The Jealous Kind (7 page)

The change in his tone was like an elixir to his friends. They tightened the circle around us, their bodies hard and tan, beaded with water. Saber had said Grady's kind was different, incapable of empathy. He wasn't wrong. They threw trash out of their cars, were profane around people they believed to be of no value, and were unfazed by the suffering of the poor and infirm. But for me, the open sore on every one of them was unnecessary cruelty. As I looked at them gathered around Saber's pitiful excuse for a hot rod, I remembered a scene from years before. There was a coulee and a piney-woods pond on the backside of River Oaks Country Club. It contained bream and sun perch, and kids from other neighborhoods came there and fished with bobbers and bamboo poles. One week after Christmas, on a warm, sunny day, a little boy had parked his new Schwinn bicycle at the top of the incline and was fishing among the lily pads when a carful of kids who were country-club members stopped their car. A tall kid got out, picked up the Schwinn, and hurled it end over end down the slope into the water, scratching the paint, denting the fenders. The little boy cried. The kids in the car sped away, laughing.

I thought about Saber's mention of the tire iron under the seat, and I thought about it not because of the danger we were in but because of the memory of the Schwinn bicycle.

“All is fair in love and war,” I said.

Grady's gaze shifted sideways into neutral space. “You're speaking in code?”

“That means do your worst.”

“I think you and Saber need a dip in the pool.”

The passenger door was still ajar. I leaned inside and felt under the seat and pulled out the tire iron. I let it hang from my right hand, the end with the socket touching my knee.

Grady looked at his friends. “Do you believe this asshole?”

“You dealt it, Grady,” I said. “Want to boogie?”

“With one phone call, I can make your life miserable,” he said.

“My life is already miserable.”

“Maybe you need an around-the-world. I'll call Valerie. She gives the best I ever had.”

I kept my eyes on his and didn't blink or show any expression. I felt my fingers tightening on the shaft of the lug wrench. He looked again at his friends, as though sharing his amusement with them. None of them met his eyes. He looked back at me. “What's with you? You got some kind of mental defect?”

“Nothing is with me. I won't be a senior till next week. You already graduated. You're a wheel. I'm nobody.”

“You're trying to provoke an incident and then file a suit. It's not going to work, Broussard.” He flexed his shoulders and rotated his head like a boxer loosening up. His confidence was starting to slip, and the others knew it.

“Call the shot, Grady. Or apologize for that remark about Valerie.”

“You start a beef at my house and I'm supposed to apologize? That's great, man. You almost make me laugh.”

The woman in the blue robe stepped out on the swale. She was wearing huaraches. There was a smear of lipstick on one of her canine teeth. She cupped her hand on the back of Grady's neck, one pointy fingernail teasing his hairline. She was whispering in his ear, but her eyes were on me. He seemed to be listening to her as a child would to its mother.

“Get back in the car, Aaron,” I heard Saber say.

“We're fine,” I said.

“No, get in the car,” he said.

“Listen to your friend,” the woman said to me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She winked, her lips compressing into a glossy red flower, her eyes darker and more lustrous than they were a second earlier.

I stuck the tire iron under the seat, and in seconds Saber and I were headed down a long tunnel of live oaks, his dual exhausts echoing off the tree trunks. My right hand was trembling, the shaft of the tire iron printed as red as a burn across my palm.

S
ABER TURNED NORTH,
toward the Heights and Valerie Epstein's house. “What happened back there?” he said. “Who's that broad?”

“You got me.”

“It's like she has some kind of control over them. Why is she wasting herself on guys like that when I'm available? Have you seen me do the dirty bop?”

“I missed that.”

“It's not funny. I'm a good dancer.” He tugged on his dork, trying to straighten it in his pants. “This is killing me. I've got to have some relief.”

“Will you act your age?”

“I am.”

“I didn't know your father was in the marines.”

“He wasn't. He was in the Seabees. He spent most of the war in San Diego.”

“Why did you tell Harrelson he was in the marines?”

“To make him feel like he's worse butt crust than he already is. Any time I can screw up the head of a guy like Harrelson, I'm on it.”

He shifted down, flooring the Chevy, blowing birds out of the trees into a maroon sky as we plowed deep into the Heights.

K
NOW WHAT IT
was like back then? It's
not the way everybody thinks. Not one person I knew listened to Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby or Perry Como. We thought their music was shit and Lawrence Welk was water torture. In jazz, there was the cool school and the honk school. Pres Young was from the cool school. Flip Phillips was honk, in the best way. He and Pres and Buck Clayton and Norman Granz toured the country with Jazz at the Philharmonic. Hank and Lefty were on every blue-collar jukebox in America. The seminal recording in R&B was Jackie Brenston's “Rocket 88,” featuring Ike Turner on piano. Politics? What was that? My father said Senator McCarthy had the warmth and depth of a bowling ball. Saber asked him who Senator McCarthy was.

The real story was the class war. We just didn't know we were in it.

“What's that?” Saber said, slowing the Chevy.

On the street a short distance from Valerie's house, I saw a scorched area the size of a car and fractured glass and scraps of rubber on the asphalt. I realized that once again Saber had driven us into the belly of the beast.

“That's where Loren Nichols's car got burned. Get us out of here,” I said.

“He lives in that dump?”

A sagging nineteenth-century two-story white house, with a dirt yard and rain gutters that had rusted into lace, stood on cinder blocks among live oaks whose lichen-crusted limbs seemed about to crush the roof. Loren Nichols was drinking a beer, bare-chested and wearing suspenders, behind a hair-tangled old woman sitting in a wooden chair. Her skin was shriveled like dry paste, her neck tilted as though she had been dropped from a hangman's noose. Loren was down the steps in a blink, the beer can in his hand, coming hard across the yard. “Come back here, boy. Your ass is grass,” he hollered.

Saber shot him the bone and kept driving. The beer can smacked against the trunk and rolled across the asphalt.

“Stop the car,” I said.

“Over a beer can?” Saber said.

“Let me out.”

“No, that guy's a
mean motor scooter, Aaron. Anybody is who survives Gatesville.”

I pushed open the door and stepped out with the car still moving. Loren came toward me, his torso as pale and hard-looking as whalebone. I stepped back, raising one hand. “It wasn't me who torched your heap. Maybe I cut your tires, but I didn't set the fire.”

“Who did?”

“Probably the guys who threw the Mexican girl out of their car a couple of blocks from here.”

“What do you know about the Mexican girl?”

“Nothing.”

“Then shut your mouth, asshole. She was my cousin.”

“Don't be calling me names.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“A guy who wasn't looking for a beef until you and your brother and your friends 'fronted me on the street.”

There were nests of green veins in his forearms and chest. He was breathing through his mouth, his eyes out of focus. He hit me in the sternum with the heel of his hand.

“Don't do that,” I said.

“I'll do it all day. You got a shank?”

“No.”

“How'd you cut our tires if you don't carry a shank?”

“I said
maybe
I cut your tires.”

He thumped me in the forehead. “I can take your skin off, boy.”

“I know that.”

“Admit you burned my car.”

“I didn't.”

He slapped me. “Lie to me again.”

The side of my face was on fire. I felt tears running down my cheeks. “I didn't do anything to you guys.”

“You think you can come up to the Heights and wipe your feet on us? You come up here to dip your wick?”

“I didn't wipe my feet on anyone.”

He raised his hand as though to slap me again. “I'll knock your
head into the storm sewer. I mean it, I'll tear it clean off your shoulders. Who he'ped you do it?”

“No one,” I said, wiping my face.

Saber had gotten out of the Chevy. The passenger door was still open. I saw him reach under the seat for the tire iron.

“You chickenshit?” Loren said.

“People who fight are weak.”

He tried to catch my nose between two knuckles. “Don't jerk away from me, boy. You're about to get on your knees. That's the only way this is going to end.”

I tried to push his hand aside. Saber was walking toward us now, the tire iron behind his leg.

“Why were you spying on my house?” Loren said.

“Why would I want to spy on your house? I couldn't care less about your house.”

“Because that's what dingleberries do. I hear you're a momma's boy and your old man is a lush.”

“You don't know anything about me.”

“Go wash your face. You can use my garden hose.”

“Get back, Saber,” I said.

Loren realized he had forgotten about Saber. He turned in Saber's direction as though in a dream.

“Put it away, Saber,” I said.

“Well, you little shit,” Loren said, sliding his right hand into his pocket.

“Look at me, Loren,” I said.

“What is it now?” he said.

I thought about saying something clever, but I didn't. I felt like a helpless child watching his best friend about to cross a line and perhaps ruin his life. The wind was as warm as blood; I could feel the tears drying on my cheeks.

I caught Loren Nichols on the mouth, bursting his lips against his teeth. I never saw anyone look so surprised. He cupped his hand to keep the flow from his mouth off his chest and drapes. I had never been in a fight and did not know what I was supposed to do next.
Then I saw the pain and shock go out of his eyes. From that point on, I didn't think.

I used both fists and hit him so hard, I knew the blood on my knuckles was from me and not from him. He tripped backward over the curb and tried to lift his forearm across his face, but I clubbed his head and the back of his neck and drove one punch into his eye when he looked up at me for mercy.

My mother had been the first to call the blank spaces in my days “spells,” maybe because spells and blackouts ran in her family. The Hollands were a violent people, capable of turning their weapons on themselves as well as others. My grandfather was a Texas Ranger who put John Wesley Hardin in jail, something Wild Bill Hickok tried and couldn't do. My mother often went to places in her head that no normal person dared visit. I believe Loren Nichols realized his mistake and wanted to undo it even as I drove him across the dirt yard onto the rotting steps of his house, even as I continued to beat and stomp him in front of the old woman, who had madness in her eyes but seemed to see nothing.

For the first time in my life, I understood that I was capable of killing a man with my bare hands. The world turned to a red and purple melt while Loren Nichols's face was coming apart. Then I felt Saber's arms grab me from behind, his hands locking on my chest, pulling me backward as I kicked at Loren and missed.

I tried to get loose, but I was finished, the adrenaline gone, my strength draining like water through the soles of my feet. The old woman was making a keening sound, her body shaking. Loren rolled into a ball on the ground. His face didn't look human.

“We're in the skillet,” Saber said. “Did you hear me? We're deep in Indian country, Aaron. Snap out of it. His friends will pull our teeth with pliers.”

He carried me upright to the street as he would an upended hogshead, and body-slammed me on the swale. I stared up at him, the sky and the trees and the houses along the block spinning out of control.

“Is that you, Saber?” I asked. “Did you just throw me on the ground? What in the world is the matter with you?”

I
MADE HIM DRIVE
me to the
alley that led behind Valerie Epstein's house.

“You're going up to her door like that?” he said, looking at my clothes and hands.

“I'm going to use her hose.”

Valerie's yard was deep in shadow, the fronds of the banana plants next to her garage rattling in the wind. The air smelled of fertilizer and the damp soil in the flower beds, an odor like a fresh wound in the earth. An odor like a grave. I heard a siren several blocks away.

“They're coming,” Saber said.

“Nichols started it.”

“I'm scared,” he said.

“They're just cops. It's our word against his.”

“No. It was the look on your face. It wasn't you.”

“Don't talk that way.”

But I couldn't get his words out of my mind.

I squatted down by the garage and removed my shirt and turned on the garden hose. I washed off my hands and arms and soaked my shirt and squeezed it out and put it back on and dried my hands on my pants. I saw Valerie through the back screen. I got to my feet. I didn't know what to say to Saber.

“I hurt Nichols pretty bad?” I asked him.

“He won't want to look in the mirror for a while.”

“Was that his grandmother?”