“Your brother’s home,” I said.

Joe Bill turned around, and we watched Scooter and Clay pull their bikes into the yard. Scooter slammed on his brakes and slid his back tire around in the gravel. They dropped their bikes in the driveway and walked toward the carport. Scooter saw us standing in the backyard, and he stopped walking and just stood there and stared at us. Clay stopped walking and stared at us too. I didn’t know what to do, so I raised my hand and waved at him. Scooter flipped me the bird.

“Fuck off!” he hollered. I heard Clay laugh.

“I’d better go home,” I said. “It’s getting late. It might rain too.”

“If you want to, you can stay a little while longer,” Joe Bill said. He turned and looked at me, and then he looked back up at the house. “My mom will be home soon. You can wait until she gets back, and then she can drive you back to your house.”

I knew Joe Bill said that just because he didn’t want to be left alone with Scooter and Clay without his mom being there. I didn’t blame him, and I didn’t say nothing to him about it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be at home by myself with Scooter and Clay either.

“I’m glad we weren’t shooting his gun when he got home,” Joe Bill said. He was still staring up at the house, and I looked down where he held the basketball and I knocked it out of his hands again. “Hey,” he said. “It’s my shot.”

“I’m taking another turn,” I said. “That last one didn’t count.” I walked away from the goal to the other side of the court closest to the house. I took a step toward the basket and shot it. I watched the basketball hit the rim this time before it bounced out onto the dirt.

“Almost,” I said.

“Almost ain’t close enough,” Joe Bill said. He picked up the ball off the ground and wiped some of the dust off it. “You shouldn’t shoot from so far,” Joe Bill said.

“I’m getting closer,” I said. Something like a bumblebee buzzed past my ear, and I ducked my head and flicked it away. “What was that?” I said.

“Don’t move,” Joe Bill whispered. I looked up at him and saw that he was staring over my shoulder back toward the house. I turned around and saw Clay standing in the backyard by the carport. Scooter was down on one knee beside him with his BB gun pointed right at us. He cocked it and gave it two pumps. He raised it up to his shoulder and took aim at us again. I realized it was a BB that had just buzzed past my ear.

“He won’t shoot us if we don’t run,” Joe Bill whispered.

I heard Scooter take a shot, and a BB bounced off the basketball. Joe Bill dropped it in the dirt, and his throat made a sound like he was about to cry.

“Don’t, Scooter!” Joe Bill screamed.

“Did y’all touch my gun?” Scooter hollered. Joe Bill looked at Scooter, and then he turned his head slowly and looked at me. He had his mouth open, and I could hear him breathing hard. Thunder rumbled out over the mountain behind him.

“I did,” Joe Bill said. He looked at Scooter. “I took a couple of shots, but then I put it right back where it was.”

“I told you not to touch it,” Scooter said.

“I know,” Joe Bill said. Scooter lowered his BB gun and stared at Joe Bill for a second, and then he looked over at Clay.

“Go get them, Clay,” Scooter said. Clay jumped like somebody had just scared him, and he set off across the yard toward me and Joe Bill.

“Jess,” Joe Bill whispered. “Run.” I looked from Clay to Joe Bill. “Run,” he said again. It was a long way across the yard up to the road, and even though I knew Clay was too fat to catch me I was still scared of Scooter running after me, and I didn’t know what I’d do if they chased me on their bikes. I also figured Scooter might try to shoot me if I ran off. I felt something land in my hair, and I realized it was raining. It must’ve surprised me, because I lit out of Joe Bill’s yard and didn’t stop running even though I could hear Scooter and Clay hollering for me to come back. I swear I even heard a couple of BBs whiz past my ears.

The rain was coming down so hard that by the time I got up to the road my shirt and my shorts were soaked all the way through and I could feel the water sloshing around in my socks. I knew those wet socks would make my toes all wrinkly.

I stopped running when I ran out of breath, and I slowed down and walked up the road toward where it curved around in front of the rock wall below the highway right above me. Water ran down from the highway like a little stream, and it spilled off those rocks like a waterfall. I stood on the side of the road and reached my hand over the guardrail and let the water run through my fingers. It ran in the gully beside the road and then got carried down toward the French Broad. I followed the gully where it ran alongside the road before it headed down the bank toward the river. I stepped out onto the bridge and looked over the side at the river, where it ran faster and louder than it had when I’d walked over it on the way to Joe Bill’s house. There were sticks and leaves and stuff in there and I watched it all float toward the bridge before it went under there and came out the other side. I pushed back off the rail and walked to the other side of the bridge and looked over. A car passed by and slowed down when it saw me like it was going to stop. I waved, but it just kept on going. I figured whoever was in there probably wondered what I was doing out there in all that rain.

I started running again once I got across the bridge, and soon I was on the road to my house. Down in the cove the rain ran down the hills on both sides, and I watched it run and I knew it was filling up the creek and floating up all those crawdaddies. In my head I sang a song that Mama taught me and Stump when we were little:

It’s raining, it’s pouring,

An old man is snoring.

He went to bed and bumped his head,

And couldn’t get up in the morning.

Before I knew it, I was headed up the driveway toward our house and the water rolled down through the gravel in little streams, and I knew if I came out in the morning I’d be able to find me some good quartz rocks that had gotten themselves washed up in this heavy rain. I heard the thunder crack somewhere behind me, but I was almost home and it didn’t scare me one bit.

When I came around, I saw somebody out in the yard on the side of the house, but it had gotten too dark to tell who it was, but my daddy’s truck was parked in front of the porch and I figured it was him. Once I got into the yard, I saw that he was messing with the gutter where the water poured down on the rain barrel. The rain came down so hard that I felt like I was looking at him through an old window screen, and I walked up into the yard and stood by the house and watched him, and I wondered if I should say something. The rain was loud, but I could hear him talking to himself and trying to put that gutter back together where it had broken. His feet slipped in the grass, and he had to get a good hold on the rim of the rain barrel so he didn’t fall. I was too scared to say anything because I didn’t want him asking me what happened. He looked up from the rain barrel and saw me standing there.

“Where you been?” he asked, but it was raining so loud that I couldn’t hardly hear him good enough to know what he’d said. I looked at him, and then I looked at the gutter where it was bent. He quit messing with it and took a step toward me and then lost his balance and almost fell. He grabbed on to the rain barrel and stood up and started coming toward me again. When he got close, I saw his clothes were soaked all the way through just like mine were. “Where you been?” he asked me again.

“I went to Joe Bill’s after school,” I said.

He stared at me, and I saw that his eyes looked like he hadn’t been asleep in a long time. It seemed like he couldn’t even look at me for being so tired. He pointed behind him at the rain barrel.