The light changed and they took off. Teddy finished his beer and asked for another one. She reached in the cooler at her feet and took a longneck Rolling Rock out of the ice, twisted off the cap and handed it to Teddy. He held the Z28 steady, passing through Ferndale.
He said, “Who’s this Richard Butler character?”
He was a character, too. Like a demented uncle who always had a smile on his face. Celeste said, “He was the founder of the Aryan Nations. People called him Pastor Butler ’cause he was also head of a church called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. I remember one time he pinched my cheeks and said with my beautiful blue eyes and white skin, I was a quintessential example of Aryan womanhood.”
“Quina… what?”
Teddy’s face had a look of pure stupidity on it.
“Quintessential. Like, the best.”
“Oh.”
“In his sermons, he’d talk about how white people everywhere had to develop a sense of racial identity, racial worth. No one has more to be proud of than we do, he’d say. We’re the descendants of Magellan and Lindbergh, the kin of Plato, Napoleon and Sophocles, the folk of Dante, Wagner, Galileo and Newton.”
“Who’re you talking about?”
“Famous people,” Celeste said, “you know, like philosophers and scientists and explorers from past history. Didn’t you go to school?”
“Yeah, I went to school.”
“Didn’t you learn nothing?”
“I guess I’ve heard of some of them.”
“My biggest problem with the Aryans,” Celeste said, “nobody had a sense of humor. They were all so serious and uptight. Although my dad used to say, ‘Know what the world’s shortest book is?’ And he’d go, ‘ Nigger Yachting Captains I Have Known ’ and start laughing. He thought that was pretty damn funny.”
Teddy looked confused.
“I wanted to tell him I had a book even shorter than that called A Hundred Years of Aryan Humor. It only had one page.”
“How could a book only have one page?” Teddy said.
Did he get anything?
She also told him Aryans believed in the existence of a supra-human being called the cosmic being. “I’d go to my dad, ‘What’s all this cosmic being stuff have to do with us?’ And he’d go, ‘The Aryan race has been given a special mission by the cosmic being, who has endowed us with a character that’s like the divine Being itself.’”
“You just lost me,” Teddy said.
That wasn’t tough, Celeste was thinking. “Let me put it another way. Aryans are warriors and warriors have a special destiny. By living like a warrior, we’re undertaking the will of nature and the will of the cosmic being. Got any questions?”
“Yeah,” Teddy said pointing to the cooler. “Got another cold one in there?”
ELEVEN
Delayna said, “I went to my doctor, who’s a GP, for a physical. The nurse said do you want a gynecology exam, too, while you’re here? I thought, why not? Get the full checkup.”
Kate was leaning back with her head on the edge of a sink at the Bardha Salon, Delayna washing her hair. Kate was barely listening, thinking about Luke, worried about him. She had a strange feeling that something was going to happen. Just like she’d had the morning Owen and Luke walked out of the lodge to go hunting. She was anxious, agitated, couldn’t relax.
Delayna said, “The doctor gave me the physical, then he brought this floor lamp over so he could shine it down there and check out my goody-goody.”
Luke wouldn’t eat dinner last night or breakfast this morning. He walked out the door without saying a word. He got in his car and Kate watched him pull out of the driveway. Even though he was failing every course, she was glad he was still in school-out of his room-in the company of his friends for part of the day.
Delayna said, “He put the lamp between my legs and turned it on and the bulb was burned out. God was he embarrassed. I’m lying there naked while he takes the old bulb out and puts a new one in. After the exam, I heard him tell the nurse he hadn’t used the lamp in six months.” Delayna laughed. “Can you believe it?”
Kate didn’t say anything. She had to get out of there.
Delayna said, “Are you okay?” She’d styled Kate’s hair for years, knew her well and could sense something was wrong.
Kate sat up and said, “I’ve got to go.”
“I haven’t cut your hair yet,” Delayna said.
Kate said, “I’m not feeling well,” stood up and pulled off the burgundy smock and put it on the chair.
Delayna was concerned, didn’t know what to do. She said, “Did I say something?”
Kate was conscious of people looking at her, customers and hairdressers, as she crossed the floor of the salon, hair dripping wet, and went through the waiting room out to her car.
On the way home she doubted herself. She couldn’t explain what she was feeling, just like she couldn’t the last time. Her blouse was soaked now from her wet hair. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Was she cracking up, losing her mind?
She parked in the driveway and opened the kitchen door and saw the message light on the phone flashing. There were two calls. She pushed play. The first one was from Helen Parks at Luke’s school, saying he didn’t show up for class and they would appreciate a phone call or Luke would receive a detention. The second message was from a Detective Simoff with the Bloomfield Hills Police, saying that Luke had been arrested and he needed to speak to Mr. or Mrs. McCall ASAP.
She drove to the station and bailed Luke out and brought him home. He was a mess-still drunk from the vodka he’d had hours before. She took him upstairs and put him in bed and let him sleep it off. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. At five she woke him up and told him to take a shower and come down.
They sat in the small paneled den, Kate on the leather couch and Luke, a few feet away in a leather chair, staring at the antique Heriz rug, telling her he’d had half a dozen vodka and lemonades, run a stop sign on his way to Tower Records and hit a seventy-eight-year-old woman broadside. He said he tried to get away, but his car wouldn’t start, the hood of his Volkswagen Jetta buckled, steam hissing out of the radiator.
“You hit a woman and hurt her and you were just going to leave?” Kate shook her head. This was hard to understand.
Luke didn’t say anything, he just stared at the rug.
“Look at me,” Kate said raising her voice.
He lifted his head, met her gaze. No expression.
“Say something.”
He glanced down at the floor again.
Detective Simoff told her a police officer had arrived a couple of minutes after the accident. So did an EMS unit. The woman, Mrs. Decker, was taken to Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital. Luke, after he was breathalyzed and handcuffed, was taken to the police station, everybody wanting to know what a sixteen-year-old kid was doing on the road in broad daylight with a blood alcohol level that was almost twice the legal limit.
Kate did, too. She said, “What’d you do, wake up and decide to get smashed?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re on a hell of a roll. Do me a favor, will you? Tell me what you’re going to do next, so I can be ready.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” Luke said.
He had his hand over his face like he was trying to hide.
She said, “You better not. You’re in enough trouble as it is.” She told him he had been charged with an MIP, minor in possession of alcohol. He’d be given a court date and would be on probation for a year. He’d have to do community service and attend alcohol awareness classes.
She told him his driver’s license was restricted and he would have to submit to random alcohol testing. She told him he would have to report to a probation officer once a month and that he might have to spend time in the Oakland County Jail.
He looked stunned.
She got up and went over and put her arms around him.
“I’m sorry,” Luke said.
He had tears in his eyes.
“I’ll help you,” Kate said. “We’ll get through this. Just promise me you won’t do anything else.”