Friendswood (34 page)

F
IVE 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 ambiance, 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 believe 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.

S
HE WOKE UP ON
F
RIDAY,
got out of bed, and went to the window, where she looked down at her street, at the neighbor's station wagon, its windshield strung with fallen Spanish moss, and the green yard bisected by the winding stone path. She made herself a cup of coffee and sat out in the yard, listening to Patsy Cline, that full, double-sided voice, the words sorrowful, but matter-of-fact, her neighbor Mike Bergen over in his yard, sweeping leaves off the black bed of the trampoline.

She remembered the time Jess had found Lee's old aqua prom dress and put it on. She was still little then, and the loose satin crumpled against her tiny frame, as she walked around the house saying, “I'm the mother queen,” and when she got to the top story, she opened one of the windows and shouted it out toward Banes Field. “I am a queen!” And Lee let her scream for ten minutes before she felt she had to say, “Hush, you're bothering the neighbors.”

Later, in her kitchen, she poured a gallon of bleach into a pot over the potassium chloride and turned on the stove, her nose stinging from the sharp odor. After a few moments, she held the tong of the hydrometer in the liquid and watched the red light move to “full charge.” She put the pot in the refrigerator, so that the crystals would form, and she sat in front of the TV, not really watching the news footage passing over empty fields, a politician's simian face, then the camera cut to a woman in a sequined minidress with the face of a panther.

When the alarm clock went off, she opened the refrigerator and saw that the crystals had formed at the bottom, small white teeth, glinting unevenly. She used a spoon to scoop the Vaseline from two large tubs into another glass pot. Then she dropped the shavings of old candles into the goo, and melted the two together. When the Vaseline and wax had cooled, she added the gasoline and kneaded the mess with the crystals. She pushed the substance, slimy and white, into two empty plastic boxes.

“Place in a cool, dry place,” the instructions said. She put the two small waxy packets near the cooler in the garage, knowing she wouldn't be able to relax as long as they were there. What was she doing?

Her thoughts stuttered and grated on her, wheels on a track that somehow couldn't get traction in the right direction. She was doing what she had to do. All night, she drank water, paced in front of the windows, rehearsed. The gloves, the socks over the shoes, the way through the gate, the string of fuse to the wax rectangles. The instructions scattered in her head, then rearranged themselves, and she had to pick up each one again and hold it. At some point, she heard a bang in the garage, but then, the house was still there, everything was still there, and when she went out the door to look at them, the wax packets sat there calmly. They probably wouldn't even work. It seemed too easy that she could make these things and they would work the way they were supposed to. After all these years, why should they?