“Then you’ll do it?”
“Fuckin’ right.” Trying to sound tough, hard. But Boze could see the fear in his eyes. This was a couple steps up the criminal ladder from the shoplifting and minor vandalism they were usually into. This was quite a ways up the criminal ladder, in fact.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Boze said.
“Cool,” Gunner said, closing the door. Cool, Boze thought to himself as the Firebird squealed away from the curb. Sometimes Gunner was such a lame, he couldn’t believe it.
Mom wasn’t home yet. Sometimes Al at the restaurant, a slow afternoon, he’d let her off a little early and pay her for the whole day. Mom liked Al despite the fact that the old bastard was always putting the moves on her. He wasn’t alone, of course, Al wasn’t, Mom being a good-looking woman and lots of men hitting on her. But she said it was “sweet,” a seventy-two-year-old guy hitting on a thirty-eight-year-old woman. Plus, it was the best waitressing job she’d ever had. Great tips and nice family-style restaurant. She’d burned out on butt-pinching truck stops and stingy-ass truck drivers.
On a sunny day like this one, the trailer park didn’t look so bad. The dirt roads winding between the half mile of mobile homes were dry and not muddy; and fresh wash hanging on clotheslines looked white and clean; and even the battered trailers themselves — screens missing, some graffiti here and there, cracked windows taped up — looked reasonably clean and tidy, tiny strips of lawns covered with dirt roads.
When he got inside, he heard music coming from Angie’s room. Rap music. He should have taken that as a sign for sure, last year when she’d started listening to that crap. White girls, at least not good white girls, didn’t listen to blacks who couldn’t (a) sing (b) write songs, or (c) look like anything but the street punks they were.
At least she’d cleaned up the house. Angie was the neat freak of the family, mostly because she had friends over a lot — she even had a couple of fairly rich friends from in town; she was a friendly and bright and popular girl, she was — and she hated it the way Mom and Boze always left ashtrays overflowing and half-drunk cans of beer and pop strewn everywhere. Not to mention magazines and newspapers and even the occasional half-eaten sandwich. Dad was a neat freak too, unlikely as that was. Angie had inherited the tendency from him.
He knocked on her door and then pushed in without waiting for her to answer.
“Damn you!” she cried when he burst in.
She was standing at her bureau mirror, combing her long, chestnut-colored hair. Her hair was her pride, as were the high proud breasts she’d sprouted last summer. She was dressed only in a white slip now. Despite the anger he felt— how the hell could she go out with a black guy, anyway? — he wished now he hadn’t broken in like this. He looked uncomfortable seeing his fetching sister half-undressed this way. He wanted to think of her the way he used to... as a sweet little kid he was always very protective of. He’d even walked to school with her, to make sure she was all right, even though the other boys used to make fun of him. When it started to storm, he’d always panicked, searched frantically through the trailer park until he had her inside and safe. And when she’d been sick with flu or a sore throat or something, he’d always brought her stupid little gifts, and tried to make her laugh so she’d feel better. And then she changed. Last year, it was. Maybe it was her breasts. Maybe her breasts had made her crazy or something. Suddenly, she resented all his fondness, all his protectiveness. How many times in the past year had she screamed at him. It’s my life and I’ll do what I damned well please! He always felt vaguely sick — even mysteriously fearful — when she screamed this. He felt deserted, more alone than he ever had in his life, even more alone than when Mom and Dad split up six years ago.
And now she was going out with a black guy.
“I’m really getting tired of this, Boze,” she said. “You’re supposed to knock.”
He kept his eyes from her as much as he could. What he really wanted to do was say it. Say he knew about the black guy he had seen pulling away from the trailer here on two different occasions. Linn County plates. Cedar Rapids. Boze hadn’t gotten all that good a look at him. But he didn’t have to. The guy was black, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that enough?
But Boze didn’t say it because if he did say it she’d run right to Mom and tell her everything, and Mom didn’t need any more grief than she already had. It wasn’t easy, holding the family together this way, let alone your daughter going out with a black guy. Obviously, there was no way Angie was going to tell Mom — I been going out with this black guy, Mom. And wouldn’t Mom just love that? Mom knew a lot about men and men problems. She’d dated a lot of different guys since Dad left. She knew all the ways a woman could get screwed up over a man. And that certainly included dating someone not of your own race. Mom would tear Angie a new one if she ever found out about the black guy.
Boze decided to be coy. “Where you going tonight?”
“Out.”
“I know ‘out.’ I mean where?”
She looked angry a moment and then she smiled sentimentally at him in the mirror. She was putting on bright red lipstick. Blood red. The color she’d be if the black guy ever cut her up with his switchblade. Boze knew all about black guys and their knives. “I’m not six years old any more, Boze. You don’t have to protect me.”
“I have to protect you more than ever,” he said gently.
She turned and came over to him. He tried not to look at her breasts loose beneath her white silk slip. No bra. She kissed him. “I’m sorry I got so mad a minute ago.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled sweetly of perfume. It was like she wasn’t his sister at all. She was as full of wiles as any other girl, now. He felt sad for some reason. He wanted her to be six or seven or eight again, and have her tiny hand in his, and be helping her. He’d liked to help her. It made him feel important somehow. He hadn’t felt important much lately at all. “And since you asked,” she said, withdrawing, going back to the mirror and the comb and her hair, “I’m going to Cedar Rapids with Donna and Heather.”
“You should stay away from that place.”
She watched him coolly in the mirror. “So should you. You’re the one who got in trouble there. Not me.” The edge was back in her voice now.
He was about to defend himself — pointing out that all he got charged with that time was underage drinking and public intoxication, not exactly murder one — when the front door opened and Mom said, “Hi, kids!”
It was always good to hear her voice. “Hi!” they both said back to her.
Mom set the sack of groceries on the table and then walked back to the bedroom. “How do vegetable burgers and a salad sound for tonight?”
She smelled of perfume, too, and then Boze realized that Angie was wearing Mom’s perfume. Mom was short, slender, with long, dark hair and turquoise eyes. She usually wore jeans and crisp white blouses and argyle socks and a pair of comfortable walking shoes. The saddest he’d ever seen her was when Dad gave her that black eye that time. Usually when he beat her up, you couldn’t see anything. But the black eye had really embarrassed her. That had been near the end of the marriage.
Mom said, “I take it you’re both going out tonight?”
Boze smiled. “No, I thought I’d stay home and do a little knitting.”
Mom loved it when he joked with her. When her marriage had been good, before Dad really got going on the booze, Dad had kidded around a lot with her, too. “Oh, you,” she said, poking Boze in the ribs. But she looked tired, despite the smile and the kidding, and sometimes he worried about her, how tired and suddenly old she could look. A great sorrow overcame him at such times and all he could think of was funeral homes when he was little, the mysterious adult ritual of putting the dead to rest, the choking-sweet smell of flowers and the whiskey-breath of the working men as they bent down to kiss their little nephews and nieces and the smell of his mother’s Kleenex damp with Hail Mary tears when she’d knelt next to the coffin.
Half an hour later, they ate. The burgers were delicious. Part of the time Boze looked out the window. Dusk was falling and it was beautiful, the sky gorgeous golds and salmon pinks and rich purples behind a few full thunderheads. Dusk made Boze sad, too, but it was a good sad somehow, not a bad sad like with Angie or Mom or Dad or Molly Cantrell when he was in love with her last year. That was just one more crazy thing in an already crazy world; how there could be good sails and bad sails. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you ever talked about because people would think you were crazy.
Mom said, “You remember you’re supposed to be home by eleven tonight?”
“Oh, Mom,” Angie said. “That’s not fair.”
“It certainly is fair, Angie,” Mom said. “You were late last Friday night by an hour, so tonight I’m taking an hour off the time you’re supposed to be in.”
“But eleven o’clock. Nobody else has to come in by eleven o’clock.”
“I’m sorry, Angie. But that’s the way it’s got to be.”
Boze lifted weights for twenty minutes while he watched The Nashville Channel (say what you want, Dwight Yoakam was still the coolest of all the male country singers) and then he took a shower and then he got dressed for the night. He put change and a ten-dollar bill in his right pocket (Mom always gave him a ten-dollar bill on Friday) and his twelve-inch switchblade in his left pocket. Anything over twelve inches, the cops could bust your ass for carrying an illegal weapon. Then he got down on his haunches and opened the bottom drawer. There was a small grey metal lockbox in there. He opened it up. The .38 snub nose pistol looked as imposing as ever. Mom’d kick his ass if she ever found out he had it. Same way she’d kick Angie’s ass if she ever found out Angie was going out with the black guy.
He loaded the .38 and stuffed it down the front of his pants. Down in black town, man, you couldn’t have enough weapons. Not on a Friday night, you couldn’t.
Angie was in the living room still arguing with Mom about eleven o’clock. Boze gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. Angie looked beautiful, purple blouse, hip-hugger slacks, high heels. Her sexuality was overwhelming. He imagined black hands on that white flesh. The image sickened him.
“You’ve got hours, too, Boze, don’t forget,” Mom said. “Twelve o’clock.”
Boze grinned. “You make a great boot camp instructor, I ever tell you that?”
Mom grinned back. “Many times.”
Then Boze was out of there. In the car. Driving fast on empty country roads just as the half-moon was rising above the cornfields and all the little farmhouses whose lights seemed curiously lonely in the gloom. Dwight Yoakam was singing his ass off. Boze had half an hour by himself driving this way — a can of beer from the trunk in one hand, a cigarette in the other — just driving, driving fast all by himself before he had to pick up Gunner.