Friendswood

by Rene Steinke

  “Willa, I’m here. I want you to know that. I’m just here.”

  Willa glanced at the door. It wouldn’t even matter if she ran.

  “Oh, honey,” said Ms. Ryan. “You’re really in a state, aren’t you?” She clapped her hands on the desk. “Alright, then, you know what? I think why don’t you just go on home now? We’ve called your mom.”

  She couldn’t understand why she’d had to see that thing, why it had thrown back those words. “Why did you call her?”

  “Willa,” Ms. Ryan said, shaking her head. “Mothers need to know.”

  HAL

  HAL DROVE HOME down the back road, all that land still undeveloped outside of town, where the trees and grass were bright against the black asphalt, and if you had to pull over, it might be twenty or thirty minutes before you saw another car with someone in it liable to help you. He watched the yellow lines, the flat horizon of the road. The run-down Taft house Avery handed off to him yesterday would be difficult to sell, but maybe he could find a young person who’d like the old-timeyness of the place and want to fix it up, or someone with a vision for a tanning-bed business or lawyers’ offices. Maybe he wouldn’t get the asking price, but he couldn’t think that way now. He needed to think that odder things had happened and there were gifts of the spirit beyond his imagining.

  Just over the ridge, a flock of birds stirred and flew up in the air in a flapping tent across the sky. He drove under it, thinking his chances with Lee Knowles were even better than with the sale—he was good with people, knew how to listen and maintain eye contact, knew how to guess what someone was feeling by the way her mouth moved or by the way she touched her neck. All that time he’d spent at the cash register of his dad’s hardware store had taught him to read faces. And who knew? Maybe he would get her saved too, in the end.

  Hal turned into town, prosperity shining down in the sun, and drove home to his ranch house on Edgewood—modest, with clean lines and a whole acre and a half of land next to it, a four-car garage big enough for both his SUV and Cully’s truck. As he walked up the brick path, he was irritated by the green hose loose in the yard—though it just meant Darlene had done some gardening—and he went inside. He was thirsty and tired, warding off a headache.

  Darlene was standing in the kitchen, chopping carrots.

  “Hi.” He kissed her on the cheek from the back. “A good day. Even if I wasted the whole time on a couple of undeciders.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame.”

  She’d bought ten orange pillows for the living room, and among her celebrity gossip magazines, they lay on the couches and chairs like giant pieces of fruit.

  “I don’t know why these fools can’t tell when their wife is doing a number on them.”

  She patted his arm. “Can you?”

  She was flirting, but he was too tired to flirt back. She hugged him, but he kept his body stiff. He didn’t know yet what he wanted from her, but he didn’t want mothering.

  He opened the fridge and saw a large piece of meat waiting in a pot. He grabbed a bottle of Coke. “I’m going out to the pasture.”

  “Alright,” she said as if to cheer him on. Darlene said it didn’t do any good to worry about what you couldn’t control. It was as silly as wringing your hands over the weather.

  The pasture was left over from the previous homeowner, who’d kept cows. The barn was empty now, and so was the acre of land, fenced in with barbed wire.

  He set up a can with a curlicue of flowers on the label, on top of a post. Then he went into the barn and unlocked his gun from the cabinet where he kept it (Darlene wouldn’t allow a gun in the house), and he stepped back away from the can about forty feet.

  It was just a handgun, but it was heavy and old-fashioned, from the 1940s, he’d been told, and he liked the challenge of maneuvering it.

  He cocked the gun; aimed at the frilly yellow, red, and blue design; and shot just to the right of the can, missed it.

  His form wasn’t good after a day of “Look at this” and “Can you see yourself living here?” Avery Taft’s offer was an opportunity from God, and he didn’t want to blow it; he needed to shoot the negative doodads out of his backyard. The devil was getting too damn close. He aimed again and shot the can off the fence post. Satisfied, he took a pull of Coke and trudged back to find the can, and put it back on its mark.

  He’d never used a gun in any real situation, never used it to protect himself, and hated hunting, the boredom of long hours waiting around for something in the trees to move. But now that he didn’t drink, shooting the gun was one thing that relaxed him. Pulling the trigger so the force backed up into his forearm, as if it were part of the gun too, the clean explosive feeling of hitting the mark, the smell of it.

  He shot again, and the can had two holes, bent in on one side. When he was really on his game, he could shoot through the thin side of a playing card—he had a split jack of hearts and a split ace of spades, burn marks laced on their broken edges. He saved them in a little box up in his bedroom, along with his favorite wedding photo.

  He felt hungry, but it would be at least an hour before they ate. He was about to go inside for some corn chips when a familiar dented blue truck pulled up on the street in front of the house. It belonged to Cully’s friend, Trace, and Hal started walking toward the barbed-wire fence to call out that Cully wasn’t there, he was still at practice, when he saw Cully pop out on the passenger side and the blue truck speed away. What was he doing here so early? Cully hobbled into the yard, his mouth slack, head hung down, his gait offbeat and off-balance in that pitiful way that Hal recognized in his bones.

  “Hey!” he said, rushing to the fence.

  Cully looked up at him, sheepish, his eyes lidded.

  “I thought you had practice.”

  “Coach sent me home.” Hal thought that he could smell it even from six feet—bourbon. Probably Jim Beam.

  “He did, huh? Why’s that? Where’s your truck?”

  Cully didn’t answer and passed out of Hal’s sight as he walked toward the front door.

  Hal heard the door slam. He walked back to the barn, his head pounding, the gun heavy against his fingers. He’d promised himself not to handle the gun except when even tempered. Birds flapped out of the tree overhead, cawing in a way that sounded maniacal. Inside the barn, dim except for one clean slab of light in the corner where he stood, he unlocked the cabinet, took out the case, methodically put the gun back into the blue velvet indentations. He saw again his boy’s sagging, clowning face, and felt his own blood roiling. He snapped the cover shut, placed the case on the shelf, and locked the cabinet.

  He barged inside the back screen door and walked into the kitchen, where Darlene was now brushing the meat with a slick sauce. “Cully’s home early, says he doesn’t feel well,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” said Hal. “He’s dead drunk—can’t you tell?”

  She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide. “No. Is he?” She stopped brushing the meat. “You going to go talk to him?”

  “Damn right.”

  He set his Coke on the counter. “Goddamn teenagers.”

  He was too angry to say anything else to her—how could she not notice? He watched her open the oven door, slide in the pan, crash the oven door shut again, his whole body filling with furious heat.

  “Don’t be too hard on him, Hal. And he’s too old for the belt.”

  “Hell if he is.”

  “Hal!”

  When Hal had fallen off track last year, Cully had been his lifeline back to the family. Even when he couldn’t bear to look at Darlene, he and Cully went out for tacos in Pasadena, drove to Houston to look at the new construction. His son seemed to understand even without words why Hal had felt pushed into a corner, and he knew how to bring Hal out of his funk. But in the summer, Cully had mysteriously distanced himself, left the house most afternoons and didn’t
come back until late, kept his conversation to one-word answers to questions, and the space between them turned barren. Hal felt his words float up in the air like moisture in clouds, dissolving even as they hung around.

  He knew part of this was just boy stuff. How many bold-faced lies had he told his own dad so he could go out drinking beer at the Ice Haus pool hall? How many close calls? There was the time he’d crashed the family car against a tree and walked away, more scared of his father’s reaction than the accident itself or the gash in his stomach bleeding through his shirt. And for the whole evening his mother thought he was dead—when he walked in the house after midnight and said hello, her cup turned over, china shattering on the floor. She didn’t care what he’d done to the car—he was alive. And there was nothing his dad could do to him then. Nothing at all. It hadn’t been intentional, but his dad thought it was a trick, and he’d maybe never quite forgiven him for it.

  He took the stairs two at a time and knocked on the door of his son’s room.

  “It’s open,” Cully said.

  Hal walked in to find Cully lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, a faint smell of vomit in the air, his shirt stained with it. On the table, the computer was on, a green light blinking against the black screen.

  “Funny, you coming back early, isn’t it?”

  Cully turned his head, but didn’t even sit up. The disrespect rankled Hal.

  “You drunk?”

  Cully shrugged.

  “Coach Salem smelled it on you, huh?”

  Cully didn’t answer.

  Seeing his son’s head on the pillow, his dark hair mussed like that, Hal remembered the night when Cully was really little, maybe three, and his fever had spiked up to 105, his eyes rheumy and cheeks flushed. At first they’d debated, tried Tylenol and cool washcloths and said to each other, grabbing the thermometer, “What is it now?” He’d driven the boy to the hospital with Darlene in his old truck, speeding all the way, then carried him in his arms, running into the emergency room, screaming at whoever wore a white coat. They put Cully’s little body on a huge gurney and a nurse stuck IVs into his fat thigh, while Hal held the tiny balled fist of his son inside his own fist, kept vigil over the tiny squinted shut eyes, and he murmured, Please please please until the fever finally pulled back. The doctor said Cully might have died that night, if they’d waited any longer. And now his son was taking his own life so lightly, so recklessly, and it brought back the rage he’d felt for those slow-moving night nurses, the hospital’s impersonal fluorescent lights.

  “You know what this means, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a small smile on Cully’s face, and this made Hal want to hit him, but he kept himself in the doorway.

  “I’d hate to be in your shoes, come the next practice,” Hal said. “And by the way I’m taking the keys to your truck. It’s still at school, isn’t it?” He was hoarse.

  Cully didn’t say anything. Hal knew he was still drunk and might not even remember this conversation later.

  “Your mother’s real upset,” he said, and closed the door. His own father would have beat the hell out of him with a belt. But Darlene wouldn’t let him do that. He guessed it was a good thing. If he were a better dad, he would have given Cully the right line of Scripture. Something from Judges. Something to make him think.

  HAL SLEPT FITFULLY, a sticky film of sweat on his face and arms, the hairs on his legs catching on the sheets. A mosquito zinging from somewhere up on the ceiling kept landing in places near his neck. Still, Darlene slept soundly beside him and he put his hand on her back, her soothing breath gently rising and falling. And he worried, an endless shifting in his mind—he had a vision of sifting through a mess in his tool chest, in search of an elusive hammer.

  The next morning the principal, Ida Johnson, called him at the office, and he picked up a bent paper clip, its thin metal end needling his thumb.

  “Are you aware, Mr. Holbrook, what your son was up to yesterday?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  “Well, we’re just getting the reports.” Ida Johnson was an old gal with a bouffant hairdo and bowlegs, and she was tough in a way Hal liked and understood—she attended every game, every school play, wearing a pantsuit and horse brooch, her thin grin on her bony face. She did not suffer fools.

  “There were fifteen boys, and they all missed afternoon classes. I don’t know how many of them were intoxicated, but it’s clear that your son was one of them. Looks like Cully fell down just walking out of the field house.”

  “I know. I’ve had a talk with him.” He felt Ida Johnson’s scolding was meant for him, as if she somehow knew about the time Hal got so drunk on Jack Daniel’s he lay down in the middle of the street, weeping and yelling at a stray yellow dog that had followed him, until a car stopped and a man whose name and face he didn’t remember took him home. Or the time he ran out of booze and went driving looking for more, when he broke out the window of his buddy Scott’s house with a wrench and crawled through broken glass to find the bar.

  “You know that normally we suspend a boy for this.”

  “As well you should.” He heard the weariness in his voice.

  “I’ve told him he won’t get another chance. This is a forgiveness gift. We’re suspending him, just for two weeks. It should be longer, and it’s up to Coach Salem whether or not he plays. But there won’t be another gift like this. I think he understands.”

  “Well, alright.” He blew out a sigh, dropped the paper clip in the trash can.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said. “But he’s got to know he’s good.”

  She reminded him of his uncle Earle, who’d been in the military and come back from Vietnam grinning, with flag pins for the boys and bracelets for the girls, his posture erect and his stories with morals at the end. Hal had always called him “sir.”

  THAT NIGHT HE SAT DOWN with his son in the living room, turned off SportsCenter on the TV. Darlene was upstairs, rustling around in the laundry room. Outside on the street, there was an irritated honk from a Mack truck coming to that light at the intersection. Cully lay on the couch, his huge feet up on the armrest, hands folded piously on his flat T-shirted stomach. Darlene’s magazines lay splayed on the coffee table. That cute young celebrity, he couldn’t remember her name, her bright eyes spangled with makeup, her nose pretty as the inside of a flower. Now why would she want to do that? Just beneath her pointed chin, she held the blade of a knife to her throat.

  “Son, I want you to know you don’t get a lot of chances. You just got another one this week, and I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  He tried to sound firm and smart—but the whole time he was talking he felt the sloppiness of his own drunken period seep through the words. Hal was ashamed to admit how many times his son must have seen him drunk. He prayed, Help me, Jesus. Amen.

  “I know, Dad.” Cully’s eyes were tired and red. “I’m sorry. I won’t mess up.”

  “You’ve still got a shot at a scholarship, but not if you keep up this nonsense.”

  “I won’t. I’m going to keep steady.” He made a fist in the air, but it looked weak.

  Hal tossed the Bible on the couch. “Here’s the good book. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret later. That’s the problem with drinking—it’s a regret machine. You sure you got your head on straight?”

  Cully nodded.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was just a thin hint of fear in his voice, a quaver, and at this, Hal inwardly rejoiced.

  LEE

  THAT NIGHT LEE had a long, slow dream in which Jess was a lamb, weaving among the speeding cars on Route 2351, and she had to watch her be crushed again and again, until gradually she turned into a small sun, a tiny ball of fire on the TV that bounced over the words of a song she couldn’t read.

&n
bsp; The phone rang. “Don’t hang up,” Jack said.

  Her eyes were still unfocused, and in the dark, the bright blue curtains on the windows seemed to swell with wind, though the windows were shut and the air conditioner was on.

  “Why?”

  “Why’d I call?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You have before, darlin’, don’t you remember?”

  “Oh.”

  She fought back the pull of sleep, sat up with the phone to her ear. For a moment, she thought she saw some kind of animal perched on the dresser, a cat that had got in through the window or something, but then she realized it was only a pile of dirty clothes. The dead blare of the air-conditioning seemed to coat the room in a fuzzy substance.

  “What is it, Jack? It’s the middle of the night.” She wondered if he’d been drinking this time.

  “I just gotta ask you, why is it that we’re not together right now? Why is it that I’m not there in that bed with you?”

  “You left me, remember that?”

  She missed the solidness of his body more than anything, the long tapered fingers with sharp knuckles, the calluses on the palms. The leg he limped on was just slightly skinnier than the other, and he led with that leg when he moved to get on top of her, his shoulders muscled, though thinner in middle age. He smelled like smoke and deodorant, and scattered hairs pressed against her cheek when she laid her head on his chest.

  “That was a long time ago. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well, you were acting crazy then.”

  “What makes you think anything’s changed?”

  “Talking to you like this. I can tell.”

  “Maybe you’re crazy now too. Ever think of that?”

  “No.” He sighed. “I did have this weird thing happen to me the other day. I walked into this little grocery store to buy some milk, and in the next aisle, there were these two women I didn’t know. I’d never seen them before. But I just knew they were talking about me. It was a real strong feeling.”