Krauser began curling a ninety-pound bar, his biceps swelling into white cantaloupes corded with veins. “Spit it out.”
“Saber and I have bad people on our backs, Mr. Krauser. The problem is, we don’t know why.”
“This is about those punks from the Heights?”
“I think it has to do with people in the underworld.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“I don’t think it is.”
He continued to pump the bar, eight and nine and ten times, the steel plates rattling, sweat popping on his face, his odor blooming.
“Sir, I’m asking for your help,” I said.
“You think too much.”
“This isn’t just a beef with some rough guys from the Heights. I think we’re dealing with evil people, people with no mercy. There’s some things about you that don’t make sense, Mr. Krauser.”
He dropped the bar on a rubber pad, breathing deeply, his nostrils dilating. “What was that again?”
“Saber says you were following him.”
“What, I follow Mongolian idiots around town in my off hours?”
“Why would you come to my house and offer Saber and me jobs? You don’t like either one of us.”
“I tried to do a good deed, that’s why. I didn’t exactly get a warm welcome from your parents.” He picked up a thirty-pound dumbbell in each hand and began pumping, his eyes sinking in his face.
“Saber saw you at the Pink Elephant with Jimmy McDougal.”
Krauser inverted the dumbbells, lifting them straight out from his chest, counting to ten under his breath, a drop of moisture hanging off his nose. He dropped them heavily on the rack. “Get this straight. There’re kids who frequent that neighborhood because nobody else cares about them. Others go down there because they like beating up queers. Most of them are queers themselves but don’t know it. Jimmy McDougal is a kid with nobody to take care of him. I told the faggot who picked him up what I’d do if he ever tried it again. I even gave him a preview. By the way, the reason Bledsoe saw me at the Pink Elephant is that’s where he hangs out, even though he pretends he’s got some other reason to be there. Tell me if I’m right or wrong on that.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Good try, son.”
He gave me a threatening stare. I looked him straight in the face and didn’t blink. His stare broke. He blotted the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I got to shower. A lady friend is coming over. I don’t want you here when she arrives.”
“Why’d you bolt the door?”
“We have break-ins. Now get out of here.”
“I think you’re scared, Mr. Krauser.”
“Scared?” His forehead was strung with tiny knots. He pulled up his jersey and pointed. “That’s where an SS lieutenant cut me open. I took his knife away from him and sliced off his nose. Then I put a bullet through his brain. That’s his helmet on my desk, his knife on the blotter. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with you, Broussard.”
It was classic Krauser: the self-laudatory rhetoric, followed by the attack on the sensibilities. This time I was ready for him. I stepped closer to him, holding my breath so I wouldn’t have to breathe his fog of testosterone and BO and halitosis. Involuntarily he stepped backward, as though unsure of his footing.
“You’re cruel because you wake up scared every day of your life, Mr. Krauser. I know this because I used to be like you. Now I’m not. So I owe you a debt. You’re the model for what none of us ever want to become.”
I unbolted the door and went outside into the heat. I thought he might follow me into the yard and take a swing at me. But he didn’t. I even waited by my car to see if he would come out. The sun went behind a cloud, and I got into my heap and drove away, no plan in mind.
Headed toward home, I saw a black-and-red Oldsmobile Rocket 88 convertible with a starched-white top. The driver was slowing as though looking for a house number. The Rocket 88 was state-of-the-art, hoodoo cool, too cool in my opinion for losers like Mr. Krauser and his friends. I slowed my car until I was abreast of the driver. She came to a complete stop and took off her sunglasses and shook out her hair, then removed a strand from her mouth. “What’s the haps?” she said.
“You’re the lady who was at Grady Harrelson’s house,” I said. “You’re Miss Cisco.”
“Who told you my name?”
“A Houston police detective.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Must have been a slow day at the precinct.”
“Are you looking for Mr. Krauser?”
“Maybe. Want to take a ride? I’ll let you drive. How about a cherry milkshake? I can drink them all day long.”
“I’m pretty tied up right now.”
“Bussing tables?”
“I work at a filling station.”
“You have a girlfriend? I bet you do, a handsome kid like you. Clean-cut and wholesome. A little reckless, maybe. Girls like that. I always did.”
“Why are you talking to me like this?”
“Because you remind me of someone I used to know. Hop in. Don’t be scared.” She was wearing a white blouse that exposed her shoulders, the kind Jane Russell wore in her films. There was a mole by her mouth, a purple shine to her hair.
“If you like nice guys, why do you hang around with douchebags like Grady Harrelson?”
“Boy, you have a potty mouth, don’t you? Get in. Live dangerously. I dare you.”
I felt foolish and stupid in front of her but didn’t know why. “I knew Benny Siegel.”
“You shot craps with him at the Flamingo?”
“My uncle is Cody Holland. He was a runaway and a vagabond when he was twelve years old. He became a bouncer at the Cotton Club and a bodyguard for Owney Madden and put himself through NYCC on a boxing scholarship. He’s business partners with a guy who was in Murder, Incorporated.”
She laughed. “You’re cute. I just wish you weren’t a fly in the ointment.”
“I’m a what?”
“You’re getting yourself into stormy weather, kiddo. You should stay in your part of town.”
“What kind of crap is that?”
“I knew a boy who looked and talked just like you. I’m not making fun of you. You could be his twin. Tell your sweetheart she’s a lucky girl. I wasn’t fooling about that cherry shake.”
“You pick up high school guys?”
“What’s a girl to do? Will you not look so serious? By the way, you’re right about Grady Harrelson and his friends. They’re shitheads. That’s my point. Why let them fuck up your life?”
“So why are you with them?”
“It beats getting your ass pinched in a cocktail lounge. Your parents did a good job. You’re a good kid. Keep me in mind if you want that cherry shake.”
She blew a kiss at me, then drove off to park in front of Krauser’s house. My head was a basket of snakes by the time I reached the Stop sign.
A HALF HOUR LATER I pulled into the deep shade of Valerie’s driveway rather than park on the street, where my heap might be recognized and vandalized by Loren’s friends. I twisted the bell on the door. No answer. I walked up the driveway, beneath the tall windows, and tried to see inside by jumping above the ledges. I saw Valerie’s face behind a dining room screen, a towel wrapped around her hair.
“Are you out of your mind?” she said. “Why are you looking through the windows?”
“I’ve been calling all morning. Where have you been?”
“I went to the grocery.”
“I have to talk with you. It’s urgent. Call it of global significance.”
“I thought we were going to Galveston,” she said.
“Once we get some things out of the way.”
“Stop shouting.”
She went to the back door and pushed it open. I brushed against her as I stepped into the house. I could smell a scent like strawberries on her skin. She was dressed in faded jeans and a short-sleeve blue denim shirt with cacti and yellow and red flowers sewn on it. She ha
d unwrapped the towel from her head. Her hair was damp and hung in ringlets on her cheeks and neck.
“Let’s go for a cherry milkshake,” I said.
“Cherry milkshake? We’re not going to Galveston?”
“I can’t think straight. I just talked with a woman who’s probably in the Mob. She was talking about cherry milkshakes, so I have milkshakes on my mind. She was talking about you. Or seemed to be. So was Saber. How long did you go out with Grady Harrelson?”
“What does that have to do with anything now?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “I went out with him for two months. Why?”
“It took you that long to discover what kind of guy he is?”
“Yes, it did. What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t believe it would take that long.”
“I don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth. Grady can be thoughtful and kind when it suits his purpose. But I saw another side to him the night you walked up on us at the drive-in.”
“Saw what side to him?”
Her mouth was a tight seam, as though she were deciding how long she would tolerate my behavior. “A Mexican girl got out of one of the cars and came over to say hello. She had a pachuco cross on the web of her left hand, like a street kid might wear. She got confused and didn’t know what to say and kept looking around. I felt sorry for her. She walked off, humiliated in front of Grady’s worthless friends. He swore to me he didn’t know who she was. So I went to the restroom. When I came back, he was talking to one of his friends, the guy who flipped a cigarette against your back. Grady didn’t see me. He said, ‘Get that bitch out of here. Tell her she’s going to be a grease spot if she bothers me again.’ ”
“You never had a clue about him before that?”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but if you’re trying to hurt me, you’re doing a good job of it.”
“I just wondered why you were with a guy like Grady. It doesn’t make sense. How could it? You’re everything that’s—”
“A woman in the Mob said something about me?”
“I saw her at Harrelson’s house. She was asking me if I had a girlfriend.”
“Why are you telling me all this crap? Why now? We were going fishing on the jetties.”
“I was trying to tell you you’re everything that’s good. That’s why I couldn’t understand how you could go out with Harrelson. I’m not the same since that night at the drive-in.”
“Don’t talk stupid. People don’t change,” she said. “They grow into what they’ve always been. They just stop pretending, that’s all.”
My head felt small and tight. My cheeks were burning. I couldn’t speak.
“Some people are the jealous kind,” she said. “They don’t love themselves, so they can’t love or trust anyone else. There’s no way to fix them. That’s why you’re really upsetting me.”
“I think that’s the worst thing anyone ever said to me.”
“I’m going upstairs now and lie down,” she said. “I don’t feel well. Or maybe I’m going to take a long walk by myself. You can let yourself out.”
I don’t know how long I stood in the middle of the living room while the house swelled with wind and her footsteps creaked across the ceiling. “Come down, Valerie!” I shouted.
I heard a door slam and thought perhaps she was having a tantrum, which meant her mood would pass and at some point we would make up. But doors began slamming all over the house, and I realized the wind was perpetrating an innocent deceit upon me, unlike the pernicious deception I had just perpetrated on myself. I had let suspicion winnow away my faith in the girl I loved, and as a consequence the gift presented to me had been taken away and probably would be given to someone else. Worse, I knew the fault was my own.
That’s about as close to a definition of hell as it gets, if there is such a place.
MY MOTHER WORKED in a bank and each afternoon came home earlier than my father. I was sitting at our redwood picnic table in the backyard with the cats and Major and my Gibson when I saw her through the back screen, a glass of sun tea in each hand. She came down the steps and sat across from me, her expression thoughtful rather than irritated or anxious. “Are you worried about something, Aaron?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Worry robs us of happiness and gives power to the forces of darkness.”
“You learned that in a log-house church in San Angelo. I’d leave it there.”
“I learned it in 1931, picking cotton from cain’t-see to cain’t-see. If you have enough to eat for the day, the next day will take care of itself.”
I looked at the simplicity and repose in her face. These moments came to my mother rarely, but when they did, the transformation in her manner was as though she had undergone an exorcism. Today it’s called bipolar. Back then, people didn’t have a name for it.
“I went to Mr. Krauser’s house,” I said. “He told me he had been protecting Jimmy McDougal from a homosexual who hangs out at the Pink Elephant. He said Saber hangs out at the Pink Elephant, too.”
“Mr. Krauser believes Saber is a homosexual?”
“That’s what I gathered.”
She ticked her nails on the side of her glass. “What’s your opinion?”
I was hesitant to confide in her. Her mercurial nature was similar to my father’s, but rather than rage, she would find pills in the cabinet or solitude and darkness in her bedroom. My mother’s prison was her mind, and she took its dark potential with her wherever she went.
“One time at Saber’s house when we were fifteen, he asked if we could get naked and wrestle.” I gazed at my hands, my ears ringing in the silence. I saw her pick up her glass and remove the napkin from it and slowly wad the napkin in her palm.
“So what did you all do?” she asked.
“I made a joke about it. Then he said he was just kidding.”
“And that’s the way to remember it. It’s nothing to worry about. What occurred then was not bad, and it’s not bad now. That’s the way you must think about it.”
“Really?” I said, looking her in the face.
“Mr. Krauser said he’s protecting Jimmy McDougal?” she said, the subject already behind her.
“Do you know something about Mr. Krauser I don’t?”
“You could put it that way. I know a liar and a bully and white trash when I see it. Is Mr. Krauser in the directory?”
OUR TELEPHONE WAS in the hallway. I sat in the living room and could hear her dialing Krauser’s number. The cats and Major had followed us inside. They perched on the furniture like an audience anticipating a stage presentation. My mother’s voice was clear, without emotion, her accent less like Texas than the boarding school she briefly attended in New Orleans through the generosity of a charitable family.
“This is Mrs. Broussard, Aaron’s mother, Mr. Krauser. I understand you think his friend Saber Bledsoe is of questionable character. . . . You saw him at the Pink Elephant? Can you please tell me what you were doing there? I see. Why would you have Jimmy McDougal in your automobile at the nightclub if in fact you did not want Jimmy to be in the company of the men who frequent the nightclub? Mr. Krauser, I’m not going to report you for your activities. Instead, if I hear you have lied about or mistreated either my son or any of his friends, I’m going to take a horse quirt to you in public, in front of witnesses. Then you can explain your shameful behavior to others, in particular the superintendent of schools. Thank you for your time.”
There are good days you never forget. There are also days when people can throw a cup full of kerosene into a smoldering, wood-fueled stove, not pausing to think about the evaporation process and its effect when they casually toss a match through the grate.
That evening I called Saber and told him I was sorry I had ever hurt his feelings or done anything bad to him. I also told him he was the best guy I ever knew, and that Valerie felt the same about him, although that was a lie. I also told him it was time to visit one of our favorite nightsp
ots, Cook’s Hoedown, the honky-tonk where Elvis said he loved to perform more than any other. I snapped my Gibson into its case and put it into the backseat of my heap and headed for Saber’s house. It was a bad choice.
Chapter
9
THE CLUB WAS on Capitol Street, and all the big Western bands and stars played there during the 1930s and ’40s, including Hank Williams. A disk jockey named Biff Collie used to let me in through the back door and allow me to sit in with a couple of the bands at the back of the stage. To this day I tell people I played with Floyd Tillman, who wrote “Slipping Around,” and Jimmy Heap, who recorded the most famous song in the history of country music, “The Wild Side of Life.” I don’t tell them I sat in the shadows, my acoustic Gibson lost among the drums and amplified instruments of the band.
It was a beer joint with a small dance floor and an earthy crowd. My parents wouldn’t have approved of my being there, and few kids from my section of Houston wanted to go there unless they had an agenda that had to do with the availability of uneducated blue-collar girls. But for me the coarse physicality of the culture, the hand-painted neckties, the slim-cut trousers, the two-toned needle-nose boots, the drooping Stetsons, the sequined snap-button shirts that sparkled like snow, all somehow created a meretricious artwork that was greater than itself, one that told the audience that fame and the glitter of stardom were only a callused handshake away. Even Saber seemed in awe of me when I stepped down from the back of the stage and returned my Gibson to its case. “Jesus Christ, I cain’t believe it’s you up there with those people,” he said.