Rain Gods by James Lee Burke

braiding along the edge of a bleached riverbed, an alluvial fan of damp sand cut by the hoofprints and the clawed feet of animals.
     
    “Ma’am?” he said.
     
    She couldn’t concentrate. What was he asking her? “Do you want a ride to your motel?” she said.
     
    “Maybe I can make it. It was you I was worried about.”
     
    “Pardon?”
     
    “I got the sense those fellows in the Trans Am were hassling you. You know those fellows? That was them that roared on by, wasn’t it?”
     
    “I don’t know who they are. Do you want a ride?”
     
    What had he just said? He had asked about the two men in the Trans Am, but he had been looking at her, not them, when they passed. He seemed to be thinking now, with an expression like that of a fool humorously considering his alternatives at someone else’s expense. The headlights that had silhouetted a hill in the distance disappeared, and the outline of the hill dissolved into the darkness. “I can limp in with this tire as it is, I guess. But it’s kind of you to stop. You’re mighty attractive. Not many women traveling alone would stop on the road at night to help a man in distress.”
     
    “I hope your new job works out all right for you,” she said. She turned and walked toward her vehicle. She could feel the skin on her back twitching. Then she heard a sound that didn’t belong in the situation, that didn’t fit with everything the driver had told her.
     
    He had opened a cell phone and was talking into it. She got in her vehicle and turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught for perhaps two seconds, then coughed and died. She turned the ignition again, pumping the accelerator. The stench of gasoline from a flooded carburetor rose into her face. She turned off the ignition so she would not run down the battery. She placed her hands on the steering wheel and kept them absolutely still, making her face devoid of all expression so he could read nothing in it. He approached her window, dropping the cell phone in his coat pocket, reaching with his other hand for something stuck in the back of his belt.
     
    She unscrewed the plastic drinking cup from the top of her thermos, then unscrewed the cap and rubber plug on the thermal insert and began pouring coffee into the cup, her heart seizing up as his silhouette filled her window.
     
    “People call me Preacher,” he said.
     
    “Yes?”
     
    “Everybody has got to have a name. Preacher is mine. Step out here with me, ma’am. We have to get going pretty quick,” he said.
     
    “In your dreams,” she said.
     
    “I promise I’ll do everything for you I can. Arguing about it won’t help. Everybody gets to the barn. But for you maybe that won’t necessarily have to happen tonight. You’re a kind woman. I’m not forgetting that.”
     
    She threw the coffee at him. But he saw it coming and stepped away quickly, raising one arm in front of his face. In his other hand, he held an unblued titanium revolver, one with black rubber grips. It was not much larger than his palm.
     
    “I cain’t blame you. But it’s time for you to get yourself in the trunk of my automobile. I’ve never struck a woman. I don’t want you to be the first,” he said.
     
    She stared straight ahead, trying to think. What was it she was not seeing or remembering? Something that lay at the tips of her fingers, something that was like a piece of magic, something that God or a higher power or a dead Indian shaman out in the desert had already put at her disposal if only she could just remember what it was.
     
    “I have nothing you want,” she said.
     
    “You dealt the hand, woman. It’s your misfortune and none of my own,” he said, pulling open her door. “Now you slide yourself off that car seat and come along with me. Nothing is ever as bad as you think.”
     
    Amid the litter on the floor, she felt the coldness of a metal cylinder touch her bare ankle. She reached down with her right hand and picked up the can of wasp spray, one that the manufacturer guaranteed could