Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

cold. The path to the barn was easy enough to see by the starlight. He stopped and listened. The refrigerator turned off in the house. He strained to hear better. She’s been late before, he told himself. They have a lot of business on Friday night. People stay till all hours. The place simply gets jammed. Then stick around afterward and clean up. A wonder she gets home as quickly as she usually does . . . usually before midnight . . . an hour and a half late so far.

He heard a distant, jumbled sound and his senses quickened. It might be an echo of the tires’ noise, still on the highway. Then he heard it again, and again, but no closer. Only wind in thetrees, he thought. When you really hear her turn the corner, there won’t be any doubt, you’ll know it can’t be anything else. Only the false sounds make vague promises.

He felt as though he had been standing there a long time. His face was beginning to numb. He was also letting his anxiety get out of control and had begun playing the subconscious game of If I can hear her, then in three minutes she’ll be home, putting aside all attempts to rationalize how she might have come to be so late. He conferred with his better reasoning.

Now look, if something’s happened, somehow they’d’ve gotten in touch. Because I don’t have a phone doesn’t warrant this kind of worry. And be it as it may, until she drives in the driveway she won’t be here, listening or no listening. So go find Holmes.

He flipped on the flashlight and went into the barn. The faint ball of orange light hardly illuminated the loose hay covering the floor, and it was distinguishable only by shade from the rough wooden walls. He walked ahead very slowly, feeling along the wall for the opening. Holmes usually slept back against a manger, underneath the ladder to the mow. July turned and went down the aisle between the stanchions, hearing his muted footsteps and breaking the peaceful spell of the barn. A mouse rustled out of his way. He shined the light ahead, stretching it out as far as it would reach, playing it along the sides of the mangers, not allowing himself to speak until he caught the glint of Holmes’ eyes.

“Hi, Holmes,” he whispered, as though the big barn were a cathedral and the darkness were the cloud. The dog came toward him. “No, don’t get up. I just thought I’d come out and see what you were doing.”

He sat down in the hay and took the dog’s head in his lap, turning off the flashlight. “So how’s it going, old Holmes?” and he felt along her back, sinking his fingers deeply into it. The dog’s spirit seemed to leap out to him. “Don’t worry, Holmes, there’s no sense for you being upset. It’s probably not even two o’clock yet. It’s a half-hour, maybe forty-five-minute drive from here. Having a coke or sandwich before she left would make itabout 12:45; then figuring on cleaning up after a busy night, washing the tables off, sweeping the floor, especially if one of the girls was sick, makes it after midnight when the last customers left. Why, I’ve left plenty of restaurants myself at midnight. So there’s nothing for you to be worried about. Just go back to sleep.” He put her head back down in the hay and carefully stood up. “Go back to sleep,” he urged again and began making his way outside where he could hear better. It was becoming harder and harder to keep his imagination from running over what it might be like to get into his car and drive into town looking for her, see some flashing red lights ahead, see the tangled fender of a brown station wagon, then the—

He reached the door. Every fiber of his being was wired to his eardrums, ready to devour the first little tremble. It was of comfort to be listening again, involved in some way in the activity of her coming, as though listening would bring her closer. He stood with the barn to his back, thinking that because of its huge size it would reflect any noise that might escape him directly from the source.

Then he heard something, so faint that he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his own desire. The sound disappeared too quickly to be tested. No, that was her, he thought—still on the highway, just before the hill. Then a faint wind came through the oaks in back, the brown, clinging leaves rattling against each other like giant, flat insects. Damn that wind, thought July, and despite it he tried to pick out Mal turning the corner, knowing the sound would last only a little longer than five seconds before the first hill tucked it away and she’d be hidden from his hearing until she reached the top, where he’d get another chance to hear her before she reached the next hill, and at this one—if he was standing out front in the road—he could see the headlights! He ran through the snow, making a fresh trail in the crusted surface. Holmes followed behind him. The sound of their running made the second chance to hear her null and void. They got into the tire tracks and reached the gravel.

He looked off into the distance and watched with wild, flashing eyes for the halo of approaching car lights to climb the crest of the faraway hill. First that, then as the halo grew brighter and bigger, at the same time the sound would come reaching toward him, the two lights would pop into view, suspended like handheld beacons in the darkness, and come bobbing and roaring toward him. What time must it be? he thought. It’s too clear for the light to reflect off the atmosphere. I won’t see it until just that moment. His eyes were trying to leave his body. The