The jacked child bartender said, “Fuck yeah, totes magotes.”
“Then talk to that kid there when I leave. He’s the next J. J. Abrams.” She pointed at Sammy Greenbaum.
“Another tequila, sweetness?” the bartender asked. “On the casa. And use your phone all you want.”
Maya downed the shot, then went to apologize to Sammy that she had to bail right now, ’cause of work shit—Trump tariffs and a volatile market roiling real estate, bullshit, bullshit—but could he, she asked semi-flirtatiously, maybe meet her for a drink at Shutters on the Beach to finish the pitch maybe tonight maybe tomorrow if he’s free, and tell her more about his movie vision. She had to be nice to this kid; his dad was on the Praetorian board.
“Ah.” He smiled, pleased that this attractive, powerful gatekeeper wanted to see him when the sun went down. “You wanna get in on the ground floor of the Sammy Greenbaum business, huh?”
“You know it,” Maya said, kissed him on the lips, kind of, and dipped back to Praetorian.
Maya actually ran into Malouf and Darrin in the Praetorian elevator. They were getting back from lunch, too. Darrin was limping. He was sporting a brand-new pair of the cowboy boots Malouf had envied on Bronson. Malouf was making Darrin break them in for him. “How’d it go with Sammy?” Malouf asked. “Smart kid. Do you think he’s handsome? You like short guys? Spinners?” Jesus, not now, she thought.
“Hammer time,” Darrin blurted, trying to belittle Maya’s work assignment while he attempted the famous shuffle, but he came up lame and grimacing on his sore feet.
“Yeah, Sammy’s cute. Sir, I need to talk to you about the Powers deal.”
Malouf nodded, deadening his eyes. The doors opened, he stayed her shoulder with his hand and guided her out of the elevator, dismissing Darrin with a curt nod as the doors closed. Malouf put his finger to his lips. “I don’t like to talk about that deal in the office. Let’s keep it belowground.” An empty elevator car opened. Malouf ushered Maya in and pressed the button for the lowest floor, P4.
When they got to a spot deep in the bowels of the garage, Maya told him all she knew, and then asked if he thought he’d be able to find this phone that might have the fight recorded. He nodded a long time, processing, and finally said, “It’s my duty to find the phone, Maya. We’ve created a tough situation for a kid here, it’s partly our responsibility, for two kids really, and we need to make it right. And see justice done, wherever that leads. We might have to take some lumps, so be it.”
Maya couldn’t believe it. She waited for a moment to see if he’d break out into a maniacal laugh and say “Just fuckin’ with you,” but he held her gaze sincerely. His deep brown eyes even seemed moist with a species of feeling akin to guilt or empathy. She’d underestimated him all along, she thought. Maybe that’s why he’s where he is—he’s great in a crisis. “I’ve got people who will get that phone, believe you me. Easy,” he said. “You don’t need to know. You shouldn’t know. I’ll need the boys’ names and where they live. I’ll have that phone by tomorrow night and then we’ll see what’s on it and where we’re at. I can see you’re upset, but this is how the sausage gets made. It’s ugly, but it ends up tasting so good.”
“Thank you,” Maya said. “I’ll hit Janet and get you that info ASAP.”
Malouf reached his arms out. “May I?” he asked. Maya nodded and took a step toward him; she let him hug her right there on the line where P4 Yellow turned into P4 Green. She sighed with something like relief. “There, there, Wharton,” Malouf said. “It’s okay. This is where you learn.”
She was crying now. He hugged her harder. Every time she exhaled, he seemed to squeeze her a little more. She dimly remembered a factoid from her research on her nemeses, snakes, that boa constrictors never put pressure on their prey, they do not actively strangle, they simply take up the slack of each exhale until there is no room for the lungs to expand and inhale through the lethal embrace. She felt a little dizzy and realized she was having trouble breathing now enveloped in her boss’s muscular consolation. She pulled back slightly in panic. Moving his hands to her shoulders, Malouf extended his arms out of the hug, gently lifting her chin with his thumb and the remaining knuckle of his missing finger so he could stare into her wet eyes and offer his hard-earned words of wisdom. “She who can sustain the most pain wins,” he whispered.
She sniffled and managed to joke, “I bet that’s what you say to all the ladies.”
Malouf smiled at that, nodded, and said, “Yeah, right before I ask them to turn over.” Maya didn’t even have time to react before he added, “Now buck the fuck up.”
34.
HYRUM FINISHED WITH his second trip to the police station, and in a few hours was remanded to his mothers and ordered not to leave the city of Rancho Cucamonga. Hyrum’s one suit was bloody and ripped from the fight, so Yalulah found the nicest polo shirt he had and pants that didn’t droop to his hamstrings to go visit the boy he beat up at the hospital. When they got there, they were told Hermano was in the ICU and only family could visit. But this hospital seemed almost empty, no security anywhere, really, so Yalulah and Hyrum drifted off and followed the signs to Intensive Care and looked into rooms until Hyrum said, “Here.”
Yalulah saw a dark-haired teenager on the hospital bed. He looked like a monster. His head was half shaved and swollen out to one side like a misshapen melon, and his eyes were puffy and shut. There was some kind of tube running liquid into or out of his head, which Yalulah soon figured was to remove the fluid from the swelling brain. Yalulah felt a sob rise up within her, as a mother, and then a wail. She grunted and swallowed it back. She composed herself.
“Is that him?” she asked Hyrum.
Hyrum nodded. “I think so.” He looked scared, like it had all just now become real for him, the damage he’d caused. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Yalulah could feel her legs want to give out, and she dropped to her knees, keening, “Hyrum, Hyrum, what have you done?”
Hyrum stood there impassively. He knelt down to Yalulah. “It’s okay, Mom, here, get up.” He put his hands beneath her shoulders and gently pulled her. “Get up.”
As Hyrum was helping Yalulah regain her footing, another woman walked into the room behind them, a middle-aged Mexican lady, maybe Hermano’s mother, or even grandmother. She began speaking to them in Spanish. Yalulah didn’t speak the language, but Hyrum had had a year of it, this year at Etiwanda, actually. Hyrum exchanged a few words with the lady.
“What? What are you saying?” Yalulah asked, offering her hand to the woman, saying, “Hi, I’m the mother, Yalulah.”
“Hold on, Mom. Her name is Esmeralda. She’s his grandmother.” They kept talking in simple, halting words. Hyrum pointed to his heart, and said, “Yo lo siento.” Over and over again.
It slowly dawned on the woman that she was talking to the boy’s attacker. She crossed herself and pointed at Hyrum, saying, “You? You? You?” and then she flew at him, slapping and punching wildly but ineffectively. Hyrum did not fight back; he simply covered up, waiting for the old woman to exhaust herself on him. Yalulah interceded and tried to pull the woman off, but she was screaming now and in a blind rage, and she turned her attack to Yalulah. Now Hyrum had to pull the woman off his mother. He tried to pin the older woman’s arms back.
“Get your hands off her!” a man in a suit yelled, and came charging into the room, pushing Hyrum away from Esmeralda and taking the woman in his arms, where she collapsed, spent. “What are you doing attacking an old woman? How did you get in here?”
“We just asked for him and walked in,” Yalulah said.
“Jesus Christ, this fucking hospital. Get out!”
“We wanted to apologize,” Yalulah said. “Hyrum wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize? Apologize to whom?”
“Him,” Hyrum said, pointing to the unconscious boy on the bed.
“‘Him’? ‘Him’ has a name; he’s a person, goddammit. It’s Hermano!”
&nb
sp; The man seemed to realize again that he was holding this sobbing woman in his arms. “Get out, okay?” he said, in a somewhat calmer tone. “I’ll be out in a minute, ma’am, okay? Please leave the room, wait for me in the hallway. I’ll be out.”
“Yes,” Yalulah said. “And we’re sorry. We are so very, very sorry.”
Yalulah paced and tried to compose herself in the hallway.
“You okay, Mom?” Hyrum asked.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “I’m okay.”
“Is he gonna be okay?”
“Hermano?”
“Yes, Hermano.”
“I don’t know. Yes, I hope so. God willing. I hope so.”
After about ten minutes, the man exited Hermano’s hospital room, closing the door softly behind him, and walked down to Yalulah and Hyrum and out of earshot. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry, we felt so bad and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how bad it was,” Yalulah said.
“Yes, it’s very bad. I’m sorry for yelling back there,” the man said.
“It’s okay.” Yalulah patted him. “I understand.”
The man pulled away from Yalulah’s touch. “My name is Benny Ruiz. I’m one of Hermano’s uncles. I’m also a lawyer.”
“Oh. I’m Yalulah Powers. And this is Hyrum. Shake his hand, Hyrum.”
“I know who this is,” Benny said, not shaking Hyrum’s extended hand.
Yalulah winced at that. “Hyrum wanted to apologize for his part in this.”
“His part?”
“Yes, his part.” Yalulah would not be bullied.
“Why did you really come here?”
“What? I told you. To apologize,” Hyrum said.
“You think that’s enough?” Benny Ruiz’s breath seemed to get short and shallow again.
“I don’t know.” Hyrum shrugged.
“No, of course not,” Yalulah added, “but it’s a start.”
“I shouldn’t even talk to you people, you’re all holier than thou, you Mormons. How old are you?”
“Eleven,” Hyrum said.
Yalulah said, “Say ‘sir.’”
“Eleven, sir.”
Benny Ruiz smirked. “Don’t ‘sir’ me now, kid. It’s way too late for ‘sir.’”
“You’re an asshole,” Hyrum said, waving the man off.
“Hyrum!” Yalulah grabbed the boy’s shoulder.
“Ha! There’s the white privilege coming out, just under the surface always. Too bad you’re not older. You’re gonna get away with this ’cause you’re so young and so pale. No jail for the pale, but that’s where I’d love to see you.”
“I understand your anger, but—”
Benny Ruiz cut Yalulah off. “You don’t understand shit.”
“But an eleven-year-old in jail?” Yalulah asked incredulously.
“Hell yes, for this little red-haired animal. But whatever, that’s the criminal justice system in America for you, slanted for the white man or, in this case, the white boy.”
“You’ve got us all wrong.” Yalulah shook her head. She couldn’t believe what this man was saying. He was lumping her family in with everything she had come to hate about America, everything that she, Bronson, Jackie, and Mary had rejected and fled. Everything she said was taken the wrong way. Every time she apologized only inflamed this man more. His eyes were burning with a hurt both ancient and new, and she saw he was not looking at her as a person now, but as a thing. She was a symbol to him, of an unfair system, and she began to fear that little Hyrum would be a symbol to everyone as well, a scapegoat in a new order. Mr. Ruiz would not let her speak anymore. He held up his hand. He knew what he knew; he felt what he felt.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “Your playtime is over. You are dinosaurs. Dead Mormons walking. Now get the fuck out. Your apology is not accepted.” He leaned in so close to Yalulah that she could feel his breath. Beneath the coffee, she could smell that he’d been crying, that particular deep, sour odor of sudden loss and mourning. She stifled an urge to hold him.
“And before you go.” He lowered his voice to an angry, intimate whisper. “Listen carefully to me—there will be no trial for this white boy, but there will be an adjudication and then a civil suit. That beautiful brown boy in there—his life is ruined; he will never recover fully, and we are going to put a price tag on that, a big, big number, and we are going to multiply that number by a factor of ‘hate crime,’ which is going to add many zeroes to the end of it, and consequently, every penny you have, every penny you or your inbred, white-bread generations to come will ever have, is going to go to that poor boy in there and his family. The record in such a suit so far is four million in California, but this is a new day, and I think you can multiply that by twenty. It’ll take some time, a few years, but it will happen.”
“We don’t have any money,” Yalaluh said.
“Bullshit. I did my research, Yalulah Ballou, you and your New England family, or your Powers husband, have a fortune in land. Or you did. That’s Hermano’s land now. You just met your new landlord and his name is Hermano Jesus Ruiz. See you at the deposition. Now kindly get the fuck out of here.”
35.
RANCHO CUCAMONGA HIGH SHUT DOWN indefinitely after the brawl. The last two performances of the musical were canceled, so the reps from Yale would not get to see Pearl. Classes were also canceled, but the doors of the school and the classrooms remained open with grief counselors waiting to “process” the “events” into a “teaching moment” if the kids wanted to come in and talk about “trauma” and “process together.” Same at Etiwanda Intermediate, which Hyrum attended. The schools were in a holding pattern, the children confused and angry, rumors and conspiracy theories mixing and multiplying. Local newspaper reports called the incident a “real life West Side Story,” playing up the race angle and comparing it with the beating of a white man by Mexican men in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium a few years ago that left the victim permanently altered.
Then Hermano died.
As this news spread, Mary, Yalulah, Hyrum, Deuce, and Pearl holed up in the house in a type of siege. Mary sneaked away to take a pill or some Adderall whenever she felt the walls closing in. A cop was posted at their door with the dual purpose of protecting them and making sure they didn’t run away. Every time one of them left, a reporter, or any blogger, vlogger, wannabe newsmaker, or self-styled vigilante with a cell phone would follow them and ask them questions, trying to badger a word out or provoke a newsworthy moment. The news had leaked that they were “Mormon Survivalists”; the spin was that they were possibly white supremacists. Janet put a lawyer in touch with them. The lawyer told them to speak to no one.
Hyrum retreated back into Fortnite and barely left his room. Pearl spent most of her time talking on the phone and texting with Josue. It was bleak and claustrophobic in the house, but they were all safe in there, for now. Mary, who was becoming more and more useless and disoriented in Rancho Cucamonga, was sent back to Agadda da Vida so she could take care of the kids in the desert, freeing Bronson to come talk to his son, and see his other children. They weren’t about to expose the younger ones to this evil circus.
Bronson arrived three days after the incident. Deuce ran to him and held him tight. He was his father and teacher and he hadn’t touched him in months. Deuce inhaled deeply; the man felt like food to him, sustenance.
Bronson said, “I’ve been reading about you, son. So proud.” Deuce smiled wide. Pearl came forward, too, and hugged Bronson, as if she were a child again. “My Pearl, I’ve been hearing about you, too. Proud of you, too.” He released Pearl, and said, “Hello, Yalulah, good to see you, where’s Hyrum?”
She pointed to his bedroom. “In there, playing Fortnite.”
“What’s Fortnite?”
“Oh, you’ll see.” Bronson went to Hyrum’s door and put his hand on the knob.
Yalulah stopped him. “Bronson,” she said, “Hyrum doesn’t know yet, but we
just heard, the boy died.”
Bronson ceased all motion for an instant; he hung his head and began to quietly cry. Yalulah walked toward him, but he put his hand out to keep her away. Bronson dropped to his knees for some time, his tears striking the plush carpet.
“My boy is a murderer,” he whispered.
Yalulah spoke softly to him. “It was the blow on the ground that killed him, when he hit his head on the sidewalk. It was a freak thing. Hyrum didn’t kill him.”
Bronson looked up and shook his head sadly. “Yaya, O Yaya…” he moaned, and then he put out his hands to his wife and children to join him on the ground in prayer for the murdered boy. They held hands and prayed with heavy hearts and aching souls. When they had finished, Bronson said, “Give me the dead boy’s name and I will make sure he is baptized and eternal life is his.”
Yalulah nodded. “Hermano Jesus Ruiz.”
“Jesus,” he repeated softly. He stood up, walked into Hyrum’s room, and shut the door.
About an hour later, Bronson emerged. He seemed less than he had been when he arrived. There had been no raised voices from behind the closed door, just a steady stream of back-and-forth—a deep voice murmuring, asking, consoling, and a young high voice answering, explaining, apologizing, and finally both high and low voices merging into groans and tears, followed by silence.
“How is he?” Yalulah asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Bronson said. “It’ll take a little while, but he’s gonna be fine. I’ll make sure of that. God has a plan for this boy and his atonement, and I intend to see it through.” Off the word atonement, Deuce looked at Pearl strangely. Bronson caught it. “Something you want to say, son?”
“No, Father,” Deuce said. The budding working-class hero could still be easily cowed by his cowboy father.
“Okay, then,” Bronson said.
Yalulah stood. “Oh,” she said. “Maya Abbadessa from Praetorian something or other called while you were in with Hyrum.”
Truly Like Lightning Page 33
