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.
There was a certain part of the Interstate when you were coming into Cedar Rapids... if you looked fast enough, it was like coming into a really big city... the way three or four tall buildings were silhouetted against the moon... and the way the neon chain of lights seemed to stretch forever into the prairie night and the way crosstown traffic was almost bumper-to-bumper on a Friday night like this.
Boze waited until they pulled up in front of the pool hall before he told Gunner. He just wanted to see his face. See how pale he would turn. See how sick and scared he would look. While they had bad reputations for being dangerous, Boze was the only truly dangerous one of the duo. And both of them knew that.
“Guess what I brought tonight?”
“What?” Gunner said.
“Guess.”
“You steal some more booze from your Mom?”
“Huh-uh. Somethin’ else.”
“Shit, I hate guessin’ games, Boze.”
“My .38.”
Boze got the reaction he wanted. Instant terror on Gunner’s face.
“Are you crazy, man? A gun?” Gunner said.
“Scare him a little.”
“You know what the cops’d do to us if they found a gun on you?”
“They’ve all got guns down there. We’ll need one, too.”
“This is the kinda shit they put you in jail for, man.”
Boze was suddenly tired of Gunner’s whining. Boze really was the only dangerous one here. He felt especially dangerous tonight, the .38 stuffed down the front of his jeans this way. That bastard was never going to bother Angie again, that was for sure.
“C’mon,” Boze said, “let’s go shoot some pool.”
Boze loved the atmosphere of the place. It was mostly bikers and they looked fierce as hell in their beards and tattoos and their chains and leather vests. They never bothered Boze and Gunner either, which Boze thought was pretty cool. Just let them play. There was a good jukebox, too, a lot of heavy metal from the seventies and eighties, the only kind of rock and roll Boze could stand. No blacks.
They shot for two hours. Gunner was lame as usual. Especially so tonight. Boze could see the gun thing was really working on him. Gunner could barely concentrate on his game. Gunner kept running back to the john all the time. Pissing. Nerves.
When they were out in the night air again, leaning on the Firebird and smoking cigarettes and watching the Friday night traffic, all the beautiful wan city girls cruising past and gracing Boze and Gunner with the most disinterested of glances, and the whole city redolent of fuming ripe Indian summer, Gunner said, “Man, that gun of yours scares me.”
“Don’t be such a chickenshit.”
“I didn’t sign on for no gun, man.”
“We’re gonna scare him a little is all.”
Gunner looked at Boze. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You give me your word, Boze?”
“I give you my word.”
“You better not use that thing,” Gunner said. “You better not man.”
Another planet.
At least that’s what it felt like to Boze. Everything looked darker, for one thing. The lights in the houses didn’t seem to burn quite so bright. The glow of TV sets seemed dulled, somehow. Even the headlights of the battered cars that prowled the streets like wounded animals... even they had a gauzy, faint cast to them. Boze had expected a lot of noise. Shadowland. Blacks dancing in the street maybe to rap music and throwing their doped-up bodies this way and that. But the streets were mostly empty. And dark. And silent. The only sound was the occasional car radio thundering rap music. Or the sound of the muffler long perforated scraping sparks on the black street.
The little houses seemed to cower in the night as they had cowered ever since they’d been built.
Another planet.
The houses small, hunched together. Large empty lots here and there. The occasional brand new car parked proudly in a driveway. Eyes, gang eyes, peering at Boze and Gunner as they passed by in their white-boy tourist arrogance. Don’t belong here motherfucker. Don’t belong here. Even Boze now feeling a tightening in his groin, a hammering in his heart.