“Just sit down and hear me out. Okay?”
“Hey, I’ll hear you out, man!” Rick called. He hooked an empty desk toward him and propped both feet atop it, leaning back with his arms crossed. “Lockett don’t understan’ no English no how, Mr. Hammon’,” he said, deliberately thickening his accent.
“Shut your face, spitball,” Tank rumbled.
At once several Rattlesnakes were on their feet; a skinny, curly-haired boy sitting next to Rick leapt up. He wore a red bandanna around his forehead and five or six small crucifixes on chains around his neck. “Fuck you, fat boy!” he shouted in a thin, reedy voice.
“Your mother and sister.” Tank showed him a middle finger.
The Hispanic boy almost flung himself over the rows of desks to get at Tank, who outweighed him by at least seventy pounds—but Rick’s hand shot out and grasped his wrist. “Easy, easy,” he said quietly, his smile still in place and his gaze aimed at Cody. “Hang back, muchachos. Pequin, you settle down, man.”
Pequin, whose real name was Pedro Esquimelas, was trembling with fury, but he allowed himself to be restrained. He sat down, muttering obscenities in gutter Spanish; the other Rattlers—among them Chris Torrez, Diego Montana, and Len Redfeather—remained standing and ready for trouble. Tom could hear disaster knocking at the door; if he didn’t keep control of this, the classroom could erupt into a battlefield. But at least Pequin had quieted. Tom knew the boy had a fiery temper that got him into a fight almost every day; his nickname was appropriate, because a pequin was a small chile pepper that would make the devil reach for Pepto-Bismol.
“How about it?” Tom asked Cody.
The boy shrugged. In his locker was the tie rack he’d finally finished; he wanted to get that home and work a couple of hours for Mr. Mendoza, but otherwise he wasn’t in a hurry. “If I stay, they stay.” He nodded at his entourage—six tough ’Gades: Will Latham, Mike Frackner, Bobby Clay Clemmons, Davy Summers, and Tank.
“Okay. Just sit down.”
Cody sauntered back to his desk. The others followed his lead. Tank leaned one massive shoulder against the cinder-block wall and cleaned his fingernails with an unbent gem clip.
“I’m gettin’ old waitin’, amigo,” Rick announced.
Tom walked to his desk and sat on its edge. On the blackboard behind him was the outline of a Robert E. Howard Conan story he’d asked them to read for a discussion of laws in a barbarian culture. Very few had done it. “Tomorrow’s your last day of school,” he began. “I wanted to—”
“Oh, madre!” Rick moaned and pulled the fedora down over his eyes. Pequin put his head on his desk and snored noisily. The ’Gades watched in stony silence.
Tom’s shirt was wet, sticking to his back and shoulders. The fan was only blowing hot air around. Tank suddenly burped; it was like a howitzer going off, and brought laughter from the ’Gades and silence from the Rattlers. Tom tried again: “I wanted to tell you that—” but his voice snagged. None of them were even looking at him. They didn’t give a shit, had already retreated behind masks of boredom. Dammit to hell! he thought. I might as well try to lasso the damned moon as get them to listen! But he was mad now—mad at their bored poses, mad at whoever was supposed to fix the screwed-up air conditioners, mad at himself for being so stupid. He felt the walls closing in on him, a rivulet of sweat running down his neck; a surge of anger grew and swelled, thrashed mightily—then broke its bounds and rushed through him.
His hand reacted to it first. He picked up the Governments in Transition textbook from his desk and threw it with all his strength across the room.
It whacked against the back wall like a gunshot. Pequin jumped and lifted his head. Rick Jurado slowly pushed the fedora up off his eyes. Tank stopped cleaning his nails, and Cody Lockett’s gaze sharpened.
Tom’s face had reddened. “So that gets your attention, huh? A loud noise and a little destruction? Does that make the wheels turn?”
“Yeah,” Cody answered. “You should’ve thrown that fuckin’ book against the wall the first day of class.”
“Tough guys—and girl,” Tom said, glancing at Maria Navarre, who sat with the Rattlers. “Real tough. Lockett, you and Jurado have got a lot in common—”
Rick snorted with derision.
“A lot in common,” Tom continued. “Both of you have outdone each other acting tough and stupid so you can impress the losers sitting around you right now. I’ve seen your tests. I know the difference between bullshitting and holding back. Both of you could’ve done a whole hell of a lot better if you’d—”
“Man, you’ve got runnin’ off at the mouth!” Cody interrupted.
“Maybe so.” Rivers of sweat were flowing from Tom’s armpits. He had to keep going. “I know both of you could’ve done a lot better. But you pretend you’re dumb, or bored—or just fucked up.” The use of that word cemented their attention. “I say you’re both cowards.”
There was a long silence. Lockett and Jurado’s expressions were blank. “Well?” Tom prodded. “Come on! I can’t believe two tough guys like you can’t come up with some sharp—”
“Yeah, I’ve got somethin’ to say.” Cody stood up. “Class dismissed.”
“Okay, go ahead! Get out! At least Jurado has the guts to stay and listen!”
Cody smiled coldly. “You’re walkin’ a mighty fine wire, mister,” he said. “I’ll sit and listen to your shit durin’ school hours, but when that bell rings it’s my time.” He shook his head, and his skull earring threw a red glint of sunlight. “Man, who do you think you are? You think you know all the answers, and you can just spout ’em out? Mister, you don’t know a jackdamn thing about me!”
“I know you listen in class, whether you want anybody to know it or not. I know you’re a lot smarter than you let on—”
“Forget that! Just forget it! When you walk in my shoes, you can preach to me! Until then you can go straight to hell!” There was a murmur of assent from the other Renegades.
Someone applauded. Tom looked over at Rick Jurado, who was slowly clapping his hands. “Hey, Lockett!” he taunted. “You gonna be an actor, man? You oughta win an award or somethin’!”
“You don’t like it?” Cody’s tone was chilling, but his eyes burned. “You know what you can do about it, motherfuck.”
Rick’s clapping stopped. His body had tensed, his legs about to spring him from his desk. “Maybe I do, Lockett. Maybe I’ll come burn your fuckin’ house down like your people’ve been burnin’ ours.”
“Cut the threats,” Tom said.
“Yeah, make me laugh!” Cody jeered, ignoring the teacher. “We didn’t burn any houses. Hell, you burned ’em yourself so you could holler that we did it!”
“You come across that bridge at night, hombre,” Rick said quietly, “and we’ll give you a real hot fiesta.” A savage grin hung on his lip. “Understand, shitkicker?”
“I’m shakin’!” In truth, no ’Gade—as far as Cody knew—had set fire to those houses in Bordertown.
“Okay, hold it!” Tom demanded. “Why don’t you two forget that gang crap?”
They glared at him as if he were the most useless insect to ever crawl from a hole. “Man,” Rick said, “you’re way off base. About that and all this school shit too.” He looked at Tom with bored eyes. “At least I hung in and finished. I know a lot who didn’t.”
“And what happened to them?”
“Some of ’em got rich, dealin’ coke. Some of ’em got dead too.” He shrugged. “Some of ’em went into other things.”
“Like working for Mack Cade? That’s not much of a future, and neither is prison.”
“Neither is crawlin’ every day to a job you hate and kissin’ ass to keep it.” Now Rick had had enough, and he stood up. “People in this town kissed old man Preston’s ass for about fifty years. Where’d it get them?”
Tom started to reply, but the wheels of logic in his brain froze up. He had nothing to counter the question with.
“Don’t have al
l the answers, do you?” Rick continued. “See, you live in a nice house, on a nice street. You don’t have to listen to somebody tellin’ you where you can and can’t walk, like you were a dog on a short leash. You don’t know what it’s like to have to fight for everything you’ve got, or ever will have.”
“That’s not the point. I’m talking about your educa—”
“That is the fuckin’point!” Rick yelled, startling Tom into silence. He trembled, clenched his fists, and waited out the anger. “That is the point,” he repeated tautly. “Not school. Not books written by dead men. Not kissin’ ass every day until you learn to like the taste. The point is to fight until you get what you want.”
“So tell me what you want.”
“What I want.” Rick smiled bitterly. “I want respect. I want to walk any street I please—even your street, Mr. Hammond. In the middle of the night, if I want to, without the sheriff slammin’ me up against his car. I want a future without somebody ridin’ my ass from dawn to sundown. I want to know that tomorrow’s gonna be better than today. Can you give me those things?”
“I can’t,” Tom said. “You can give them to yourself. The first thing is not to give up your mind. You do that and you lose everything, no matter how tough you think you are.”
“More words.” Rick sneered. “They don’t mean shit. Well, you read your dead men’s books. Teach ’em if you want to. But don’t pretend they really matter, man, because only this matters.” He lifted his clenched fist, the knuckles scarred from other battles. He turned toward Cody Lockett. “You! Listen up! Your whore hurt one of my men today. Hurt him real bad. And I got a visit this mornin’ from that other whore, the one with the badge. You got a deal with Vance? You payin’ him to let you burn down our houses?”
“You’re crazy as hell.” Cody had about as much use for Sheriff Vance as a coyote had for a sidewinder.
“I owe you some pain, Lockett. For Paco LeGrande,” Rick went on. “And I’m tellin’ you that any of my people who cross that damned bridge better be left alone.”
“They come over at night, they’re askin’ to be stomped. We’ll be real glad to oblige.”
“Man, you’re not the fuckin’ king around here!” Rick shouted, and before he could think about it he picked up the desk in front of him and flung it aside. At once all the Rattlers and Renegades were on their feet, separated only by the imaginary line that divided the classroom. “We’ll go where we please!”
“Not across the bridge at night,” Cody warned. “Not into ’Gade territory.”
“Okay, settle down.” Tom stepped between them. He felt like an utter fool for having thought this would do any good. “Fighting isn’t going to—”
“Shut up!” Rick snapped. “You’re out of this, man!” He kept staring at Cody. “You want a war? You keep pushin’ it.”
“Hey!” Oh, Christ! Tom thought. “I don’t want to hear any of that—”
Tank started to lunge at Rick Jurado, but Cody grasped his arm. He figured the Rattlers were carrying blades, like all wetbacks did. Anyway, he didn’t like the odds and this wasn’t the time or place. “Big man,” Cody said. “Big talk.”
“I’ll let my boot talk to your ass!” Rick threatened; he kept his tough mask on, but inside he didn’t want a showdown just yet. He didn’t like the odds and, anyway, he figured all the ’Gades were packing knives. His own blade was in his locker, and he didn’t allow any of the other Rattlers to bring knives to school.
“Let’s get it on right now!” Pequin whooped. Rick restrained the urge to bash him in the mouth. Pequin liked to start fights, but he rarely finished them.
“You call it, Jurado,” Cody challenged, and almost winced when Tank started making a clucking chicken noise to goad the Rattlers.
“There’s not going to be any fighting!” Tom shouted, but he knew they weren’t listening. “You hear me? If I see any trouble in the parking lot, I’m going up to the office and call the sheriff! Got it?”
“Fuck the sheriff!” Bobby Clay Clemmons bellowed. “We’ll whip his ass too!”
The moment stretched. Cody was ready for the Rattlers to make the first move, and he was measuring a blow to Jurado’s solar plexus; but Rick stood rock-steady, awaiting the attack that he knew was coming.
A figure limped into the doorway. Abruptly halted. “Oh! Red says stop!”
Cody glanced over his shoulder, but he already knew who it was from the high, childlike voice. The man in the doorway wore a faded gray uniform, carried a mop, and pushed a combination bucket and wringer. He was in his early sixties, his moon-shaped face ravaged by deep lines and brown age spots, his white hair cropped so close to the scalp it looked like a fine layer of sand. At his left temple there was an unmistakable indentation in his head. The little name tag on his custodian’s uniform said “Sarge.” “Sorry, Mr. Hammond. Didn’t know anybody was still here. Green says go!” He started to leave, favoring a right leg that folded up at the knee joint like an accordian.
“No! Wait!” Tom called. “We’re just clearing out. Aren’t we?” he asked Rick and Cody.
The only sound was Pequin cracking his knuckles.
Cody took the initiative. “You want a nitro lesson, you know where to find me. Anytime, anyplace. But you’re gonna stay off ’Gade territory after dark.” Before the other boy could reply, Cody turned his back and stalked to the door. Tank stood watchful guard while the Renegades followed, then he left as well.
Rick started to shout a profanity, but checked it. This wasn’t the time; it would come, but not now.
Pequin hollered it for him: “Fuck you, assholes!”
“Hey!” Sarge Dennison scowled. “Mama’ll wash out that dirty mouth!” He glared reproachfully at Pequin, then dipped the mop in his bucket and went to work.
“It’s been a real rush, Mr. Hammond,” Rick told him. “Maybe next time we can all come over to your house for milk and cookies.”
Tom’s heart was still racing, but he made the effort to at least appear composed. “Just remember what I said. You’re too smart to throw your life a—”
Rick gathered saliva and spat on the linoleum. Sarge stopped mopping, his expression a deuce of righteous anger and bewilderment. “You just wait!” Sarge said. “Scooter’ll chew your legs off!”
“I’m real scared.” Everybody knew Sarge was crazy, but Rick liked him. And he kind of admired Mr. Hammond for what he’d just tried to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to cut the teacher any slack. That just wasn’t how things were done. “Let’s haul,” he told the other Rattlers, and they left the classroom chattering in Spanish, laughing and beating on lockers with an overspill of nervous energy. In the corridor, Rick whacked Pequin on the back of his head a little too roughly to be just jiving, but Pequin grinned anyway, showing a silver tooth at the front of his mouth.
Tom stood listening to their noise recede along the hall like a wave washing toward a distant shore. He did not belong to their world, and he felt incredibly stupid. Worse than that: he felt old. Damn, what a fiasco! I almost stirred up a gang war! he thought.
“Settle down, boy. They’re gone now,” Sarge said as he mopped the floor.
“Pardon?”
“Just talkin’ to Scooter.” Sarge nodded toward an empty corner. “He gets jumpy around them guys.”
Tom nodded. Sarge returned to work, his wrinkled face a study of concentration. As Tom understood, “Sarge” Dennison had been hurt as a young soldier in the last months of World War II, and the shock had left him with the mind of a child. He’d been on the custodial staff for over fifteen years, and he lived in a small adobe house at the end of Brazos Street, across from the Inferno Baptist Church. The ladies of the Sisterhood Club brought him home-cooked dinners and kept watch over him so he wouldn’t wander the streets in his pajamas, but otherwise he was pretty self-sufficient. The matter of Scooter, though, was something quite different: Sarge would look at you as if you were deranged if you didn’t agree that a dog—of uncertain breed—wa
s curled up in an empty corner, perched in a chair, or sitting at his feet. Sure there’s a Scooter! Sarge would say, pointing to the fact that Scooter was fast and shy and often didn’t want to be seen but that food left in Scooter’s dish on the front porch in the evening would be gone by first light. The ladies of the Sisterhood Club had long ago stopped trying to tell Sarge there was no Scooter, because he cried too easily.
“They’re not so tough,” Sarge said, swabbing up Jurado’s spit. “Those guys, I mean. They’re just actin’ is all.”
“Maybe so.” That was no consolation, though. Tom was jangled to the core. It was three-fifteen, and Ray would be waiting at the car. He opened the top drawer of his desk and got his keys. For some reason he thought of the car keys that must be somewhere in the Perez house, and he wondered if Mr. Perez ever held them and weighed them against the life of his son. He felt the swift current of time passing, and he knew that at this moment vultures were circling over the Great Fried Empty. He closed his drawer. “See you tomorrow, Sarge.”
“Green says go,” Sarge said, and Tom walked out of the sun-streaked classroom.
13
Cody’s House
AS HE SWERVED THE MOTORCYCLE onto Brazos, Cody felt his gut clench: an instinctive reaction, like the tightening of muscles before a punch landed. His house wasn’t very far, standing near the corner of Brazos and Sombra. His rear tire tossed dust from the gutter, and on her front porch the Cat Lady, a broom in her gnarled hands, shouted, “Slow down, you germ!”
He had to smile. The Cat Lady—the widow Mrs. Stellenberg, her real name was—always stood out there sweeping about this time of day, and she always shouted the same thing as Cody sped past. It was a game they played. The Cat Lady had no family but for her dozen or so felines; they multiplied so fast Cody couldn’t keep count, but the things sneaked all over the neighborhood and wailed like babies at night.
His heart was beating harder. His house—weathered gray clapboard, the shutters closed at every window—was coming up on the right. Parked at the curb was his father’s junker, an old dark brown Chevy with rusted bumpers and a bashed-in passenger door. A layer of dust lay on the car, and Cody immediately saw that it was in exactly the same position it had been in this morning, both the right side tires pinched on the curb. Which meant that his father had either walked to work at the Inferno Bake Shoppe or that he just hadn’t gone at all. And if the old man had been alone in that stifling house all day, there could be a fierce storm brewing between the walls.