“This is my brother,” Bren said, nodding my way, but she didn’t go on. I couldn’t picture Shirley in the mall anymore, though I’d seen her there just a couple of hours ago.
Four or five guys in camo jackets slumped in a booth in a corner. Two men in overalls and dusty Texaco caps circled a pool table. The tallest one spat tobacco into a Dixie cup and mumbled, as though he’d only run into her this morning, “Bren-da! What’s up?”
Bren cocked her hip against the table. Relaxed into a smile. Color flooded her cheeks. I stood by a flashing jukebox. It was beating out a hip-hop tune: white cops in coffins. I guessed Dad felt this way when he’d found the photos. Disoriented. Slapped in the head. I imagined him in a psychiatrist’s office — a pale, sterile place — his jaw trembling, his skin slack, an old man all of a sudden …
I gathered from Bren’s banter with the guys that they had been pals of Bobby’s. “Ain’t hardly seen him in a while,” the tall one said. “Last I heard, he’s wildcatting down near McCamey … or Houston …” He turned to me. “Name’s Pete. How you doing, man?”
“Hi, Pete.”
“Brenda’s bro?”
“That’s right.”
“You shoot stick?” His buddy had wandered off to the bar.
“Used to.”
“I’ll rack ‘em up.”
“Well …” Bren appeared to be settling in. “All right.”
She laughed and went to get a Lone Star.
“Where you from?” Pete said. He arranged the balls. Behind him, painted on a mirror on the wall, a red-headed woman in hot pants rode a jumbo beer bottle as if it were a bull. Next to her, a sign-up sheet for a Gulf War veterans support group, a Time magazine shot of W. pinned to a dart board.
“Oregon. I work in a film lab there.”
Pete whistled. “Got to go to college for that?”
“Not necessarily. But I did.”
He picked a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder off the edge of the table. He sprinkled his hands. “Okay, College. Show me what you got.”
My palms were sweaty. I tried the powder, but it didn’t help much. I hadn’t held a cue stick in years. It slipped and my break was bad. Three or four balls rolled from the pack but most of them stayed where they were. Shirley giggled into her whiskey. Bren sat next to her on a cotton-spitting red leather stool. Pete ran three stripes off the table. “Watch it, College, watch it now! Or-ee-gone, eh? What’s it like there? I hear it’s the Pastures of Plenty. Pair-o’-diice.” He sank another.
“It’s nice,” I said. “Cloudy. I miss watching meteors.”
“Meteors? You a fireball, College? Ha!” The twelve ball banked off a side cushion, just past the pocket. “Shit, Fireball, here’s your chance! Don’t say I never gave you nothing!”
Rushing, I blew a simple corner. Bren and Shirley joined in Pete’s laughter. My sister’s smile looked malicious. She downed her beer and ordered another. On the jukebox Shirley punched up “Play That Funky Music, White Boy,” and she and Bren danced. Pete strutted back and forth in front of the mirror. “Gonna put you away now, College!” How many beers had he snarfed? His hot-dogging cost him an easy bank shot.
The floor felt uneven under my feet. Warped boards, gritty, sticky. I chalked the tip of my stick and remembered the Elams’ basement, the warm, dim lights, the swamp cooler rustling in the corner, the paneled walls blocking out the flatness all around us. Jack Elam, four years my junior, was overweight. The son of a jeweler. He was the only kid I ever knew who wore a silver Rolex. His watches kept getting stolen at school, but his father would just replace them. Perhaps because of the teasing Jack took — his belly, his family’s ostentatiousness — he was always bitter, quick to anger when things didn’t go his way.
I stepped around Pete and sank the yellow one ball.
Jack clung to me as his one friend, though I always beat him at eight-ball. I’d beat Bren, too, or whip them both when she and Jack ganged up to take me on together. The joy of winning, of letting the two of them gain a little confidence, then going purposefully about my business, always raised the heat in my face. I understood that Jack and Bren were jealous of each other, competing for my attention. My tolerance of him, and his closeness to me, kept Bren on her toes.
The two and the three. Pete squinted his concern. Bren stared at me over the rim of her glass.
After school, if Jack had been bullied, and he was sullen, I’d sit with him in the basement and tell him to freeze! “Now lift your hands,” I’d say. “Otherwise, don’t move. Hold them in their frozen position. See how weird they are?” Fingers oddly curled, thumbs splayed. Hands weren’t supposed to look like this. I don’t remember how this game got started, but it delighted Jack. Years later, thinking about it, I concluded it must have given him a rare sense of control over his body. As I paced around the table, telling Pete, “Excuse me,” “Sorry to take so long,” I recalled Jack’s laughter. Right after I moved to Oregon, I heard he’d died of a heart attack while fixing a wristwatch for a customer in his daddy’s store.
I buried another ball and left myself a beautiful approach to the five. More powder. More chalk. My cheeks burned. I knew, right then, I should stop. Bren had quit dancing and was slumped on the stool. With her beer bottle she made wet, wide circles on the bar. Give her some pleasure, I thought. Just once. You can afford to let this go.
But the shot was too good to miss. You’d have to fake it to muff a shot like that, and everyone would know.
Afterward, I called the eight in the side and put the sucker to bed.
“Damn, College,” Pete said. He shoved his stick in the rack and walked outside. I headed for the men’s room, clapping powder from my hands. I didn’t look at Bren. “You got any holiday specials?” Shirley yelled at the barman. “We need some Christmas cheer ‘round here.”
No toilet paper, soap, or towels. No hot water. I wiped the rest of the powder on my pants. Taped to the wall, to cover a hole in the wood, was a National Geographic shot of a bear, like the frames I developed for zoos to use in their television ads. My face in the mirror was red.
Back in the bar, Bren’s hands shook wildly. She’d spilled Shirley’s whiskey on her dress. “I need to eat,” she told me. “We’d better get home.”
“You want some Fritos or something?” Shirley asked her.
“I’m good. Dinner’ll be waiting.”
“Good old Mom,” Shirley said.
“Right.”
“Don’t be a stranger, sugar, okey-dokey?”
Bren nodded. “Hi to Bobby if you see him.”
Dust fogged the parking lot. Bren popped her trunk and reached for our mother’s bath towels. She swabbed her dress with one and tossed me another. “For your pants,” she said. “Shit, Mom’ll know exactly where we’ve been.” She threw me the keys. “You’d better drive.”
“Will you — ”
“Fine, I’ll be fine.”
As I stepped into the car I watched the lot, wondering where Pete had gone, expecting him to come at me out of the shadows. The sewage plant spat green steam shaped like a head of broccoli. The sun was lost behind the blinking red lights of the broadcasting towers.
Bren and I didn’t talk. On the radio John Lennon told us to imagine there’s no heaven. I rolled down my window, hoping to draw the heat from my face. A Southern Pacific freight train caught us at Cotton Flat Road. Bells rang, lights flashed. Bren folded her arms. Her hands twitched.