Gradually, he became aware that there was something or someone in the Tahoe, right on the other side of the glass, looking at him. He cupped his hands around his streaming eyes and peered into the vehicle’s interior. A few inches away, a dog with a distinctive pit-bull face stared at him, his pointed ears pinned against the side of his head, his nose almost touching the window glass. He wasn’t barking, but his upper lip was curled back, revealing his pointed incisors. If Django tried, he knew he would hear the dog growling.
Coming through town, the bus had stopped for a red light next to a bank building that had a digital clock and thermometer on its sign. It said the temperature on that June day was eighty-six degrees. At the same time that the dog was getting ready to attack Django through the glass, he was panting, his long tongue coming out every now and then, hanging like a limp pink flag.
The rage that came over Django was so quick and powerful that when he thought about it later, he knew it was something out of the ordinary, as much about his grief and his frustration at school as about the dog trapped in a hot car. He charged around the front of the Tahoe and across the driveway, taking the steps up to the house two at a time. He shoved through the porch door with his shoulder and was talking, loudly, before he stepped into the kitchen.
“That dog’s gonna die out there. It’s eighty-six fucking degrees outside.”
“Django!”
“And the sun’s hammering down on it. A black car might as well be a fucking coffin! It’s probably over a hundred degrees inside.”
He stopped.
Aunt Robin and a man were at the kitchen table, both staring at him. She had stopped in the act of tearing apart a form and giving him a copy.
“Watch your language, Django!”
“Is that your car?”
The man talking to his aunt stood up. He was big and broad shouldered and wore his hair in a thick braid down his back. He looked like a cross between a Sioux warrior and an old-time saint, but Django was too angry to be intimidated.
“It’s against the law to leave a dog in a car like that.”
Red faced, his aunt began apologizing to the man.
Bust an artery. I don’t care.
Caro and Jacky were dead, and next to that fact, there were no consequences that mattered to Django.
“You can’t leave a dog in a closed car, a black car. In hot weather. He’s dying in there.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do, kid.” The man smiled when he said it, but behind that smile Django saw straight into his heart, and what he saw made him take a breath and then a second one. The boys at Arroyo Elementary didn’t like Django, and that was okay. Their right. But this man hated him. “Your aunt and me are finished here. I’m heading home.” He smiled at Robin, a different kind of smile. Django called it a man-woman smile. “It’s my girlfriend’s dog. He got the last of his shots today.”
“Django, this is Willis Brock. I told you he’s going to help Grannie after her surgery.”
Django had a whole-body, bad feeling about Willis Brock.
“He works at Shady Hills sometimes,” she said. “That’s how we know each other.”
It was like she was pretending to be a hostess. But Django read her anxiety as clearly as he did Willis’s hostility. She was worried that he would take offense and cancel whatever contract they had made.
“Dogs die in cars closed up like that,” Django said again.
“I’ll remember that,” Willis said.
A dog would freeze solid closed in a car with that voice.
Django watched his aunt walk Willis out to the car and knew from the way she shook her head and shrugged that she was apologizing. Probably explaining that he was a poor little orphan boy and would Willis cut him some slack. Willis opened the car door, and the pit bull jumped out and began to run around in circles.
After the Michael Vick scandal, Django had gone online and read all about the pit bulls that had been rescued. Most of those dogs had been rehabilitated and gone to live with families that understood their special needs. Willis Brock and his girlfriend probably did not know that pit bulls were high-strung and needed consistency and firm, loving control. To Django it was obvious that Willis Brock might know how to be firm but he would be clueless about love. Django almost started crying again, he so much wanted to rescue that dog for himself.
His aunt came back into the kitchen with steam coming out of her ears, and for the next ten minutes she gave him a scolding that burned him up one side and then the other. Django tuned her out until she was finished.
“I don’t like him,” he said. “I don’t think he should take care of Grannie.”
“You don’t even know him! He’s very popular with the old people at Shady Hills.”
“I bet he steals from them.”
“Django! You have no reason to say that.”
It was no good telling her that he was an empath. She probably didn’t know what the word meant. “There’s something creepy about him. And he’s mean.”
“Django, the dog was closed in the car for twenty minutes. Less than half an hour.”
“It was more than one hundred degrees inside.”
“You don’t know that.” She leaned back against the sink and folded her arms over her chest. She stared at her sandals for a moment. “Well, you’re right. The windows should have been open. But that’s no excuse for insolence…” She stared at her shoes for so long that Django wondered if he could leave and go upstairs.
She looked up. “Is this the way you were… before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Were you always a knight on a white horse?”
She was being kind. It would be better if she ignored him. He didn’t want to care about her.
“If you want a dog, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. They’re dirty and they require a lot of care, and I just don’t have the time for that.”
Her voice reminded him of a girl at Beverly Country Day who walked around on tiptoes all the time and never spoke above a whisper.
“Willis has been working at Shady Hills for six months and he’s just what Grannie needs.”
“If that dog died, he wouldn’t care.”
“That’s an awful accusation.”
“But I’m right. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. Okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. You were rude to him and he was a guest. You can’t do that, Django. There are rules in this house.”
As if there had been no rules in the house in Beverly Hills. There had been plenty, and sometimes Django broke them; but mostly he didn’t because they made sense. Letting a dog die in a car made no sense at all.
She sighed again and opened the refrigerator. “I don’t want to hear any more about this.” She started taking things out—cheese and lettuce and salad dressing. “Do you like Caesar salad?”
He did, but probably not her version.
She shook a couple of aspirin out of a bottle and swallowed them down with water from the tap, cupped in her palm. “How was school?”
He popped the top of a soda can. “Great.”
“Well, that’s good.” Her smile made him feel guilty. “I knew you’d get along.”
He left the kitchen and went up to his room, closed the door, and turned on his iPad. He pressed the GPS app and entered the address he had read off Willis Brock’s contract. It was on Red Rock Road, out in the country but not far away. First chance he got he was going to ride his bike over there to check on that dog, and if he didn’t like what he found, he was going to kidnap him.
As she made dinner, Robin thought about the offer made her that morning in the lawyers’ office. Mr. Conway was delighted when he heard Django was living with her.
“Under the circumstances, a change of scene would do you both good.”
Though Robin had promised to think about it, she didn’t really intend to do so. But that afternoon as she tried to settle into her work at Shady Hills, she had found herself recalculating
the same set of numbers two and three times. In the end she left work early and stopped in at a coffeehouse just off the highway. She ordered an iced mango tea and took it back to the car, where she sat, staring into the parking lot.
Mr. Conway had spent twenty minutes singing the praises of Tampa, Florida. The beaches, the weather, the cultural life. He even told her that his wife’s best friend from college lived there, someone named Pansy, who would make sure Robin had a wonderful time. He even tried to make her believe she could keep working for Shady Hills and her other clients, communicating by cell phone and e-mail. She had been amused by the way he amassed his arguments until what he said at the end. That riled her.
“This is an opportunity for you, Robin. You’re too young and smart to get stuck.”
What was it about people fond of travel that gave them such an attitude of superiority? Her mother was just as bad.
It had taken all Robin’s self-control to get out of the office without giving Mr. Conway a piece of her mind. For one thing, she wasn’t young; she was almost forty-three. For another, what he called stuck was to her mind a comfortable and productive life. She had a successful business, a nice enough house with a reasonable mortgage, a smart car, and a small circle of friends who cared for each other. Every fall she flew to Hawaii for a week. If, as Conway had said, she was in a rut, it was one she liked.
She wondered if she might have to quit her job with Conway, Carroll, and Hyde just to end the argument once and for all.
But Mr. Conway had raised three sons, and Robin thought that when it came to Django, he might know what he was talking about. She wondered what he would think of the scene earlier with Willis Brock. Django had embarrassed Robin, but at the same time she was proud of him for having the nerve to confront Willis, who was, she thought, a rather intimidating man. Caro had been a fighter too. It was one of many things Robin had admired about her.
Maybe their father had also liked this in his younger daughter. Robin wondered for the first time if, in comparison, she might have seemed dull to him. That could explain why, after he and their mother separated, he had stayed in contact with Caro but ignored Robin completely. Nola said he had abandoned Robin, but that was such a loaded word and implied intentionality. She didn’t like to use it. Maybe he just found her so uninteresting compared to Caro that he forgot about her.
She was positive that Django thought she was as dull as dishwater. He would hate being stuck with her in Arroyo, unhappy and bored; adding that to adolescence seemed like a blueprint for trouble, and she didn’t need Mr. Conway to tell her that. He would be better off with Huck, regardless of his unorthodox lifestyle. They would travel together to places a lot more exciting than Florida and Hawaii, and Django would meet the sort of vital young men and women who would interest him. There would be glamour and adventure and the stimulation a bright boy needed to keep him out of trouble. She resolved to call Huck Jones and use Mr. Conway’s persuasive technique, keep him on the phone until he got tired of saying no and agreed to take his brother.
Chapter 8
Despite his run-in with Django, Willis was in good spirits when he got home after his interview with Robin Howard. He kept Madora company in the kitchen as she made dinner and did not mention Linda even once. At such times Madora could pretend that the girl in the trailer did not exist. She and Willis were an ordinary couple, living a commonplace life like the one she remembered in the years before her father walked into the desert.
After his death she had turned to her mother for comfort, but Rachel had nothing to give and Madora was left on her own. The only person who ever tried to explain the suicide was a cousin who came to the funeral and said that Wayne had been a sad sack on and off, all his life. Sad sack. Madora hated her cousin for dismissing her father’s pain that way. Rachel never talked about him or the suicide at all. And Madora hated her for that. When she met Willis it seemed like she hated almost everyone, most of all herself.
When she told Willis about her father, he attended to every word. Her heart swelled with his obvious concern. He urged the whole story out of her without saying much, asking a question every now and then. Afterwards, he talked about her father as if he knew him well, and he explained his death in a way that made sense.
“Men like your dad and me, it’s in our nature to love and trust one special woman. You might say, we give away our hearts. And if we get let down, if we get disappointed—”
“I’ll never let you down,” Madora swore.
She remembered how he held her face between his hands and looked at her with such tender sadness that she felt she might break at any moment. “I hope you mean that, little girl. I pray to God you mean that.”
Something about Willis had roused Madora’s mother from her stupor of grief. When Rachel turned off the television and started to pay attention, she became aware of Madora’s short shorts and bikini tops, the glitter on her toes, and earrings that dangled almost to her shoulders, her failing grades and the complaint calls from teachers. Madora said “fuck you” when her mother said she could not see him anymore. “I’ll do what I want.” Day and night they fought until Willis told Madora to stop. “Just pretend to go along with her. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Several nights a week Madora said she was going to Kay-Kay’s house to study, and her mother never doubted her. Or maybe she knew the truth all along, but for her, too, it was easier to pretend.
And without her mother doing anything at all, Madora had begun to change. Willis admired intelligence and self-discipline and insisted that she go to school and do her homework. He told her not to dress trampy, and if she wore too much makeup he scrubbed it off her face himself. He would never touch a girl who used drugs and drank too much, so she cleaned up her life in that way too. Though they made out in the backseat of his SUV until they were both hot and breathless, Willis never touched her intimately, had not even slipped his hand under her T-shirt, which she so much wanted him to. She believed that he held back out of respect, thinking she was a virgin. It was the kind of honorable behavior she expected from him.
On a hot night smelling of carne asada and green water, they took a blanket to the river. In the semidarkness she whispered to him about the two boys she’d had sex with the summer before.
“We only did it a couple of times,” she explained, surprised to feel shy when she said it. One of the boys had brought a bottle of tequila and she’d been lying on her back on the blanket between them when one put his hand on her leg and the other touched her breast. She couldn’t remember now if she had liked either one of them very much. Or if she had experienced any real pleasure, traded off between two friends on a vacation. In the middle of her story she cried, humiliated. Willis held her close and said that he forgave her.
“It’s hard to be a woman,” he said. No one had ever called her a woman before, and because he did, she believed he understood her better than anyone ever had before. “You’re like a little soft creature in a world full of predators.”
That night at the river she had hoped Willis would take her in his arms and do what those two boys had done except with the care and tenderness with which he did everything. She kissed him and ran her tongue along the inside of his lips, pressed her hips and breasts against him. He pushed her away.
“I know what you want, little girl, but I got to tell you, it’s not going to happen. Not here on this crap-ass river; that’s for sure.”
“I thought you liked me.”
“I love you, Madora. You’ve heard me say it, and I think you know I don’t lie.”
“I could go on the pill.”
“Madora, I want you to listen real carefully. Then you tell me if I’m right or not, okay?” He sat cross-legged on the blanket facing her, holding her hands and looking right into her eyes. It was almost dark at the river, but the light of the nearby bonfire flickered across the planes of his perfectly symmetrical face.
“I’m not going to make love to you until you’re eighteen. One reason is, it’
s against the law and I don’t want to get thrown in the brig. That’d screw me with the Corps and I’d never be able to go to medical school.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
He laughed and his warm breath stirred the air between them.
“The second reason we won’t do it is even more important. The kind of man I am, I want you to be a virgin for me.”
“But how can I—? I thought you said it didn’t matter.”
“Just listen to me, Madora. If you can stay pure for me until you’re eighteen, it’ll be the same as if you’ve been made a virgin all over again. It’ll prove that first time was an innocent mistake. You’ll be purified and the nasty things those boys did to you, they won’t matter. All the parts of you they touched will have disappeared and been replaced with new cells. You know about cells?”
“What if you get shipped out? You might go to Iraq or that other place where they hate women.”
He tilted her chin with his index finger. “And if that happens, could you be faithful to me?” He pressed the tip of his finger to her lips. “This is all up to you, Madora. If you don’t control yourself, if you tempt me, I’ll likely give in, just get carried away. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. That’s the power a woman has. So I don’t want you to say anything right off. Take a minute to think about it, Madora, because this means something. This minute, right now, is the most important moment of your life. Are you mine forever? Can I trust you, Madora? Think hard before you answer.”
She didn’t want to think, nor was it necessary.
“You can trust me. Forever.”
Madora’s mother announced that she and Peter Brooks, the man she had been dating, were getting married. It was more than two years since the suicide, and this was a new start for her.
“You too, Madora.”
Peter Brooks lived in Sacramento and they would be moving there.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Who doesn’t want to get out of Yuma? Sacramento’s a beautiful city. It’s green there and Lake Tahoe’s only four hours away and Peter’s got a nice little house. No more stinky-dinky apartments, Madora.”
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