," he said, quietly, and reached out again tentatively.  "Please?"  She finally let him take her hand, holding it out stiffly, not liking the feeling of his palm, beneath hers.  His was large and warm.  Their hands rested very lightly together.

"What is this?" she demanded, uncomfortably aware of his heat.

"Shhhh," he said.  He eased her hand gently until it was cupped, and held it that way with his own.  She looked up to him, and his eyes began to close slowly.  He raised their arms together, palms upward, to her eye level, and held them there.  She stood facing him, rigid, unyielding, only dimly aware of the sudden change in the meadow.

She watched him.

He closed his eyes fully.  Then he opened them.  "A party trick," he said, "by Tom Keatley.  For Karen Grange."  He winked and closed his eyes again.  Karen smiled.

He stood very still, like a statue in the middle of the clearing.



When Tom closed his eyes, he let go of the place in the orchard.  He emptied his mind of Karen, of the trees, of Goodlands, of the incredible dryness here that he couldn't explain.  He reached up, farther and farther, and found the rain.  It was there.  As always he could feel the wetness inside his body; the plump and pregnant clouds that were holding it seemed to be inside him.  But this time, it was as though he were standing very nearby, but not near enough.  He tried again, as he had many times that day, to pull it toward him.  When he grabbed at it, he could hold on.  He could feel it there, letting him touch it.  And he could tug it a little, as though his door to the sky was all but closed.  But he couldn't bring it in.  He didn't have to bring it all.  He had only to bring enough over to convince her.  To show her that he could do it.  Just enough for a show.

He strained against the sky, teeth clenched, lips pulled back in a grimace.  The muscles of his face and body stiffened with the exertion.  He found a neat little pocket of rain to the west of them.  He settled on it.  He worked the sky through his little doorway.



The heat in the meadow was impossible.  Full, sultry.  Karen watched Tom's face change.  His face turned upward, to the sky.  One arm reached up, palm up.  Nothing in the clearing moved.  The stillness moved through her, soothing her.  Her eyes were locked on his face.  He was motionless.  He didn't seem to know she was there.  Karen kept her eyes open and watched his face.  Energy seemed to come off him in waves, running down through his hand to her.  She could feel something change in the air around her.  Her nightgown clung to her.  Sweat radiated along her hairline.  She became aware of the trees, their smell.  Everything in the clearing became hyperreal, hyperalive.  She was transfixed.

Karen was still looking into Tom's face, had watched it change, settle, relax, when she heard the first sound.  A trickle as if from a stream.  Something familiar filled her hand.  It broke through the heat in her body and chilled the flesh of her palm.  It slipped softly down her arm.  Moonlight sparkled, following the rivulets.  With the light splashed over her, she saw it.  Her eyes widened and her lips parted as she drew in breath.

In the palm of her hand there was a little pool of cool, fresh water.  It trickled down through the tiny spaces between her fingers, down to her elbow.  She could feel it.  See it.  Smell it.

Rain.