The Jealous Kind (37 page)

I hung up, then stared at the phone as though it were alive. I took the receiver off the hook and put a pillow over it so I wouldn't have to listen to the buzzing sound filling the house.

I
KNEW WHERE MY
father would go when he returned from Walgreens with my mother. I asked if I could go with him.

“I never thought you were keen on the icehouse,” he said. “Thirsty for a Grapette?”

“Yes, sir. I'd like to talk with you about a concern of mine also.”

“What would that be?”

“Sleepwalking and such.”

“Your mother said you had a snootful last night.”

“Better wait till we're at the icehouse, Daddy.”

We walked the three blocks to his hangout and sat at an outdoor plank table under a striped canopy riffling in the breeze. It was dusk. The sky was speckled with birds slowly descending into the trees that shaded most of the neighborhood.

“Three guys threatened me in an alley up in the Heights,” I said. “One wanted to cut me with a razor. Loren Nichols bailed me out.”

His face never changed expression, but his eyes did. “
Who
was going to cut you with a razor?”

“I don't know his name. Bud Winslow was with them. He was a linebacker who used to run interference for Grady Harrelson.”

The waiter brought my father a Jax and a glass and a salt shaker on a tray and set them down one by one in front of him. Then he served me a Grapette and went away. My father's eyes never left my face. “Go on,” he said.

“I think I might have gone to Winslow's house in Bellaire last night.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Winslow came to the station today with Cisco Napolitano and said he saw me get out of my heap in front of his house.”

“You have no memory of that?”

“No, sir.” I paused. “I had a shank.”

“A what?”

“A stiletto.”

He was still, not a hair moving on his head, even though the canopy was flapping. “I think a predictable phenomenon is occurring in your life, Aaron. It's the nature of evil.”

“The knife?”

“No. Evil is like a flame that has no substance of its own on which to feed. It needs to take up residence within us. You imagine yourself committing acts that are in reality the deeds of others.”

“But what if I harmed someone?”

“You didn't. You never have. And you won't, at least not deliberately.”

“Vick Atlas called.”

“I don't want to hear about it. These people don't exist. If they come around, we'll have to make a choice.”

“Sir?” I said.

“Maybe it won't come to that. You know what we need? A slice of that Hempstead watermelon at the stand on Westheimer.”

He put seventy-five cents on the table to cover the beer and the soft drink and the tip for the waiter. I had never seen my father walk away from a glass or bottle that contained alcohol.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Saber moved back into his house. I was surprised. I had thought Mr. Bledsoe was an unforgiving and angry man. He was probably like most people, better than we think they are. It probably took a lot of courage for him to humble himself and go to work as a Jolly Jack ice cream cart driver, on a route in his own neighborhood, where people concluded he had been fired from his job at the rendering plant for drinking, which wasn't true. Anyway, the Sabe motored into my driveway and parked under the porte cochere and announced he was through with Manny and Cholo and boosting cars and dropping goofballs and smoking Mexican laughing grass. I wasn't quite sure Manny and Cholo were through with him, and I knew Grady Harrelson and Vick Atlas weren't.

Saber's return home presented another problem, too. Our enemies knew where he was.

“Where'd you get the mouse?” I asked.

The bruise was dark blue and purple, in the corner of his eye. “I had to straighten out Cholo.” He grinned, knowing how absurd he sounded.

“What'd they do with Grady's car?”

“You got me. They're out of their league and dumping in their pants. They wanted me to drive it to Mexico. How's that for smarts? ‘Hello,
señor,
got anything to declare? Oh, almost one million dollars? Come on in.' ”

“Vick Atlas said he might do something awful to Major and the cats.”

“He's been watching your house?”

“He or somebody else,” I said.

“That's one guy who should be cut off at the knees. You told your folks?”

“My dad.”

“What'd he say?”

“That we might have to make some hard choices.”

“Come on, blow it off,” Saber said.

“I think I had a blackout and went to Bud Winslow's house with a shiv.”

Saber squeezed his eyes shut as though trying not to hear me. “Let's play miniature golf tonight. We got to get back to our old ways.”

“It doesn't work like that.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said. “You got to be upbeat. I'll pick you up at eight, Gate. Tell Valerie we'll be motorating over to her place. We're back in action, Jackson.”

I watched Major and the cats walking down the driveway toward us, trusting, innocent, full of curiosity.

“I got a new one for you,” Saber said. “What did the bathtub say to the commode?”

“I don't know. Tell me.”

“ ‘I get the same amount of ass you do, but I don't have to take all that shit.' ”

Saber was Saber. Destiny was destiny. I felt myself falling through a black hole. As he backed out, he gave me a thumbs-up to show that he had everything under control.

B
EFORE I LEFT THE
house, I called Merton Jenks at home. “How you feeling?” I asked.

“Worry about yourself,” he replied.

“Did Miss Cisco come see you?”

“You got a big problem, Aaron. You want to believe in people.”

“That's bad?”

“For you it is. You have the judgment of a hoot owl sitting in the middle of the highway on a bright day.”

“Vick Atlas and his father or their people are going to hurt my family or my animals.”

“You know this for sure?”

“I have no doubt about it.”

He waited so long to speak that I thought we had been disconnected.

“Are you there?” I said.

“What the hell are you up to, boy?”

“See you around.”

I hung up and headed for Vick's apartment building.

I
RODE UP TO
the penthouse in a birdcage elevator. Vick answered the door in a pair of red Everlast boxing shorts, flat-soled gym shoes, and a strap undershirt. His shoulders and chest were covered with black hair. He had on a pair of blue bag gloves, the kind with a wood dowel inside. “How'd you get up here?”

“On the elevator.”

“What happened to your face?”

“This?” I said, touching the bandage on my cheek.

“Yeah,
that.
”

“A bull got me.”

“A cow or a cop?”

“Guess.”

Behind him I could see a heavy bag hanging from a steel frame. The air was fetid, his eyes like two ball bearings out of alignment. He looked up and down my person. “Are you calling me out?”

“Why would I call you anything?”

“God, you're stupid. Are you making a play? You want to mix it up? You want to shoot off your mouth? Tell me what it is.”

“I want you to kill me. Then you'll be on your way to Old Sparky, and my animals and my family will be safe.”

“You're a nutcase, man.”

“I guess we'll never be buds. So in that spirit, see how you like this.”

I hooked my fist just below his eye and felt the skin split against the bone. I'm not proud of the rage and violence of which I now knew myself capable. I know he had no expectation of what was happening to him. I know he got up once and tried to run for the bathroom. I know he knocked the phone off a hall table. I remember his taking the shower curtain with him when he went down in the tub. I also remember the horsetails of blood on the wall. He was mewing on his knees and holding both hands to his nose when I left.

I took the stairs down to the first floor and went out the back exit. A black woman was picking stuff out of a garbage can. A rag was tied on her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. “You hurt, suh?”

“I'm fine,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, suh. There ain't nothing wrong wit' me.”

“Don't you have food at home?”

“My welfare got cut off.”

I gave her two dollars from my wallet. Her palm and the underside of her fingers were the gold-brown color of saddle leather. She closed her little hand on the bills and put them into the pocket of her dress. “There's a police car out yonder. Don't be going near them with what you got on you.”

“No, ma'am, I won't. Thank you.”

I got into my heap and drove away. I thought I heard a fire engine screaming, but I could see no emergency vehicles in the vicinity. At the red light, the sound was so loud that I was sure my heap was about to be cut in half. Then the light changed and the world went silent and I drove home like a man who had been struck deaf.

A
FTER I BATHED,
I rinsed my clothes clean under the faucet and wrung them dry before I hid them at the bottom of the clothes hamper. Then I scrubbed the tub with Ajax. When my father came home, I told him everything.

“I wish you hadn't done that,” he said.

“I didn't see any other way out of it, Daddy.”

“That's an interesting perspective. Can the rest of us do the same thing? ‘I don't like this, I don't like that. So I'll just punch someone in the face.' Sound reasonable to you?”

“Not when you put it in that context.”

We were in the kitchen. The backyard was in shadow. The cats were sitting on top of the redwood table, and Major was jumping in the air at a mockingbird that kept dive-bombing him from the telephone wire.

“How bad was the Atlas boy hurt?” my father said.

“I didn't ask. He's not a boy, either.”

“It doesn't matter what he is. You shouldn't have attacked him.”

I gestured out the window. “How about Major and Skippy and Snuggs and Bugs? Who speaks for them?”

He cut his head. “You make a point.” He opened the icebox and looked inside as though a bottle of beer or wine waited on a shelf. As I said, my mother didn't allow alcohol in the house. If that was what he was looking for, he was out of luck.

“Want to walk over to the icehouse?” I said.

“No, not really.” He sat down at the breakfast table.

“What are we going to do, Daddy?”

His collar was unbuttoned, and there was a V of bright red sunburn on his chest. His fingernails were clipped and pared and clean, every hair on his head in place. “It's time to make some people do their job.”

“Which people is that?”

H
E MADE AN
appointment with Detective Dale Hopkins, the plainclothes investigator who had busted Saber and me for vandalizing Mr. Krauser's home.
We met with him in a tiny windowless room that contained no furniture except a wooden table and three chairs and a D-ring inset in the concrete floor. The door was made of solid metal. Through the crack, I could see officers in uniform walking back and forth in the corridor. Hopkins wore a suit the color of tin. He did not bother to shake hands with me or my father. The skin of his face was as taut as a drumhead. He carried a clipboard with him. Perhaps intentionally, he clattered it on the table when he sat down. He had the worst nicotine odor I had ever smelled. “This is in reference to Vick Atlas?” he said.

“Vick Atlas and my son,” my father said.

“So what about Vick Atlas and your son?” He smiled as though trying to be polite and pleasant.

“We want to know if Vick Atlas is all right,” my father said. “We want to apologize. You're the same gentleman I spoke with on the phone, aren't you?”

“We're not in the apology business, Mr. Broussard. Vick Atlas isn't pressing charges. So all sins are forgiven.”

“I don't think I've made myself clear,” my father said. “My son is sorry for what he did. If he's not, he should be. That is only part of the reason for our coming here. We believe the Atlas family plans to do us harm. What my son did was wrong. But he was acting in defense of his animals. Can you tell me why people like Jaime Atlas and his son and their ilk are allowed to do anything they wish, including the murder of others?”

Hopkins's eyes were like glass, the pupils like seeds. “I got no opinion on that.”

“That's remarkable,” my father said.

“I didn't catch that.”

“Isn't it obvious something besides a teenage squabble is going on? The Harrelson and Atlas families are involved, a schoolteacher has committed suicide, my son lives in fear for his life, and you seem to see or hear nothing.”

“I don't appreciate your tone.”

“Do you plan on talking to Vick Atlas or his father?”

“No.”

“Do you care to explain that?”

“No charges have been filed. There won't be any, either.”

“Why not?”

“Vick Atlas and his father told me it was an argument and a fair fight. For them, it's over.”

“Do you believe them?” my father asked.

“What I believe is irrelevant. If you want my opinion, the issue is your son.”

“Aaron is the catalyst?” my father said.

“The what?”

“Corruption has a smell. It's an infection a man carries in his glands.”

The room seemed pressurized. I could see a pencil drawing of a cock and balls on the back of the metal door. Down the corridor, someone was yelling for a roll of toilet paper through the bars of a holding cell.

“I went out to the apartment building myself,” Hopkins said. “I talked to the desk clerk who called in the incident. He saw your boy go out the back door. He also saw him talking to a nigger woman by the garbage cans. Your son was giving her money. Know why he would be doing that just after he beat the hell out of someone?”