The Jealous Kind (16 page)

“What were you fixing to say to Mr. Bledsoe?” I said.

“That his conduct is dishonorable.”

“Why didn't you?”

“He's an uneducated and poor man. We won't make him a better one by criticizing him.”

We drove home in silence. After he pulled into the garage, I hoped he would follow me into the house and the two of us would clean
up the kitchen, working as a team. Instead, he said he had to check the tire. Ten minutes later, I went back outside. The moon had gone behind clouds, and the yard was filled with shadows as pointed as swords. My father was sitting in the passenger seat, the car door open, drinking from a paper cup one sip at a time, his eyes closed as though he were involved in a secular benediction whose nature no one else would ever understand.

I
WENT IN TO
work early the next morning so I could get off that afternoon and take Valerie to play miniature golf. I wasn't expecting to see Cisco Napolitano's black-and-red Olds convertible coming down the boulevard. Miss Cisco was behind the wheel. She turned in to the station and stopped at the pumps. She was wearing a scarf and shades and white shorts and a pink halter that barely contained her breasts. “What's the haps, darlin'?” she said to me.

“Are you from New Orleans?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because that's the way people talk in New Orleans.”

She removed her shades and let her eyes adjust on my face. “Take a ride with me. No argument this time.”

“What for?”

“You got yourself in a lot of trouble. I can get you out of it.”

I told the other kid who worked in the station that I'd be back soon. He took one look at the Olds and the gorgeous woman behind the wheel and stared at me in disbelief. I got into her car and settled back in the comfortable softness of the leather. She stepped on the gas before I had the door closed.

“Where we headed?”

She squeezed me on the thigh, grinning behind her shades.

“What are you doing?” I said, alarmed.

“Don't be so serious. Your virginity is safe. You're a virgin, right? Anyway, I don't molest young boys.”

She turned off the boulevard into the Rice University campus and parked in the shadow of the football stadium. She took a small
leather-bound photo album from the glove box and marked one page with her thumb, then handed me the album. “Tell me who that is.”

“Benny Siegel and Virginia Hill.”

“Who's that with them?”

“You?”

“At age twenty.”

“Who's the guy with you?”

“Who's he look like?”

I lifted my eyes to her. “Like me?”

“He was an actor. I met him at a lawn party at Jack Warner's, next door to Siegel's house. He was my first real love.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died from a heroin overdose. It was probably a hotshot. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“The dealer slips the user some high-grade stuff he's not ready for. He was going to another studio. Hollywood is a place where you don't break the rules. Vegas works the same way, Aaron. You come into their world, you play by their rules. You don't sue the Mafia. You listening?”

“I didn't choose to be involved in any of this.”

“Jesus, you're thick. There's a hot-dog cart by the street. Go get me one.”

“What?”

“I'm hungry. Now go do it. What's the matter with you?” She handed me three dollars from her purse. “With relish and ketchup and mustard and onions. Buy yourself one. Bring us a couple of Cokes, too. I have to pee. I'm going into the stadium. Hurry up, now.”

I went after the hot dogs. When I got back, she was fixing her hair in the mirror, examining a sun blemish under one eye. She patted the dashboard, indicating where I should place the food and drinks.

“What did you think of Benny Siegel?” I said.

She picked up her hot dog and bit off a huge hunk of sausage and bread and onions, catching the drippings on the back of her hand. “He was a psychopath. Which returns us to the subject at hand.”

“I wish you wouldn't
put it in that context.”

“You fucked yourself, kiddo. Now let's see if we can unfuck you. Our problem is not Vick Shit-for-Brains. It's his father, Jaime Atlas. Do not get the idea that he's a devoted father who wants to get even for his son. Shit-for-Brains is Jaime's possession, and you and your buddy threw a brick through a windshield into his face.”

“I didn't throw anything.”

“Your friend did?”

“Why did you bring me here, Miss Cisco?”

“Tell your friend to turn himself in. In the meantime, think about the army. Your parents can sign for you. When you finish your enlistment, this will probably be forgotten.”

She wiped her fingers with a paper napkin. A campus security car pulled up next to us; behind the wheel was a guy wearing aviator shades and a cap with a lacquered bill. “You cain't park here without a sticker, ma'am.”

“I'm moving in just a minute, Officer.”

“You have to move now, ma'am.”

She shot him the finger without looking at him, then started the engine and drove out to the street and parked under a live oak.

“Is that how you deal with everybody?” I asked.

“Shut up. Do you know what ‘in the life' means?”

“No.”

“I don't know why I'm doing this. I should let you drown. I feel like throwing an anchor chain around your neck myself.”

“I don't know why you're doing this, either.”

She looked straight ahead and blew out her breath. “Grady Harrelson's father is a silent partner with some nasty people. Jaime Atlas will get his pound of flesh, or he will no longer be doing business with Clint Harrelson. It's you or your friend. But there're no guarantees on that. It could be both of you.”

“I can't change that.”

She pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. I moved my head away from her hand.

“I go out
of the way for you, and that's how you feel?” she said. “You're a strange kid. Maybe you're a lost cause, not worth the effort. What's your opinion?”

“I didn't want any of this to happen.”

“Tell that to the people who voted for Hitler.”

She put on her shades and started the engine, then clicked on the radio. I thought she might play some music. She turned the dial to the stock market report and didn't speak on the way back to the filling station. When I got out, I turned around and thanked her. She drove away without replying.

I
WENT HOME AT
three
P.M.
and bathed and changed clothes. I was about to go to Valerie's house when my father pulled into the driveway and parked in the porte cochere. He got out of the car with a paper bag in his hand.

I met him outside. “You're home a little early.”

“Where's your mother?” he said.

“At the grocery.”

“If you have a minute, come in the backyard.”

He opened the gate and sat down on the back steps and waited for me to sit down with him; the bag rested on his knees.

“Yes, sir?”

“The most frightened I've ever been was the first time I had to go over the top in early 1918. I went over it four more times, but nothing could equal the fear I felt the first time. No one who was not there can understand what that moment is like. No one.”

He rarely spoke of the Great War, and when he alluded to it, he never mentioned his experiences as a soldier. Most people who thought they knew him well were not even aware he had been to Europe. When others began to speak of war—especially when they spoke in a grandiose fashion—he left the room. The paper bag was folded in an oblong, humped shape, as though it might contain a rump roast or a couple of odd-sized books.

“You think I'm
quitting school and joining the army?” I said.

“No, I think you're worried about evil men coming into your life. That's what I want to talk to you about. When we went up the steps on the trench wall, it was likely that the man in front of you had soiled himself. You had to breathe his odor and stiff-arm him in the back so he didn't fall on you, and you hated him for it. Once you were in the open, there was no going back. You had to run through their wire into hundreds of bullets while your chums fell on either side of you. I did it once and thought I could never do it again. I told this to the lieutenant. He was a Brit serving in the AEF and a fine fellow. He said, ‘Corporal Broussard, never think about it before it happens, and never think about it after it's over.' I remembered that the rest of the war. It gave me peace when others had none.”

I didn't know why he was telling me any of this, and I said so.

“Can't blame you,” he said. “These men who wish us harm may come to see us or they may not. If that happens, we'll confront them as necessity demands.”

He unfolded the paper bag and removed a heavy blue-steel sidearm with checkered grips stuffed in an army-issue canvas holster. “This is the 1911-model .45-caliber automatic. It's simple to operate. Its effect can be devastating. You drop the magazine from the frame, you load the magazine by pressing these cartridges here against the spring, then you reinsert the magazine and pull back the slide. You do not take it from the holster unless you plan to shoot it.”

“Does Mother know about this?”

“She's the one who told me to buy it. Aaron?”

“Yes, sir?”

“When you kill a man, his face stays with you the rest of your life.”

“Can I hold it?” I said.

He placed the .45 in my hand. The magazine was not in it. The frame and checkered grips felt cold and heavy. There was a reassuring solidity about its heft, a potential that was dreamlike and almost erotic. I put my finger through the trigger guard and aimed at a caladium in the flower bed my mother had dug along the neighbor's garage wall, just as my dog, Major, emerged from the plants and stared at the gun's
muzzle and at me. He backed among the caladiums and elephant ears as though he didn't know who I was.

“It's all right, Major,” I said. “Hey, come out here, little guy. Don't be afraid.”

My father took the .45 from me and shoved the magazine into the frame with the heel of his hand, returned it to the holster, and snapped down the flap.

“Why is Major scared?” I said. “He's never seen a firearm.”

“They have an instinct,” my father replied. “It will be in the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk. It will stay there unless we have urgent need of it. Do not play with it. Do not show it to your friends. You with me on that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “A woman named Cisco Napolitano came by the station today. She's mixed up with the guys who run Las Vegas. She said Jaime Atlas won't rest till he gets his pound of flesh.”

My father got up from the steps. “Good. Tell her thanks for the advance notice. If any of these criminals call, would you tell them I'm at the icehouse and I'll have to get back to them?”

I
LOVED MINIATURE GOLF,
and I loved playing it with Valerie. It was fun putting down the lanes of pale red fabric, watching the ball rumble over tiny bridges and waterways and through the bottoms of Dutch windmills, then see it plunk neatly into the cup.

The evening was cool and breezy and smelled of water sprinklers and meat fires, and after we played nine holes, we ate watermelon at the stand across the street while Tommy Dorsey's “Song of India” moaned from a loudspeaker in the fork of an oak with its trunk painted white. Then I heard a pair of dual exhausts that were like none other—operatic, deep-throated, throbbing like the motorized equivalent of a classic ode, produced by Saber's homemade mufflers and the oil he had set aflame inside them. He pulled his heap to the curb and got out wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and half-top boots with chains on them, combing his hair with both hands, affecting a confidence I suspected would crumble any second.

I was happy to see him. I couldn't bear to think of Saber as a Benedict Arnold. People like Saber died on crosses or were lobotomized but were never compromised or absorbed by the herd.

“Thought y'all would be here,” he said, his eyes going from me to Valerie.

“This is Saber, Valerie,” I said.

“How you, Miss Valerie?” he said, sitting down at the picnic table.

“You don't have to call me ‘miss.' ”

“I get it from Aaron.” His eyes went everywhere except on her face. Saber was a wreck around girls. One time he climbed out a second-floor window when a girl tried to drag him onto a dance floor.

“What happened to your arms?” Valerie said.

“Fell off the roof.” He folded his forearms and tried to cover the stripes on them. There was a fresh stripe on his cheek, the same shade of red as the ones on his arms, all of them the width of a belt. “I could stand some of that melon. Those are Hempstead melons. That's the best kind.”

“Did your dad go after you again?” I said.

“He's not thinking straight. He's all right when he sobers up.”

“Your father did that to you?” Valerie said.

He looked straight ahead, trapped inside his shame. Valerie cut off a piece of watermelon from her slice and put it on a paper napkin and pushed it toward him. “Aaron says you're the best friend he's ever had. He says everybody respects you.”

There were strings of electric lights in the trees, and I could not tell if the shine in Saber's eyes was from their reflection or not.

“How'd you know where we were?” I said.

“Called your mom. Krauser popped up today. He came by the house right after Jenks did.”

“What's Krauser want?”

Saber looked at Valerie, not sure how much he should say. “He works part-time for the probation department. He says he knows I'm going to end up in Gatesville. He can get me into a youth camp of some kind that'll protect me.”