“What’s up, little brother?”
Billy Rowntree, looking all inflamed in his orange Steve Nash jersey and orange headband, said, “Sir.”
“Nah, man. Just Danny.”
“Sir, I have a question, sir.”
It didn’t fit, that kind of language. It came from a warped place, Tervo would explain. It came from a place where damaged kids learned that authority was arbitrary and would torture and starve them and demand blow jobs in broom closets.
“Well, maybe I have an answer,” Tervo had replied, expecting it would be something like sure, I’ll take a half ounce.
His brow low, his eyes on Tervo’s chest, Billy Rowntree said: “Sir, are you selling water, sir?”
Startled, Tervo laughed. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, sir.”
“Wow. Yes, I’m selling water.”
“How much, sir?”
“Right on, man.” Tervo had clapped the kid on his skinny tattooed shoulder. “Wow. Stevie Nash, making a play.”
After that, seriously, Esofea would have found it cute how Billy Rowntree had directed the tanker through the city with the surly confusion of someone who had never driven a car before and thought that every one who did always knew where they were going. Did she remember the two of them, back in high school, jacking cars during the football games and discovering they had no idea how to get anywhere?
“Sir, sorry. Left.”
“Okay, Billy.”
“Not here. Fuck. Sorry, sir. Back there.”
“Let me turn this baby around. And Billy, no more ‘sir.’ Okay? I don’t like getting lumped in with those people. Just talk to me like a friend.”
Whereupon, Tervo would tell Esofea, over the next thirty minutes or so, he had gone from sir to bitch. Turns out the kid had only two modes, he would tell her. One mode was for camp “counselors,” the sirs who actually killed kids and wrote reports up to make it look otherwise. The other mode—she would dig Tervo’s analysis here—was inside Billy’s head, his fantasy talk-back mode to all the teenage black criminals from L.A. County who outnumbered him a hundred to one, who stole his spoon and urinated on his pillow and squirted ketchup on his Steve Nash jersey.
Tervo had looked across the tanker’s bench seat and seen the long, brown stain on the kid’s orange jersey, under the lettering on the front. The blacks. The kid focused on them. The ones who called him bitch. Letting it out now, using the word on Tervo. See, girl? How understanding I am?
What Tervo did eventually was turn the tanker around and return to the garden. There, they chilled for twenty minutes waiting for the Number 72 bus, then followed that roaring, spewing beast through the shimmering Phoenix heat. Tervo would share with Esofea the facts ascertained during that time:
Billy Rowntree’s ankle bracelet allowed him to travel via that 72 bus from his stepdad’s in north Phoenix to the botanical garden.
He always fell asleep, so he didn’t know the way.
He was at the Boys Ranch due to an accident caused by a lie told by his mother.
Sinbad was Billy Rowntree’s second black stepdad. The first was Rowntree, who fucked with the kid, day and night.
Sinbad and his mother weren’t together because his mother went to Miami. She was supposed to come back to Arizona and pick Rowntree up when he got out, but she was having trouble with her transportation.
Steve Nash had won two MVP’s and been in the All-Star Game seven times.
His mother sent him the jersey and headband, finally, after he had already done what he did to get in trouble.
That ketchup stain had cost some black bitch a cracked skull and a busted vertebrae, and Rowntree had spent six months in isolation for throwing a chair.
No, that Takahashi bitch was wrong. Sinbad was not a dealer. He was a grower. That’s why the water.
Tervo, celebrating silently, had burped the tanker through a maze of closed streets and empty parking lots until they reached a chuck-holed gravel expanse littered with car parts and stripped-out machinery.
Eyes in the back of my head, baby, as always.
“Stop.”
Rowntree pointed to a long, flat pole barn. The sign leaning against it said the place was brownsville lift parts. A sun-bleached basketball lay among the pet bottles and glass shards, beneath a bent hoop screwed to the barn. Rowntree had gone inside and shortly returned to the tanker. Ramon, the Mexican, had told him Sinbad wasn’t in yet.
So they hooped a little, waiting, the sun not yet too high or too hot. The kid played dirty. He carried the ball and took extra steps on every move. He elbowed Tervo and hacked his arms and hoisted goofy-looking long shots from waist-level. On the rare occasion when he made one, he circled his index fingers and thumbs and taunted Tervo with “threes.”
Danny Tervo, all Upper Peninsula as a senior, was the prototypical hippie skywalker, the loose and shaggy white kid with enough hang time to light a match against the backboard and a bowl on the way down. He took it easy on little Billy Rowntree—only one time, baby, did I turn it on and snuff the kid, blow past him and jam it. And he said, “Foul.”
“Bullshit.”
“Foul, bitch motherfucker.”
Billy Rowntree wasn’t kidding, and things had turned unpleasant at this point. Tervo should have walked. He didn’t need trouble. He had two orders already. He should have driven away. But you know me, baby, always giving people a chance. Always being fair.
“Okay, cool, man. I fouled you.”
Rowntree had picked up the ball. He had smacked it between his palms. He had gone into a larval hunch, then straightened out and made a run at the hoop. No way, Tervo thought.
On his last step, Billy Rowntree strode wide and hard. He went up, and up, twisting and jackknifing his body—straining, climbing the air—and as he peaked he cocked the ball over his head—tongue out like Jordan—and slammed it well short against the bottom of the rim.
“Fuck!” he raged as he landed. He kicked the basketball. “No, man. That was awesome. You almost had it.”
“Fuck!”
“No, man. You were up there. Half inch. You were so close.”
Rowntree trembled. His zits turned white inside the livid crimson of his brow and cheeks. Then I made a big mistake, baby. Tervo had looked down at the kid’s ankle bracelet.
“All you need is that half inch. Seriously, my brother, nobody ever showed you how to take one of those bad boys off?”
Tervo pushed the tanker north around Des Moines, picking up Interstate 80, aiming his headlights into a moth-speckled dusky gloom toward Iowa City. He had crossed the entire Oglala Aquifer now. He had left behind the largest underground freshwater resource in North America, which was dropping by five percent a year. That was warp speed, unless you were an insect or a goldfish and planned to be dead soon anyway.
That was little Billy Rowntree’s fate, Tervo found himself thinking, ignoring the phone again.
Dead soon.
Free of his bracelet.
A moth against a windshield, thinking it could knock a truck off the road.
But the kid would take a few people down with him. Like Sinbad, who had arrived in a gold Escalade and, clearly belligerent, had parked right under the hoop. Tervo and Rowntree had followed the man’s waddle into his warehouse “office.”
Things got out of hand in there.
Sinbad had dropped breathless into a wheeled leather desk chair, dug his heels in, and come after Rowntree first.
Baby, Tervo would say, I’m sorry, but to understand you need to hear the hurtful terminology involved: little bitch, little Nash bitch, hippie white-trash motherfucker—that was me—little white-hope-trash Nash bitch liability like you, little bitch motherfucker—
“Hold on,” Tervo had interrupted. “Yo.”
Sinbad was startled. He spun the chair.
“Say what?”
“I said hold on,” Tervo repeated. He had put a hand up sharply. Just an open hand, but Danny Tervo could give a look like C
harlie Manson on some real different tofu. “I don’t care for your wording,” he told Rowntree’s stepdad.
This fat Sinbad dude just gaped at him, wallowing a sea of stupefaction while Tervo opened a door behind Rowntree and looked into the grow room. An older Mexican looked back, a dripping hose in his hand. Behind the Mexican was about five grand in equipment, Tervo figured, and about twenty grand in weed. Small time. Walk now, he told himself, closing the door.
But you know me, baby. Peacemaker. Do-gooder. Citizen.
He shut the door. Sinbad meantime had pointed a piece at him, some kind of trendy foreign-made assault weapon, to which Tervo said, “The only tool you need is kindness, my brother.”
Then he made his sales pitch. This young man beside him, who was concerned for various welfares, but especially for the welfare of Sinbad himself, had brought Tervo here with the gift of unlimited, off-the-grid, premium grade water, at a reasonable price.
Fat Sinbad, of course, had defiantly motherfucked this and that and waved the nasty weapon, but Tervo had persisted.
The grow house was using city water, was it not? Large, illegal quantities, was it not?
It was only a matter of time, Tervo had pointed out, before City of Phoenix officials began tracking down restriction violators and making visits. At that point the various welfares went in the following directions: the Mexican gentlemen to a holding facility and then back to Mexico, Billy Rowntree straight back to confinement on parole violations, and Sinbad the Sailor on a twenty-year voyage into the seas of mandatory sentencing, Arizona-style.
“Not to mention the crop loss,” Tervo concluded. “Very sad, given that I saw what looked like Burmese Kush.” Here he had been lying. The stuff had looked pale and undernourished. “Real tragedy all around.”
“I can’t afford to pay for no water,” Sinbad had snarled.
“You can’t afford not to, my brother.”
“I ain’t got it. Man in Chicago owes me.”
“Here’s my number.” Tervo handed the man a picture postcard of Lake Superior, shot from the Luce County shoreline, the beach near Deer Park. “That’s your water,” he said. “My number’s on the back. When your man in Chicago comes through with your money, you call me.”
Tervo had moved toward the outside door. “You gentlemen have a nice day.”
Iowa, the endless corn-tundra, forced a leftover half-joint upon him. How to put it, the little problem that came next? How to narrate his response? But wait: Esofea had said something? Enough to worry Belcher? And this was linked, apparently, to the fabulous gift of Heimo Kock’s murder?
For a guy who could normally put pieces together in a hurry, Tervo was stumped. But maybe there was an angle here.
He powered up his laptop and set it on the dash. Around midnight, coming through Dubuque, he scored some solid unprotected wireless.
He pulled over and Googled Heimo Kock. Both the Marquette Miner and the Detroit Times had online pieces. The Green Bay Gazette, too. Typical carbon copy stories—anybody’s guess as to which fifty percent of the “facts” were accurate. Every story had the same quote from Luce County’s new dyke deputy, who said she was “unable to comment further at this time.”
Typical media junk. But the “fact” that interested Tervo was this one: the suspect was apprehended in a citizen’s arrest by a county employee, who shot the suspect in what authorities are saying was self-defense. The suspect was alive, but word on his condition was unavailable.
County employee?
Esofea?
Shot the suspect? Could that be it?
Shit.
Well, no. Perfect. If she had her own little problem.
So, what the hell, he’d pick up a bottle of Pino Grigio at the all-nighter in Manistique, drop in on the girl before breakfast if he hustled. She’d be excited to see him. She always did get worked up for Danny Tervo, one way or another.
Tervo’s problem being that he had stopped at the warehouse door when Billy Rowntree spat out, “Bitch.”
He should have kept moving. But Tervo had looked at Rowntree. Rowntree had glared at Sinbad.
“You got that money up your ass right now,” the kid said.
“Motherfucker—” began Sinbad.
“Fat-ass bitch,” interrupted Rowntree.
Tervo put his hand up again. “Gentlemen—”
Rowntree kept his mouth going, clearing a backlog of thoughts: “You keep talking about this dude Quality in Chicago owes you money so you can’t do this, can’t do that, you can’t send my momma money for transportation, you can’t get water to save your own fat ass. What about Ramon? What about me? Dude in Chicago owes you money, get the money, fat-ass bitch. Quit making excuses.”
Billy Rowntree gasped for air at the end of this. But Tervo had noticed that the kid’s mouth, off on its own, had curled into a grin.
He was letting something go, baby. He was unhooking the wagon.
Tervo would report to Esofea his feeling that next, when Sinbad set that automatic weapon down on his desk, the man had made the fatal mistake of deciding to mess up Billy Rowntree later, as soon as Tervo walked out the door. That was the scene on Tervo’s inner eye—that was the reason, he would tell her, that he had continued to linger in the office.
I was concerned about Billy Rowntree. At that point I was proud of the kid. He was cracking the cocoon, baby. The little grub was growing wings.
Then Sinbad said, “Your momma ain’t coming, boy. It ain’t about transportation. You telling me she can’t find some nigger to fuck for bus money? You stuck in my house, Billy Nash.”
Suddenly it was too late, baby.
Rowntree sprang past Tervo with that crude basketball quickness. With one forearm he struck Sinbad on the shoulder and sent the chair into a spin. With the other hand he grabbed the weapon. Exactly one second later, as Sinbad spun around, Rowntree scattered bullets into the fat man’s belly and chest.
Tervo would have a hard time describing himself from this point on. He had no memory of what he said or did. He was a spectator in the scene, a sputtering camera.
He remembered the Mexican rushing out of the grow house, seeing Sinbad gripping himself, seeing Rowntree turn toward him with the weapon, fleeing back in among the dope plants.
He remembered Sinbad falling face-first off the chair, landing with a splat on the concrete floor, both shoes flopping off.
Now Tervo did remember one thing from himself. He had said,
“Not cool. Not cool, Billy. Not cool at all.”
He remembered Billy Rowntree pulling a fat wallet from the dying man’s pocket, Billy Rowntree turning to Tervo with a handful of bills, saying how much?
“Not cool, Billy.”
“Fuck cool, bitch. How much for the water?”
And Tervo said … Tervo should have said … Tervo would say, when he told the story to Esofea, How much? I’ll tell you how much, Billy. Five dollars a gallon, at the 7-Eleven. Because I don’t do business with killers.
But he had taken the money, hadn’t he?
Yes.
Shit.
He hadn’t meant to. See, I don’t operate outside what I’m about, baby. But there it was, two grand cash, between Rhode Island and Tennessee in his atlas.
So now what?
12
Later, inside of a memory, Dog recognized the voice.
The librarian, the one who shot him, had been talking to the big deputy with the smell, the one who in some distant time zone had caught Dog’s wrists and steered him back to the bed. After that he had returned to a sleep the librarian had infiltrated, first her voice outside, the one he now recognized, and then the blurry hindsight of her black clodhoppers and sloppy stockings appearing through his face-hole beneath the bed.
Snap-snap!
She had snapped her fingers right beneath his face.
Her hand opened. Written in pen on her palm was I CAN GET YOU OUT. She held it. Then she closed her fist and pointed with her thumb out at the head of the bed.
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The clodhoppers and stockings reappeared there, against the cream-colored melamine cabinets that now held Dog’s woozy gaze. A flowered shoulder bag hit the floor. Just beneath the line of his eyebrows Dog had caught a glimpse of the rest of her as she popped in and out of a squat. In that motion she shoved a second bag, worn-out canvas, into one of the cabinets and closed the cabinet door without a sound.
Then her fingers again: Snap-snap!
Her other palm appeared: AM, 6 BELLS, GO LEFT ON VIBRATE. Then she was calling out toward the hallway. “You’re right. He is alive. Oh, Timmy. You saved me.”
Her breath arrived hot against his ear. “In the morning—can you hear me?”
Dog said, “Nnn.” She withdrew. He felt her lift the back of his gown.
“Oh, shit,” she said aloud. “But listen, I’ve heard it’s not that bad. Just don’t get infected. Ok?”
Then her palm appeared again beneath his face: AM, 6 BELLS, GO LEFT ON VIBRATE.
Dog was dosed enough to arch his face up out of its hole and see the pleats of her skirt as she darted from the room.
Dog turned his face the other way. The window was luminously pink. So this was dusk again. This was the hour to quit fishing, mix a vodka-Tang, put his brain in the pickle jar for the night. He might sit up another hour or two, empty-headed, smoking Swisher Sweets. He might watch the bats and the stars. He might sleep in his lawn chair until frost pinched his nose—then jerk awake, wondering: Couldn’t I have heard something? Splashing? A struggle? Didn’t I? How long have I been out here?
Now, Dog took a series of small actions, testing himself. All he needed was Dolf Cook’s fly reel—needed to find it in the kindling box where he had dropped it, possess it before Cook did, match it with the line around Kock’s neck, and he was on his way.
Esofea had fed Mr. Nilsson. She had cleaned her inky palms and scrubbed her freckles off with Palmolive. She had poured a jelly glass full of red wine, drank it down at the kitchen counter, then poured another and took it upstairs.
In her bedroom she smoked a leftover half-joint. She removed her contact lenses. Then she stripped off Pippi and slipped into the bath, thinking about a man who had lost a little boy and still knew McElligot’s Pool by heart—who would no doubt stand at the edge of that pool for eternity.
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