Friendswood (26 page)

He kind of hated her for all these weeks of her bossing him, then shorting him on tips, but for now he stood taller than her, and smiling, she taught him to shuffle his feet, to lead, and if he didn't look at her face, worn-out skin and triangular bones, he could pretend she was someone else. He liked the steady sway of her hand in his, how the rough waltz
took him back in time to some older country music, before TV, before computers, before his parents were even born.

H
E'D BEEN RIGHT
about the garden. His mom sent him to the nursery for more seeds and chicken wire, told him to save what he could of the plants. He dug in the mulch, sweating through his white T-shirt. His mother was on the phone about the fallen stop sign—through the window, he could hear her talking loudly, as he eyed the intersection and waited for one car to crash into another.

He dug small holes with the spade and planted the carrot seeds. They didn't have the garden when his dad had still lived with them, but it pleased his mom so much to see a vegetable grow—when the sprouts came out, she grinned at them as if no one else in the world had ever planted a seed and these were miracles given just to her. “Look at that little radish.” He imagined his dad had fallen for a girl who danced at a bar, or a girl in a mask of eye makeup who promised to give him everything. Dex didn't know. But his dad had fallen, and now he lived with a woman his own age with sticklike blond hair (in the one picture Dex saw), though his dad wouldn't say her name, and Dex's mom lived with him and Layla, and that was it.

He pounded in new stakes with a hammer around the plot of the garden. He'd not appreciated the way those guys talked to him, even before what they'd done to Willa. They'd goaded him; they'd used stupid, whinnying voices. They'd let him know he wasn't worth their time. There was damage he might do to their cars in the middle of the night—a key scraped against the door or a windshield broken, so they'd notice and not be able to do a damn thing about it. He knew where each of them lived. If the means were not ones that his mother would have been proud of, then so be it. He imagined that if she found out, she would not be too terribly disappointed.

He wrapped the chicken wire over the stakes, nailed it secure, the delicate leaves just coming up like green hair against the black dirt.

He went back to turn the mulch a bit, pull out the weeds, and as he stabbed the spade into the dirt, he remembered how good it had felt to have Bishop's neck against his fist, and then he thought about Cully's pathetic excuses, and then, at the intersection, he heard the metal crunch of two cars colliding, and one horn started to blare.

R
UNNING,
W
ILLA GLI
DED OVER THE WORLD
, rushed forward to the rhythms of her breath, the pound of her feet. In Robertson Park, the trees' green mosaic slid beside her, the path twisting through the grass, past the playground, past the old Brown house museum, past the tennis court, the gazebo, a street of houses, and then she ran the circuit again.

On her third lap, through a gap in the trees, she saw Cully. He was washing his truck in a driveway. She was afraid he'd turn around and see her if she kept running. Still trying to catch her breath, she stood behind a tree. He lived over near the junior high, not so close to the park. Why was he washing his truck at someone else's house?

He wore an orange baseball hat that bobbed up and down as he walked around the side of the truck, spraying the hose at its shiny red bed. Then he tossed down the garden hose, lay halfway across the hood with a rag to polish the metal, one sneakered foot lifted off the ground. She didn't see his face clearly again, but he jumped back to both feet, and he went around to the back of the truck with that distinct rolling rhythm of his walk.

Out from behind a pine tree in front of her, something shimmered in the dimness, and she saw the antlers, thick and gold. When she blinked,
the vision stuttered, and the thing had seven identical heads as if they'd been digitally multiplied. The legs and feet were a lion's, peaked green scales on the body, and it was the same face of her old dog, Junior, repeated seven times, though the mouth snarled in a way her dog never had.
You are dead.
The words came into her head as if she'd said them herself, or someone had said them to her.
You are dead.
She couldn't see Cully anymore—the beast blocked out the sight of him, a tangled mass of white beetles at the edge of one claw. She felt her breaths go shallow and rapid, and looked around for help.

There were the low-hanging black
U
s of the swings, the rusty rails of the monkey bars, the dull metal slide. In the other direction, the vacant tennis court with the crisp net, a squirrel standing on the clay, holding up its paws as if it carried a purse. She smelled something like horse manure and a burning electrical wire, and then she saw the clotted gray smoke coming up from a golden urn. From the nostrils of one head, a faint hum of a hymn she used to sing at her grandmother's church:
“Somewhere in outer space, God has prepared a place, for all those who trust him and obey. The countdown's getting closer every day.”
Another head opened its mouth, and in the back of it, she saw the film: a body in an old white T-shirt and boxers, flames raked across the chest until the form trembled away in a spasm. The beast closed its mouth. A sour taste came up from her throat. She took two steps back, walking away.

All at once, she heard the whisper and honk of traffic behind her again on the road. The vision dissolved beyond the pine tree, and she saw Cully pivot around his truck and go into the house. She heard the door close. She bent to tighten the laces on her sneakers, stood up, and took off running.

When she got home in her room and shut the door, in the shadow by the bed, she saw the scaly, scabbed tail, and then all of those heads, which seemed to be watching her.
You are dead. You're not even alive
. She couldn't feel her hands or feet. One of the heads opened its mouth. Lying
on the orange tongue was a small, dead baby squirrel, its tiny heart exposed and pink.

H
ER MOTHER DIDN'T TRY
to pray with her anymore, and she didn't try to find out more details, and her father had never referred to what had happened at all. They were embarrassed, and they loved her, and they just wanted to ride it out, and what else was there to do, really? Willa's father had begun to drink his coffee in the backyard, standing up among the trees, while her mother washed the dishes and cleaned up after dinner alone.

But a change had worked itself within her—the extra eye muscle, the lines of poetry that appeared on her skin some mornings—but more than that, there was a pain in her that was hardening, barely held back and concealed, like a gun held against her flesh.

Later that night, she was at the family computer while her parents sat with their backs to her, watching the news. She heard the voice of the newscaster, a suicide bomb killed twenty-one in Baghdad, a five-year-old girl had been taken from her bed, and then the anxious, martial tune before a commercial.
Ba-bum-bum.
“Drixel Upholstery Cleaner will pick up anything.” She was careful to open emails only when they weren't looking. There was an email from Dani, saying, “Please consider telling the police. I will help you. Read this article.” The link went to a site with plain, military-style letters: “One out of every five American women has been the victim of an attempted or a completed rape in her lifetime.” She read the line quickly, then clicked it away. And then the next email opened so quickly she hadn't even glanced at the sender. In the dark screen, the beast was there, fluttering in 3-D, the eyes like flashing lights. In green capital letters, the word
REPENT
, and in the background, bombs going off in Iraq, soldiers' bodies blown apart, guns ratcheting
out of tanks. She closed the screen, deleted the message from [email protected].

She turned around and saw the tops of her parents' heads above the headrests, the buzz of her father's graying hair, the shiny crown of her mother's brunette. “Don't forget, tomorrow, we have that church dinner,” her mother said. Willa got up from the chair and went to the back window and stared out at the darkness. It stared back.

H
AL LINGERED IN THE LIV
ING ROOM
, waiting for dinner, restless. Darlene had sprayed green apple room scent all around the couch, and Hal went to the window, just to get some air. Across the street, he saw Lee Knowles in her yard, tending to flowers on a bush. She had a shapely figure beneath the bulky men's shirt and work pants—her breasts high and firm, her legs slender and long—and though she never did much to help it, she had a pretty face. For that, he somehow hated her more.

So many people he knew were out of work. There was Larry Mivens, with three young kids to raise, a house the bank was about to foreclose on—there was Binx Dooley, laid off from the oil refinery and promised his job back only when business picked up. He had a mother with cancer, who lived with him and his wife. Lee Knowles might as well have been storing up jobs in her attic, just hiding them from people—because whatever Taft did, it would bring back jobs. Hal watched her, fussing with that bush, chopping at a branch. Truly it was the unhappy people in the world who caused so much misery for others.

He wished he could make her afraid, but she seemed impervious. A demon sprung out of grief had got into her, manned her up, and now there was only so much he could do.

Later that night, as he helped Darlene with the dishes, she said, “How'd it go with the neighbor?”

“Oh, she listened alright.” He pictured Lee's face, the way her full mouth turned down in doubt.

“She going to stop bothering Taft? Really?”

“She said she was sorry for the trouble she'd caused, that she'd only wanted people to be a little more cautious, but she certainly didn't want to stand in the way. She knows what it would mean to people to have that subdivision—I talked to her all about that. What it would mean, those jobs.”

“What did you say? How'd you work your magic?”

“I said I appreciated all she'd done for us so far.”

“Well, that was thinking. Flattery.” She shook her head. “I guess it pretty much always works.”

“I think she just misplaced her love, you know, that's all. I've been reading about that in this book from Pastor Sparks.”

Darlene pulled a plate shaped like a ladybug from the soapsuds, laid it on the counter for him to dry. Why did she buy so many dishes that looked like children's toys? Even Cully wasn't a kid anymore. “Hal, I wanted to give you a chance to catch your breath first. But your mom had an accident today. They gave her the wrong medication and she threw up in the common room. They were real apologetic, but still. She hasn't been eating since then.”

“Those skunks. What do I pay them for?”

“It happens sometimes. I think generally they do a good job. At least they told us about it.”

“Assholes.”

“Hal.”

“Okay, I'll go visit. Soon as I can.” He remembered his mother's crumpled, wilted face, how she held her stomach like a sack.

“I'm bringing her some soup tomorrow,” Darlene said, “and I'm going to tell her then that you're coming.”

“I will. I do want to see her.” It was the right thing to say, and he
wanted to say the words anyway, to make them true, but instead, the lie burned in his mouth.

T
HERE WAS A
NEW
PLAQUE
on the wall of Avery Taft's office that said
I'M NO B
ELIEVER, BUT DON'T WR
ITE THAT ON MY TOMBS
TONE
. Hal tried to pretend he hadn't read it, as he waited for the good word, for the ray of sunshine from Avery. Hal had just told him about his visit to Lee Knowles, how he'd told her that even her new studies would certainly not hold up to the EPA's, how Avery would keep binders of evidence available to the public in his model homes, in case there was any question.

“I may have changed my mind about that,” said Avery, smiling, “but go on.”

“It's a good idea. If they're thick enough, no one will want to read them anyway.” Sunlight suddenly streamed through the window. Hal was on a roll. “And, I tell you, the lady listened, and I think she felt a little embarrassed at herself really. I think she might leave you alone for a while now, sir. And, really, what can she do anyway?”

Avery shrugged. “Now I've got Councilman Atwater after me. Apparently, he found some minuscule increase in benzene, he claims. He's got this gal at the Texas Commission on the Environment on the case.”

“Really?”

Atwater was the kind of man Hal was accustomed to pity, short in stature, thinning hair, an earnest smile with too many vulnerable teeth. He wore blue shirts and red ties and navy slacks. He was the kind of work geek who actually wanted the picnics, the birthday parties, who looked forward to this fellowship because he had no other. It was hard to believe he'd be capable of much.

“Avery, I'll talk to him too, if you like.” God was helping him. After he walked away from Lee's house, back to his own, who knew what had happened beyond the curtains, inside of her soul?

Surely he'd been telling Avery the truth, though now Avery seemed to be studying him, weighing his trust. “And I've got another problem now too. Someone's fooling with the equipment. Probably just kids, and I've got my friend José there most nights on the lookout in the trailer. Except Saturday when he goes to the Chinga Club to flirt with the ladies. Hey, do you think Cully might be interested in taking over that night? Make a little extra cash? Nothing's going to happen. But just having someone there makes a difference to my peace of mind.”

Hal felt slighted only for a moment. Cully was meant to play football, for greater things than odd-job security. Then, staring at the wood of Avery's desk, Hal turned the idea around. Or God did it for him. Cully needed something to fill up the absence of playing ball, and this offer came with a rock-solid connection, a boon he might later call on.

“Well, I'll sure ask him.” He nearly felt a cord tightening his connection to Taft, as he sat there, more confident in that leather seat, blessings coming down from every angle of the room. “I sure will.”

“Have him come see me then, and we'll set it all up,” said Avery.

“Alright, then.”

“Let me see what I can do.” Hal stood up, and it felt good to be the one ending the visit. Avery had been lucky, but Hal might be blessed. He'd been praying well every morning at the breakfasts at church, he'd been keeping his thoughts clean, his liver sober—and as he bounded down the stairs toward the ornate door with the Mexican filigree, he could feel it coming to him, all that money, all that light.