This Is What I Want (7 page)

OMAR

The boy fixated on the strip of white skin between Sam Kelvig’s slipping belt line and the tail of his shirt. The upper crease of Sam’s ass peeked above the leather belt, and Lord help him, Omar Smothers couldn’t help but stare. Old men and their plumbers’ cracks. Is that what he had to look forward to in some distant tomorrow?

Sam continued rummaging through the small storage shed adjacent to the town hall, which itself was just a Quonset hut painted in simple white and well insulated for the angry seasons of the northern plains. Omar rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then idly picked at the line of acne standing sentry on his right jaw while he waited for instructions.

“The damn things are in here somewhere,” came Sam’s muffled declaration.

“What are you looking for, Mr. Kelvig?”

“Sam. The damn pylons.”

It was always this way between them: Mr. Kelvig asking him to ditch the formality, and Omar being mindful of what his mother was forever telling him, that he needed to respect how wonderful the Kelvigs had been to them, with the job and the friendship and the support of Omar’s aspirations. It had been Sam who paid for Omar to go to that basketball camp in Las Vegas two years ago, and Omar now received a bucketful of mail nearly every day from college coaches who wanted him to come play for them. That doesn’t just happen for everybody, his mother was always saying, and while Omar had his own talent to credit, he shouldn’t discount Mr. Kelvig’s role in things.

Omar got it. He did. There weren’t many men in town who’d do what Sam Kelvig had done, who’d embrace a single mother and her bastard son and treat them like his own. He appreciated it. He just wondered sometimes why he wasn’t allowed to feel embarrassed when Mr. Kelvig’s voice would sail out from the stands, louder than everyone else’s, scolding him (“Damnit, Omar, you’ve got to grab that ball with both hands!”), or when Mr. Kelvig singled him out for a chat after church on Sundays or insisted on buying him a malted at Pete’s when Omar just wanted to be with his friends. Or why he had to be up at this ungodly eight a.m. to help Mr. Kelvig. Omar yawned. Why? Because his mom had said so. End of discussion.

“Isn’t that them right there?” he asked.

Sam looked back at him, annoyed. “Where?”

“Just let me . . .” Omar slipped his slender frame between Sam and the shed’s door frame. The pent-up mustiness hit him at once, flavored with hints of stale gasoline and parched soil. He reached for the top shelf in the far back, a simple task at his height of six foot eight, and he plucked the stacked pylons with his oversized hands.

“Hot damn, Omar,” Sam said. “I’d have never seen them up there in the dark. You got X-ray eyes?”

“No, sir.”

“All right, come out of there. Let me get the rest of the stuff and we’ll get busy.”

Omar stepped out the way he’d gone in and went back to waiting, making patterns in the dirt with his feet.

Sam whistled a tune while he gathered the signs that would direct traffic around downtown, some spray paint, and some boundary ribbon.

“You’re going to be a big star at the U, Omar,” he said between whistle blasts.

That was another thing,
Omar thought. Mr. Kelvig was always talking up the University of Montana, like it was a done deal that Omar would be going there, the way Sam’s own son had done back when Omar was just a little boy. He had to be nice about it, because like his mother said, Mr. Kelvig meant well, but privately Omar figured the old guy could kiss his half-Indian ass. Coach Boeheim wanted him at Syracuse. Coach K wanted him down at Duke. They wanted him at UCLA. The University of California at Mother-Fucking Los Angeles, as Coach had said. Mr. Kelvig might think the world stopped at Montana’s borders, but Omar had a few ideas of his own. He’d always need his mother, but he wasn’t going to need this town much longer, and he wouldn’t need Montana, either. All he needed was beaches, basketball, and girls. Stuff that in your ass crack, old man.

NORBY

For a long while, Norby had harbored a theory that places acted like dry-cell batteries, storing remnants of the lives of everyone who had ever passed through them. Even as he had put steady distance between himself and where he’d come from, he’d held to that notion. But now, as he cleared the last bend in the road before Grandview loomed into view, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

Apart from the physical layout, nothing here looked like he remembered. Fields that had once lain open, alternating between fertilized and fallow, now held mishmashes of RVs and travel trailers. Holding tanks and oil pumps sprouted in front yards and back forties. An infusion of oil tax money had allowed the town fathers to slap a new coat of paint on everything—Norby knew this from the email exchanges with his dad, who could talk up a storm about everything that didn’t much matter. The whole effect was a mash-up. Old farms, new alignments, cheap housing alternatives fronted by all the trappings of quick oil wealth—dirt bikes and watercraft and gleaming new pickup trucks.

The butterflies flapped around his stomach again, same as with his struggle with creeping doubt that morning in the Billings hotel room, as he endured the tug-of-war between expedient desire—find a flight, now, and just go back—and practical consideration for his folks’ point of view.
You get to do that once,
he reminded himself before he set out on the four-hour drive home,
and you’ve already burned your chance
.

And then, before he could give himself time to consider bailing out one last time, he was upon it. On the left, the cluster of three schools—elementary, middle, and high—where he’d spent thirteen years. On the right, a constant amid the change, the Rifleshot Pizza Company, where three generations of Grandview kids ate and worked and settled their differences in parking-lot fisticuffs. Then he made his left turn, and the new, foreign Grandview fell away and familiarity flooded the scene. It was like cueing a movie in Norby’s head. Childhood, at first idyllic and then chaotic as he learned more about himself, sped through his mind’s eye, and when Norby came to a stop in the driveway of the house he grew up in, just a short walk across the street from his old schools, disorientation set in, as if he had no idea how he’d gotten here.

“You’ve changed your hair,” Patricia told him after she’d held him tight and then ushered him into the living room. (“Sit down, and let’s talk while we have the time,” she’d said, and Norby had fought with himself not to read something more into that. He’d spent the better part of the morning reminding himself of the thin margin between innocuous chitchat and a deliberate message, with his final pronouncement being that he should just give his folks the benefit of the doubt.)

He dragged a hand across his brow, pushing the intransigent shock of hair back. “Yeah.”

“I liked it better short. You shouldn’t hide your face.”

“Mom.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m nervous. Is it OK if I say I’m nervous?”

They sat across from each other. Norby wished she were closer, so he could take her hand and give some indication of how alike they really were in this. Instead, he smiled through pursed lips. “Yes, it’s OK. I am, too.”

“I’m just so glad you came. That’s the main thing.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a nice car you got.”

“I guess so.”

“Montana plates. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

The heat flushed through Norby. The stupid, pointless ruse about where he was flying.
What is wrong with me that I thought that was a good idea?
he wondered.

He aimed to move her off the topic.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Down at the park by now, I should think. You should go see him.”

“I don’t know.”

“He wants you to, Norby.” He looked at her. Though he’d made his wishes clear about the name he wanted to use, neither of his parents had acceded, until now. “I’m trying,” she said.

“OK. I’ll go.”

Patricia stood. To Norby, it was as if she wished to hustle him off before he changed his mind.

“Good,” she said. “Be sure to drop by the mayor’s office and see what kind of foolishness he’s been up to.”

Norby decided to cover the distance on foot, the better to poke around in his memories at a gentler pace. He pressed due north on Mission Avenue, past the most memorable settings of his younger days, connecting the threads of time and place as he went. There, in the backyard of the house on the corner of Fifth Street, was the clothesline he and Marc Ray had raided in the summer of 1997, intending to hold Marcy Yaw’s underwear for a ransom. No, wait, he thought, that would have been ’96, because Marcy’s older sister, Kate, was class of ’97 and was killed by a drunken driver out on Cutoff Road the following spring, two days before graduation. That had been a solar-plexus punch for everybody in town.

At Sixth Street, he turned right, and the reason for his mother’s urging him to go this way shoved into view. Three skid steers were being loaded and locked down onto a flatbed trailer, and another truck carried a container stacked high with singed lumber and blackened cinder block. Where Norby expected to see the mayor’s office building, he saw nothing but a view to the alley behind it. Standing well back but front and center and assuredly in charge of the bustling work site was Mayor Swarthbeck.

Norby jogged the final few yards.

“Mayor,” he said.

Swarthbeck did a literal double take before recognition finally triggered.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, gripping Norby’s hand and shoulder and giving both a considerable shake. “How the heck are you?”

“Pretty good. So what happened here?”

Swarthbeck, still holding on to his shoulder, commandeered Norby and moved him a few feet farther away from the cleanup. “Oh, you know, little mishap. Jeez, kid, I’ve gotta tell you, didn’t expect to see you around, so I’m sorry it took me a minute. It was like opening the door to the fridge and seeing an aquarium. A little hard to ponder.”

“No biggie.”

Swarthbeck looked him up and down a couple of times. “So this is the California look, huh? Long hair. No socks in your shoes.”

“I guess.”

“That what they call metrosexual or something?”

Norby clenched his fists instinctively, without any real plan for what to do next. He searched the mayor’s face for some indication of intent behind the remark but couldn’t suss any out.

“I’m just joshing you,” Swarthbeck said at last, nudging Norby with an elbow. “Naw, you look good, kid. The coastal life’s been good to you, I guess.”

“I guess.” Norby switched gears. “You seen my dad?”

The mayor cast a dismissive wave toward downtown. “Down at the park, putting up the bunting or some shit. It’s his show, you know.”

“Thanks, Mayor.”

“He’s there with that kid, Omar. You know about him?”

“I’ve heard some stories.”

“He’s the real deal. Better basketball player than you, that kid.”

There was no mistaking that one. The words had been sharpened and aimed at the heart. Norby turned and walked away, ears burning. At least half of the sting, he told himself, lay in the fact that he allowed the stupid comment to pierce his skin. It wasn’t that he hadn’t heard it all before from people much more significant in his life than the mayor. He’d been called a coward, though he had no idea how anyone could support that contention. There’s nothing cowardly about telling your coach you won’t play again, no matter how much he’s counting on you. Nobody with fear ruling his heart stands in front of his father and says the same, while offering no explanation, because who would have believed it? He’d had ten years to make his peace with what he’d done, and he knew, in the deepest part of him, that given another hundred chances to make the decision, he’d do it the same way. Every time.

THE CHIEF

At the north-side downtown blockade, Adair nosed the squad car off to the right, up a street, and into the alley. She didn’t care for not being able to drive the full length of Main, and she’d told the mayor as much several weeks earlier, when the nuts-and-bolts planning kicked in. Still, she couldn’t argue with the general principle of keeping a rowdy, alcohol-fueled crowd penned in once the nighttime festivities began.

She emerged from the alley onto Sixth Street, and what she saw brought her to a stop. She couldn’t believe it. Here, hours earlier, had stood the charcoal ruins of the mayor’s office. Now it was a hole in the street, just a bare foundation, like the gap left by a missing tooth.

“What the hell?” she said.

She checked the mirrors behind her, and craned her neck out of the window. Nobody on the street. Just an empty space and dust stirred by a gentle wind.

Adair’s cell phone buzzed. She checked the text messages. LaMer.

You coming? These guys are ready to eat.

Yeah.

You got everything?

Yeah. Where’s Sakota?

On patrol. You want him?

Loaded question,
Adair thought. Yeah, she wanted him. She wanted his head on a spike. A building doesn’t just up and disappear, and if it does, the police chief damn well better get a call.

No. Be a sec.

With little trouble, Adair got food ordered for the hungry men in her charge, and while they waited for Pete to knock out the orders, she made a show of handing out yellow T-shirts with the town insignia on them, as well as zip ties for each man to use as handcuffs should the occasion warrant it.

The mayor had been direct about his wishes when Adair decided to hire the extra security. “We don’t need a show of damn force, Adair,” he’d said. “Tell everybody to dress casual and blend in.” The T-shirts had been her compromise. They weren’t exactly unobtrusive; these guys weren’t going to be mistaken for a boys’ choir in the matching duds. But Adair knew she needed a quick way of identifying who was who once the sun went down and the rowdiness kicked up a few notches.

She sat with LaMer at lunch, working on her bottom lip and grinding her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

She plucked a french fry off her plate and jabbed it in the air at him. “You see what was going on at the mayor’s office this morning?”

“Yeah. He had a crew come clean up the mess. So?”

“A little unusual, don’t you think? I mean, I just dropped him off at his place, what, six hours ago?”

“Yeah.”

“How come nobody called me?”

LaMer took a bite of his burger and talked through it. “I don’t know. Why are you so sore?”

“It’s just weird. He even asked me about calling the state fire marshal. Not much point in that now, is there?”

“Guess not.”

Adair threw the fry back onto her plate. Sometimes, she got a nasty mouthful of just how dumb Joe LaMer could be, which wasn’t his most attractive quality. When she’d finally gotten home after the explosion, keyed up and exhausted all at once, she’d used him—or, rather, her imagination about him—to get off, to cut the tension down to something manageable and bring sleep on. She thought now that he wasn’t deserving of her fantasies or her touch.

“What I’m saying, Joe, is that it shouldn’t have gone like that. There’s a protocol.”

LaMer wore a look of boredom, and that goosed Adair’s discontent.

“It’s his building,” he said. “I figure he can do what he wants.”

“Oh, come on—”

“Listen, Chief,” he said. He never called her chief, and the invocation startled her. Maybe she should have insisted on it. In an effort to get along, and with such a small staff, she’d encouraged first names. A little deference, a little thought to keeping her in the loop, might be nice right now.

“Yeah?”

LaMer looked down, as if he didn’t want to get into it, and then he brought his face back up. He set a hard gaze on Adair. She found it unnerving.

“This isn’t any big deal,” he said. “Maybe you ought to let it go.”

Quick as it came on, the stolid look from LaMer slipped away, and he went back to his plate. Adair pushed hers to the middle of the table and stood up.

“Have half of these guys at the park at four thirty,” she said. “Other half need to be posted around the downtown area. We’ll swap places at five thirty so everyone can eat. OK?”

LaMer nodded. “You got it, Chief.”

Adair walked away, fighting to conceal the wobble in her legs. She’d never seen such straight-up insolence from LaMer before. No, not just insolence. Creepiness. It had jerked her antenna up, this subtle yet strong indication from him that she should shut up and let it go, and that left her caught between rattled and pissed off. A few guys in her hired crew acknowledged her as she headed for the door, and she responded with a pursed smile.

Outside, in the cruiser, she gave herself a minute to gather her composure. One minute, just sixty seconds, and then she had to get on with it. She set a timer on her phone, and she watched the seconds tick off. One minute, and then Adair would be a rock.

No fear.

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She slammed a fist on the empty seat beside her. “What the hell just happened?”