The grief counseling team was on campus all week. Marcus sent Sharon and Araceli to talk with the black-haired woman whose voice was as soothing as heated milk, since every time they saw the two empty seats, their eyes spilled over and they set everyone else off.
Samana’s seat was empty, and so was Chris Perry’s. Marcus had asked B-Real and Mortrice, who said, “Chris ain’t into school no more.” Samana was in the wind, Marcus knew.
He’d called Harley, who was busy with the two shootings and didn’t call back. Marcus went to the gym to find Salcido; in the free-weight corner, he’d tried to explain about the list, about Samana’s gun and how he left. “Remember the canal, man?” he’d said. Salcido nodded, but no police had called.
Whalen was coming back Monday. Marcus looked at the faces, drawn and wary, in the circle. “You guys better get used to rows again,” he said. “Hey, it was cool working with you. You did a great job on the essays.”
“They were depressing,” Sharon said. “Everything was sad, like now.”
“Not everything,” Marcus said. “Come on.”
“I liked writing about my grandpa was a cowboy in Mexico,” Rubén said.
“I liked hearing about my mom when she was a singer,” Araceli said. “But now she says she just a mom.”
“So’s mine,” Marcus said. “I like moms. My girlfriend’s a beautiful mom.”
Bebos rolled his eyes. “So you’re a ready-made pops.”
The bell rang. “Guys,” Marcus called, and most of them stopped in their scramble. “Be cool out there, okay? Peaceful. Good histories, right?”
In his apartment, he stared at the newspaper articles and photos. Joshua Firola Roberts. William Reese McFall. Shot during a party in a field. Random act. No known motive. No gang ties. Average students. Victims of increasingly senseless violence.
At the funeral, the photographer had captured Josh’s mother and father, standing separately near the casket. Mary Firola had brown hair in limp waves. Trevor Roberts had very blond hair that looked nearly white in the photo, sharp Ray Bans, and his mouth was open and grim. His teeth were large and straight. He was the guy who wanted to bring vacuum cleaners to the Jungletown market.
There was no way Trevor Roberts even remembered the house where he’d sold some colored woman a Silver King, among the hundreds of houses he must have made fun of when he got into his car with a signed contract for far too much money. Marcus didn’t even think Web Matheson remembered the place. They all look alike—the people, the yards, the kids, right?
He called Harley again, and he was surprised to hear the tired voice answer. “Hey, uh, this is Marcus Thompson. Finis brother?”
“Yeah?”
“Did, uh, did Tony Salcido tell you the information I had about some stuff? About the Cambodian kid?”
“Yeah, he did, Marcus. The kid had a thirty-eight, you think. But the two kids got shot by a nine-millimeter. None of the party types saw anybody, but there were definitely at least two guys around the victims. Hey, I appreciate the call, though. And I’ll get back to you. I’m just really swamped right now. I got people looking out for this Asian kid, okay?”
On the weekend, he went to his father’s place. His mother and his abuela were washing aphids from the new purple leaves on their roses. “Spring come right on, didn’t it?” his mother said, looking at the apricot tree. “After all that rain, we gon have a good year.”
“Maybe,” he said, smiling. Maybe the shit was all over now.
Enchantee had just hung up the dishcloth when two men came in the open front door. She could still hear Abby, Dylan, and Bent talking outside with Abby’s mother and aunt. Web Matheson—his hair combed back like a hundred tipped brown barbs, and another man with blond hair and deep ravines beside his mouth. Web smiled and said, “Hi! We’re gonna wait for Señor Smith in the library. Can you bring us cervezas? Dos cervezas? Muchas gracias.”
Enchantee saw him lay a folder on the table. “The nanny, I guess, for my sister-in-law’s kid,” she heard Web say when the men headed down the hallway. “Connie’s aunt dropped off those proofs of her story, but she wants them back tomorrow at Easter brunch. You’re coming, right?” The door snapped shut.
They didn’t look up when she knocked and then put the tray down on a table. Charts and maps and papers were spread near the men’s knees.
She closed the door and stood listening. “Okay, you got three phases. Cedar Crest, Willow Crest, Timber Crest. The green, the lake, the whole thing.” There was a long drinking pause. Then Web said, “I’m tired of Connie’s aunt bugging me about this place. You see how she was just now, with this story? She’s obsessed with this place in Treetown—handed me the story like it’s her top-secret lethal weapon.” They both laughed. “She’s sure once they see her little article, the city council and redevelopment can step in and save the day. As broke and slow as government is.”
“The idea’s okay, what she’s proposing?” the other man asked.
“Yeah, Swede, no problem, but this building, where it is—damn, the only solution for a place like that is a nuclear bomb, okay? Level it out and start over. Build a replica. With a different population, you know.”
“If it’s a historic site…”
“Hey, goddamnit, these people aren’t budging, and I’ve offered above market price.” She heard bottles clink against gold rings. “Hey, what about those new smart bombs that take out the people and leave the structures?” Web laughed. Enchantee heard the glass clink wetly onto the tray. “The other place is worthless. A pit. She’s talking petting zoo or something. I say burn it, there’s nothing of value. The other obstacle was like a fucking asylum, worst eyesore around. It needed a crazy bomb. But it’s gone now.”
Moving her feet carefully on the Oriental runner striping the hallway, Enchantee headed for the kitchen. She heard Abby come inside and say, “Let’s go celebrate your contract, babe. I’ll change.”
Enchantee stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Bent was on the phone with someone now. “Marcus?” Enchantee frowned. “You going to work? Hey, meet me at the restaurant, I’ve gotta show you something.”
When he’d gone, she went back to the kitchen, her hands shaking. She hoped she could remember all the words, to tell Demetrius. When Web Matheson came up behind her, she jumped. “That folder’s gone,” he muttered, moving papers on the table. He looked at her. “Where—uh—como? How do you say where?” He sighed. “Folder?”
Enchantee shrugged and turned away.
They were drinking at the outdoor tables when Marcus arrived. “Hey, Kolavic,” Bent was saying to a brown-haired guy. “I’ve been researching this one.”
“Esquire, man, I’m jealous as hell,” Kolavic said. “What’s the title?”
Bent saw Marcus then, and he motioned him over. Abby’s voice was slurring a little, and Marcus couldn’t tell what she was drinking. “Lost and Found—A Bluesman in Southern California,” she read from a piece of paper.
“Hey, this is Marcus,” Bent said, standing up. “He’s…”
Marcus shook his head slightly, and Bent seemed to understand. Marcus didn’t want to talk about The Blue Q. “Can I get you guys something else?”
Abby hadn’t heard. “Well, I love you, babe,” she said to Bent, “but I’m jealous, too. I’ve gotta find some long-lost foods, something buried in obscurity, write about it for Gourmet or something.”
Bent rolled his eyes at Marcus. “Oscar wasn’t buried,” he said, his voice sharp. “He was pretty alive, Abby. That stuff’s pretty strong, huh?”
Abby lifted her glass. “This is medicinal, okay, it’s good for me and the baby. It’s amaro—people drink it in Italy, it’s got herbs and spices. I should get a whole bottle for tomorrow—Easter brunch with Web and Connie. All his political assets—a stupid blond wife who’ll smile and a fat baby on the way. She’s all freaked out over the way it’s still flooded over there.”
Marcus turned, but Bent came with him. “You got a clear table in the back?” Bent said.
He laid out the folder and photos. “I heard Abby’s aunt talking about Thompson land, and I thought she knew some history about The Blue Q, right? I figured they’d freak if they knew I’d been there, but when I saw these pictures—it’s the place where those girls were killed. I had just moved here, and I went with Kolavic to tag along for the story.”
Marcus looked quickly at the photos, then closed the folder and raised his eyes to Bent’s face. The man looked serious. “This is your father’s house?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said slowly. “This is for the paper, right? Can I borrow it for tonight?”
Bent nodded. “You know, you took all that heat for me at The Blue Q, and I owe you. I figured I’d tell Abby’s aunt I got my story folder mixed up with hers. She’s supposed to get this back tomorrow, at brunch. I heard Connie telling Web her aunt couldn’t wait to show it to him.”
Marcus breathed hard, looking at Bent’s tie. “You owe me? Okay. I want to come to brunch. I’ll give this back to you then.” He paused, looking at the afternoon sun gleaming through Chile’s window.
“Hey, it’s like a gated community,” Bent said, chewing on his lip. “But this is half Easter and half fund-raiser. You’d know if you knew Web.”
“I don’t want to know him,” Marcus said. “I don’t want him to know me.” He raised his chin at Bent. “How bout if you call down to the guard? And I’ll try to act like a fund giver.”
Bent shook his head. “Not with these Republican types. Listen—it’s catered. We can deliver some food from here? Chani can call down from the kitchen.”
“Chani?” Marcus frowned.
“Your sister-in-law. She’s bringing Dylan so Abby can help set up.” Bent turned to go outside. “I’m not asking any questions right now, okay? But I’m curious as hell.”
“So am I.”
Sitting at his mother’s kitchen table, Marcus listened while Enchantee tried to remember all the words. Nuclear bomb. Market price. Redevelopment. Petting zoo. Asylum.
“Asylum?” his mother asked, her voice vibrating.
“A place for the mentally insane,” Marcus said. “And it’s gone. The Kozy Komfort.”
“Petting zoo?” Alma whispered.
Hosea nodded toward the story proofs and photos on the table. “In my yard?”
Marcus glanced at the headline again. “Historic Adobe Building Neglected: Crime Site Eligible for County Landmark Status.” He didn’t look at the words. Four large photos paraded down the page.
A dark door surrounded by pale wall, where a large hole was dug out near the cement steps. A blackish patch floated near the screen. Then Alma’s veranda, where bare wisteria vines tangled like thick string and tiny baby dresses hung from a line. Junked cars on the storage lot. And the barn wall, festooned with tools and coffee cups, sawhorses and beer cans near the doorway.
“Where are we?” Demetrius shouted. “I ain’t seen nobody takin pictures.”
Alma’s knuckles pressed her chin like she was holding it onto her face. “She say she from the city, ax can she walk round. She come when I was cookin. Come back and ax me was there problems here lately. I told her no. Then she got in her car and go. Y’all was on a job somewhere.”
Marcus reached for the folder. He looked at Enchantee. “I’ll meet you up there tomorrow. At his place. But I don’t know what I’ll say.”
“I’ve been there once before,” she said. “I’ll get you inside.”
“And what Sissy do when he get him?” Demetrius said. “Talk to him till he drop dead?”
“You can’t take somebody like Matheson out and kick his ass, okay?” Marcus shouted.
“Asylum?” his mother was whispering. “For crazy people?”
“I thought Web hated pearls,” Abby said. She and Enchantee made a nest of blankets on the nursery floor for Dylan, who’d fallen asleep in the car.
“He does,” Connie replied, smoothing the baby blanket in the crib. “But Aunt Carrie’s coming, and she makes a big deal when I wear them.”
“It’s brunch, Connie,” Abby said.
“It’s an opportunity for Web to talk to contributors, and Aunt Carrie is a big help,” Connie said, pausing at the nursery doorway, her silk dress pleated over her belly. Enchantee watched her larger smile set itself into her face.
The nursery was all blue, since Connie knew she was having a boy. The rocking-horse theme, with wallpaper border and mobile and quilt, was cute, Enchantee thought. Abby had groaned and said, “Predictable.”
They walked down the stairs, and Enchantee looked quickly out the window at the cars winding up the long driveway. She bent and unplugged the baby monitor, watching Dylan twitch and dream.
Enchantee saw a pile of brochures on the counter. “Matheson and Associates,” she read. “Is this your husband’s company?” she asked casually.
Connie nodded, arranging silverware. “Except there’s some problem with that tract, a bird or moth or something. I don’t know. He’s pretty upset.” She glared at Abby. “Are you going to answer the door or not?”
“I’ll put these in the great room,” Enchantee said. She looked at the brochure. The text read: “On the sun-drenched, oak-covered hills of southern California, a unique gated community of magnificent proportions is evolving, a place of incredible beauty and Old West charm, but devoid of modern-day problems and pressures. This hidden paradise is Heritage Oaks. Two-acre estates, five exciting floor plans. No expense has been spared in planning construction of these lovely Old-World estate homes for your family…”
She saw the lots laid out in puzzle formation. A crowd of people had come into the room, and Abby led them outside to the deck. She came back to peer over Enchantee’s shoulder. “That’s where I was trying to talk Bent into buying, if he gets a book contract. And he isn’t going for it. He likes downtown.”
“Where is he?” Enchantee said nervously, watching Web and another crowd of people come in.
Abby smiled. “He said he’s bringing some food just for me, from Chipotle Chile.”
Enchantee nodded. She watched Web greet people in the great room, on the deck, at the door. “Yeah! A boy! I can’t wait to teach him to play golf! Yeah, I know, Connie’ll have to try for her girl next. Dresses and all that stuff. Hey, you look great!”
He moved through the rooms like a pinball in a machine, Enchantee thought, seeing him bounce deftly from an elbow to a hand to a shoulder, touching, turning, clasping lightly, always smiling. She heard Bent’s voice in the kitchen, and she saw that he and Marcus were paused in the doorway. Marcus wore his Chipotle Chile work clothes, and he raised his chin slightly to her.
Web had finally approached the two older women on the couch, their hair as puffed and insubstantial as dandelions. Enchantee walked over to Marcus, saying, “Go into the guest bathroom, hurry up. Open the door under the sink and plug in the receiver. Hurry up.”
After a few minutes, she saw Carrie Smith Donohue and Bent gliding up the stairs.
When Marcus plugged in the receiver to the baby monitor, the static spat at him so loudly that he hit his head on the sink when he jumped up. Turning it down, he stared at the locked bathroom door, sweating, hearing voices eerie and liquid. Demetrius would love this, he thought, Sissyfly holdin a baby walkie-talkie. And what I’ma do? Daddy said at least listen and try to see if they got a plan. Okay.
Bent was saying, “So this is your home office, huh, Web? I’d love to have this much space.”
“Abby tells me she wants to buy in Heritage Oaks,” Web said. “Lots of space.”
“Yeah.” Bent must have moved. “So I’m sorry I took your folder by accident. This story’s coming out Wednesday?”
“Yes,” Carrie Smith Donohue said. Her voice was dismissing. “Thank you.”
“See ya down there, Bent,” Web said.
Marcus crouched near the bathtub, pushing the rug near the door crack with his shoe, hoping no one had to pee. “He picked up my folder by mistake yesterday,” she said. “He’s very absent-minded.”
“Yeah—he’s a liberal asshole who likes rap music,” Web said. Marcus could hear shuffling papers. “I hadn’t seen the place before, not close up. Damn—it looks like hell.”
“I agree. That’s why I’m bringing it to the public’s attention.”
“But if you do the story now, and the city goes for landmark status, the price goes up,” Web said.
“You only worry about money,” she said impatiently. “This place is going to be a museum attraction.”
Marcus heard someone pouring a drink. “Museums are never profitable, okay?”
“The barn and outbuildings are ideal for gift shops and boutiques, and the adjacent property for parking, if nothing else. There’s your profit.” She paused, and Marcus heard footsteps outside the bathroom. He got up and turned on the sink tap. “What are you drinking?” she asked.
“Glenfiddich,” Web said. “Classy enough?” Marcus heard him walk, a series of muffled thumps on the monitor, and then he said from a distance, “I can’t believe you know everything, the history of the whole damn area, and you’ve been up here before, and you couldn’t bother to mention the fucking lake.”
“Your mouth, Web,” she said.
His voice was closer again. Marcus imagined him leaving the window. “I’m serious, they tell me this lake’s been here before. But not wrecking homes on the seventh tee.” He paused. “What? What are you staring at?”
“Your house has no aesthetic value, really, Web. It’s worthless architecturally. There are hundreds like it.”
“You old bitch,” Matheson said softly, and Marcus heard the consonants pop.
“There’s no class in this design,” she went on. “The old Mission Revivals, the old Craftsmen, they have class. Truthfully, if water ruins something over here, across the bridge, it isn’t worth saving.”
“There isn’t any goddamn bridge yet.”
She continued like he hadn’t spoken. “Even the Archuleta adobe is worth more architecturally than your whole development here.”
“Yeah, well,” he began, but she cut him off, her voice sharp.
“The waste of that whole area, the filthy shacks and dirt, and oh, the Archuleta place breaks your heart. Wrecked cars, a sea of mud. Not a blade of grass. I’d planned a garden. My father always said, ‘Where Negroes go, grass won’t grow.’ ”
Web began to laugh, and Marcus put his own hand over his mouth. “You can’t call them Negroes now.” Marcus heard him set down a glass on a tabletop. “Look, the whole schedule is off now. After all that, I thought the guys would either be dead or in jail and the women would sell the place. But the pale one? With the shack? She’s past unreasonable. The last time I tried her, I said, ‘A good-looking woman like yourself, you’d probably rather live in the city, closer to shopping and salons, I know my wife does.’ And the woman goes nutso, she says, ‘Get out my kitchen,’ like it’s a goddamn country club.”
Aintielila, Marcus thought. Matheson went on. “I wanted something acquired by February and cleaned up by May, so I could use it in the campaign. A guy who gets the job done fast, no government bullshit. rescued from blight by private enterprise. But if this historic gateway plan goes through, the city can condemn the lots and do eminent domain.”
“You can still use it if you stop talking and start thinking,” she said, impatient again. “The city council takes it up next week, and they can set it aside in committee for a short time, and you can go back to negotiate. I’m sure the woman would rather deal with you than with the city.” Marcus heard her sigh, and then feet trod past the monitor, as light as a wary bird.
He turned off the receiver and put it back under the sink. When he pushed open the door, a woman frowned at him and turned to let him pass. Marcus’s face was hot. He saw Bent in the kitchen then, holding Dylan in his arms. “Hey, Marcus,” Bent said. “I had to get this little guy for Abby. Did you get to talk to Web? Or Abby’s aunt? Or did you want to?”
Enchantee stood near the refrigerator, shaking her head slightly, her gaze hard. “I didn’t want to,” Marcus said. He looked at Bent’s gray eyes, behind glasses like his own. He couldn’t explain this to Bent, couldn’t trust him yet. He knew what his father would say. “I didn’t feel so hot.”
Abby was saying, “I wish I had a sorbet, after all that great spicy stuff, Chani, you know, to clear the palate.”
Marcus slipped out the kitchen door without looking at anyone. Sorbet. Sherberts. Pastel, sweet, grainy-dissolved, instantly gone. He could taste the lime in his throat. To clear the palate for the next new taste. No mingling.
Alma had craved the watery blue. She’d painted and stood back to breathe the wet. She’d raked and trimmed and touched the sea-urchin purple window frames.
“She talk about the blue in here,” Hosea had said, looking at the article.
Alma had read most of it. The woman mentioned a garish shade of paint visible for miles, a color historically inaccurate. And the forlorn photos—Alma knew them with her eyes shut. “She talk about she can see them old cars on your lot for miles,” Alma said, her throat heated. “How they a eyesore.”
Her hands, swimming among the canning jars in the sink now, were as numb as padded oven mitts dangling from her wrists. She had pruned the roses, scrubbed the floors, oiled all the heavy wooden furniture Archuleta had left them. She couldn’t feel anything below her elbows. She could pick up a hot-handled pot with no towel.
But the woman with cotton-candy hair hadn’t taken photos of the roses, or the gleaming carved furniture, or the Madonna amid her candles and dried flowers in the arched plaster hollow made just for her.
The house was immaculate. It was the men’s things all over the property that had attracted the attention. Their cars and tools and cups and trash. That looked so bad in the pictures. No one could see how she kept her house in that article. After living in a station wagon, in the seas of mud and overflowed outhouses, how would she keep her house anything but perfect?
Demetrius and Octavious came into the kitchen now, their boots shedding dirt onto her floor. “Take your plate and go!” Alma shouted. “Look what you doin to my floor! Always bringin in a mess.” When she looked up, she saw Sofelia peering out the window.
“Look like some white men here,” she said, holding the sheer curtain aside. “City car, got a picture on the side.”
“Go get your father,” Alma said, feeling bitter seed tears under her lids. City code enforcement, probably. “They mad about all his junk.”
“Here come Marcus, too,” Sofelia said, and Alma stepped outside blindly, not looking at the city men or her husband. Abuela’s hand was a tiny starfish on Marcus’s sleeve, and Alma helped her into the car.
“She want to see the lake again,” Alma told her son. “The one she ain’t seen in so long.” She refused to look back.
Paz kept her eyes carefully on the moving sky while Marcus tried to find a place where they could stand near the lake. She had never gotten used to cars; the only places she let someone drive her were the market and Salcido’s place. When she felt the car stop, she let herself look at the water.
Standing at the muddy, licking edge, she saw that it was still silty-brown from the violence of the canyon, of all the small ravines and arroyos and canyons that emptied here, in the low valley. At the southern edge of the lake, a stream wound its way to the river; Paz remembered that when she’d first seen the lake, it was here for four years before the water had drained.
Espíritu. She had stood near here when her daughter was small, staring out at the water, remembering the ocean near Maneadoro, the olive trees and cliffs and shifting blue. This was the closest she had ever come. In Mexico, she’d been sweeping someone else’s dirt, dirt that had clung to her legs and then rubbed off on his hands when he grabbed her. Here, the first time, she’d been watching her second grandchild wither and yellow and die.
Now she looked across the lake to her olive trees, a patch of faint silver like a dew-coated spiderweb in the field. The fairy shrimp would come soon to this place and to the pools scattered farther west; the angel moth would hover over her flowers at dusk. The barn owl was already peering from the rafters of the olive shed, her small-outlined face melancholy company. Not white with death, like the bobbing image in the window that night, but pale and watching.
The boy was gone from the hills. Maybe he was a ghost, Paz thought. Maybe he had only hovered near the fence while the water was gathering here, like a movable spirit.
“Show me his house,” Alma said.
Marcus drove down the clattering dirt road from the lake, near the groves of the man Hosea had always called the Hungarian. The lake lapped at the edge of a housing tract, covered a golf course, and partially submerged a construction project to its floating, golden, plywood roof. Marcus skirted the water, driving down from the groves on the old road that was now four lanes. Up a sloping street where mud had washed in reddish veils along the asphalt, the earthen berms along the road had slumped like giant toes.
“That’s his house,” Marcus said, pointing to the peach-stuccoed mansion on the slope, behind the gated entrance.
Alma stared at the balconies and windows. “It’s beautiful. Spanish.”
“Mediterranean,” Marcus said. “I think.”
Paz had tilted her head to peer up at the house. She said, “Dios, Dios les da el dinero a los ricos. Porque si no lo tuvieran, se morirían de hambre.” She rubbed her belly and sucked her teeth.
“God,” Marcus said, frowning. “God gives money to the rich. Because…”
Paz pointed to her stomach, then cut her finger across her throat.
“Morir. Muerto. Mortrice,” he whispered. Alma frowned at him. Then he smiled. “Because—”
“Without it, they’d starve to death,” Alma said. “Ain’t nobody starvin at my house. Nobody.”
When they’d reached the riverbottom road again, Alma saw a planter made of black stones, small, round rocks with white stripes, near one house. She smiled. “Finis used to love them rocks,” she murmured. “Always said he was gon go down to Salcido’s and get enough to build him a skunk house.”
“Skunk-eye rocks,” Marcus said. “That’s what he called them.” He stared across the river. “Damn. I know where he is.”
Marcus and Demetrius greeted Rubén Salcido at the gate. “I’m glad you came, cause, you know, I couldn’t keep him much longer. Tony’s a cop, man, and that was hard, to hide your brother. He’s in the shack.”
They walked past the piles of gravel, the mounds of river rock, the stacks of brick. Those round, black stones with the white ring—they’d been piled near the door of the old shack at the very edge of the yard near the fence, along the riverbottom. “Rubén said he brings food every day,” Demetrius said. “Finis! Brothaman!”
His chest wasn’t hollow or thin, Marcus thought, seeing him in the doorway. But his face was more gaunt than Bob Marley’s, as if the constant dust had leached out the moisture.
“Come on, man, Mama got tamales and Oscar got chitlins,” he said, taking Finis’s arm gently. “You didn’t have to run, man.”
“Damn, brother, maybe Sofelia can do somethin with your hair,” Demetrius said.
“Sofelia?” Finis whispered, his brows drawing together.
When he saw her in the kitchen, leaning against the stove, he put his arms around her, and Marcus saw her plum-dark eyes fill with tears. Then his mother came flying into the kitchen like a plump pigeon to hold him tight.
“You mess with his bones?” Mortrice’s mother caught him in the yard, her fingers strong now, stronger than they’d ever been at Soul Gardens. Her forehead had a straight line like a needle between her eyes. “You was only supposed to be sleepin in his place.”
“I ain’t messed with nothin,” he said, waiting until she’d relaxed her grip. “I’ma go get my stuff. My music and books.”
“You gon sleep in the house again,” she said.
“The other trailer empty, cause y’all won’t let Kendrick in there.” Mortrice tried to move away. The gats. He had to get the gats hidden.
But she shook her head. “Sleep in the house for now. Until the trouble over.”
“Shit, this trouble ain’t never gon be over,” he said to himself, nearly running down the path to the trailer. “Until I get Sketch and them job.”
Inside the murky light of the trailer, which always sat in shade and then darkened as fast as a cough when the sun fell, Mortrice looked at the bones. He had moved them when he’d tried to make bullets for the buffalo gun. The lead had come out of the forms perfectly—the damn casings, man, he needed the gunsmith to make those. If he was going to take someone out when this job came down, he wanted to use the buffalo gun, and it wouldn’t be ready. The cinco-six would be the right one, for the land. His mother’s place. Cause the cinco-six wouldn’t leave nothin behind.
Squatting on the narrow channel of floor, he pulled out the duffel bag with his guns and books and kits. He didn’t want to go back to Olive Gardens, where Chris and Teddy were always hollering, where too many eyes were watching. He wanted to stay here and think, try to figure out how to do the job.
He saw the silver drops of lead on the table where the bones had been, and he pulled at the thin, white splinters jammed in a heap near the window, trying to arrange the hand. His own fingers shook. The skull-faced guy with wild braids who’d come to the door—this was his place. His uncle. Shit. He wanted this place. The finger bones spun, and Mortrice ran down the two metal steps, stopping near the other trailer.
He knelt near the back wheel and dug out a pile of eucalyptus bark and tiny red flowers that were falling even now, in the wind. Laying the duffel bag behind the flattened tire, he pushed leaves and bark back over it until it was only a heaped drift in the earth.
“I’ma take him out,” Oscar said, sharpening his chitlin knife with a whetstone. “I know his car. Chevy Blazer. I’ma go to that damn tower and shoot him.”
Hosea sat in the barn doorway, watching Demetrius work on another carburetor. Marcus squatted in the sunlit yard. “Maybe I could find out more about the deal,” he said slowly. “Shit, I don’t know what to do with what I already found out.” Hosea waited for Demetrius to spit out something smart about his brother, but Demetrius only probed the metal.
“I say take his ass out,” Demetrius murmured then.
Hosea felt the piece of paper folded into his work-shirt pocket. He hadn’t shown it to anyone since Alma had handed it to him—not Oscar or Demetrius or Marcus. He said softly, “What Marcus done heard, Matheson give it to the government now. Killin him ain’t gon stop it.”
Oscar took a drink from his jar. “Once the government get it, like a goddamn pit bull. Gotta kill it to open that jaw.” He put the empty jar near his feet. “The man scare the shit outta Lila last time he come. I don’t know what he said, but he ain’t sent no government. She couldn’t hardly talk when I got back.” Oscar rubbed his blade. “Maybe he mention them pigs. Somebody done seen em from the freeway. But they cleanin up—Lanier pigs eat paper, McDonald’s, everything but cans.”
Hosea saw Mortrice standing at the edge of the barn. “Why you listenin to old folks talk?” he said. “What you want?”
“Nothin,” Mortrice said, raising his chin toward Marcus before he left.
“I don’t see him now that I’m not at school,” Marcus said, drawing in the dirt. “Seems like a long time since I had that class. I think those two kids got shot, they killed Pammy Sawicky and her friend. And Bessier. But the other one—Samana—I don’t know where he is.” He looked up at Hosea. “So if that was intended to get us out, and it didn’t work…”
Hosea waited. Us. Then he said, “You takin me to lunch. Your mama been mad at me, about my junk.” He thought about his son Finis, hiding in the shack. “I want to see Matheson for myself.”
What was his father planning? Marcus rolled down the drive. They walked the walk, talked the talk, no extra words—his father and uncle and brothers never let a swirl of extra words and definitions rise inside their foreheads to hide the physical layout of the fight or the car or the danger. But him, he loved the vocabulary and construction of the sentences, loved talking to Kurt or the students or Brother Lobo. Because underneath, if he were challenged, words were his only escape. His father wanted to kill Matheson. But there had to be a way out with conversation. The right words.
He loved talking to SaRonn. She and Willa got into the VW, and Willa turned to her mother and said, “Bumpdragon!”
SaRonn pulled in her lips to hide her smile. “She know your car now.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Marcus said easily. He wanted to try the blue-corn tortillas again. “You think she’s gon like my place?”
SaRonn had a grave look on her face. “Do you have any milk?” To his puzzled frown, she added, “In case we both spend the night.”
“Damn, I’ll take care of that now, if you gon offer me that kinda possibility,” Marcus said, pulling into the minimall. Som’s window was dark. Inside the liquor store, the Korean man behind the counter was arguing with a guy who looked like a Kozy Komfort resident. Except that Marcus saw only faint black outlines of nothing across the street now.
“You give me ten! Not twenty!” the cashier said.
“Man, I given you a damn twenty, and you given me two a these!” The brother held up two bag-wrapped forty-ounce bottles. “You better give me my change, motherfucka!”
“Look! Ten!” The cashier held up a ten he’d taken from the shelf of the register.
“No-win situation,” SaRonn murmured in the back, reaching for a small carton of milk. “Who knows who’s tellin tales?”
“I don’t want to know right now,” Marcus said. They put the carton on the counter, and the cashier turned toward them. Marcus saw the brother heading out the door; he couldn’t tell who had won, or lost.
“Eighty-two!” the man said loudly. When Marcus reached into his pocket, a woman came from the back of the small store, shouting, “What she get? What she get? Look!”
She was pointing at Willa, who held something tightly in her fist and came up behind SaRonn’s leg to clutch her mother’s skirt. Marcus said, “If she got some candy, I’ll cover it, okay?”
“No! Not candy. She get something shine!” the woman said. “Jewelry!” She pointed toward the display of cheap jewelry and hair accessories nearby.
SaRonn knelt and said, “Willa, what you got, baby girl? Somethin good?”
Willa opened her hand like a tiny flower; she held a washer with faceted edges. “My ring,” she murmured.
SaRonn stood up, her cheeks hollow with her pulled-in breath. “She found it in your car, Marcus.” She took Willa’s hand and walked out.
“I sorry for that,” the man said, his voice hard. “We come here from L.A., have so many people steal every day.”
“She look like a hardened criminal?” Marcus said, putting the change on the counter. “I look like a wino?”
In his kitchen, Marcus said, “Why bother wearin J. Crew and I still look like—”
But SaRonn surprised him with the softness of her voice. “You know, I used to hate it in L.A., too. The Koreans always arguing with the brothers. And when I got back here, the Super Save store was just as bad. I tried to think about all the nice store owners I knew in L.A., tried thinkin they were into a Middle Eastern bazaar type thing, you know, only respect the customer if he haggles for bargains. But then I saw those Super Save guys pull a Taser on somebody, and I saw the video of Latasha Harlins gettin shot.”
Marcus nodded. Watching TV was painful, seeing that footage and the King video over and over.
“I don’t know,” she said, propping her chin on her fingers. “You can’t go from store owner to sheriff. I guess I worry about it cause that’s what I want to do, Marcus. I want to open a store, maybe in that minimall, or downtown here if I could afford the overhead.”
“What kind of store?” Marcus gave Willa another tortilla.
“A boutique, with Indian incense and spices and jewelry, and African prints, and Mexican furniture, who knows what else.” She smiled. “You think I’m crazy. But I’ve been sellin some jewelry, savin my money, gettin Bennie and Malinda to pay rent, and if I could pull this off, Willa could hang out in the store with me. I can’t go off to work somewhere and let somebody else watch her. I’d miss her too much.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Marcus said, looking at the golden slivers radiating from her pupils, at the deep curve over her lip. “You seen Finis?”
SaRonn shook her head. “You seen Chaka?” He laughed. “But I hope he comes by to watch videos with Willa.”
After Willa had touched all the figurines one more time, after she’d jumped on the bed, she went to sleep there on his pillow. On the couch, the door shut and candles lit, SaRonn lay on top of him with her face buried in his shoulder. Then she whispered, “You gotta be careful, cause I don’t want to have a baby with you.”
“What?” Marcus said, his fingers in her hair.
“Cause I want to have a baby with you. Cause you’d probably give me a nice boy. Grow up to be a nice man like you. And I can’t do that yet.”
Marcus ran his hands over her back. “I can’t either,” he said. “Cause I ain’t sure I’m a nice man. Got Thompson genes, remember? The Jungle Brothers? Nice wasn’t what people called us.”
She was silent for a long while, kissing him, touching his chest, and then she said, “Back then, when I was small, I wanted to know what it was like to sleep with a boy. Sleep with him. I was lonely. I used to sleep like this.” She curled on her side, lifting her own shoulder so that her cheek was pressed against the soft part. “So I would feel like somebody was with me,” she said, closing her eyes.
Someone knocked on his door just as Willa was waking up, calling, “Mama?” He and SaRonn lay on the floor in blankets, and she scrambled up to the bedroom while Marcus pulled on his jeans and threw the blankets onto the couch.
Mortrice nodded in the doorway. “I need to ax you somethin from your pops,” he said.
He and B-Real stood in the living room, looking at the books. “We goin to class like good students,” B-Real said. “But Whalen’s class is past deadly, brothaman, it’s like—rigor mortis.”
Marcus saw Mortrice look at B-Real hard, strange, and then Mortrice said, “Uh, Grampa say he need to borrow a jacket. For the restaurant. Say you know what he mean.”
“A jacket?” Marcus shook his head. “I guess he’s right. He can’t get away with the ripped jeans and Dickies look at his age.”
In the bedroom, SaRonn was dressed, and Willa was leaping, naked, on the bed again. “I had to wash her up,” SaRonn said, “and she loves to air dry.”
“My nephew and his friend are out there,” Marcus said. “Just so you know.”
She lifted her chin. “You embarrassed to have me here?”
Marcus stopped moving jackets. “Embarrassed? Hell, no. Proud, baby.” When they went into the living room, SaRonn stared at Mortrice, frowning.
Mortrice was reading the articles on the coffee table. “Who this dude?” he asked, and Marcus bent over to see.
“Trevor Roberts,” he said. “His son was Josh. Roberts sold my mom a vacuum cleaner once.” He dropped the picture. “I don’t know what he sells now, but he had it in his blood.”
Mortrice nodded. “Who this dude with the big forehead?”
“Web Matheson,” Marcus said. Saronn was giving Willa cereal in the kitchen. “Big-time developer running for office. He’s the one wants to buy Daddy’s place, and Uncle Oscar’s.”
“What for?” B-Real said.
“I guess to build a bridge over it,” Marcus said, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know. Matter of fact, Matheson sold my mom the vacuum cleaner, too.” He laughed. “Big buddies. Except one’s sellin the most expensive thing in California, and I never heard of the other one again.”
“Yo, we gotta go, man,” B-Real said. “One World, Mr. Thompson.”
“Later,” Mortrice said, taking the jacket.
SaRonn glanced out the window, and through the archway she must have seen B-Real’s Jamaican-painted van pull away. “That boy was the one with Zefi Perry’s boy,” she said. “Your nephew.”
Marcus, who was trying to make toast, didn’t pay much attention. “Yeah?”
She came into the kitchen then and smiled wide. “That was what I was going to call the store,” she said. “One World.”
Hosea remembered the blow to his ear, the bitter crystalline air needling into the canal, the walking along ditch banks so that pale eyes behind windshields wouldn’t gleam with the thought of him thumping off a fender—that satisfying thud they so loved, the solid connection of metal to bone however they could hear it—car to hip, pipe to skull, bullet to backbone.
Oscar could shoot this man, the one ten feet away. He’d killed the white man who’d left blood stripes across Lila’s face. Oscar could shoot a man stepping over his fence line. Hosea glanced at the nails on the cellular phone, remembering the slew of bullets on the porch. Maceo’s body. The sweet, floating fire. He’d taught his sons to fight so hard no one would try. He’d taught them to shoot possums.
The man who wanted his land, speaking to people on the phone, the voice spiraling through those wires as tight-curled as a pig’s tail, couldn’t shoot a horse, a pig, a rabbit, a quail. Couldn’t remove skin or feathers or coarse hair and silken-blue inner walls to find meat. He couldn’t shoot a man, or he would have shot Hosea already. And this wouldn’t be done, this shooting, because now when a man wanted your land, he couldn’t just hide in your pecan grove and shoot you, or walk into your shotgun shack near Greenwood and shoot you and throw your still-moving body back into the flames. He couldn’t do those things knowing that your children or grandchildren or whoever you claimed as your blood would see the killing and learn and leave. Not in 1992. Not when you had five sons, three who loved to fight, who loved the barn and rocks and hubcaps and cars.
One who wandered like a ghost, a ghost who might see but never learn.
One who might not have loved a damn stone on the place, who never seemed to give a damn about the land or cars, but who hadn’t given up on this yet. He sat down across from Hosea and they were the same size, thin-legged, chests tapered hard. Not swollen broad like the other sons. The blazer Marcus had lent him was the color of pine needles. “We wear the same size, huh?” Marcus said, grinning. “What you want to eat?”
Hosea shrugged, trying not to stare at the men two tables over. Matheson. Brown hair combed back as sharp as porcupine quills, mouth as thin-edged and square as a mail slot. Another man so fat, he had a second face behind his first one. Two silver-haired, seal-suited men with their backs to Hosea.
“Olive tamales for my dad,” Marcus told the girl who came. “And carnitas.”
Hosea sipped the lemony water and heard Matheson saying, “So let me get this right—this fairy shrimp is about an inch long. Nobody can eat it except a damn duck or bird, and we have to protect it.”
“The sand moth is even more laughable,” the fat man said.
“Yeah, what, nobody’s ever seen this moth eat, nobody knows exactly where in the habitat it lives, and I can’t use two hundred damn acres now? Not until they figure out what stick it sleeps on?”
Hosea was silent until the food came. “I don’t know how this is gon help you,” Marcus murmured over the steaming bowl of meat.
“I ain’t said it would help.” Hosea looked at the carnitas. “Salcido comin over soon with that goat meat.”
“Kurt does okay,” Marcus said. “How you like your tamales?”
Hosea put down the fork. “I rather eat your mama’s food or Oscar’s.” He pulled the letter from his pocket and slid it across the table. He’d memorized the typing. Dated March 25. Requesting that Alma Thompson attend a hearing in one month at the city council chambers to consider acquiring her property through eminent domain. Rio Seco Redevelopment Agency.
“This is what he and the historian were talkin about,” Marcus said softly. “Why you didn’t tell me before?”
Hosea took back the letter and slid it inside his pocket. “What was you gon do till the day come? Talk? Now you gon go speak for her. You talk to them kinda people all the time.”
Marcus shook his head. “I talk to kids. Customers,” he whispered harshly, leaning forward. “Talk about what? Eminent domain means the city wants it, the city takes it.”
“For him?” Hosea nodded toward the table of men.
“Hell, I don’t know.” Marcus sat back.
Hosea swallowed the taste of the too slick sauce pooled around the tamale. “Listen. I walk around the place, I look at the letter, I think about them people got killed. Oscar just as well go on up and shoot the man.” His voice felt rough from the strange food and too many night walks. “I’m gon go in there and you gon talk. After that, whatever happen, I do what I have to.” He stood, his head swaying with the fluorescent lights and refrigerated air, and walked outside, not looking at the upturned faces like swiveling lamps.
Alma didn’t stare at the swelling fruit every day. She only walked among the fallen petals, brushing a few off her head. In a few weeks, she’d glance up at the oval nubs, as small and sharp as baby fingernails. Then she’d move her eyes slowly over the thumb-plump green fruit she had now. Each apricot was hers, to eat right off the tree with grandkids, to halve and preserve with Abuela, to spread on a biscuit for Hosea.
Everything was his, too. She couldn’t touch a hubcap. Last night, she’d sat outside the coldhouse with him, back to cool stones. “I’m sorry I fuss about your cars and your junk,” she’d whispered. “All that time, I didn’t never think we’d grow no cars.”
Summer was coming already—living through the heat and smog and dry again, waiting for night to turn ashen purple, like now. But you could survive that. You couldn’t survive winter, those freezes when she was a girl, the ice that coated lemons and avocados and took not only the workers’ fruit but their pay while the warped wood shacks let the air inside.
That was when Hosea had told her he would have his own land, with his jaw set so tight she knew the ache that jolted cold over his back teeth, and wanting like she felt for her babies. And he’d told her he’d plant so many different crops that one disaster of weather couldn’t ruin them. A freeze would hurt citrus, but not the apricots or nectarines. A drought wouldn’t bother the olives or figs.
But he ended up with the cars, too, his fingers coated with oil and callused by metal, the worn dollars edged in black. And when she thought of all the plants she’d tied and staked and hoed and then harvested, her fingertips scarlet with blood or strawberry juice, her shins aching and contracted from her thirst, her head swollen with heat, she walked among her roses.
Now she lay in the bathtub, trying to breathe the morning light, remembering when they’d had so little running water that the boys were happy to take dunk-splash baths outside all summer and Alma would be the only one in the tub, in the hot water. Back when the soreness could be drawn from her muscles and bones by hot water, the aching beaded up on her shoulder blades, down her spine, like moisture gathering on the veins of broad leaves to swell and finally drop.
Now her skin was dimpled and soft, holding the pain inside her hidden bones. She dried herself and put on her best dress, the black church-going dress with tiny white flowers. She’d last worn it to Ocie Mae’s funeral, the last time she’d gone under the freeway, up that road lined with beckoning ditches.
“You comin?” Hosea saw her in the doorway, her hair tightly rolled, the soft skin at her temples as thin as tissue.
“My name on that paper,” she said. “I want to—I want to see what y’all do.”
He drove slowly up Pepper so she wouldn’t be frightened. He didn’t know what the hell he’d do, and he didn’t want her watching him feel helpless. Just like the hospital, when he could barely turn his mouth for water, and that was part of this. This plan. This shit. When he parked below Marcus’s apartment, she said, “I ain’t never seen his place. Too far.”
“Just seem far,” Hosea said when Marcus came through the archway. “Downtown.”
“Mama?” Marcus said, sliding into the back. “You comin, too?”
The modern building had turquoise windows and beige walls. The amphitheater was half-filled, facing the ring of men behind a wooden horseshoe, nameplates and microphones at their wrists. A small blond woman spoke into a microphone at the podium. “This Wal-Mart would bring an incredible amount of traffic and noise into our neighborhood,” she said. “I have a signed petition from…”
Alma sat in the fold-down chair, but Hosea couldn’t breathe. He walked to the back, hearing a councilman say, “It’s unfortunate that people are unhappy to see new enterprise coming to the area, but…”
“Tell her to shut up, cause we want a Wal-Mart,” someone called from the audience, and a stern voice said, “You’re out of order there.”
He went outside. He could hear the amplified voices when the swinging doors opened and closed. The words flew out in bursts. “Micromanaging. Sure, it’s doable, Mr. Pérez, but… The traffic commission meeting…” Hosea’s stomach rolled like spoiled meat was inside. He went inside the door marked MEN. The bathroom’s tiled walls echoed with the voices, climbing the squares, falling. He leaned over the sink and drank some water, hearing one woman’s voice now rising, now falling, going on as long as a speech. Oscar said people went to clubs to learn how to talk like that, to keep people entertained. Toastmaster, Oscar had said. Hosea’s mind spun when he stared into the gleaming sink. He closed his eyes and pictured The Blue Q, where people were drunk and flirting and tired. And if you could tell a story like Oscar could, and mouths left beer-bottle rims to laugh, you were a hell of a speaker. Like Oscar. Not like me.
The door opened and voices rose thicker in the air. “Daddy,” Marcus said. “Come on. Only one more item before you. Us.”
A suited young man was at the podium. “I know Councilman Sawicky has been highly critical of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but this area is the heartland for several rare and endangered species, and the current rate of development is devastating. For example, the fairy shrimp lives only in vernal pools, and not a single pool is left in Los Angeles or Orange counties.”
Sawicky asked, “And we have them, right?” He looked at his notes.
“They’re at a real risk, and we’ve had a severe drought for seven years, so some of them are just making a resurgence.”
Sawicky said, “I love this—we lose tax dollars, piss off landowners, and prevent new development for—let’s see, a few birds, and now a moth. And a fairy.” Ripples of laughter rose from the crowd. “Mr. Olafson?”
“I’m with Matheson and Associates,” another man said. “I’d just like to say that we oppose spending tax dollars for county and city surveys on these, species, that then harm us businesswise. Right now, we’ve got one large housing project blocked, and one postponed. As you know, Mr. Matheson is running for Congress in June, and he’d like it known that he opposes the frivolous use of taxpayer money like this. He had another meeting this morning and couldn’t attend.”
“Look, we don’t have a vote on this, right?” a younger councilman said impatiently, looking at his watch. “We need to move on, okay?”
The city clerk read off the words. Eminent domain. Alma Thompson. Hosea saw the official who’d stood in the barn. Redevelopment.
“Well, the redevelopment agency is asking the council to acquire the property at 2498 Pepper Avenue through eminent domain, as both our developer, the previously mentioned Mr. Matheson, and city officials have been unable to come to terms with Mrs. Thompson on the purchase of her land. This property falls inside the boundaries of the proposed historic gateway corridor project, which we just passed approval on last week, if you recall. The project includes an off-ramp and on-ramp to the forty-two freeway, widening of the existing street, and construction of a bridge to replace the old Pepper Avenue bridge.”
“Is the property owner present?” asked the younger councilman.
Marcus pulled Alma from her seat and walked with her to the podium while she held herself stiff. “Yes, sir.”
“You are?” said the councilman. “State your name and address, please.”
“Alma Thompson, 2498 Pepper Avenue,” she whispered into the microphone. The city official stood off to the side, holding his papers. Hosea gripped the armrest of the chair.
“You have negotiated with the developer, Mrs. Thompson?” the younger councilman said, frowning. “Because I, for one, am opposed to using eminent domain in a situation like this.” He looked at the other men around him. “I mean, from this map, the area to the west of the existing street is largely empty, right? Why take the property east if you don’t have to?”
The older councilman beside him smiled. “From what I understand, Mr. Sutter, the property in question is neglected, it’s the site of recent criminal activity, including homicides, and the city has offered slightly above market value for it. Mrs. Thompson, you did speak with Mr. Matheson and with the gentleman to the side of you, correct?”
“I don’t want to sell my place,” Alma said, her voice as dull as a mourning dove through the speakers. Hosea stood up and walked down the aisle, where a man put out his arm into the space before him. “Wait,” the man said. Marcus was gripping the microphone now.
“Marcus Thompson. 1563 Las Palmas. I know that my mother and another property owner never received notice in the mail of this proposed project, and it obviously affects them.”
The city clerk stood and said, “Notices were mailed out in December.”
The older councilman smiled and said, “Do you know what I recall about that date? This property is in Treetown, correct? If I recall correctly, wasn’t that the month when there was so much shooting going on down there that the post office stopped delivering?”
Marcus said, “Look, my aunt also owns land, right next to my mother, and she hasn’t received this notice about condemnation. Maybe the city council should look into why somebody really wants my mother’s land.”
The men behind the horseshoe frowned, and one said, “I don’t understand your meaning, young man.”
Hosea strode past the outstretched hand. “Hosea Thompson. Same number. That’s my wife’s land. It ain’t neglected.” Then his head roared with words and the glinting of their glasses and watches and the spotlights over them. “You gotta know the land.” He heard nothing behind him but a hundred mouths stealing air. “What the city gon do with it? I got olives up on that hill. She got olives.” He looked desperately out the smoky windows to the trees in the plaza. “If you was roamin around starvin, would you eat them olives outside?”
“Excuse me?” one man.
“Them black olives hangin on them trees right now,” he said, sucking at his molars, shaking his head. “Already black.”
“There should only be one person behind the podium, please,” someone said, and Hosea stepped away to the wall.
The councilman behind number 5 said, “This isn’t a racial issue, and I’m not sure why the gentleman is trying to portray it as such. This has to do with upkeep of property, with code enforcement and neglect, and with the city’s desire to…”
The younger councilman was frowning at his notes. “Mrs. Thompson,” he interrupted. She stood there alone. Hosea saw her wide-tipped fingers pale on the podium’s edge. “Do you have an attorney or an appraisal of your property?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you get those and meet with the developer again. If the price hasn’t been fair, I think those two things might help. Let’s postpone the vote on this for three weeks, okay?”
“Second.”
“All those in favor?” Suddenly four green buttons and two red ones lit up over their heads, and someone said, “The next item on the agenda concerns…”
“You did what you could, Daddy.” Marcus sat at the kitchen table. “Let me try to get a lawyer downtown to look into this.”
But Hosea went outside. Oscar was there, and Lanier, and Roscoe Wiley with a part for his big truck. Darnell Tucker came to take Wiley home, and Kickstand grumbled at him about his Toyota. “Man, grouchy as you are, how you get a nickname like you got?” Darnell said.
“He give it to me,” Kickstand said, nodding toward Hosea. “Man, I come up from Texas, I was hangin around forever lookin for work, and the man said, ‘Hell, Kickstand, I give you a job cause look like you holdin up the whole damn barn by yourself.’ ”
“I know they want them pigs outta there,” Lanier said suddenly. Oscar had been silent, his wrists hanging loose on his knees. Hosea stared at the Miller cans lined on the stone wall.
“They want the whole thing,” he said finally. “The whole damn thing.”
“You know what people said,” Lanier went on. “In the South, they don’t care how close a nigger get, long as he ain’t too big. In the North, they don’t care how big he get, long as he ain’t too close.”
“How the hell that work out here?” Oscar said.
“Work like the Wild Wild West,” Hosea said. “I’ma have to shoot.”
“It ain’t got nothin to do with shootin,” Marcus said from near his car. “Has to do with paperwork and lawyers.”
Hosea stood and bent over the ten-foot length of old irrigation pipe. “Lift me up that end,” he told Oscar. “Paperwork,” Marcus was saying. “They can’t just grab what they want, man.”
Hosea worked the old pipe cutter onto the iron, jerking it hard. The Indian guy from the riverbottom used to sharpen it. Now Oscar did. The blade sliced clean silver gashes into the dull rust. Like the engraved letters on his father’s shell. He took it out nearly every night, wondering what tool the Frenchman had used during the war. ALL MY LOVE.
“They gon let them cops off,” someone said, pointing to the TV.
“Naw, man, that shit is on tape,” Darnell said.
“Hell, yeah,” Kickstand said. “Tired a seein that trial every five minutes.”
Marcus said, “They say the jury’s seen it so many times, they don’t even take it seriously now.”
Hosea glanced at the screen, at the blurry boots and elbows and faces. After the riot, the newspaper had blamed it all on the men like his father, the dead bodies. What did it matter if this picture flashed over and over, slow enough to see the angle of the elbows hanging for a moment to gain swing power before chopping at the head with the baton? He’d heard the voices from the TV. Hit any home runs? Power swing. What did it matter if the faces turned to the camera and said, Hell, yeah, we’re beating this nigger because he didn’t do what we told him to. He had a knife. He probably had a gun. He didn’t do it, what we said. And there are ten, twenty, a hundred of us in a circle, and we’re right as right can get because we’re standing here hard on this patch of ground in our shoes. All our shoes.
Alma always washed the white clothes on Tuesdays. She came to him in the coldhouse, holding out her hand for the T-shirt he’d worn that afternoon. “I’m gettin to it late,” she said. “I’m so tired, Hosea.” The lines between her eyebrows radiated into her forehead like sun rays.
“I’m tired, too,” he said. “So tired I can’t think.”
When he went out in the dark, he saw the sheets and shirts hung on the line behind the coldhouse, and he felt a tremor. His mother’s white wash, dancing ghostly between the trees. He went closer, seeing his T-shirt laid out on a stone, putting his finger to the lemon juice and salt paste she’d rubbed into the tiny rusted smiles marking the cloth.
He heard the shouts, the burst of gunfire on the porch, felt Oscar’s baby foot in his back. I ain’t sleepin till he come, he thought. Whoever comin next. If it’s Matheson come to the house or someone else sneak round the back fence, I’ma kill him. I lived a long time. I done done what I had to. But the place… I leave it for the rest of em.
He didn’t walk to the storage lot, like usual, but stood at the front gate watching the moon rise. From where he stood under the tallest palms, he could see their fronds shifting wild, the frayed tips glowing silver as if electricity had lit the fringes.
Bats slanted in the currents with plinking cries. Cirrus clouds moved across the moon, thin and stretched like silt wafting downstream, and he thought of how he’d looked for rain the last seven years. When he’d first come here, all the signs his grandfather had taught him—the halo around the moon, the arrangements of the stars, the thickness of bark—hadn’t worked. Hosea had missed the thunderstorms, the lightning in great veins, the Oklahoma sky. He’d touched the eucalyptus trunks with disdain, the bark wrinkled like skin at the joints, splitting to reveal pink, pearly stuff like tissue. Not home, he thought. But now, home. He stared at the sky. Maybe the sixty years that had passed meant something, too. Maybe the stars had shifted imperceptibly, and no one could read the sky.