Six Bad Things (14 page)

I drop back behind the motor home just as it swerves sharply into my lane and barely misses hacking off my front bumper. And now I see that the speeding black car has driven half onto the left shoulder to pass the motor home while it was passing me. I also see that the black car is not a black car at all, but a black Toyota pickup. Then I’m pulling to a stop on the side of the road, watching Danny and his friends as they speed up the highway. Fucking hell. What is this,
Deliverance
?

I LET Danny get farther up the road before I pull out. Around Coalinga I see a black pickup across the meridian, headed south. Could be them giving up, or driving back to scan the northbound traffic. I don’t know.

It’s after dark when I see my exit. By now my eyes keep dropping shut and I’ve lost most of the sense of forward motion; the road just seems to be reeling toward me as I stay in one place. I hit the blinkers and turn off.

God, I forgot what Christmas is like in the suburbs. It’s still a couple weeks away, but lights are dribbling down from the eaves, reindeer are on the rooftops, forests of giant candy canes are growing from the lawns. We used to do that thing; drive around all the different neighborhoods looking at the lights. Christmas. I should have got them something. I park a few blocks away, rather than leaving a strange car in front of their house for the neighbors to see. Then I sit behind the wheel, trying to get my shit together. Maybe I should have called.

AS SOON as I knock on the door, the dogs start barking. The same dogs. I can hear her inside, coming into the hall, telling them to shush, and them not listening at all, just barking like crazy. A lock snaps open. They never used to lock the door, but I guess they’ve had reason enough the last few years. The door swings open just enough for her to look out and still keep it blocked with her body so that neither of the dogs can squirt out around her.

She looks at me.

Mom is a tiny woman. She likes to claim she’s five foot two, but the truth is she’s just a shade over five. At least she used to be. It’s been several years and she looks a bit smaller now. And older. Much older. I did that to her. She looks at me, the guy on her porch with the deep tan, short beard, and long hair. She looks at the nose, crunched and bent, the extra twenty pounds of weight, the tattoos dribbling out the tugged-up sleeves of my shirt and down my forearms. There is no beat, no pause or halt, just instant recognition and the sudden escape of air from her mouth.

I push the door open, catch her as her knees give out beneath her. I hold her shaking body up and kick the door closed with the heel of my foot. She gasps for air and I give her a little squeeze and a shake and a huge gob of snot and phlegm flies out of her nose and plasters the front of my shirt and she starts to breathe again. I hold her tight and she shivers and sobs and pounds on my back and shoulders with her tiny fists and curses at me and tells me she loves me while the old dogs run around in circles, barking at me.

—Henry.

My name.

—Henry.

Hearing my name from my father’s mouth almost starts me crying again.

—Henry!

—Yeah, Dad.

—What the hell do you think you’re doing?

What I’m doing is standing on the back patio, lighting a cigarette.

—I was just gonna have a smoke.

—When the hell did you start smoking?

—I don’t know. Couple years ago.

I light up.

—Look at that, you have a great meal and now you’re going to ruin it by killing your taste buds and filling your lungs with that poison.

—OK, Dad.

—Look at the pack, it tells you right there.

—Got it, Dad.

I stub the smoke out in an empty flowerpot.

—They just about tell you that you have to be a suicidal idiot to smoke the things and people keep smoking them.

I’ve been here for maybe two hours.

—It’s out.

—And you, you wait over thirty years and
now
you start?

And already it’s like I never left home at all.

—Dad, it’s out. OK?

—Yeah, sorry. I just. I just don’t want you to get hurt or anything.

He turns his head as tears start to well up in his eyes again. Well, almost like I never left home.

—I don’t want to get hurt, Dad.

Mom opens the back door.

—Come inside, it’s cold out.

THERE WERE steaks in the fridge. Dad grilled them for us, standing by the propane barbeque out on the cold patio, watching me through the windows as I helped Mom set the table.

He had been at the shop, working late just like he always did when I was a kid, unless I had a game. When he came home, Mom met him at the door. But she started crying before she could say anything. By the look he had on his face when I walked out of the kitchen, I think he was assuming the worst. One second he thinks his wife is trying to tell him their son is dead, and the next I’m standing in front of him.

After that there wasn’t much to do except decide what everyone wanted for dinner.

NOW DAD and me come in and sit down at the kitchen table with Mom. She’s sipping a glass of red wine and Dad is drinking some brandy he got from a bottle that was buried at the back of one of the cupboards over the sink. He pours himself another and looks at me.

—Sure you don’t want one?

—No. I had a drinking thing there, Dad. In New York. I was drinking too much, so I had to stop.

—Yeah, we heard something about that.

Mom moves her hand so that it covers mine.

—People said a lot of things, Henry. We didn’t know what to believe. Except about the killing. We knew they were wrong about that, we knew you couldn’t kill anyone.

My left forearm is lying there on the table, the six hash marks exposed. I open my mouth, close it. Dad sets his glass down and covers my hand and Mom’s with his own. He has big hands, nicked and cut and bruised from the shop, a thin rim of grease permanently tattooed under his fingernails.

—Why are you here, Hank?

Someone threatened to kill you and I came home to make sure it doesn’t happen.

—There’s just some more trouble, Dad, and I need to take care of it.

—But why, what did you do?

—I.

I helped a friend. I tried to protect people. I did everything I was supposed to and the only thing that worked was killing the people who were trying to kill me.

And then I took their money.

—Dad, I just tried to do the right thing.

He pours himself another drink. His fifth. I’ve never seen him drink this much before.

—So what now?

—I’m gonna take care of it.

—How?

—I’m gonna give these people what they want.

THEY GO to bed a short while later, and I page Tim. And wait. And then I page him again. And again. And again. And again. I page him ten times and he doesn’t call back, and finally I’m just too tired to care.

AFTER MY leg was shattered and I couldn’t play baseball anymore I took all my old trophies and plaques down, boxed them up, and stuck them in the attic. Sometime in the last three years Mom or Dad must have gotten those boxes down to look through them, because all the old trophies are in my old bedroom. My bed is still in there too. Other than that, it’s a different room. Mom uses it for her sewing and crocheting and the several other crafts she’s thrown herself into since she retired last year.

I lie in the too-small bed in the darkness and watch light from a street lamp glinting off of all the fake gold and silver. Outside, it’s silent except for the occasional bark of a dog, quieter even than my beach in Mexico, where there is at least the sound of the surf.

On the nightstand is a small, framed picture of me. I’m sixteen, my hair is almost white from years under the California sun, my face is golden brown and unlined, and I’m wearing a cap from my high school team, the Tigers. I remember the day the photo was taken. I had pitched a shutout for the varsity squad, hit a homer, and had five RBI. I was six feet tall, a hundred and sixty pounds and still growing, working out every day and eating anything I could get my hands on, trying to build muscle for the inevitable day when I would be a Major League player. To this day, it is the face I expect to see when I look in the mirror.

NORMALLY DAD would take the truck parked in the driveway to work, but today he fires up the tiny MGB in the garage. He hits the automatic opener, the door flips up, and he pulls into the street.

—Where did you park?

—Over on Traina.

There’s been a lot of turnover on Dale Road in three years. A lot of people I used to know moved out during the year of constant attention from media, police, and sightseers that followed my adventures. But even the newcomers know who my parents are, know that they have a mass murderer for a son. I stay squished down in the footwell until we get a couple blocks away.

—A BMW 1600?

—Yeah.

—Oh, Hank, not this piece of crap?

I scoot up into the seat. Dad has stopped where my car is parked.

—Yeah.

—How much did you pay for that?

—Four.

—And you drove it from San Diego?

—Yeah.

—You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself in that thing.

—It’s not that bad.

—Like hell it isn’t.

He sits behind the wheel of his perfectly restored 1962 British racing green MGB and stares in horror at my wreck.

—Well, let’s get it over to the shop and out of sight.

I get out, start my car, and follow him over to Custom Specialty Motors.

CSM SERVICES and restores classic, exotic, and performance automobiles. Says so right on the sign. This is the business Dad dreamed of owning his whole life, the one he created and built over the last twenty years after he threw in the towel as hotshot mechanic for a series of high-end dealerships. His customers are mostly middle-aged men who finally have the money to buy the toys they craved in their youth, but who lack the mechanical aptitude to keep them running.

He unlocks the big rolling garage door and I drive into the shop. He pulls the MG in behind me, closes and locks the door, and switches on the overheads. Fluorescent light bounces off of some very expensive paint jobs. I get out of my crappy car and go look at a 1953 Corvette Roadster, cream with red interior.

—Wow.

—Look at this mess.

I look over my shoulder. Dad has the hood of the BMW up and is peering into the disordered engine compartment.

—Jeez, Hank, your plugs are filthy, there’s corrosion on the battery cables, the gaskets on the carb are rotting, there’s oil everywhere.

He grabs a socket wrench from one of the big rolling tool cabinets and starts pulling the plugs.

—Dad, you don’t have to do that.

—There is no way you are driving this car anywhere without a complete tune-up.

—Dad.

—No way. Now, you go home and get out of sight.

He’s right. His customers may not know how to change the oil on all this steel candy, but most are retired and they love to come around and get underfoot while Dad is working. He goes into the office and comes back with a CSM cap and windbreaker.

—Here.

I slip them on, get into the MGB, grab his sunglasses off the dash, and put those on as well.

He stands next to the car, not moving to open the door for me.

—Hey! Hey, we haven’t talked about the Giants yet. Can you believe the season they had?

I know. I know they dominated the National League West, and won their first World Series since they moved to San Francisco. I didn’t get to watch or listen to a single game, but I know.

—Yeah, I haven’t seen much baseball, Dad.

—Oh.

—But maybe you can tell me about it later.

—Yeah, sure. At the house maybe.

He goes over to the door and pushes the big black button that rolls it up.

—Well, take it easy in that thing.