Favorite Sons (8 page)

“How's Adrian?” I asked.

“Moody as hell, just like always.”

“He's got a lot on his mind right now.”

Pepper waved at the air. “Petey Sanchez has nothing to do with it. Adrian spends half his life in a foul mood. I told him if a woman was on the rag as much as him, she'd bleed to death.”

“How'd he take that?”

“Like you'd expect. He smacked me up the back of the head.” He grinned. “Hard, too.” He looked around the garage at the mound of trash I was piling near the door. “Does your mom ever give you a day off?”

“Not too often. She says it keeps me out of trouble. You saw what happened the last time she gave me the morning off.”

Pepper rolled his eyes. “I hear that.” He walked across the garage and sat down on the weight-lifting bench. “Are you going to the night swim tonight?”

“Maybe. I've got to go to the funeral home first.”

His eyes widened. “For Petey?”

“Yep.”

“You're shitting me?”

“I shit thee not.”

“Why?”

“Because my mom thinks I should go and pay my respects. It's not so much about Petey as it is being nice to Mrs. Sanchez. Mom feels sorry for her with all those kids and no money.”

“Well, whose fault is that? She's like a damn Pez dispenser for ugly, squash-faced babies.”

“Christ, Pepper!”

“Tell me it's not so. Every one of those kids except Petey has a face like the top of a pumpkin.”

I had to choke back a grin. “Are your folks going?”

Pepper shook his head. “Dad said the only contact he ever had with them was the time old man Sanchez came to him for a car loan. He needed eight hundred bucks to buy a used station wagon to haul all those kids around.”

“Did your dad give it to him?”

‘“Yeah, he said Mr. Sanchez had more fingers than he had dollars in the bank, but he was driving those kids around in an old car that had rusted through the floorboards, so he gave it to him.”

“He ever pay it back?”

“Every dime, on time.”

I worked a broom under the bench and pulled out some dirt and mouse turds. “Are you supposed to know that kind of stuff?”

“Probably not.” He leaned back on the bench and pounded out a set of eight. “I hear Dad talking to Mom when he thinks I'm not listening. I know every bad loan risk in town and who's late on their mortgage payments.” Pepper stood for a minute and stared into space, lost in his thoughts, then said, “I don't think I could do that, Hutch.”

“Give Mr. Sanchez a car loan?”

“Smart ass. Go to the funeral home.”

“Haven't you ever been to the funeral home?”

“Sure, but you know what I mean—being up there with Petey and his family.”

“They don't know anything.”

“That's just the point. You're going to be standing around all his family. They're going to be all teary and wanting answers and you're one of the few people who has them. You know, it was one thing to leave Petey up in the woods and just walk away. I mean, we all walk away from problems, and that's exactly what we did. There wasn't anything we could do for him, so we just wiped our hands and left. But, going to the funeral home?” He shook his head and whistled. “I couldn't do that. If I don't have to look at them, or be around them, or hear them cry, then I can deal with this. I can justify it in my mind by saying that I'm doing it for my brother. But I couldn't go to the funeral home knowing what I know.”

“I'll be all right.”

“Don't get weak.”

I shook my head. “I won't.” But I wish he had not planted that seed of doubt.

*    *    *

The Williamson & Keller Funeral Home was just half a block up Ohio Avenue from my house, catty-corner from the post office, and clearly visible from our sunroom. Ralphie Ketchum opened the front door and greeted us as we stepped onto the porch.

The viewing room was full of Sanchez kids and kin. Five of the tiny-faced older siblings were married and had kids of their own, several of whom ran around the visitation room, squealing and smearing snot across their faces with the backs of their hands. Uncles,
aunts, and cousins also filled the room, creating a humming maze around the casket. The men and boys had clean white shirts and dirty dress shoes, their hair held into place with cream that smelled of antiseptic. They stooped at the shoulders and shoved their hands deep into their pants pockets, and greeted you with soft, limp handshakes. Some women wore stretch pants and white shirts that stretched at the bosom, while others wore sleeveless dresses that exposed thin, milky arms and dark moles. The women all hovered around Mrs. Sanchez, who sat with a framed school photograph of Petey on her lap and worked a soggy, balled up wad of tissue into the corners of her eyes. Mr. Sanchez stood in the back of the room, talking to his brother and clamping a paper coffee cup between his thumb and ring finger, which were the only digits remaining on that hand.

When Mrs. Sanchez saw my mother, I could see her say, “Oh, there's Mrs. Van Buren,” and she immediately stood, propped the photo of Petey on the chair, and came across the room. She began sobbing before she reached us and threw her arms around my mother's neck. “It was so nice of you to come,” Mrs. Sanchez said, a tear running around the edge of her nose and into her mouth. She put her hand on the small of my mother's back and, as if on cue, the sea of Sanchezes parted and opened a clear channel to the casket.

Petey was laid out in a white shirt with an open collar and a brown sport coat that funeral director Bernard Williamson had donated from a collection of clothing he kept for indigents. The skin was stretched taut over his horrific overbite and the lips were so bent around the teeth that only a sliver of pink appeared. The hole in his forehead had been filled with putty and the skin stitched together and covered with makeup.

“Mr. Williamson did a nice job of covering up the hole in his forehead,” Lila said, speaking with the matter-of-fact casualness of someone explaining a repair to a dented fender. “You can hardly tell where it was.” She had to be kidding, I thought. It looked like it had been patched up by a second-grader. “I guess he put some kind of clay in there and then smoothed it out real nice and covered it with makeup.” As she spoke, Lila ran the back of her index finger gently down the length of the scar. “Mr. Williamson said if he'd been out in that heat much longer they wouldn't have been able to show him.
I'm glad they could, otherwise I'd never gotten to say goodbye to my boy.” She looked at me and smiled. “Don't you think he did a good job on him?”

I nodded my agreement and muttered, “Very nice.”

“Do they have any idea what happened?” Mom asked.

Lila shook her head. “Not yet. The coroner said he got hit right where he died. He said Petey didn't last no time at all after he got hit, which I guess was a blessing.”

As they continued to talk, I stood at attention before the casket and recalled that, including this visit, the last two times I had looked at Petey he had been lying on his back. As I tried to block the image of Petey lying in the high grass and weeds, my mind locked in on that moment after Petey had been struck, but before he fell, and his head had swiveled toward me. His eyes had been blank, the lids drooping like a young child fighting sleep, and I wondered if there had been a flicker of life in them yet. I wondered if the last snapshot they took before the lights went out was of me standing wide-eyed, mouth agape, a blue felt liquor bag in my hand. Was that image permanently etched on the back of Petey Sanchez's eyelids for him to stare at for all eternity?

Lila's crying and sniffling snapped me out of my trance. “Poor thing. He had a tough life, that one,” she said. “God knows he had his problems, but he didn't deserve this.” She dabbed at her eyes with her left hand and extended her right to touch his right, which rested atop the left. “I love all my babies, even this one.”

It was an odd thing to say, but I understood the intent. A parent never wants to bury a child, even one who went through life making bird calls and who twice tried to roast the family alive. Lila began sobbing and my mother hugged her. Eyes turned toward the casket; I stepped away and moved toward the back of the room. I avoided Earl Sanchez. I wasn't afraid of approaching him and offering my condolences, but I wasn't sure of the protocol of shaking the hand of a man with no thumb or index finger on his right hand, and to tell the honest truth, the thought of it creeped me out. Susan Sanchez, my classmate, was sitting in the corner of the room, bouncing a little boy of about three on her lap, and I made my way toward her.

I was not kidding when I told my mother that I didn't know Susan very well. Our class had fewer than a hundred students, but she
was one of those kids who seemed to materialize during first period and vanish after the final bell. I never saw her walking the street, or at the store, the firemen's street fair, or a sporting event. If she had any friends, I didn't know who they were because I don't recall ever seeing her talking to anyone.

She was wearing a green dress and the same aqua-colored cat eyeglasses that she had worn since the sixth grade, and which squeezed the sides of her round head. A homemade wooden cross the dimensions of a playing card hung from around her neck with a piece of rawhide that looked like it came from a dirty work boot.

“Hi, Susan. I'm very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said, continuing to bounce the boy, who had one hand pushed into his mouth to the knuckles and a purple stripe from a grape lollipop running down his chin and neck. She looked at me, a faint smile on her lips, but offered nothing else. I struggled to think of something else to say, and as I did her lips and jaw began to quiver. Her head tilted back and as her eyes rolled into the top of her head she said, “He's in a better place, and I . . . hope . . . he's . . . riding . . . his bicycle.” And with the last syllable she burst into uncontrollable sobs.

I stepped back. Various Sanchez clan members charged over as if I had slapped her. A girl came over and hugged her. Someone else lifted the boy off her lap. As this commotion took center stage, I turned and slipped back into the protection of the maze.

As we walked back down Ohio Avenue, Mom asked, “Now, don't you feel better about going?”

“Not really. I'm not crazy about funeral homes to begin with, and then I had to listen to Lila talk about Petey like he'd just come out of an auto body shop.”

“Well, it was nice of you to pay your respects. I know Mrs. Sanchez appreciated it and I'm sure Susan did, too.”

“Yes, did you notice how appreciative she was when I offered my condolences and she burst into tears?”

“It was still nice that you went. I just hope they find out who killed him.”

“Do you think they will?” I asked, deliberately responding with another question to avoid concurring. I could feel a wave of heat starting under my collar.

“I don't know. It's a crazy world out there.”

By the time we returned to the house, the cat on the wall showed seven thirty.

Three days were behind us.

Tick-tock.

*    *    *

At 11 p.m., I was ready for bed. Mom and Walter Deshay were at the kitchen table playing dominos for a dime a point and drinking Iron City beer from longneck bottles. I said goodnight and started up the stairs when Mom asked, “What are your plans for tomorrow?”

“I've got practice for my summer league basketball team at ten.” It was a lie. There was no practice. “Why?”

“No reason. G'night.”

I took two steps up the stairs, stopped and squeezed my eyes closed for a few seconds. “Crap,” I muttered under my breath. I turned and walked back down and into the kitchen. “Did you want to go to Petey's funeral? I can skip practice if you do.”

“Oh, no,” she said, playing a double-five. “I have to work in the morning. I was just wondering what you had going.”

Miriam Van Buren kept me on my toes.

We had no air-conditioning and summer nights upstairs were oppressive. An old box fan sat atop the desk on the far side of the room, and I always turned it on before hopping into bed. Its housing was slightly off center and it whined like a prop plane struggling in a high wind. The fan didn't make my room any cooler, but at least it kept the hot air circulating. I wore only my boxers and stretched out on top of the sheets.

I was glad the day was over. Relieved, actually.

The fan strained and the moving air tickled my chest. For the first time since the night Petey was killed, my mind shut down and I quickly drifted off to sleep.

M
om didn't have to be at work until eight on Saturdays, so I got to sleep in an extra hour. When she yelled up the steps, I sat up in my bed, stretched, and rubbed at my eyes. As Mom headed out the door, I fixed myself a bowl of cereal, poured a glass of orange juice, and flipped through the morning paper. In a one-column story on page four of the local section, wedged between the crease and an advertisement for Big Phil's Tires summer blowout sale, was a brief article under the headline:

Murder Victim's
Bicycle Found

The bicycle belonging to Peter Eugene Sanchez was found yesterday on a hillside near Overlook Park west of Crystalton, about a quarter-mile from where the body of the 17-year-old mentally retarded boy was discovered Tuesday, according to Jefferson County Sheriff Sky Kelso.

Kelso said detectives and auxiliary officers from the Crystalton Police Department had been searching the area for the bicycle, hoping it would reveal clues in the boy's death. It will be dusted for fingerprints and examined for other evidence, Kelso said.

Sanchez died from a blow to the head and his death is being investigated as a homicide.

Kelso said deputies are following several leads in the case, but declined to say if investigators have any suspects.