“Does that look like a hitter?” she said.
“No,” I said.
And it didn’t. Not at all.
“Jesus,” I said. “Does anybody tell the truth around here?”
“I do,” she said. “You do.”
I looked at her and for a minute she was eight and I was ten and we were hiding in the doghouse while Ma and Dad and Aunt Toni, on mushrooms, trashed the patio.
“Mikey,” she said. “I need to know. Did you do it?”
I jerked my face out of her hands, turned, went.
“Go see your own wife, doofus!” she shouted after me. “Go see your own babies.”
5
Ma was on the front lawn, screaming at this low-slung fat guy. Harris was looming in the background, now and then hitting or kicking something to show how scary he could get when enraged.
“This is my son!” Ma said. “Who served. Who just came home. And this is how you do us?”
“I’m grateful for your service,” the man said to me.
Harris kicked the metal garbage can.
“Will you please tell him to stop doing that?” the man said.
“He has no control over me when I’m mad,” Harris said. “No one does.”
“Do you think I like this?” the man said. “She hasn’t paid rent in four months.”
“Three,” Ma said.
“This is how you treat the family of a hero?” Harris said. “He’s over there fighting and you’re over here abusing his mother?”
“Friend, excuse me, I’m not abusing,” the man said. “This is evicting. If she’d paid her rent and I was evicting, that would be abusing.”
“And here I work for a beeping church!” Ma shouted.
The man, though low-slung and fat, was admirably bold. He went inside the house and came out carrying the TV with a bored look on his face, like it was his TV and he preferred it in the yard.
“No,” I said.
“I appreciate your service,” he said.
I took him by the shirt. I was, by this time, good at taking people by their shirts, looking them in the eye, speaking directly.
“Whose house is this?” I said.
“Mine,” he said.
I put my foot behind him, dropped him on the grass.
“Go easy,” Harris said.
“That was easy,” I said, and carried the TV back inside.
6
That night the sheriff arrived with some movers, who emptied the house onto the lawn.
I saw them coming and went out the back door and watched it all from High Street, sitting in the deer stand behind the Nestons’.
Ma was out there, head in hands, weaving in and out of her heaped-up crap. It was both melodramatic and not. I mean, when Ma feels something deeply, that’s what she does: melodrama. Which makes it, I guess, not melodrama?
Something had been happening to me lately where a plan would start flowing directly down to my hands and feet. When that happened, I knew to trust it. My face would get hot and I’d feel sort of like, Go, go, go.
It had served me well, mostly.
Now the plan flowing down was: grab Ma, push her inside, make her sit, round up Harris, make him sit, torch the place, or at least make the first motions of torching the place, to get their attention, make them act their age.
I flew down the hill, pushed Ma inside, sat her on the stairs, grabbed Harris by the shirt, put my foot behind him, dropped him to the floor. Then held a match to the carpet on the stairs and, once it started burning, raised a finger, like, Quiet, through me runs the power of recent dark experience.
They were both so scared they weren’t talking at all, which made me feel the kind of shame you know you’re not going to cure by saying sorry, and where the only thing to do is: go out, get more shame.
I stomped the carpet fire out and went over to Gleason Street, where Joy and the babies were living with Asshole.
7
What a kick in the head: their place was even nicer than Renee’s.
The house was dark. There were three cars in the driveway. Which meant that they were all home and in bed.
I stood thinking about that a bit.
Then walked back downtown and into a store. I guess it was a store. Although I couldn’t tell what they were selling. On yellow counters lit from within were these heavy blue-plastic tags. I picked one up. On it was the word “MiiVOXMAX.”
“What is it?” I said.
“It’s more like what’s it for, is how I’d say it,” this kid said.
“What’s it for?” I said.
“Actually,” he said, “this is probably more the one for you.”
He handed me an identical tag but with the word “MiiVOXMIN” on it.
Another kid came over with espresso and cookies.
I put down the MiiVOXMIN tag and picked up the MiiVOXMAX tag.
“How much?” I said.
“You mean money?” he said.
“What does it do?” I said.
“Well, if you’re asking is it data repository or information-hierarchy domain?” he said. “The answer to that would be: yes and no.”
They were sweet. Not a line on their faces. When I say they were kids, I mean they were about my age.
“I’ve been away a long time,” I said.
“Welcome back,” the first kid said.
“Where were you?” the second one said.
“At the war?” I said, in the most insulting voice I could muster. “Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“I have,” the first one said respectfully. “Thank you for your service.”
“Which one?” the second one said. “Aren’t there two?”
“Didn’t they just call one off?” the first one said.
“My cousin’s there,” the second said. “At one of them. At least I think he is. I know he was supposed to go. We were never that close.”
“Anyway, thanks,” the first one said, and put out his hand, and I shook it.
“I wasn’t for it,” the second one said. “But I know it wasn’t your deal.”
“Well,” I said. “It kind of was.”
“You weren’t for it or aren’t for it?” the first said to the second.
“Both,” the second one said. “Although is it still going?”
“Which one?” the first one said.
“Is the one you were at still going?” the second one asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Better or worse, do you think?” the first one said. “Like, in your view, are we winning? Oh, what am I doing? I don’t actually care, that’s what’s so funny about it!”
“Anyway,” the second one said, and held out his hand, and I shook it.
They were so nice and accepting and unsuspicious — they were so for me — that I walked out smiling and was about a block away before I realized I was still holding MiiVOXMAX. I got under a streetlight and had a look. It seemed like just a plastic tag. Like, if you wanted MiiVOXMAX, you handed in that tag, and someone went and got MiiVOXMAX for you, whatever it was.
8
Asshole answered the door.
His actual name was Evan. We’d gone to school together. I had a vague memory of him in an Indian headdress, racing down a hallway.
“Mike,” he said.
“Can I come in?” I said.
“I think I have to say no to that,” he said.
“I’d like to see the kids,” I said.
“Past midnight,” he said.
I had a pretty good idea he was lying. Were stores open past midnight? Still, the moon was high and there was something moist and sad in the air that seemed to be saying, Well, it’s not early.