Friendswood (9 page)

It was as if he'd reached through the phone and shoved her back in the chair. “Well,” she said. “That's impossible.”

“Lee, you know what it looks like, don't you?” She thought of his long horse teeth that he'd bare when he laughed, how he'd smelled of sweet tea the last time she'd been in his office. His voice was gentler than usual. “You have to remember there was a lot of cleanup after they demolished the houses, and with the storm, I don't know, it probably got moved around. I'm fairly certain this was just a case of some debris.”

So many years ago now, that man in Rosemont, Bob Etson, had stood outside his house with a megaphone yelling, “Stop driving down our property values!” He'd stayed put, right up to the end, not believing the “nonsense about chemicals,” and a few years later, he died of liver cancer.

In the beginning, even Lisa McHugh had insisted to Lee that the sludge had been planted by O'Bresley Realtors, who wanted to drive down the value of their homes, so the land could be repurchased and sold for
an exorbitant price. “Cal heard it all at work,” she said. “He thinks there's a spy or two living on these streets, reporting back.” But her voice got flinty and stern as it did when she talked about “the blacks” who'd moved in on Berry Street. “It's a shame. We're not going in for all that hype about it being poison. You can't believe what these folks will say to try to get something from you.” The people at the end of Sawyer Street refused to let their homes be razed; they thought they might one day want to come back.

Apparently, property values trumped everything, still. Lee tried to muffle her anger. “Mayor Wallen, it's right where they buried the container, according to the cleanup plan. I looked at the document.”

“Huh. But that thing was buried at fifty feet. It wouldn't come up so easily out of the ground.”

“The rain did it. It pushed it on up.”

“That's what you think, huh? Well.” She heard something slam in his vicinity. “Be my guest. Go take a look for yourself. There's nothing out there but empty land waiting to be put to good use.”

S
HE PARKED THE CAR
near the chain-link fence and put the hazard lights on. As she walked out under the sky, the wind whipped at the brush and weeds. Women worried too much about how they might get mirrored back to the world, how they might be judged. Well, her mirror had cracked. Let them arrest her for trespassing. Twenty minutes later, she located the place, the survey stakes constellated around her. She was sure. But now there was nothing to see but dried mud and flecks of weeds.

She dug for an hour or so, until her biceps felt as if they were being stabbed by small knives, and she couldn't lift the shovel anymore. The hole was only about a foot deep. She hadn't hit anything solid yet. The crickets came out and chattered. Her feet felt heavy. Her body ached. And
she'd have to excavate the whole field to be sure. Hell, she'd need a bulldozer.

When she looked up, there was the black ring of an old tire, a scatter of stones, patches of brown grass. The air looked dusty now that it was dusk, and it was getting harder to see. Pain revolved around her arms. Her palms were chafed from gripping the wooden handle of the shovel, and there was a cut on her wrist. She stared at the turned dirt, got down on her knees, and reached into the hole, swiping away the dirt at the bottom, feeling around for the flat plane of plastic.

She dug for another hour. She pitched the shovel into the ground, pushed it in deeper with her boot, and lifted up a shovel of dirt, two shovels of dirt, threw it behind her. She didn't even worry anymore about what the toxic shit might do to her. It was too late for that. Either it got her or it didn't. When the hole was the size of a small bathtub, she heard Jess's voice in the sound of the digging,
Mom, Mom, Mom.

A
T THE
GAME,
Dex paced the sidelines. It helped to count steps, to push his hands into his jeans pockets beneath his loose jersey, because he didn't like to show his nerves. He felt as if the crowd was looking down at him from the bleachers, staring a hole through him, and he had to remind himself that it wasn't him they were watching, but the green-lit field and Scott Gilt lofting a beautiful pass.

Coach Salem called him over. “Go warm up Teak—I'll send him in next quarter.”

Dex signaled to Teak, and Teak came over so Dex could check the tape on his knees, and then Dex started him loosening up. It was the third game of the season, and they'd barely won the first two. He tried to watch the game out of one eye while he helped Teak get ready. Last week, he'd had to go and help Louder off the field twice, and ice down and wrap up a sprained knee on the sideline. He was always at the ready for injuries, and it kept him on edge, a tiny alarm clock in his chest that might at any moment go off. There was a totality to these nights too, the huge black sky, the unblinking white lights, the band's horns and drums, which made the field seem heavy and fraught—the enormity of the past and the infinity of the future about to crash together any moment.

Dex was aware that people thought a student trainer was only the sad shadow of a guy who couldn't play football himself. But he actually liked
riding back from games on the bus with the coaches, overhearing their decisions about drop-in-a-bucket plays and power sweeps and the Gilt Special. Coach Salem had invited him to be a trainer because he'd known Dex's dad, and Dex liked the bristled sternness of Salem—even if it was hard to read his face.

The Mustangs handily trounced the other team, and it felt like revenge or praise for the hurricane, the scoreboard flashing into higher and higher numbers under
HOME
, the band blaring, the crowd's howls and applause almost like a living thing itself, about to take off and stomp down the bleachers and out into the roads.

After the game, it was his job to account for the equipment in the field house, and he needed to tend to Hershel's newly sprained ankle. Hershel said the whole time, “It's okay, I got it,” then winced whenever he tried to put weight on it. “Thanks, man,” he said, after finally giving in and letting Dex retape it. He was one of the decent ones, not exactly a friend, but someone whose playing Dex could honestly admire, because off the field, he didn't talk shit.

Dex sorted the dirty uniforms and checked the lockers. After he'd changed his clothes, the players were already gone, and Coach Salem was turning out the lights, “Come on, son.” He followed Dex out. It was just beginning to get cool at night, but not enough to wear a jacket.

Salem walked Dex to the parking lot, nodded to him before he hitched himself up into his truck. He wasn't going home to his wife because she was dead. Cancer was the rumor Dex had heard. What did Salem do at night? It was difficult to imagine him watching TV or sleeping. Off the field, he was a mystery.

From habit and because he didn't want to go home yet, Dex drove over to the laundromat in the dark Stones Throw shopping center parking lot, where he knew some players and other guys would be, drinking hidden beers. When he got there he was disappointed not to see Weeks's car, but he pulled his truck up behind the others anyway, and took out one of the beers he'd stashed under his seat.

Cully Holbrook sat alone on the hood of his truck holding his mouth that way—as if he knew some secret you wanted to know. “Hey, Dex.” There was a cell phone in his hand.

For some reason Dex had yet to fathom, Cully was always friendly, but that didn't make Dex like him. “Nice win, huh? You'd think we'd have given them at least one, just to keep things interesting. I swear, I just got bored after a while.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet for a minute as Dex popped his beer and poured it into an old coffee cup he kept in his truck. The coffee mug read
# ONE DAD,
and when he found it in the back of the cabinet, he felt he should get rid of it, but instead threw it into the cab of his truck.

“Nice!” said Cully, holding up his beer covered in a brown sack. “Cheers.” Cully bragged as if he needed to cover something up. Dex almost wanted to feel sorry for him.

“Well, here's to you,” said Cully. “Looks like your truck could use some work.” He nodded at the gash in the side of the bed, where Dex had rammed into a light pole in a parking lot.

“Yeah, someday,” said Dex, shrugging.

“My cousin's shop does good work. Spiton's in Alvin.”

“Have to keep that in mind.”

“I could get you a deal.”

“Huh.”

Cully was probably waiting for a girl to call him back. For some reason, one of those things another guy couldn't see—the females liked him—a possum grin on his face, and he was cocky in that way, tall and rangy, looking as if there were something on his tongue that he might or might not spit out.

Dex nodded good-bye, then walked over to the group of guys leaning against one car or another. Only Trace acknowledged him. “Hey, Dex, my man.” A bottle cap pinged on the pavement. Dex leaned against the hood where Trace was. “Hey.”

Through the window of the laundromat, in the fluorescent lights, a slumped-over woman was putting coin after coin into a washing machine. The sign on the window said
WASH 'N DRY
in letters like soapsuds. Underneath his nervousness, he felt a familiar dull rage in his forehead, and savoring a sip of beer, he wondered why he'd even bothered. Weeks was supposed to show up—maybe he'd be there in a minute.

The talk fell to silence, and Scotty, wide and squat, with a big smile of horsey teeth, started singing a George Jones song. His hand strummed just over his huge belt buckle.

“Go, Scotty,” said Trace. The other guys sniffed, shuffled their feet, pulled away from the cars, then leaned back again, so they wouldn't have to join in.

Trace kept talking. “So me and Scotty went down to the old golf course right after the hurricane—to that place way out from the houses near where the sixteenth hole used to be—it's all grown over, the sand trap's gone, but the hills are still there, little ones, so you can go up fast and fly.” Trace always talked so meticulously about mudding, as if it were his sole occupation, the reason he'd been put on earth. “And, man, it was good. We got just the right lift, right, Scotty?”

“Damn straight.”

“Then Angie puked.” The guys laughed. “Girls are always asking me, ‘Take me mudding, take me four-wheeling.'”

Lawbourne had a toy cap gun, and he was shooting the caps at the ground, the ashy smell snapping up in the air around them.

“You know what?” said Dex. “Once I went over off Veemer Road, where those Rosemont houses used to be. Weeks noticed that the gate wasn't locked, and we drove right in. No hills, but it's a great big stretch of nothing.” That night, he and Weeks hadn't even been drinking. They were just on their way home from the movies, and the ground was wet, so they decided to stop and give it a try. Weeks was laughing so hard he was snorting, and Dex's hands burned against the rubber padding on the steering wheel. As they churned through the mud, looking straight out
the windshield, the stars and blackness whipped over them like a wild blanket, and they let the back wheels fan out, raising splatters like huge ripped curtains.

“Was that before or after you stole the mailman's clothes?” said Scotty.

Dex looked down at his blue work shirt and pants from the thrift shop. “After.” That was always his way with these guys—deadpan.

Lawbourne shot the cap gun into the air, a flash of toy silver. He shot it again, with a determined look—actually aiming for something, and the smoke rose up in the dark.

“No, we went out there too once,” said Trace. “A bunch of us, people sliding around in the back. Shit. If you can get through the gate, you can drive all over that place. We followed this one road all the way back into the woods, and then the girls got scared.”

Dex felt something in the back of his throat but didn't know how to say it. And didn't want to waste his words with this crowd anyway. He knew from his dad how petroleum could make people sick—he knew all the right precautions to take if you worked with it. Those oil residues in Banes Field had been buried and sealed up, the way they were supposed to be, and now the place was only gnarly land, good for mudding and not much else.

“It was too bad because, you know, we were thinking of taking girls inside one of the ruined houses, nice and empty. There's toilets and staircases—all kinds of shit,” said Brad Razer, a pocket of Skoal caught in his cheek. Suddenly Dex could smell the menthol. He'd never been inside one of those abandoned houses, but he'd heard people had left TVs, clothes, chairs, and Weeks claimed he'd found bottles of perfectly good whiskey inside a metal cabinet.

Bishop Geitner, who didn't play but somehow was friends with all of them, came over holding out a bowl full of pills. “The blue ones are Ritalin, the orange are Klonopin, the green Xanax. Take your pick, pricks.” He had a face like an angry bird, a sharp small beak of a nose, and small
dark eyes, a mouth that disappeared when he wasn't talking. He stood there, stringy and average height, with the football players. Dex wasn't interested in taking whatever someone had stolen out of his mom's medicine cabinet. Beer worked just fine.

He'd heard about what Bishop and Trace had done the other night when two goats escaped from a farm and somehow ended up on the sidelines of the football field, but he didn't believe, no matter how drunk they were, that they'd really bash in the goats' heads with bats. He believed the part about setting their tails on fire, farting around with cigarette lighters maybe, but he didn't believe Bishop and Trace would actually beat them. There were jokes that they'd fucked the goats first, but he didn't believe that either.

Trace grabbed a pill, and a few of the other guys gathered around Bishop, who held his head back as if he wore a heavy crown.

Cully had a girl with him now in the cab of his truck. In the shadows, Dex could just see that her head looked tiny against the passenger seat, but when Cully opened the door and the light went on, Dex saw her face, mouth open, laughing, sharp, fake-looking eyebrows.

“Fucking Cully. What's he do?” said Lawbourne.

Dex shrugged.

“He's got, like, I don't know.” Lawbourne shook his head, sipped his beer, and stumbled a little forward.

“Maybe he's just a good liar.”

“Damn. I'd like to learn if that's all it is.”

An invisible thing seemed to crowd in the dark around them, as if despite all the space across this sprawl of asphalt there wasn't enough room for all of them to be there. They started to talk about girls then, who'd sent which naked picture, because you couldn't see the girls' faces, only their racks—they were shouting over one another—and Dex started to walk back to his truck because it didn't seem like Weeks was going to show up after all.

Suddenly, guys started making goat sounds and laughing. Trace was following Dex, so drunk or high that he walked in a very slow, jangly way, careful not to spill out of himself.

“Got a bone to pick with you, Dex.”

“What's that, Trace?”

“You told the coach.”

“No, I didn't. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't talk to the coach about you.”

“No one else would do it.” Bishop came over to them, but he could barely keep his balance. “Do you know how much shit we're going to get for this? How many miles my buddy's going to have to run?”

“Hey, I heard the story from someone, but I didn't really believe it. You want to go beat up goats at night, that's your problem.”

Cully's truck streaked out of the parking lot then, the red taillights straggling behind it, the motor gunning.

Bishop, Trace, and now Brad and a couple of others stood around Dex.

“Come on, man. Dex wouldn't do that,” said Lawbourne. He called over to the other truck, where some guys stood smoking. “Hey, Hershel! Dex is an honest man, right?”

“Damn straight!” Hershel called back, holding up his beer.

“Bullshit,” said Bishop. “I'm not even on the goddamn team, and I wouldn't care except you're messing with Trace.” He grabbed Dex's arm and squeezed it.

Dex shook him off. “Get the hell away from me. I'm leaving.”

Lawbourne said, “Bishop, come on. Don't be an asshole.”

Dex walked as slowly as he could over to his truck. There was laughter behind him. He couldn't tell if it was the joke after the tension explodes or if they were laughing at him walking away.

He got in his truck, shaken, and turned on the radio loud. He pulled out of the parking lot methodically, because he didn't want to seem in a hurry. He drove for half an hour through the extra-dark streets, stalling before going home, past the mansions on Sunrise Drive, down Riverback
Avenue, where the old trees hung overhead, no one else on the roads. He circled around to the intersection where the gas station was still lit up and turned onto 2351, where he passed an occasional car, and a billboard with a vodka girl, smiling down as if she knew him. He was on his way to Houston and would soon turn around at the San Jacinto exit, so he could go back home. This was the time of night when drunks rammed their cars into telephone poles, when guys ended up thrown out on the side of the road, vomiting, or got lost somewhere out in Pasadena where you could get drugs in baggies at the closed-down and abandoned drive-in, right under the giant plastic man with one hand broken off. But for now, just driving forward made him feel okay again—he'd get his currency back from Bishop and Trace. Headlights mopped the black road ahead of him, and the overpass arched in the distance. Dex tried to think about what his dad would say about all of this, but nothing came to mind.