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Overview
“A sharp-witted, affecting noir.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Fans of historical crime fiction won’t want to miss this one.” — Publishers Weekly
Desperate times call for desperate measures in Kalteis’s lightning fast crime caper story
Sonny and Clara Myers struggle on their Kansas farm in the late 1930s, a time the Lord gave up on: their land’s gone dry, barren, and worthless; the bankers are greedy and hungry, trying to squeeze them and other farmers out of their homes; and, on top of that, their marriage is in trouble. The couple can struggle and wither along with the land or surrender to the bankers and hightail it to California like most of the others. Clara is all for leaving, but Sonny refuses to abandon the family farm.
In a fit of temper, she takes off westward in their old battered truck. Alone on the farm and determined to get back Clara and the good old days, Sonny comes up with an idea, a way to keep his land and even prosper while giving the banks a taste of their own misery. He sets the scheme in motion under the cover of the commotion being caused by a rainmaker hired by the mayor to call down the thunder and wash away everyone’s troubles.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770414792 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2019 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.90(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Lexile: | 870L (what's this?) |
About the Author
Dietrich Kalteis is the award-winning author of Ride the Lightning (bronze medal, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards, for best regional fiction), The Deadbeat Club , Triggerfish , House of Blazes (silver medal, 2017 IPPY, for best historical fiction), Zero Avenue , and Poughkeepsie Shuffle . He lives with his family in Vancouver, B.C.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Sonny Myers narrowed his eyes against the gust, felt the rush of cold, the air crackling: static electricity churning and hellfire flashing inside the mass of black looming high over the flat land. The yard a frenzy of whipping sand and debris by the time he got his mule and car in the barn. Felt like the end of times coming. Through the boiling wall of sand, Sonny made out two sets of headlights approaching on the county road. Could be coming for shelter from the duster, but something told him no. Going to the house, reaching inside the door, he took the shotgun and stepped off the porch.
Coming to the door, Clara wanting to have a look.
"Just a blow." He told her to stay inside.
"What you gonna do, shoot it?"
His eyes slits, Sonny stepped into the yard, forcing his steps, having to lean into it, going toward the headlights.
Looked like two pickups stopped down by the mailbox, lights dim against the blasting sand. Doors opened and men got out. Nobody he knew. Best he could tell there were six of them, pulling hoods on. Two going to the bed of the first truck, pulling a long cross from the back. Sonny smelling kerosene and oil from where he stood, halfway to the house. A couple of them fanned to his left, heading for the side of the house, flanking him.
Sonny fired in the air, the only warning they'd get, popping in another shell. Leaving the ones by the trucks, Sonny went after the pair going wide around the house. Couldn't see twenty feet ahead as the duster bore down. Hurrying around the side, his eyes searched for them somewhere ahead of him. One hand against the boards, he made his way around the back, staying low. Expecting an ambush. Ready to shoot if he had to. Getting to the far side before he smelled the smoke. Thinking it was the burning cross. Then he caught figures moving ahead of him.
"Halt," he called, wondering what kind of thing was that to yell. Couldn't shoot, knowing Clara wouldn't stay inside like he told her. No point in shooting his wife. Catching sight of the flames, the cross burning down by the mailbox, the sound of car doors shutting, taillights pulling away.
Then Clara screamed from the porch, stumbling down the steps, hand on the porch rail, she moved along and found him, pointing to the barn. Sonny catching the flicker, another man running from it and crossing the open ground, heading for the trucks. Putting the stock to his shoulder, Sonny fired. Pretty sure he winged the son of a bitch, reaching in his pocket for another shell that wasn't there. The man chased after the trucks and disappeared.
The dry boards caught fast, flames flicked to the roof beams and spread, the straw floor alight and swirling around. Bats flew around the rafters, chickens getting out of there. The mule screaming.
Handing Clara the shotgun, Sonny jumped down along the west side, swatting and kicking at the burning straw with his shoe. The heat like a wall, pushing him back. Slapping at the cuff of his overalls as it caught. No way to get to the back. The heat was too much. Couldn't get to the screaming mule and pull her from the stall. Taking Clara, he turned her for the door.
Driven out, both of them choking from the smoke, blinded by the sand. The flames shooting from the roof, long fingers reaching across to the house. The triangle clanging like mad from the porch post. Wrapping his arms around her, Sonny got her across the yard. A picket struck his back and knocked him down. Clara tugged him to his feet. Getting to the porch. The sand blasting so hard, they could barely see the barn, both getting inside the house. Praying it wouldn't catch fire too.
CHAPTER 2A week earlier
Lining on the check, Sonny Myers raised the maul. Putting some hip behind the swing, he let the weight bring it down, hitting the log dead center and splitting it. Setting the armload on the porch, more than enough to fill the woodbox. The lower step feeling spongy under his foot. Something else that needed fixing.
Squinting at the sun like he didn't trust it. The orange ball dropping to a hand's width above the horizon. A Kansas day like all Kansas days, the sky bleached and the land perished. Shadows cast off the backhouse, stretching to the barn's west side. Soon the bats would be flitting about the rafters and ridgepole, searching out moths and beetles as the cool of evening set in.
It had been a week since the last duster boiled along the horizon, some calling them black rollers. Tapping a finger at the triangle hanging from the porch post, Sonny guessed it was nearing on suppertime, and no sign of Clara getting back from Hoxie to fix it. He put an eye to the front window, thinking if it wasn't one kind of storm, then he was looking out for another. The two of them not agreeing on much lately.
Wiping the cap across the back of his neck, his skin getting like the leather on his strop, same as the old man's had been. Ears and nose punished from working in the sun. Hands and face tanned brown and the hidden parts white, lending an odd look when his clothes were off. But Sonny didn't care much about it.
Setting the cap back on, he pondered where he went wrong: teaching Clara to drive the old Hudson after the phone company cut their service. Sitting next to her on the bench seat, teaching her to put her foot on the clutch, shift the stick, getting the one-two of putting her right foot down on the gas pedal, easing her left on the clutch. Holding his patience, biting his tongue till she did it without grinding the gears all to hell.
Clara drove to Hoxie every chance she got now, picking up supplies and the mail and catching the latest scuttlebutt at Grainger's store. Emmett and Doris letting her use the phone in back every week, charging a nickel for receiving the calls from Clara's mother over in Topeka. Nine miles of driving from the farm to Hoxie, Clara doing it when the sky promised to hold back the dusters long enough to make the trip without getting caught. This time was different. He got the feeling Clara wasn't coming back this time. Guessing it was on account of the money, or lack of it.
Clara had gone on about the storms blowing away her dreams and any promise of a future, the only thing growing was the heap of unpaid bills on the kitchen table. Anybody who tried living off the land knew that heap just kept piling up, their savings going the other way. Sonny making thirty cents an hour planting the damned government trees, FDR's shelterbelt project. If he wasn't doing that, he was digging holes for the electric company's poles, taking any kind of work he could lean his shoulder into. Barely getting them by. The money Orin left when he passed was nearly tapped and gone. The two of them fighting most of the time, her wanting to go west, him not wanting to hear it, set on staying on the land his family had farmed for three generations.
But he did hear about it, Clara going on how there had hardly been any meat these past six months since Sonny helped neighbor Boyd with his last smoat, hanging it and salting it down, bringing home some side meat and bones for roasting down.
Reaching his tobacco pouch and book of papers, Sonny twisted up a brown smoke and struck a wood match to its end. Wetting a lip, he puffed out the Bull Durham. Didn't need to go check the cupboard for the last of the money either, knowing she took it. Clara getting in his old Hudson truck and heading west. Not coming back.
Goddamn.
A shred of tobacco stuck to his lip, Sonny spit, trying to push that feeling aside, anchoring himself, picturing the land the way it was back before the drought and dusters whipped up and blew most of the topsoil to Oklahoma. How he once stood among the shoulder-high stalks as a boy, miles of wheat going from green to gold, hushing and swaying. Orin teaching him to bale that wheat straw, sweating and tending it. Father teaching son the ways of a Kansas farmer. All Sonny needed was a pair of strong hands, a good mule and the iron of his conviction. Schooling him for Kansas life, saying, "Tie a knot in the end of the rope and just hang on." What Orin didn't teach him about living on the land, the croppers staying on the low section did. The hired men earning their fifty and found, working the wheat and alfalfa, singing around the supper pots like they had something to be happy about. Sonny learning the dump rake and making windrows. Bundling feed of grain sorghum for the mules, the croppers calling it hi-gear.
Remembered the way his ma fussed about her plum thicket back of the house. Hoeing a patch for her cornstalks, propping her tomatoes on stakes, tending runner beans on poles, cabbages and spinach and coneflowers and bluebells growing along the white pickets. Sunflowers getting leggy and lazy and leaning against the house.
The windmill cranked the water pump, making that scraping sound as it went up and down over the well, the water so cold it made his teeth hurt. Enough good water to keep the tank full and plenty of it for growing. The milking cow lowing, his hand working the teat in the shed, the milk house where they kept the dairy cool. The hog rooting, rolling in mud to cool itself, its snout working everything over. The chicken coop full of hens, their clucking and cackling. Feel under them and you had eggs.
Feeling a fool for not seeing it coming. Clara, the truck and the last of the money, gone without a word. "For better or worse, my eye." And no supper.
Goddamn.
Dragging hard on the cigarette, Sonny saw himself on those Saturday evenings at the horseshoe pit, playing the hands for nickels. Those days when the Selkirks and the Braggs would come around regular in their Model Ts, suppers of venison, that taste of sweet plum tart. His mother had been a good cook, everybody saying so.
The neighboring farms mostly boarded up now, some bulldozed down, the goddamn banks foreclosing and taking the land. Some of the Braggs piling up their truck and shoving on west after the storm the papers dubbed the Black Blizzard, worst hell Sonny had ever seen. Short time on, old man Selkirk complained about a whistling in his lungs and wasn't long before he passed on, Doc Bletsoe ascribing it to the dust pneumonia. The bankers calling it a shame, but taking his land anyway.
Looking across the vastness, Sonny exhaled, thinking most of the folks he'd known were lying under it or blown on by the winds, going to California. Clara chasing after them.
But he'd stick it out.
"Not running off like all them Okies, no sir. Got a good well and make thirty cents an hour, enough to dig in." Allowing short scraps of the past to temper his conviction. Sitting on that stump till the shadows stretched longer, Sonny stubbed out the smoke, figuring he'd go fry up an egg.
Asking himself, "You got eggs?"
Looking at the sky, his mouth twisted and he shook his head, tossing the butt down and grinding it under his flapping sole. Maybe he could find some hobnails and fix the damned sole. Seemed anything he stuck his feet into lately sprung a hole. His socks in need of mending too.
Goddamn.
CHAPTER 3Clara always liked coming here. Grainger's Mercantile reflected the times, its countertop doing duty as charcuterie and post office, tin signs nailed on the wall behind it — Life Savers for a nickel, Red Bud Soda Water, Tower Root Beer, Ace High hair pomade — a blackened pot stove with its coal bucket, unlit due to the unseasonal warm weather. The checkerboard on the nail bucket with its mismatched chairs around it by the window, Emmett Grainger dubbing the spot his exchange bank, the place where the graybeards would end up once they got tired of standing. Their chatter endless and their spending rare.
Top of the counter sat the National register, like the heart of the store. A coffee mill and a line of candy jars of horehound and peppermint. A wrapping paper unit with string on the end. The shelf by the near wall held a scale for weighing and a hotplate where Doris made sandwiches. Any kind you wanted, buttered up and stacked high on her sourdough, came with a pickle and just cost a nickel.
Lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling. Sparse goods and groceries on the wall shelves, bins in the bottom, the top rows mostly empty. Packs of Bull Durham, Lucky Strike and Camel store-boughts behind the counter. A poster tacked on the end of a shelf claimed Chesterfields satisfy. Smuckers jars next to Clabber Girl baking goods and Jiffy mix, Hormel's Spam, shot shells and cartridges. Mary Ann cake pans, sewing notions, Fannie Farmer's books, stacks of khaki, denim and chambray. Past the rounded glass showcase, the smell of garlic and brine coming from the barreled pickles. A stack of pails, a harness somebody had bartered as payment, its padding puffing from a seam. Feed sacks leaned in a row, the ones with the patterns the ladies liked for sewing.
Sealing tape framed the window and putty filled any cracks the tape missed, the Graingers hoping to keep the dusters from blowing sand into the mercantile. Townsfolk stepping on the porch tracked it in, their heels working like little scoops.
The two graybeards were regular as fixtures, standing by the rack of shovels, both in bib overalls with their thumbs hooked in their straps. Albert, the one with gray hair sticking from under a straw hat, was going on about dinosaur bones found at some nearby dig-up. Tyrell took his corncob from the watch pocket, sticking it in the corner of his mouth, the pipe dancing up and down as he spoke back. Turning the talk to Bennie and Stella, Kansas's own bank robbers, speculating they were more notorious than Bonnie and Clyde. Albert pointing out that Sure Shot Stella was the only one of the bunch who hadn't succumbed to the fate of their chosen livelihood, getting shot. The debate drifted through the place, about as welcome as dust motes.
Peering from the alcove where the wood phone hung, Clara Myers eyed the young mother checking prices marked on food tins in the middle aisle, wearing a scarf as a head wrap, her little ones tugging at her skirt. Her red-haired girl asking about the candy sticks high up on the counter, the boy hopping up and down, unable to see the goodies, the mother telling them to wait and see. Looking up at the bare bulbs, Clara guessed the Graingers had unscrewed half of them, saving money where they could. Heard the radio playing from the back, K-L-X on the air, playing some Artie Shaw.
Talking into the spit cup of what the Graingers called their hotel phone, Clara told her momma how nice it'd be to one day have her own electricity. The receiver in her sun-leathered hand. Feet bare on the store planks, toes wiggling up and down like they were regarding the grain of the pine. She glanced to the counter to see if Doris Grainger was timing the five-minute call, the woman like a hawk, right now appearing to be lost in her ledger. Coming up the aisle, the mother told her kids to stay with her and keep their fingers off things.
"Well, I just can't believe these prices, is all, Momma," Clara said into the phone, the call all the way to Topeka, keeping her voice low. "Dollar sixty-nine a sack of flour, you believe it? Putting patterns on the sacks so ladies can make dresses, and charging whatever they want. Peck of spuds going for thirty cents. Thirty cents! I nearly fell over. And a loaf of bread, a nickel. You believe that, just the one loaf? And a pound of peaches, go on, guess how much?"
"Count your mercies, girl. Hard times dropped on all us. Not like it's just you."
"Hardly worthwhile, me sewing my dolls. Lucky if I get a dime a piece. Them bald-headed Kewpies everywhere you look now. Horrible things, and every kid wanting one instead of mine. Goddamn give up."
"Gonna use up your whole five minutes whining?"
"Well, you asked how it was. And got me going. Just telling you, that's all."
"Look. Fact, you married a dirt farmer, and it's what you get, dirt. Fact."
"Well, here's another fact, Momma, some fresh-air change is coming. Reason I called."
"This again. You gonna tell me you're lighting out, getting your fresh-air change. Let me ask, Sonny know about it?"
"Guess he'll put it together by and by."
"Not gonna ask me to wire more money. Already paying for this call. A woman living off her life savings —"
"Not asking you nothing, Momma. Just saying I'm done stirring broth so thin I'm likely to eat myself hungry. Nothing in it but salt, hardly a wild spud or thistle growing around the place anymore. Telling you I'm going west. That's what."
"A young woman on her own. Phhft! You ask me —"
"That's just it. I'm not asking."
"Well, how about all that 'for better or worse'? Said them words, didn't you? In a church. Your lips to God's ear."
"Well, He'll have to get past it too, won't He? Not like He listens anyway. Look around you, Momma." Clara drew her lips tight, pale eyes flashing. Trying not to cry. Bumping her shoulder to the wall, one bare foot on the other. Saying, "Been living with a man more married to the land than he is to me."
Doris Grainger looked up from her ledger, getting Clara's attention, tapping at her wristwatch.
"Yeah, well, guess my time's up, Momma. Call you from someplace on the road ..."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Call Down the Thunder"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Dietrich Kalteis.
Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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