Late Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

importance of the blood flowing through each, until Corrine, worried about how things were beginning to play out, had convinced Buddy to elope. Stanley had the last word though, giving them the house in White Pine Manor as a belated wedding present and making sure Corrine understood its point: White Pine was peopled by those who had yet to fully arrive, the development occupying a nebulous position just north of the mid-point on the slope of the area’s social register.
    Still holding the mail, Corrine stood in the middle of her front yard and lifted her arms and closed her eyes and felt the warmth of a spring sun on her face and imagined the whole of White Pine Manor on fire, every home ablaze, every shrub and flower and lawn burning beneath a sky empty of clouds, any rain coming too late.

SIX
    THE OFFICER DRIVING the blue and white reminded Jack Carson of a minor league saint, some obscure foreign holy man whose gaunt Byzantine profile belonged in a dusty corner panel of stained glass or stamped on a small coppery-green religious medal.
    “Did I hurt him?” Jack asked. He waited. The name eventually bumped into view. “Don Meade.”
    The cop glanced over at Jack, then went back to his driving. Outside, the afternoon light was pale and thin.
    Jack Carson thought it was probably April. Maybe March.
    The officer hesitated, then said, “Meade’s ok.”
    It might have been afternoon, but the inside of the cruiser smelled like a late Saturday night, the point where promise collided with disappointment but had yet to curdle into regret or resignation.
    “I’ve got references.” Jack cupped the back of his neck with his left hand. “I do good work.”
    He shook his head and then looked out the window. “Don Meade doesn’t. He doesn’t have to.”
    Jack closed and opened his fists. The skin around the knuckles was tight. The cuts he expected to see weren’t there.
    “The bids, they were supposed to be sealed,” he said.
    “I wouldn’t know about that,” the officer said.
    “You know the apartment complex over on Warley? Barely five years old and you see what shape it’s in. That’s Meade’s work.”
    The officer reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror.
    “You have kids?” Jack asked.
    The officer waited a long moment before answering, “No.”
    “If you did,” Jack said, “you’d understand why I needed the bid on renovating the recreation center.”
    Just as he would have understood what tore loose in Jack Carson when Don Meade walked into the High Tide and started buying everyone drinks, a little early celebration, Don Meade everybody’s pal, brother-in-law to the president of the city council and star of his own television and radio commercials, Meade Construction, let us build your dreams , and Jack Carson for his part wondering if he could make this month’s payroll, his own construction company once again losing out to the bigger outfits, Jack angry and afraid in equal measures because his word and his work had always been good, and then Don Meade stepping up and setting a beer in front of him and dropping his hand on Jack’s shoulder.
    Jack was not sure how many times he’d hit Meade.
    He looked out the passenger window. A street sign, white on green, popped up and disappeared in a blur of consonants. Two vowels, a and e , followed like a comet tail.
    “Almost there, Jack,” the officer said.
    Jack leaned forward and tried to read the left pocket on the cop’s chest. D-E-C -O-something. The light kept getting in the way of the rest.
    Jack hoped it wasn’t something about the bus. They hadn’t pressed charges yet, but there’d been some ugly undercurrents.
    The officer hit the signal and turned down a street lined with magnolias. The leaves were a dark waxy green and shaped like a hand with its fingers extended and tightly pressed together.
    Jack kept bracing himself for a smudge of yellow among the green and then the appearance of the bus, squat as a loaf of bread.
    Over the next