“You should call her and have lunch at that barbecue place with me and Sheila Grant. That way it’ll be friendly.”
Billy called Thalia the next day. He told her what I had said, and by now regretted, and she agreed to the date.
“She said,” Billy told me, “that Nacogdoches had obviously lost, and she felt that it was her obligation to go on a date with the winning cowboy.”
The lunch was set for Saturday.
“What you mean he’s goin’ out with that white girl?” Sheila said when I asked her to come along.
“It’s the bet,” I explained lamely. “He kind of has to go.”
“I bet he wouldn’t think so if she was black.”
“You know better than that, girl. Billy’s doing it because he won and she knows it.”
“Sounds stupid to me.”
“That mean you’re not comin’?”
We ordered hot links, brisket, fried chicken, and pork ribs, with cornbread, collard greens, fried pickles, and a whole platter full of french fries.
“So where all you southerners come from?” Sheila asked Thalia after we’d ordered.
“Only Nacky and one of the others, Braughm, are from the South. They’re both out of Nashville. We all go to this private school called Reese on Staten Island. Most of the kids there are rich and have what they call ‘social behavior problems.’”
“But all his friends dress like cowboys,” I said.
“They just wanna be like him,” Thalia said with a twist to her lips. I remember thinking that if she were Caribbean she would have sucked a tooth.
“So you’re rich?” Sheila asked Thalia, as if it was some kind of indictment.
“No. My mother teaches there, and she didn’t like the kind of friends I had in public school. I like your hair. I wish I could do something like that with mine.”
Sheila had thick corded braids that flowed down her back. She was a beautiful girl. She lost her angry attitude when Thalia complimented her.
“So Nacogdoches is like some kind of juvenile delinquent?” Billy asked.
“He got in trouble down south stealing. I think his parents just wanted to get rid of him. Anyway, he’s graduating this June. Says he’s going out to California.”
That’s when the food came. We spent the rest of the lunch talking and joking. Thalia was a painter who wanted to specialize in horses. That’s what drew her to Nacogdoches. He kept a horse at a stable in Connecticut and promised to bring her up there some day.
“But now I think he was just sayin’ that to get in good with me,” the white girl added.
Billy said he’d take her to the police stables the next morning. He invited me and Sheila too.
“It’s not a date unless you two kiss,” Sheila said when we were out in front of the Iron Spur Barbecue House.
Thalia kissed Billy on the cheek, and Sheila snapped the picture with her cell-phone camera.
Billy left with Thalia, and Sheila gave me a few friendly kisses before I walked her home.
The next morning Thalia and Billy met us at the gate of the police stables. They were both wearing the same clothes from the day before.
I had the most trouble keeping up with my horse. I was just bouncing, bouncing — up and down, to the side, and almost to the ground once or twice. But we had a good time. The girls became friends, and Billy was glad that we were there together.
“You know, Felix,” he said to me, when we were returning the big animals to their stalls, “I realized yesterday that there are good people everywhere — not only in the place you come from.”
Like every other citizen of the world with a cell phone, Sheila was an amateur photographer. She took pictures of us on our horses, out in the park, and of me, Billy, and Thalia walking side by side. Thalia’s arm was linked with Billy’s.
Things returned to normal after that, more or less. I went back to my secretary post on the student council and helped Billy write a paper for his remedial English class. It was an essay about a book of cowboy poetry his grandfather had given him. Sheila and Thalia became Facebook friends. They shared pictures and started telling each other about their experiences in different boroughs and at different schools.
I asked Sheila to go out with me six times in the next two weeks, but she always had some reason to say no.
Then one afternoon, Sheila was waiting outside my German class, clutching her beloved smartphone.
“Hey, Sheil,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Look at this,” she said, thrusting the phone into my hand.
On the screen was a photograph of Thalia. She had a black eye and a bloody lip, and she seemed to be in the middle of a scream or cry.
“Flip it,” Sheila said.
There were seven pictures of the white girl. It became obvious after the second shot that she was being beaten while someone took pictures. In two shots someone was pulling her hair and slapping her. In another photo she was hunched over, clutching her stomach with both hands as if someone had kicked her.
“Who sent you these?” I asked Sheila.
“It came from her phone. There was a text too.”
The text read, This is what happens to whores and race traitors.
As his tutor, I went to Billy’s house almost every afternoon. That day we were making the finishing touches on his poetry paper. Billy wrote on an old Royal typewriter.
“I don’t really care for computers,” he said. But I think he was just afraid of them.
The night before, he’d finished the fifth rewrite of the essay. He really did have deep insights into poetry and its uses by people living the actual lives that they turned into verse. We did a word-by-word examination of his spelling and grammar before I dared to broach the thing that was foremost in my mind.
“I need to show you something, Billy.”
“What’s that, Felix? You don’t think that the paper’s good enough?”
I located the forwarded files from Sheila’s phone and showed him the pictures. Billy flipped through them saying not a word. His eyes seemed to get smaller, but he wasn’t squinting. If he drew a breath, I couldn’t tell.
After some minutes and close perusal of the photos, Billy said, “Can you send this motherfucker a note?”
Playground above 150 on the Hudson. Midnight tonight. Come ready. Come heavy.
Billy strapped on the pistol in his bedroom. It was exactly as he had done at Lazarus House, but this time he tied the holster to his left leg.
“I thought you were right-handed?” I said.
“Two-handed,” Billy said, showing the first smile since he had seen the pictures. “But I’m a little better with my left.”
At 11:35 he donned an off-white trench coat, and we left the house.
“Where you goin’?” Billy’s mother called from the kitchen.
“Over to Felix’s,” said my friend. “He’s gonna help me type my paper into his computer so then I can send the file-thing to Miss Andrews.”
Outside we hailed a green cab and had the driver take us to the park.
Nacogdoches Early and his posse were waiting for us. Thalia was with them, but as soon as we appeared she ran to me. Her face was all swollen from the punishment she’d received.
“That’s right,” Nacogdoches said. “Go on over to them. That’s where you belong.”
A few moments later Sheila Grant, Tom Tellerman, and Teriq Strickland walked into the empty children’s playground. I had called Sheila, and she’d notified our other friends.
Nacogdoches was wearing a bright-colored Mexican poncho, which he flung off. Underneath he was wearing his brown holster and black gun. He was hatless, and his pale skin shone in the shadowy light.