Signs of Struggle Read Free Page A

toad-choking downpour, began to pelt down. The clouds broke open with a booming clap of thunder that made me jump, and heavy rain slammed into the farmyard. I didn’t seek shelter. I just let the rain fall on me, soaking my t-shirt. It felt good, cleansing, cool, like a sweet shower. I took off my glasses, lifted my face to the sky, and closed my eyes.
     
    I heard tires crunching on gravel. I put my glasses back on and looked.
     
    A white car with “Rockbluff County Sheriff” stenciled in green on the front door crawled up the drive and pulled to a stop in the driveway. The cruiser’s headlights glowed and the windshield wipers arced back and forth. The driver killed the lights and engine and got out. The wipers stopped in mid-sweep.
     
    The young man, big and beefy, maybe a tight end in college, slipped into his raincoat and pulled on a black baseball cap with “RCSD” across the front in yellow letters. The snug raincoat made him look shrink-wrapped. He strode over to the bloody grass, meeting me there. He said, “This is worse than I thought when they called it in.”
     
    His blue eyes, squinty against the rain, studied the lawn, streaking now, like faint pink ribbons trailing away from a girl’s hat. He turned and looked at me, offered his hand, and said, “Stephen Doltch, Deputy Sheriff.”
     
    “Tom O’Shea, unfortunate passerby.” It was like shaking hands with a bear.
     
    Just then lightning lacerated the sky, the heavens cracked wide open with window-rattling thunder, and buckets fell.
     
    “Terrible accident,” Doltch yelled through the cloudburst.
     
    I shouted back, “What makes you think it was an accident?”
     
    Sometimes I like to stir things up just to see what happens next; besides, Doltch’s observation seemed like a pretty quick analysis of the situation. Not that I disagreed, but my leg hurt and nausea nudged my guts. I wanted to leave, and here’s a young deputy, supposedly inured to presumptions, making judgments already.
     
    He looked at me as if a banana slug were emerging from my left eye socket. “What else could it be?”
     
    I shrugged, trying to appear disinterested, uninvolved. I looked around. I rubbed the back of my aching leg. “Suicide? Farmers have high suicide rates.”
     
    “Not Hugh,” Doltch said, his voice loud. Another shaft of lightning, farther away, then a distant rumble, rain letting up a little. “Too much to live for: Wendy, this farm, children someday, season tickets on the forty at Trice Stadium, forty rows up. No, sir, this wasn’t any suicide. Besides, I don’t think anyone would do himself in this way. My God.”
     
    So the dead man was an Iowa State guy. Talk about a string of bad luck. First the football team, now this. I said, “I knew a guy in college who killed himself by drinking a beaker of hydrochloric acid.”
     
    “This ain’t no suicide.”
     
    “Murder?” Forever picking. Wise guy . Provocateur .
     
    “Murder?” The young lawman grimaced. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, where do you get murder? Everybody liked Hugh. Good grief. You obviously aren’t from around here.”
     
    “Actually, I am.” Faint flash of lightning in the next county east, thin thunder following. I pushed my glasses up on top of my head and wiped the rain from my face, took my glasses in hand and ran a fingertip across the lenses. I put them back on. I felt suddenly cold on a warm spring day. “I am about to buy a house. As soon as I find it.”
     
    “That your truck back up the lane?” he asked.
     
    “Yes, sir.”
     
    “Very nice.”
     
    “Thank you.” The new, four-door pickup was a failed attempt to help me get my mind off my dead family. An attempt to buy a change of pace back in Georgia. Still, it is nice, a luxury I can easily afford after selling my half of the business; collecting on insurance policies; selling the house, furnished; selling the lake house, also furnished; selling the ski boat, and closing out our checking and