After the Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

there was the old pinball machine. Ace wasn’t going to sell that. No way. That would go with him.
    A dozen framed newspaper photos hung on the wall in the alcove off the bar. A small flag. Ace made a mental note to take the pictures and the flag off the wall and box them. He’d promised them to the North Dakota Room at the county library.
    He nodded to Gordy, who was behind the bar drinking a can of Coke for breakfast. Sweating standing still, Gordy was strapped into a black Velcroed back brace. Square and muscular, always unshaven. Even as a little kid, Gordy had lots of hair; a cross between the Energizer Bunny and a werewolf.
    “Late night, huh?” Gordy asked. Friendly enough except for his restless, calculating eyes. He was, still, for all his ambitious plans, the hired help. And you could never tell when this hung-over shadow of Ace Shuster would experience a lethal two-minute relapse back to when he was the baddest thing in three counties.
    Ace nodded and climbed on a bar stool. Gordy put two Alka Seltzers in a glass, poured in some water, and pushed it across the bar. Ace drank his breakfast. Gordy poured a cup of black coffee, slid it over along with a copy of the Grand Forks Herald .
    “So what’s going on?” Ace asked.
    “Nothing much. Just the last few pickups tonight, tomorrow.”
    Ace nodded. They were cleaning out the last of the booze. Pickupsafter ten. There were only three full-time deputies and one highway patrol in the county. They seldom staffed from ten at night to six A.M. There was more Border Patrol around since 9/11, but they seldom patrolled the prairie roads the Canucks used when they came down to shop for the whiskey.
    “Don’t suppose anybody called?” Ace said.
    “Nah.”
    Figured. Liquidation. Ace thought it a fitting word to describe the demise of a drinking joint. Everything must go. The license, the building, the chairs, the cash register. Ace himself. Ace’s function was to preside over the dismantling of the Missile Park Bar. Just like Dale was selling off the last of Dad’s heavy equipment at the shed across the road. Dad moved to Florida, picked up a golf club, and never looked back. Ma, expert at denial and rationalization, went to church and played bridge.
    Ace sipped his coffee, lit his first Camel of the day, and opened the paper.
    “I already looked, nothing new on Ginny,” Gordy said. Ginny Weller, a town girl who’d moved to Grand Forks, had gone missing last month.
    Ace nodded, scanned the section anyway, and turned to the commodities markets in business. “Three-dollar spring wheat,” he said and shook his head.
    “Umm,” Gordy mumbled. He was a town kid whose father ran a string of failing gas stations. He’d never sat on a tractor in his life.
    Ace passed on sports, repelled when he saw a lot of Minnesota purple in the feature football art. He came to the daily crossword and settled in on 1 across. “Four-letter word for southern veggie,” he said.
    “Corn,” Gordy said.
    “C’mon numbnuts. It says southern .”
    “Ah, grits?”
    “ Four letters,” Ace said. He checked 1 down. Dark yellow. Aftera moment he penciled in “ocher,” which gave him an O for 1 across. Okay. He got it. He was starting to pencil in “okra,” when he heard tires crunch to a stop on the weed-choked trap rock out front.
    Ace and Gordy exchanged surprised looks when they heard something they hadn’t heard at the Missile Park in a long, long time: female voices. And these female voices were on the shrill side, pitched high, banging back and forth at each other.
    Ace winced and looked at Gordy, who shrugged, came around the bar, went to the front, and looked out the window.
    “Two chicks and a little girl,” Gordy said.
    “What are they driving?”
    “Looks like a red Volvo. Hard to tell the way it’s all dusted up. With Minnesota plates. Got an old green Wellstone sticker on the bumper. And, ah, this rainbow-type decal.”
    Ace’s expression jiggled between a wince