Chapter 4
Sam
I drive home.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s not that Mr. Somerset and Mr. Hazard didn’t want to help me, but they were right—I’m the one who has to decide, and they can’t make the decision for me. Even though you know Mr. Hazard would love to make the decision for me, Mr. Somerset won’t let him.
So, as I drive, I think. There’s always drugs.
Smithfield is about the worst part of Wahredua, and when I patrol there, I see all sorts of stuff.
There’s sex work, too. Mr. Somerset said you’re not supposed to call it prostitution, and you definitely aren’t supposed to call it whoring, which I guess everybody knows, but Gran still says it sometimes.
Like when she forgot to pay the light bill and said she ran to the post office to drop off that check, and she was sweating like a whore in church. But she doesn’t mean anything by it.
Detective Dulac has a nonprofit.
Rural poverty is another one. We had to learn about that at one of our trainings because it’s a big problem in Missouri. Maybe that’s what I should do. Or human trafficking, since that was a big problem around here not too long ago.
Detective Dulac has a nonprofit, and Mr. Hazard and Mr. Somerset are going to volunteer there.
Or maybe gun violence. Something about teaching people to lock up their guns.
There was a kid, Danny Johnson, who shot his sister when we were in third grade.
I was too little to know anything except that it was awful, but I think about it now, and I want to go back in time and knock Mr. Johnson around because he didn’t have a gun safe.
But Detective Dulac has a nonprofit. Not that I want to work with Detective Dulac.
He can be funny sometimes, sure. But it’s a lot of noise, too.
And sometimes it’s like he needs you to pay attention to him, or he needs to rile you up, or he needs to see you blink or look at him again. Shock you, I guess.
But if Mr. Hazard and Mr. Somerset are volunteering there, it has to be a good organization, right?
I mean, Mr. Somerset wouldn’t volunteer there if it wasn’t good.
And that would be kind of fun, right? Kind of a different dynamic.
Not mentor-mentee. We could show up around the same time to help, and we’d just be two guys helping, and basically that’s how you become friends.
And Detective Dulac saying all that stuff—he’d had that big smile on his face.
I’m still thinking about it as I turn onto our street.
Gran and I live in a brick house in a newer part of town.
It’s a ranch, and it’s got a maple tree in the front yard, and I keep the flower beds clean even though Gran only ever puts in vincas and they burn up in the sun pretty fast. It’s Gran’s house, and she was nice enough to let me move in with her when I said I had to get out of Iberia.
I guess I could move out now since I’ve had a job for a few years, and Mr. Hazard told me about one of those high-interest savings accounts, and he made me set it up right in front of him.
I keep telling myself I’m going to look for a place.
But I don’t. Sometimes, it’s good to leave things the way they are. Comfortable.
Except then I see Dad’s truck and say, “Well, shit.”
Right out loud, God help me.
The garage door is up, and Gran’s big old Cadillac is parked inside.
I pull into the driveway, and I make sure to keep to my side—Gran’s always coming and going, and the one time she had to ask me to move my car, it was almost midnight and it put her in a real mood.
When I get out of the car, the coolness of the end of a spring day meets me.
It smells a little like the mulch I threw down the weekend before, and a little like motor oil. Growing up smells.
Dad’s on a creeper under the Cadillac, and when I walk up, he doesn’t even have to look. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Something’s going on with the fan belt.”
“I looked at that. It’s nothing.”
He grunts. “Your gran’s in the kitchen.”
I go into the house. Gran keeps it real nice, and we painted everything last year and did the floors the year before that.
Gran calls herself management, and that means she picks out the colors and tells me where to put things, and she calls me labor, so I move and lift and do pretty much the rest of it.
I told Mr. Somerset about it one time, and Mr. Hazard talked so much about capitalism that we had to go outside.
Gran’s at the counter, making her chicken enchilada casserole.
She’s got red hair, and she has what she likes to call a womanly build.
She wears the same old housedress every day—it’s rainbow plaid, and sometimes, when I look at it too long, it makes my eyes go funny—but when she goes out, she likes to wear chunky gold chains and big hoop earrings.
Lots of smocks and flared leggings. She pulls them up high because she likes people to see her socks, and one time, Dad said she looked like she was giving herself a wedgie.
A few years back, she tried meditating, and she wore a huge ankh and had a friend named Denise. Dad calls those her Mr. T years.
“Hey, Gran.”
“Hey yourself,” Gran says. “You told me that fan belt was fine.” But she lets me kiss her cheek.
I grab a couple of beers and head outside.
Dad’s sitting on an old box Gran likes to keep oranges in.
He looks a lot like me. Or, I guess I look a lot like him.
Dark hair. Thin. I guess Detective Dulac is right, though, because I have put on some weight, and it’s weird that I’m bigger than Dad now.
Working out. Eating right. Plus Gran keeps these giant ice cream sandwiches in her freezer.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” Dad says as he takes the beer. “I don’t know why she won’t get rid of it.”
I pull over another box and sit. There’s this part of me that’s—that’s checking, I guess.
Like there might be something on me. Something that gives me away.
And it’s like I’m watching myself watch myself, and that part of me is thinking, You went to their house.
You talked to a couple of people you know. It’s not like he can see anything.
But sometimes it’s like we really are the same person and he can read my mind, because he asks, “Where’ve you been? Your gran said you were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Went to see some friends.”
Dad takes a drink.
Does it mean something, that he didn’t say anything?
Does he know? But how could he? He doesn’t live here.
He lives in Iberia, and that’s far enough away.
He doesn’t have any friends here. That’s the whole reason Gran moved here, so she could get away from everybody in Iberia.
But he still hasn’t said anything. If you’re a police officer long enough, you learn something kind of surprising: a lot of people really do have a conscience, and when they do something bad, they feel guilty, and eventually, they give themselves away or they confess or they do something because they want to get caught.
And I wonder if I’m doing that right now.
“How’s the garage?” I ask and then, too fast, I take a drink of my beer. I almost cough getting it down.
Dad shrugs. “What kind of friends?”
“Just friends.”
He turns the bottle like he’s looking into it. “A girl?”
The day’s got this heavy kind of stillness that has nothing to do with spring, and I wonder if maybe a storm is coming.
“Nah.”
Dad looks at me.
Somehow, I laugh. “It’s not a girl. Just some friends.”
But Dad’s gaze narrows. Dad says you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and that’s true, and that’s what I’m doing right now, trying to bullshit a bullshitter. That little part of me that’s watching the rest of me adds, And tripping over your own dick in the process.
“You’re too young,” Dad says.
“God, Dad.”
“You are. You go out, Sam. Have fun. And yeah, I know what that means for a guy your age. But you don’t get serious.”
“I know.”
“And you sure as hell don’t get her pregnant.”
“I know, Dad.”
He takes another sip of his beer.
“I’m not in a rush,” I say with another laugh. “I’m fine the way things are.”
“You got your whole life ahead of you. You got the whole rest of your life to be tied down.”
“I know. That’s why I’m having fun.”
“You start letting things get serious, the first thing she’s going to do is dump a kid in your lap to make sure you don’t go running off.”
“Okay,” I say.
“And then you’re stuck, get it?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t think about what he’s saying sometimes.
A lot of people don’t. About Mom. And, I guess if we’re being honest, about me.
And I don’t blame him, because it’s got to be hard, raising a kid on your own when you’re nothing but a kid yourself, and you don’t have anybody to help or any idea what to do.
But—but sometimes, I do wish he’d think before he said stuff like that.
And I can’t help the way it bleeds into my voice. “Yeah, I get it.”
Dad’s looking at the Cadillac now. Maybe he does know, or he thinks about it a little too late, because he puts his hand on the back of my neck and squeezes, and he’s cold from the beer.
“I’m just going to have fun,” I say again.
“That’s right.”
“Wait to settle down.”
Dad nods.
“Buy my toys first,” I say with the start of a smile.
“God, Sammy, you’d better, because you won’t be able to afford jack shit once she starts pumping out babies.” He hands me the beer, which is almost empty, and says, “All right, let’s take another look at this.”
He’s under the Cadillac now, so I can’t see his face when he starts talking again, and that means I can’t tell what that note is in his voice. “You don’t want to wait too long, though,” Dad says like he’s remembered something, but I think there’s something else too. “Or you’ll turn into a fag.”
And I want to say, I don’t think that’s how it works.
But I don’t.