The Subprimes (16 page)

“Great, another program.”

“We will release Ronin into your custody,” says Vice Principal Nakamura. “The comb will be kept in a secure place until it can safely be destroyed.”

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT,” ANYA
says as we walk down the sidewalk beneath the flat-roofed overhang to our cars. “You talk to him.”

“It's not my fault.”

“Then whose fault is it?” she asks.

Ronin stands beside me. I can't blame the kid. “Nobody's.”

“Then why do I have to do Shooters?” Ronin asks.

“What?”

“The after-school program.”

“Oh, the school, oh fuck, I don't know.”

“Good parenting,” Anya says. “Very good explanation. Ronin, I'll talk to you tonight. For now, you and your father can talk about this incident.”

“It's not my fault,” I shout after Anya and turn to Ronin. He's developed the first rush of adolescent acne, a faint constellation of zits on each cheek. His youthful gangliness, that quality of a child stretched almost to adult size, is now curving and bowing from the weight he's put on around his shoulders and hips. He's going to be taller than me, I realize, and if his guidance counselors and school administrators are to be believed, my son will soon be a man-size serial rapist murderer. And who will change this trajectory? Who stands between my son and a life of appearances on the National Sex Offender Registry? That would be me, once I get over my own trivial legal issues relating to my own misunderstood behaviors.

We climb into my Prius. The whales, the goddamn whales have made the PCH virtually impassable, production rigs parked up and down the highway and the traffic cops constantly stopping traffic to allow the Fox vehicles to enter and exit the parking facilities.

“Do you think the whales will die?” Ronin asks.

I hadn't really thought about it. “Well, I guess, well, didn't the ones back east die?”

“Yeah. That's why they ended the show. But now they have these whales and, I was thinking, wouldn't it be a better show if the whales didn't die?”

“But don't they always have to be on the brink of death? Isn't that the drama?”

“But, what about happy endings? Aren't those important?”

“Yeah, Rone, they are.”

We drive for a while. “Don't let all this shit bother you.”

“The whales?”

“No, this crap about the comb, and Shooters, and all that. It's not you, it's the world.”

“Don't worry, Dad, this isn't really bugging me that much. Anyway, Shooters is way cooler than Freaks.”

“It is?”

“Totally. I mean, what would you rather be? A serial killer who comes to the school and, like, totally kills people, or, like, some perv?”

Traffic lurches forward slightly, but I am so perplexed by Ronin's statement that I don't accelerate.

Cars start honking behind me.

I turn to Ronin. “Neither of them is cool, but, killing people—you can't do that, right? You know that, right?”

“Jesus, don't be a spaz. Everyone's honking. Go.”

“But you understand me? That's a scary thing you just said.”

“Dad, what am I going to do? Comb their hair to death?”

THERE WERE NO SEASONS IN
Valence, there was hot, hotter, and hottest. The exurban structures were designed to be air-conditioned, and like many homes in the American West in the Post-Seasonal Epoch, when winter had shrunk to a sliver of cool mid-February breeze, these homes were not built to withstand a warm climate without 50,000 BTUs of air-conditioning support. The inhabitants of Valence sweltered; on hot nights, you could practically hear the collective sigh of resignation to the heat, residents struggling to find a less sticky spot in the bed, turning over the pillow, hoping to drift into delicious sleep.

But there was also a stretch, a half hour or so of last dark before the dawn, when the still air cooled and the hot hold broke. It felt like a trick of the body, like sweat cooling on the flesh, but it was wonderful, and if you had been stirring and unable to sleep, now you could finally rest, and if you had been asleep, you woke up, and instead of worry or anxiety at what you had left behind and what might lay ahead, you were happy just to be here.

Tom, the boy, stirred and opened his eyes just in time to see his sister, Vanessa, climb out of her sleeping bag, pull on jeans and a T-shirt, and slip out of the room.

For that momentary cool flush was a call to action for Vanessa. The teenagers of Valence were growing up somehow faster than they would have back in their pre-foreclosed homes, where gadgets and television and the Internet would have distracted them and warded off, perhaps for months, the inevitable attraction of the opposite sex, or at least made less insistent the urge to act on it.

Atticus was waiting for her, leaning against a guardrail by a scrub of cotton head near a line of onion flowers, purple petals looking black in the predawn. She saw him first as the outline of a man, rectangular head, broad shoulders, thin middle, and legs pencil straight. Closer, and she could see the boyishness of his slouch, the head tilt and grin as he watched her approach.

She could still return to where her mom and dad slept fitfully, to her sleeping bag across the room from her brother. Could stop, shrug, and then fend off this future. But she was enveloped by the dark, cool air, and, more important, was aware of every step and sound, the rustling in the nearby cucumber plants of some sort of small mammal, the hoot of an owl, the sandy scissoring trot of a coyote's legs, the tingle of soft cool against her arms where
they protruded from her white-and-blue T-shirt. She could no more turn and walk away than a hungry dog could stop chewing a meaty bone.

They hugged, not for the first time but with more at stake now, for this was a definite precursor to what they both had planned. He wore a backpack. She felt the straps when they hugged. He took her hand and they walked along the guardrail to a gap where they slipped through, following a trail down a narrow gully and then up into a patch of scrubby sagebrush encircling a bed of rice grass. Atticus walked through the stalks of rice grass, heavy with seed, stamping down a space for them both and rooting out any critters that might be underfoot. When he was finished, he stood for a moment, unsure if he should be so forward as to pull his sleeping bag out of his backpack.

“What are we gonna sit on?” Vanessa asked.

Atticus dropped to one knee and swung his backpack around in one motion, unzipping it and removing the nylon sleeping bag. He unrolled it, shook it out once, and made a place in the grass for the two of them. He looked up at her, still standing, her head silhouetted against the low moon.

“Well?”

She smiled and sat down, removing her sneakers and turning to face him. “You've brought lots of girls up here?”

He snorted. “Oh yeah, hundreds.” He pushed his pack aside. “Sure wish we had some beer.”

She'd never much liked the taste of beer, the few times she'd had it back in Riverside. “I don't miss it.”

Atticus was still kneeling next to the sleeping bag, as if he was about to say his prayers.

“You gonna join me?” Vanessa said. She felt nervous and was surprised by her confident tone.

He walked on his knees toward her, his body jerking from side
to side as he came. She lay back and he bent toward her, afraid to put his full weight against her.

That is what she wanted, his heaviness pressing against her, and she pulled him down, taking him by the shoulders with both hands, bony fingers around his upper arms and yanking with such force that he felt her nails digging into his flesh.

“Ouch!”

“Come on.” She took him down so they were chest against chest, his hard ribs and pelvis digging into her breasts and hips and she could only take short breaths because of his weight, which brought on a light-headedness that confused and excited her as their lips met and tongues darted. She was gasping, for air and in pleasure, as he arched to bend his head so he could kiss her behind the ear, licking his way down her hairline to her neck, and then abruptly stopping and pushing himself up on his arms. Somehow she knew to extend her arms up over her head so he could wiggle her shirt off.

Later, she would remember enjoying the burden of his body against hers more than the act that necessitated her taking his weight. He had been fast, and while she had been expecting pain, or at least discomfort, there was only a mild soreness, followed by a sensation that felt more like the hint of pleasure than pleasure itself, and after he had grunted and finished he kept lying on top of her, and they stayed like that until he began to move again and they did it again, and this time she felt that hint grow into a wave of pleasure that ended too soon, and then they grabbed at their clothes because the dawn sky was going gray to blue and Valence would soon be waking up.

Atticus tore a handful of grass and used that to wipe their fluid and her blood from the sleeping bag as she slipped on her jeans and T-shirt and stood, feeling awkward about having nothing to do. She took up two corners of the sleeping bag, folding them
over and then rolling it up to where Atticus sat, slipping on his boots.

BAILEY WAS SURPRISED VANESSA WAS
up, had been to the pump, and brought back a bucket of water without having to be asked. It was often difficult to relate to Vanessa's experience. When she herself was fifteen, she lived in a proper home, in a three-bedroom Craftsman in San Luis Obispo. She lived in the same house, slept in the same room, until she went off to college. Vanessa had not slept in a house with running water in two years. What was happening to us, Bailey wondered, that our children are growing up like animals?

But there was something else about Vanessa, Bailey thought, as she watched her daughter pour the water from the bucket into a pot that she set to boil on a charcoal brazier. She was moving a little differently, was more obviously thoughtful, less briskly dismissive.

“You're up early,” Bailey said.

“Restless,” Vanessa answered.

Bailey squinted as she appraised her daughter. Vanessa was becoming a woman, too soon, and there was nothing Bailey could do to stem that inevitability but try to love her daughter.

“You know, honey, just because we're here”—Bailey gestured around her at their ratty house—“doesn't mean you can't talk to me about, you know, whatever is going on.”

Vanessa said nothing.

“That boy, Atticus, he seems awfully fond of you,” Bailey said, watching carefully her daughter's reaction.

Vanessa set down the bucket. Centered the pot. She turned and mentioned her brother was still asleep. Her expression betrayed nothing.

“Wake him,” Bailey said. “He's going to school.”

Vanessa shook the boy gently by the shoulder, feeling fonder of him for the great distance she now felt from him.

Bailey poured the hot water through the filter, gave the chipped mug to Jeb, and then put another cup under it. She would drink the weaker coffee. Jeb was pulling on his boots.

“You noticed anything about Vanessa?” Bailey asked.

Jeb sipped his coffee.

“She's got a boyfriend and they're up to something,” she said. “I feel it.”

“Wait, what? Who?”

“Haven't you been paying any attention? Atticus, blond-haired, Irish Mexican or something.”

“He works with us up on the site. Good kid.”

“Well, why don't you talk to him? Make sure he's got common sense, about rubbers and stuff.”

“Jesus, Bailey, you think they're up to that?”

“What else do they have to do?”

Jeb stood up, pulled on his work Pendleton. “Oh man, I'm still sore.”

“On the same site? You said they were going to move you.”

Jeb nodded. “There's always another wall that needs raising.”

He took a tortilla, smeared on some oil, and chewed, downing that with the rest of his coffee. He hugged his wife and was gone, out the front door, where he joined a pair of men walking up the road to where a half-dozen SUVs idled to make the run up to Placer.

Bailey took his cup. Shouted after her son, who now came in, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“Take this next door to Don, make sure he eats something,” she said, holding out a plastic plate of two tortillas and a fried egg.

The boy saw no way out of the chore and took the plate. When
he returned, Bailey combed his hair, handed him a notebook, a pen, and a pencil, and told him to follow her.

“Why do I have to be the one kid who's got a mom for a teacher?” the boy said to his mother.

“'Cause you're lucky,” Bailey said, closing the door behind her as they both left for school.

SARGAM NOTICED THEM AS SOON
as they drove in, three silver-gray SUVs glistening in the sun and bristling with antennas. Trouble was her first thought. They looked like government vehicles. They made their way in a shiny column down the on-ramp and then along Bienvenida, passengers obscured behind tinted windows. They drove slowly and steadily, a sign of the imperiousness of whoever was behind the wheel. One thing Sargam knew: they were not subprimes looking for a night's rest. She ducked behind the house and ran past the cooking fire till she found Darren, kneeling down next to the worm tanks.

“Got visitors,” she said. “A whole column of armored SUVs. Looks like law enforcement.”

Darren wiped his hands on a rag and stood up. “Did you ask what they wanted?”

“No.”

“That's not like you. Shying away like that.”

“Let them wait,” Sargam said, slipping on her white leather jacket.

As the column wound up Bienvenida and down Las Lomas, the residents of Valence, mostly children and women, with the men away working, ducked into houses or into the lush cultivated rows at the sight of the vehicles.

Sargam cut through the rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, and
sweet potatoes and came up through a backyard and along the side of the three-bedroom ranch where the Korean lady had died and stood by the road as the column slowly drove down the street. She held up her right hand, palm outward, her other hand in her back pocket.