Friendswood

by Rene Steinke

  Lamb said, “What does she want? We know.” His head had grown huge and tubular, much too large for his tiny, frail body, and the legs kept collapsing beneath it.

  Dog said, “Your name will be written in the scroll of Time.”

  “Your name will be written in the scroll of Time,” said the other, cruel head, grunting, and then the five others repeated the words, out of sync and loud against her ears, until it finally stopped.

  She sat by her window, looking outside most of the evening, watching the occasional car pull up to the stop sign at the corner, watching the late-night speed walkers and the lone motorcyclist. Around ten, she saw the man who lived across the street come out to his yard and turn off the sprinklers, gather up the balls left in the grass, and hook the lawn chair under his arm as he made his way back to the porch. After she heard her parents go to bed, she saw smoke rise in the distance over the rooftops of houses. It seemed like a signal from everyone she knew who was already dead, her dad’s parents; her great-uncle; Lee Knowles’s daughter, Jess. The smoke billowed and thinned to a gray screen as it rose up toward the moon. What the dead were telling her she didn’t know.

  LEE

  SHE FOUND THE WEBSITE without any trouble, and the recipes were surprisingly easy to locate. “This thread is purely for informational use. Do not do anything illegal with this information.” The instructions were mixed in with videos of teenage boys making smoke bombs and advertisements for The Anarchist Cookbook. She settled on the recipe posted by Jolly Jim because it seemed precise and the ingredients were easy to get. “An explosion is a sudden, violent change of potential energy to work”—it was a gunpowder that had sat latent inside her all these years—“which transfers to its surroundings in the form of a rapidly moving rise in pressure called a shock wave. The shock wave can cause substantial danger.” The chemicals pushed against one another of necessity. She imagined the war on a microscopic level, and it seemed fitting that one could use these orderly, measured substances to protest a chaos of them.

  It was hard to believe she would do it, hard to see that when she poured the plastic bottles of nail polish remover into the glass jar, it would actually amount to anything with any power at all beyond removing chipped red lacquer from someone’s fingertips, and she watched herself pour a brown jug of hydrogen peroxide with fascination, the pungent liquid filling the bowl. She cleared out the freezer, threw out the package of meat, ice cube trays, plastic bags of frozen fruit and broccoli, and she put the glass jar in the center, alone. She waited the prescribed one hour.

  She had to relieve the pressure. There was no other way. It occurred to her that this may have been exactly as those men felt, boarding the airplanes with their box cutters, a buildup of stymied energy within them that could only be relieved by action. She felt reasonable and reassured, though, in her measurements, in following directions for something she didn’t know how to do. When her mother had been too drunk to cook dinner, Lee had taught herself to cook this way, blindly obeying the words on the page. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes the dish ended up bland or burned, her mother passed out on the couch, snoring, so Lee had to eat it alone. But the litany was there, written down: do this, do that.

  She took the concoction out of the freezer, added it to the swimming pool chemical, followed the instructions to stir, wait. After the glass jar spent two more hours in the freezer, she was told she’d find a kind of white powder on the bottom. She’d imagined it would look like ground seashells or teeth. But when, holding her breath, she opened the freezer door and looked, there was only maybe a quarter of a teaspoon of something like salt at the bottom of the glass. She realized she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it.

  That afternoon she went back to the fireworks stand in Alvin, wore her sunglasses and a scarf over her hair. She went straight past the skinny salesman by the stacked display, and back to the shed.

  She knocked, heard laughter beyond the door, and then Allen swung it open.

  “Hey, there,” she said. “I could use some more help.”

  “Come in then, I guess,” he said.

  On the table behind him sat a woman with very tight, short orange curls, grinning and eating scrambled eggs from a plate with her fingers. There were marks all up and down her bare legs and arms, small scabs. Lee had obviously interrupted something, and the woman scowled, pulled her plate closer to her hip.

  Lee told Allen what had happened with her failed attempt, and it was a moment before she noticed the iguana, nosing around his ankles, its scales uneven in places as if they’d been scraped off and had grown back in a crooked pattern.

  Allen started laughing, and then the woman did too. “What shit are you really trying to get rid of, lady? Did he screw someone else? Is that what happened? What are you really after?”

  “They all do at some point.” The woman chewed on the eggs. “You just have to get over it. Or not.”

  He stepped closer, flicked at her sunglasses. “What you got going on back there?”

  There was no other way. She’d have to just take the humiliation and answer this guy. “I just want to scare him, I guess.”

  “Huh,” Allen said, folding his arms. “Is that it?”

  She held out two one-hundred-dollar bills, and he took them from her, pushed them into the front pocket of his jeans. “Alright, then. Go back to the website. That recipe you tried is nearly impossible to get right. Do the one with wax. Make sure you get a meat thermometer. And be patient.”

  He kicked at the iguana, and it scurried into an open cabinet at the back of the room. “Make a long fuse. I’ll get you one. You sure you just want to scare him?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Well, make sure he’s not in the vicinity then, or you might scare him to death.”

  The woman held her stomach and cackled.

  Lee wanted to tell Allen she would never hurt anyone, but as he picked up a beer bottle from the table and started drinking from it, she realized he didn’t care. He just didn’t want to be arrested himself.

  She gave him two hundred more dollars.

  “Tell me how to do it, walk me through it.”

  The woman’s eyes went wide. “Hell, I’ll tell her if you won’t.”

  He took the money and called back to the woman, “You don’t know fuck.” He turned to Lee. “Come on, let’s get you some special fuse.”

  She followed him out to the fireworks stand, and he pointed to a box that said FUSE—EX—BOLDER. He went through the instructions with her, his demeanor suddenly serious and teacherly, as he nodded, drew a diagram of what the bomb should look like. He touched her arm. “Hey, you don’t look like a woman a man would cheat on, you know.” The ends of his fingers were stained with something black.

  She picked up the box. “Thanks.” She walked again past the clerk selling fireworks beneath the shelter, and got into her car.

  HAL

  FIVE TIMES, he drove out to the Ranch House Bar and drank as much as he thought he could get away with and still drive home. Darlene thought he was working late. He had a trick with lemons and hot sauce followed by licorice that hid the smell.

  He’d argued for a while now that Cully should quit his work for Taft—to have his own son serving that liar. But Darlene felt differently—she’d recently become friendly with Taft’s wife and wanted her beauty secrets and still thought Avery a potential benefactor to them all—it surprised him that she didn’t worry about Cully out there at the site all alone. But he couldn’t go traipsing down that path, because he’d landed Cully the job, and Hal wasn’t going to lie to her—he wasn’t worried about any physical danger so much as he was worried about his son’s soul. He hadn’t done enough for Cully’s soul. He’d made a bargain with God, but hadn’t held up his side of the deal.

  Hal took Cully out to dinner at Casa Texas, over in Pasadena, because he remembered the tacos were good, he liked the ambia
nce, and while Darlene was at church for her Pilates class, he wanted to have a talk with Cully, man-to-man.

  Cully startled a bit when Hal ordered the margarita, but Hal winked and said, “Don’t tell your mother. I got this.”

  Cully shrugged, tapped his feet under the table, staring at the menu.

  After they’d ordered, Hal said, “How’s the work, son?” He took the brilliant, first tangy sip of margarita.

  “It’s fine,” Cully said, nodding. “That guy, José, who trained me. He’s a good guy. He comes by sometimes at the beginning of my shift. He’s got all these stories from fighting in the desert. He said the heat’s nothing like Texas heat, that it practically melts your eyeballs.”

  “I don’t envy them, over there. He just get back?”

  “No, he was in the Gulf War. He’s older than you, I think.”

  Hal saw an opportunity. “Well, if you’d like to quit, don’t feel obligated to stay on my account.”

  “I’m not a quitter.” Cully’s mouth set itself in the habit of Darlene.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant that we can find you a better job if you decide this one isn’t for you.” There was a smell of roasting jalapeños, an acrobatic Mexican polka on the speakers.

  “I just said I like the work.”

  The riotousness of the music seemed to undermine Hal. “Oh, alright. I just want you to set your sights high.” He raised up his hands. “Keep your eye steady on a goal, and you keep your head out of trouble, know what I mean?”

  “So, Dad, I don’t know, but José told me some messed-up stuff about something he found out there on the field.”

  Hal chuckled. “Now, do I have to tell you not to believe everything you hear?”

  “No, seriously. He was digging something up for Avery, planing the field because there was a slope there, and he came upon this black stuff in the dirt. He said it smelled like rotten cheese and had a strange consistency. Totally fucked up his shovel. So he put it in a jar, covered it, and went to show Avery.”

  Hal drank his margarita, felt a trembling fire rising up in him that he needed to drown.

  “Avery told him to bury it deep, cover up the hole, and never mention it again or he’d be canned.”

  “Well, you know, Cully, it’s hardly news. There’s stuff like that all over town. There are oil fields just off I-45. There’s a refinery in Alvin. Been there for years. I don’t see the point in getting all worked up about it.”

  “I don’t think this was ordinary oil.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he got a rash all over that arm. Really red and it peeled. It was gross. And when he went home that night he couldn’t breathe.”

  “Well, he’s breathing now, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “See that?”

  “But now his asthma came back, and he blames it on the stuff he found. He’s worried. He said he’s going to quit as soon as he can find another job.”

  “If you don’t want to work out there, I’d be glad to help you make a graceful exit. In fact, I’d prefer it.”

  “I’m not leaving until José does.”

  “So that’s what you want.” Hal really wasn’t worried about whatever this stuff was that José found—just because he’d seen it didn’t mean it had anything to do with the asthma—he could easily just have asthma. He’d known others to be paranoid about their symptoms, who blamed them on their polluted surroundings, as if the ground itself had it in for them. And now Hal was too drunk to care if his son was planning to fuck over Avery Taft. In fact, he might prefer it.

  Then the food came, and they were both so hungry, they ate for a few minutes in silence.

  “To tell you the truth,” Cully said, “I’d like to find work with an architect firm. You know, design nice houses like the mansions in Memorial.”

  “Huh. None of those firms around here that I know of . . .” Cully’s confession baffled him. “Is it seeing Taft’s houses come up over there?”

  Cully scowled. “I just always liked seeing how things get put together.”

  “Well, you’d go to UT for that?”

  “Sure thing.” They would have that at least, the same college, Hook ’em Horns. Orange T-shirts with silhouettes of honorable steer heads.

  “Fine.” When they finished eating, a boy started to clear the table, and Hal felt he’d seen him somewhere before.

  “Hey.” The boy glared at Cully, and Hal felt a flash of protectiveness.

  Cully winced and made a pah sound. “You work here?”

  The boy didn’t answer, keeping his head to the table, gathered their utensils and plates and carried them away to a noisy kitchen door with a square window of white light.

  “That’s Dex.”

  “He’s the one?” said Hal. The boy was thin and narrow shouldered, and Hal couldn’t believe Cully had let himself fight him, two against one, to beat. “Now that’s the kind of coincidence God puts right in front of you, just so you can do something about it. It’s time, Cully, for you to ask that guy to forgive you.”

  “Dad!”

  Hal raised his hand and ordered a third margarita. They were so tasty, like a candy he remembered getting at the convenience store as a kid, but better. Forgiveness was exactly what Cully needed. “I swear it, son. We are not leaving this joint until you apologize to Dex for fighting him and ask him to forgive you.”

  Hal sat back, and Cully folded his arms and pursed his lips. “Really, Dad? Really, you’re going to do this tonight?”

  Dex moved around another table, piling dirty plates on a tray, wiping the crumbs with a rag. As he worked, his mouth made a small, tight-lipped grimace. He reminded Hal of a friend’s little brother, who, back in the day, had followed the older ones around, regaling them with details about the Alamo, the line drawn in the dirt, the Mexicans outnumbering the Texans five to one.

  Hal felt shiny, as if the tip of God’s finger had come right down and polished his face and Cully’s face with a fateful gold leaf. This was exactly what his son needed. Of course. And he’d be willing to wait. Cully took out a pen and began doodling on the paper tablecloth. Hal finished his drink and ordered a shot of tequila. The bright crepe paper scallops on the wall began to jigger, and the stained glass lamps overhead swayed to the music that had just started up in the back room.

  “Alright then, son, I’ll pay the check, and we’ll just wait on you while listening to that music. Dex isn’t going anywhere either. He’s at work.”

  The band was good. He’d forgotten how much he liked live music—the guitars following the swiveling path, the piano fast and banging. A dark-haired woman sang with a long, pretty face he wanted to get closer to, her voice as twisting and spell-like as smoke, her narrow hips kicking out so her belt buckle flashed in the light. Behind her a Buddha of a piano player, grinning, and a boy banging on the drums with his ecstatic face lifted to the ceiling. Hal and Cully found seats on the metal folding chairs against the wall, and a few people started to dance.

  “I’m not going to do it, Dad. You know why? It will embarrass him, and it’ll sure embarrass me.”

  “You will,” said Hal. He tapped his foot to the music, and the waitress brought him another shot, and then the world got blurrier and brighter, as if he were looking through water splashing against a mirror.

  At some point, he left Cully, got up to go back to the bar, and he got angry talking to the businessman next to him who said he had a good scheme he’d tell Hal about as soon as he could trust him.

  “Don’t I look like a good man?” Hal said. “Jesus saved me two years ago. He saved me and then he gave me a sign tonight if only my son would listen to it, and here I am getting lit in a dark bar. I got a wife prettier than roses, a football star son—I mean, and I got a good job, a great occupation, if only I could believe in it. I can’t seem to b
elieve hard enough. I do believe, but it doesn’t seem to make a profit. That’s the thing. I pray and I pray and I pray, but I can’t goddamn believe enough. But don’t you say I’m not trustworthy. I’m loyal, no matter what.”

  He was back in the dance hall, holding a dark-haired woman, country waltzing as he had in his youth. “You know. You don’t know,” he told her, and it seemed a good idea to nibble at her neck, when something pinched his arm and yanked it. “Excuse me, sir.” It was the skinny guy, Dex, wild-eyed and smooth-faced, whose head suddenly seemed huge. “The lady doesn’t want to dance, okay?”

  Hal couldn’t quite get his footing, and his boots spluttered beneath him as he began to protest and look to her to help him, but when he turned around again, the woman had disappeared into the darkness, mobile with dancers and lights, and he was standing over Cully, whose hand covered his face. Dex shouted out over the music, “Sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”

  “I know that,” said Cully, uncovering his face. And finally he apologized to the skinny one. “Sorry about all this.” The darkness shimmied with shadows, but at the word “sorry” a light high-beamed from the ceiling. Good. He’d done good.

  Hal put his arm around Cully. “See that?” Hal let himself be dragged out, past the dark tables with the chairs stacked on top of them, past the margarita machine’s shiny chrome.

  On the way home, Cully’s apology seemed to hang on the silvery glisten above the road, but then Hal felt dull again within himself, unredeemed, and the lanes kept multiplying from two to three, and the road twisted and buckled like a piece of taffy, each billboard about to smack the front of his car. He squeezed shut his eyes and drank half of a Coke from a can very fast, and that settled things down for a bit, until at some point in his journey, his head cleared, and a big white billboard rose up from the side of the road, black block letters as large as cows standing up to shout at him: HAL. God had singled him out, and he couldn’t even keep the road straight. He looked over to say something to Cully, and caught his breath in relief, because it was his son at the wheel, not him. He’d been saved. Again.