Devil Sent the Rain by Tom Piazza

orange letters spelled out the title of his best-known hit, SUNNY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN . The moving figure was, of course, Martin, attended by two dogs that bayed lustily at my approach. Martin didn’t stop what he was doing or register my arrival in any way; by the time I opened the door of my car he had disappeared into the limo, and as I got out his taillights squeezed bright and the limo started to back up.
    I grabbed my stuff and approached the limo, the tinted driver’s-side window rolled down halfway, and there was Jimmy Martin looking up at me, unsmiling, suspicion in his red and slightly watery eyes, his head as big as a large ham and very jowly, with long grey sideburns and thin grey hair combed straight back and left a little bit long by the collar of his black nylon windbreaker.
    â€œLeave your bags in your car,” he said. “I gotta do an errand here; you can come with me.”
    By the time I climbed into his passenger seat, Martin was trying to maneuver the limo into a five-point U-turn so that he could get it out of his driveway. He worked the gear shift, which was on the steering column, with dogged concentration and without saying a word. The hood was as big as a queen-sized bed. On the first leg of the turn the limo stalled, and Martin cursed and restarted it with effort. The car stalled twice more before he got it through the turn; at one point he spun the wheels and they splattered mud all over my car, which was about twenty feet behind the limo. Finally, the turn was completed and we coasted down the driveway with the engine gurgling uncertainly, and out onto the road.
    Once we were under way I tried a few conversation openers, but it was like trying to play tennis in the sand. It took three long minutes, driving at about fifteen miles an hour, to get to our destination just off the main road; the back of a one-story brick building where somebody was busy throwing wood and other garbage into an incinerator.
    â€œWait here,” Martin said, getting out and slamming the door. For the first time I turned and looked in the back area of the limo, which was upholstered in blue velvet, but not very well cared for, littered with scraps of paper and junk. In the middle of the back seat were two giant bags of garbage and a broken crutch. Martin opened the back door, grabbed the garbage, and closed it again. I watched him bring it over to the guy; they stood around talking, inaudibly to me, for about five minutes while I sat in the front seat.
    When they were finished Martin got back in without any explanation, and we headed back to the house, with the limo stalling only once more.
    The dogs were really whooping it up when we arrived, and Martin hollered at them as we got out and they skulked away quietly. At the end of the driveway stood a big STOP sign, with stick-on letters added, reading BAD DOG WILL BITE TAIL . I grabbed my bags out of my car and followed Martin inside.
    We walked under a carport and through a storm door into an unheated den, where the floor was piled with boxes of cassettes, CDs, an upright bass, sound equipment, and other stuff. I followed him up a few steps, through a door and past a daybed, where a collection of mesh caps of all sorts was displayed, then through another door into a vestibule with a bathroom and a bedroom off of it, which led directly into the kitchen. It was obviously a bachelor’s house: clothes were set out to dry on a chair by the heater, and at the Formica kitchen table space would have had to be cleared amid papers, mail-order catalogs, letters, and empty cassette cases to make room for a second person to eat. I unpacked my cassette recorder and notebook while Martin wordlessly looked through some mail, but before we got started I was going to give him the whiskey I had promised him.
    I had put some thought into the choice, actually. I had initially bought him a bottle of Knob Creek, a very good Kentucky bourbon. But after I bought it I