The Boiling Season (15 page)

“Don't worry,” Paul said. “They'll be good neighbors.”

“They had better be.” But even as I said it, I felt a twisting unease. Even if they could not be seen or heard from within our walls, their presence would require constant vigilance, especially with the hotel nearing completion.

Paul chuckled quietly to himself. “I'd forgotten how much you dislike being around black people.”

With a glare I showed him I was not amused.

“Or is it poor people?”

“Have you forgotten where we grew up?” I said. “Have you forgotten who we are?”

Paul opened his palms to demonstrate his innocence. “I'm just saying it's hard not to notice your bosses keep getting lighter. And richer.”

I made no effort to hide my anger. “Do you really think this is an appropriate time to be talking about such ridiculous things? Besides, you're not exactly slumming it yourself.”

In an instant, the mischievous glint in Paul's eyes flickered away. “I apologize.” He reached over to pat my knee. “I thought it might help to talk about other things.”

We followed the road for another minute before pulling over in front of a shack that looked to me like all the rest. The driver got out and went up and knocked on a piece of flaking plywood strapped to a post. Apparently this was the door. I thought to ask what we were doing here, but the answer was all too clear. Only Paul could use a death as an opportunity to make a sales call. There was no point in getting upset; it was beyond him to understand.

As we were waiting, I looked around inside the car. For the first time I realized it was the same model Senator Marcus had owned. I shifted in my seat to get a better look at the front. At ten and two the leather steering wheel was stained black with grease and oil. The knob had fallen off the shifter. In the back, where we sat, the ashtrays were gummy and discolored, and one of the window cranks was missing. The fabric in the middle of the roof had come loose, pressing down on us like an overfilled bladder.

I never would have let the Senator's car reach such a condition.

“It gets the job done,” Paul said. “I'm in the market for something newer.”

“Business has been going well?”

He nodded. “Very well.”

“I wouldn't have thought there would be such demand for floor polish, especially out here.”

He let loose another of his enormous laughs. “We've expanded a bit beyond floor polish.”

Just then the driver came out of the house, walking briskly to the car. But instead of getting back behind the wheel, he opened the rear door and leaned down to whisper something in Paul's ear.

“I'll be right back.” Paul sighed as he slipped out of the car.

The two of them went up to the house together, passing into the darkened interior. Almost immediately the shouting began, Paul's voice louder than any of the others. And then suddenly a man stumbled out through the doorway, tumbling into the dirt. There was blood running down his face, and his hand was pressed to the top of his skull.

Paul and the driver strode out after him. The driver held a brown leather attaché case. In his hand, Paul gripped a pistol, his fingers wrapped around the barrel. When they reached the man, curled up on the ground, Paul knelt calmly down and with a face virtually free of expression he pounded the butt of the pistol once and then twice and then three times into the side of the man's head. With the first blow, the man flopped down onto his belly. After that he was still.

Paul stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees. Without a word he started back toward the car.

As Paul settled back into his seat, he placed the attaché case at his feet. He had traded with the driver, giving him the pistol in exchange. Several spots of blood were already drying in the cracks of his knuckles.

Paul saw me staring at his hands. He must have registered my horror, too, but he knew better than to try to explain. He had not wanted me to see this any more than I had wanted to myself. It was not the first such scene I had ever witnessed, but it was the first time I had witnessed someone I thought I knew taking part.

“Let's go to your father's now,” he said, and he reached out again to pat my knee.

A
purple shroud hung over my father's front door. The neighborhood women had lit candles and laid out my father on his bed, washed and dressed in his suit. These were some of the same women who had come to prepare my mother for her funeral, clothing her in one of her favorite handmade dresses. After the ravaging effects of my mother's death, I was surprised to see my father so little changed. It was clear how quickly and painlessly the end had come. Even in death he had lost none of his dignity, but such was my shame that I could bear to look at him for only the briefest of moments. Through his closed eyes I could feel him staring back at me, his disappointment now frozen for eternity.

“We'll let you be,” Paul said as he ushered everyone out. How was it, I wondered, that when he cared to he always knew the right thing to do? Somehow he always seemed to be in control, even when he was beating a man almost to death.

Unlike my father's room, the shop was in disarray. My father had always been a fastidious man, and it was upsetting to see how bad a turn things had taken. The shelves at eye level were clean, and everything on them in straight rows and columns. But the shelves above and below were sticky with dust, the cartons and tins a jumble. On the floor a trail of unswept sugar circled one of the sacks, and another lay tilted toward the side, spilling a stream of rice. Was this Paul's idea of help? Was it for this that my father had chosen him as his favorite? And yet I knew it was me the neighbors would blame for having let things reach this state.

By the time everyone arrived, near dusk, I had the shop back in order. The neighbor women came in first; they had prepared food and tea, which they arranged on the counter, before several of them went into the other room to sit with my father.

Out in the yard some of the men set up a table and chairs and settled in for a game of dominoes. René, one of my father's oldest friends, was croaking in his gloomy monotone, eyes fixed upon his hands. He had a way whenever he told a story of seeming hopelessly bored by his own narration. It was a mood that tended to spread quickly. I was in no hurry to join them now.

But for a change, everyone around him seemed captivated by whatever René was saying.

“He never missed one.” René tapped the table decisively with each passing word. “Every meeting. No one was more serious than him. Those university boys had never seen anything like it. He was a one-man revolution.”

As I edged closer, René glanced up, his eyes alighting warily on my face.

“It's good to see you, René,” I said.

The old man took my hand and squeezed it.

“I don't mean to interrupt, but I happened to hear you talking,” I said. “I was just wondering—that isn't my father you were talking about, is it?”

René's face showed no change in expression. “No, no,” he said with a toss of his head. “No.”

The other men, who had been listening with rapt attention before, had suddenly turned their fascination toward the dominoes spread out before them.

“I see,” I said. “Someone else then? That was what I assumed.”

“Yes,” René said, running his fingers through his beard, “it must have been someone else.” He tapped a domino on the table. “It was a long time ago.”

“Well,” I said, “it's good to see you again. Thank you all for coming.”

One after another the men said how sorry they were about my loss. I could tell their sorrow for the loss was sincere, even as I suspected it hid something else they were less eager to share.

Back in the shop, the women were drinking tea and talking. There was a uniform look of pity on their faces as I came in, as if they had been practicing. I had not eaten since morning, but as I moved toward the plates on the counter I could sense the women watching me, and I wondered if it was not another failing of mine that I could feel something as base as hunger at a time when I was supposed to be in mourning.

Excusing myself, I stepped out again into the yard, wishing there was somewhere I could go to be alone.

Paul had not yet arrived. Strange that he, who earlier had proven incapable of offering any sort of comfort—short of antagonistic distraction—was the only person I now felt I could bear to see. However much the distance between us had grown, it was nothing compared to what now existed between me and the rest of my father's neighbors and friends.

A tall young woman in a thin brown dress stretched tight across her belly approached from up the street. At the gate she rested a moment before turning in toward the yard. Seeing me there, she looked up and smiled. At last I recognized her.

Marie-Hélène and I had gone to school together. She had been Paul's girlfriend when they were younger. For a time I had thought I was in love with her myself, but it was pointless to pretend she would ever have me. I was not the sort of boy a girl ever noticed; certainly not the kind for whom she gave up what she had. There was nothing I could offer that someone like Paul could not easily trump. I had learned to settle for the brief moments we had together when Paul brought her around, watching the curl of her lip when she laughed. Even now, despite everything I had accomplished, I knew it would not be enough. The Pauls of the world always had something more: the swagger, the coarse edges, the certainty about what they deserved, and the confidence to take it.

“I'm sorry,” she said, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

“Thank you for coming.” I stepped back to get a better look at her belly. She was due at any moment, and yet she looked more lovely than ever. “It's nice to have some good news too,” I said. “I hadn't heard.”

She smoothed out her dress. “It's been a while since you were here. I haven't seen you at church.”

“I've been wanting to come,” I said, but I could see by her expression that she did not believe me. No doubt she had heard the same stories as everyone else.

“It can't be easy to come back to a place like this.”

“It's not that—” I began.

“I don't blame you,” she said. “I hear you've made quite a success of yourself. They pretend they wouldn't”—she nodded vaguely toward the men playing dominoes—“but they would do the same if they had the chance.”

I appreciated her saying so, but I knew it was a lie. The difference between me and the men playing dominoes was that they belonged here, and they always would. Just as my father had. My world was the one my mother had imagined. I had taken it as my own.

Suddenly Marie-Hélène turned away, glancing over her shoulder. Paul's car was pulling up out front.

The driver got out first, adjusting his holster as he reached for the back door. I noticed the other heads in the yard swivel as Paul's smiling face appeared over the roof of the car. With a wave he led his driver up the path, the latter holding a large box in his arms. The domino players must have heard the clinking of the bottles, for they were instantly on their feet. Even René, old as he was, came forward to clap Paul on the back. Marie-Hélène watched adoringly, hands folded across her belly, as Paul handed out the rum. Given their choice of prodigal sons, it was clear which one they preferred.

“Come and play a game with us,” René said, tugging Paul by the arm. One of the other men got him a chair.

“In a minute.” Paul took the last bottle from the box, and as he carried it into the house I heard the women inside call out his name.

Some time later, after several rounds of dominoes with my father's old friends and solicitous chatter with all the old women, Paul found me hiding in the long shadows at the back of the house.

“How's it going?” he said with a squeeze to my shoulder.

“Losing my father was hard enough,” I said. “Being here is almost impossible.”

Paul sat down beside me. “I know what you mean.”

“You?” I said in disbelief. “They treat you as if you were the mayor.”

Paul shrugged, less flattered than I had expected. “Your father was a good man. I'll never forget what he did for me and my mother.”

I had never seen him be so diplomatic. This just a few hours after I had watched him beat a man unconscious. I was glad to see he was still civilized enough to have washed the blood from his knuckles.

“For someone who never cared much for people, he had a lot of friends,” I said. “Far more than me.”

Paul nodded. “He was like a father to me, too.”

He took a sip from a bottle I only now realized he had brought over with him. Then he offered it to me and I took it.

“This must sound terrible,” I said, “but I always liked your father better than mine.”

“That's because you had to live with yours. Who knows what mine would have been like if he'd stuck around?”

The rum tore at my throat. “No one ever really told me why he left,” I said between coughs.

“Who knows.” Paul took another sip and let out a sigh. “Who cares.”

It was my turn again. This time it went down more smoothly. “Paul,” I said, passing the bottle back, “what happened today? What did that man do to deserve what you did to him?”

“It's an ugly world,” Paul said with a shrug. “What did any of us do to deserve anything?”

I
n the morning, the hearse came to bring my father's body to the church. Paul had made the arrangements, hiring the nicest car he could find—black paint polished so that it shone nearly as brightly as the chrome.

At the service it was the neighbor women who cried the loudest, but nevertheless I felt everyone's eyes on me. I wondered if they remembered me as a child at my mother's funeral, standing paralyzed at my father's side, refusing to believe that what they had told me was true. It made no sense that someone so vibrant, someone so full of appreciation for the beautiful things of the world, could be taken so quickly, so brutally. And here I was again, now an adult, but still wholly unprepared. Were there others equally ill equipped for death? Looking around the church, I sensed it was only me. Every gesture I made, I was sure it was the wrong gesture. There was nothing I could do to show them how much I had loved my father—nothing I could say to prove I had not abandoned him.