Clouds without Rain by P. L. Gaus

talking.”
    “You’re right,” Cal said, bringing his arms down to the table. “That beats electric problems any day.”
    “I think Melvin Yoder must have gone far more liberal than I realized.”
    Cal shook his head.
    “It’s not everyone,” Weaver explained.
    “Still,” Cal said.
    “Have you got a lot going this summer, Cal?”
    “Just the usual.”
    “You think you and Mike Branden could help on the land matter?”
    “Not with the boys?”
    “That will be my little problem for a while.”
    “You want me to talk to Mike first, or get going on it myself?”
    “I need you and Branden to come out and talk with the men.”
    “Your place?”
    “Yoder’s old house. Temporarily.”
    “You said they all got a letter?”
    Weaver nodded.
    “We’ll need to see that,” Cal said.
    Weaver nodded and frowned heavily. “Can you get out to the house Friday morning?”
    “I’ll have to check.”
    “You sure you’ve got the time, Cal?”
    Cal said, “Of course—just like the old times,” and waited.
    Weaver sat with an unhappy expression and eventually said, “The way those letters read, my brother sold the land out from under eight of my families just before he died.”

6
    Wednesday, August 9
9:28 A.M.
     
     
    AFTER a light breakfast, Branden took the leather pouch containing J. R. Weaver’s trust papers off the kitchen table and stepped into the stuffy garage. He put the garage door up, and bright light flooded in on an assaulting wave of dry heat. He rolled down the windows on his truck, backed out onto the culde-sac where his brick colonial stood near the campus, and drove down into town with the truck windows open, the temperature already showing ninety-two degrees on the bank display just south of the courthouse square. He waited for traffic to clear on Clay Street and swung into the bank lot, his tires crackling on the heat blisters in the blacktop. As he walked toward the two-story brick bank building, pavement heat lifting through the soles of his worn sandals, he held J. R. Weaver’s leather pouch under his left arm, and flipped through his wallet for the photocopy he had made yesterday from his senior yearbook—Brittany Sommers in her high school cheerleader’s uniform, captain of the squad. Britta was the smallest of the lot, the confident, scrappy little girl smiling at the camera from the top position of a human pyramid, her black hair shiny and long, the fall sweater-and-skirt uniform revealing, in the young girl, the beautiful form she would carry as a woman. He shook his head, remembering her fondly, and slid the photo back into his wallet, intending to tease her about it if he got the chance.
    In the shade under the portico of the bank’s main doors, Branden used a handkerchief to dry sweat beads on his hands and arms, the back of his neck, and face. He was dressed in blue jeans and a plain yellow T-shirt. He had made the appointment yesterday, and he had stopped at Chester’s shop for a haircut and a trim. Now he used the bank window as a mirror to comb hair and beard into place. He studied his reflection in the window glass and smiled at himself, realizing that he hadn’t needed the haircut. He took out his handkerchief again, this time to dry the leather pouch he was carrying.
    He lingered in the shade of the portico while a line of customers spilled out of the bank, and he noticed the brief rush of cool air through the open door. An unkempt man came out through the main doors, stopped short at sight of the professor, and stood blocking the doorway, eyeing Branden up and down with a spiteful expression, until he was forced to move aside by people wanting to get through the door. He moved closer to Branden and blurted, “Look, Branden. My ex talks about you all the time.”
    “Arden Dobrowski,” Branden said contemptuously. “You’re not allowed within five hundred yards of Britta Sommers.”
    “That lying tramp is trying to freeze me out of . . . ”
    He would, apparently,