Right as Rain

She wiped the tears off her face and got out of the bed. She walked naked across the room.

From the bedroom window, Edna Loomis watched Ray and Earl out in the yard, arguing over something, Earl pointing to a row of stumps at the edge of the woods, where Ray had set up empty beer cans. Ray had his gun in his hand, and Edna figured he was getting ready to shoot the cans off the stumps. Ray liked to do that before their runs, said it got him 'mentally prepared' to deal with those coloreds down in D.C. Earl didn't like Ray shooting off that pistol; he didn't care for all that noise.

He must have talked Ray out of it, because Ray left, then came out of the barn with his gym bag and loaded the heroin into the space behind the bumper of the car. Edna drained her third Jack and Coke of the afternoon, watching him complete his task.

She felt kind of fu

You can always be higher, though. Ain't no question about that.

She rattled ice in the glass and sucked out the last few drips of mash as Ray and Earl got in the Taurus and drove away.

Edna got dressed, slipped the barn key into her jeans, and went down the hall, knocking on the door to Earl's room, where that half-colored junkie, Sondra, spent all her time. She opened the door and went through it when the girl didn't respond.

Sondra was naked, sitting on the edge of the bed, using a razor blade to cut out lines of heroin on a glass paperweight. Edna didn't think she'd ever seen a girl that ski

'I'm goin' for a walk,' said Edna.

'Okay,' said Sondra, not even raising her head.

'I feel like takin' a long one in the woods.'

'Okay.'

'Fine.'

Edna didn't know why she bothered covering her tracks with this one. She left the room.

Sondra bent forward and snorted up a thick line of heroin. She snorted the one beside it at once.

The warmth came almost immediately to the back of her neck. It spread behind her eyes and to the top of her skull. Then it was in her legs and buttocks and traveling like hot, beautiful liquid up her spine and racing through her veins. The edges of the room bled off, and Sondra lay back on the warm bed.

Sondra remembered that she had been crying moments earlier, but she couldn't remember why.

Edna patted her pockets as she walked into the barn and strode briskly through the saloon area toward the back room. She had her little brass pipe in one front pocket, the key in the other. She had wedged her leather pouch holding her pack of Slims and Bic lighter in the ass pocket of her jeans.

Edna used her key in the lock of the steel-fortified door, opened the door, and flicked on the lights. She closed the door behind her. She went quickly to the shelf mounted over Ray's homemade lab. She snatched a vial off the shelf and opened its lid. The vial was filled to the top with crystal rocks.

Edna shoved the entire vial into the pocket of her jeans. Ray wouldn't be back for some time. She was going to mix a tall drink and take a walk out in those woods for real. Smoke up those rocks and have a party her own self. She deserved a little treat, the way Ray always left her hangin' like that, when she was doing her best to service him good.

Edna heard a door open from the front of the barn. She turned her head and stumbled back, her own reflection in the weight-lifting mirror giving her an awful startle. Looking down at the floor, she saw the carpet remnant beside the weight bench, not completely covering the trapdoor.

Edna heard boot steps clomping on the barroom floor. She had always been a quick thinker, her friend Joha

Ray and Earl had only gotten a mile down the interstate when Ray told Earl they had to turn around and go back to the property.

'I forgot somethin',' said Ray.

'What, that speckled powder?' said Earl.

'It gives me an edge when I'm dealin' with those rugheads.'

'Go on back if you need it,' said Earl, lifting a Busch from the six-pack cooler at his feet. 'Me, everything I need, it comes from a bottle or a can.'

Ray U-turned the Taurus and headed back for the property.

Earl cracked his window, then rolled it down halfway. 'Weather turned yesterday.'

'It'll get cold again.'

'It stays like this, them greasers are go

'Ground's still too hard, Daddy.'

'You better get to it, Critter.'

'I'll take care of it, Daddy.'

Ray took a deep breath, wondering if his father would ever stop tellin' him what to do.

Ray walked hard across the saloon floor, his fists balled tight. He needed to calm down, but how could he, havin' to take care of all these people, and his business, and on top of it all having to take a boatload of shit from his old man. He pulled his keys off his belt loop and fitted one to the lock on the back door.

The lock had already been turned. He reached for the knob. God damn, the door was already open.

'Edna,' said Ray, shaking his head, because he knew it had to be her had been back here; somehow she'd gotten hold of his key. There wasn't anyone else stupid enough to test him like that.

Ray went to the shelf and took down the spansules of crystal meth. He shoved the vial into a pocket of his jeans. He sca

Ray turned at the sound of the car horn. That would be his daddy, just landin' on it, tellin' him it was time to go.

Ray looked around the room. Somethin' wasn't right… Damn, there it was, too, the carpet remnant had been moved off the trapdoor. Must have been moved with all that activity they'd had back here with the Colombians, what with them all floppin' around and shit. Even so, thought Ray, as he moved the carpet aside and lifted the trapdoor, holding his breath against a familiar smell, it doesn't hurt to check.

He looked down the wooden ladder that led into the tu

Earl landed on that horn again.

'All right!' yelled Ray, though he knew his daddy couldn't hear him.

Ray closed the trapdoor, placed the carpet remnant over it, and dragged the weight bench over a few feet. Now the weight bench sat atop the trapdoor.

Ray shut down the lights before he locked the door from the outside. He took no pleasure in hurting Edna. But he sure was go

Edna wasn't scared, not really. Even when Ray had shut the lights down, because she never had been frightened of the dark. She sat on the cold dirt patiently, waiting to make sure Ray had gone away for good, and when she was satisfied, she kind of crawled around some until she found the ladder, and climbed up it to the trapdoor.

The door wouldn't budge. Ray had put somethin' over it. She wasn't surprised. She went back down the ladder and sat, gave herself some time to think.

She'd seen enough of the tu