“Roger, wilco,” I said, stubbing out my Chesterfield in the kitchen sink.
“My car is full of beach sand,” she said.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Don’t sorry-about-that me, young man. I want you to clean it out or not use it again. Do you understand me?”
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling in the now-universal James Dean manner. “Affirmative,” I said.
And later, adopting a more conciliatory tone, she said, “Miles, I know you’re seeing that... that skinny girl. I really don’t understand it, not that it’s any of my business, but why can’t you look up your old high school friends? Why are you avoiding them?”
My old high school friends had their own lives. They had jobs now, or were in the military. We were all light-years removed from the kind of shoulder-punching, smart-mouth, street-loitering way of life we never once saw as limited, shallow, or futureless. I thought of them now, at Mom’s insistence, and could not clearly remember their faces.
We were sitting at the kitchen table. Mom slid a wedge of peach pie in front of me. She pressed a scoop of vanilla ice cream into it, and then another. The fatty pink flesh hanging from her arms jiggled with the effort.
“No thanks,” I said, pushing it away.
It’s hard for pale blue eyes to look tragic, but when they do, it takes your breath away. Tears in unreal abundance flooded down her face. She turned and stumbled out of the kitchen making warbling, wet moans. I was too shocked, for a moment, to move.
Inexplicably, my reaction to Mom’s outburst was rage. I dumped the pie and ice cream into the sink and stormed out of the house, slamming the door so hard that something inside fell off a wall. I crossed the street to the Dakeman house and knocked on the door. I’d never gone up to the Dakeman front door once in all the years we’d lived across from each other. After at least two minutes, Mr. Dakeman himself answered. He squinted at me through an alcoholic mist. “She’s out,” he said. Then he grinned a little. “Come on in and wait, Captain.”
We went into the living room, where Mr. Dakeman had been watching the wrestling matches on TV and drinking Seagram’s 7. An angry crackle of frying meat came from the kitchen. I could almost feel beads of drifting fat settle on my face. On the TV screen, Lord Blears was stomping the throat of Antonino Rocca, the great acrobatic wrestler from Argentina.
“You want a drink, Captain?” Mr. Dakeman said.
I started to say no, but hesitated a beat too long and Mr. Dakeman filled a spare shot glass to the brim. “Down the hatch,” he said, filling his own glass and lifting it to his lips with the grace and efficiency of a journeyman drinker. I raised my glass more cautiously and then leaned forward so that my puckered Ups would catch the rim before any whiskey sloshed over it. Mr. Dakeman was a round-bellied, narrow-shouldered man with big, dark-knuckled hands. He smelled of sour, days-old sweat, booze, and fried meat. He had little, intelligent eyes that glinted with a mean-spirited self-satisfaction. Though he seemed to be absorbed in the wrestling match, I knew he was watching me out of the comer of his eye as I sipped from my shot glass. I swallowed all the whiskey then and set the empty glass down. My face got hot. He refilled my glass. I lit a cigarette. Antonino Rocca had recovered from getting his throat stomped and now had Lord Blears trapped in a grapevine twist. Lord Blears, monocle in place and bellowing in pain, tried to hop to the ropes. “Phony limey bastard,” Mr. Dakeman said.
“Break his back, Rocca,” I said, feeling the whiskey.
“Rocca could do it,” Mr. Dakeman said soberly.
We spoke of wrestling and drank as the whiskey-loosened minutes got away from us and the room darkened. At one point, Mrs. Dakeman came in with steaks fried to the density of leather and covered with scorched onions. She set the plates down on the coffee table, one for Mr. Dakeman, one for me. Mr. Dakeman accepted his dinner without acknowledgment. I started to say something, but thought better of disturbing Mrs. Dakeman’s perfect distraction.
“Salt,” Mr. Dakeman said, his eyes fixed on the TV set, and his wife returned with a shaker of salt, again without apparent expectation of a mutter or nod of thanks from her husband. Rocca had beaten Lord Blears, two falls out of three, and now Gorgeous George was taking on Wild Red Berry in the main event.
“Red Berry’s tough,” Mr. Dakeman said, a wad of steak in his cheek, “but he’s too small. That hairy fruitcake’s got forty, fifty pounds on him.”
The front door opened and Eldon Dakeman came in. He stood in the half-light of the living room, steel lunch pail dangling at the end of his long arm. He was as big as ever but there was a curvature to his back I didn’t remember. He had developed an older man’s stoop. Nola had told me that Eldon was now working for Ducommon Steel down in National City, making good money unloading finished steel products from railroad cars.
“Hey, Eldon,” I said.
He peered into the dim room, gradually recognizing his father and me sitting on the couch. “Hey, Mike,” he said.
“Miles,” I said, but Eldon ignored the correction. He had finished socializing. He went into the kitchen and came out gripping a steak in his hand. Then he went off to his room, his footfalls shaking the house. I tried to imagine what Eldon looked like in a sailor uniform. The effort made me smile. He must have seemed dangerously improbable to his superior officers. They must have come to believe that the entire hierarchy of naval command would have been compromised if Eldon was allowed to wear, and distort, the uniform.
“Miles,” Mr. Dakeman said, in a musing tone of voice. “Who the Jesus gave you a handle like that, Captain?”
Gorgeous George took something out of his trunks while the referee wasn’t looking. He had Wild Red Berry’s arms twisted into the ropes. He rubbed the stuff from his trunks into Wild Red’s eyes.
“That’s cayenne pepper!” Mr. Dakeman said. “That pansy can’t win without pulling a stunt like that.”
“I don’t know who gave it to me,” I said.
“What?” Mr. Dakeman said, leaning toward the TV set. Wild Red Berry had just drop-kicked Gorgeous George into a comer post and was now working him over with flying mares. I refilled my shot glass.
“It was probably my mother,” I said. “She likes dignified names like Miles and Terence. Jonathan, Carlton, Emory. Do you know what my dad’s name is? It’s Leland.” I was sitting on the floor by then, my legs stretched out under the coffee table. I forgot myself and spit angrily into the dog-stained carpet, thinking of my name and how I hated it. The lumpish body of a big, sleeping mongrel pressed against my thigh. A smelly child in diapers stood next to me and touched my ear with a Popsicle. I saw Mrs. Dakeman come and go a number of times, carrying dishes or whispering the names of children. I saw that my glass was full again, so I emptied it as Wild Red Berry defeated Gorgeous George with a punishing Boston crab, a submission hold, the inescapable hold all wrestlers feared.
A sound from the street pierced through the cheering crowd and Mr. Dakeman’s rumbling snores. It sent a spasm through my drunken heart. It was the sound of Nola’s wild, rebellious laughter. I started to get up, then decided to stay put. I thought I should be seen sitting on the floor with a shot glass in my hand watching TV with her father, as if I were one of the family. But she didn’t some in. When she laughed again, I got up and went to the door and opened it a crack.
She was leaning against a ‘52 Ford Victoria. It was a beautiful car—lowered, leaded, chopped, channeled, with a custom paint job, a metallic maroon so deep and liquid it looked like you could slip your arm into it straight to the elbow. The driver of the car had his head tilted out the window. A cigarette hung from his lower lip. He was a Drifter. The club’s name, carved into a cast-aluminum plaque, dangled from the rear bumper of the Ford on chromium chains. He had long sideburns and his hair was sculpted into a well-greased duck’s ass. He gunned the engine now and then, filling the semidark neighborhood with a window-vibrating roar. When he let it idle, I could hear the radical camshaft make the engine stutter
. It was a street dragster, meant for high RPMs. It idled nervously, the timing unsure of itself. Nola, her hands shoved into the front pockets of her cutoff Levi’s, leaned down to the indifferent Drifter and waited for him to remove his cigarette. He took his time, but when he finally flipped the butt into the street, she kissed him. Her head and shoulders gradually entered the narrow window. Then the upper half of her body was inside the car, lost in a well of shadow. It looked as if she were sinking into a maroon lake. Her long foot rose, slowly, and the sandal it was wearing slipped off. The toes of the foot curled tightly. Then they splayed.
I switched the porch light on and off several times, as any father might have done. Of course, Mr. Dakeman would not have stood at the door observing his daughter protectively. The dignity and responsibility of fatherhood were not high on his list of personal standards. I glanced over at him. He was awake again, staring wearily at Dick Lane, the ringside announcer, who was giving his redundant analysis of the matches we had seen and what we could expect in the future. I snapped the porch light on and off with the outrage of someone who had rights—a father, an older brother. A lover. And, of course, I immediately felt like an idiot, like a coward. The truth was, the Drifters were a legendary car club, known for their fearless run-ins with the cops, their lead-pipe-and-chain-swing-ing brawls with other car clubs, and for their amazing cars, each of which was a legitimate work of art. I was in awe of the Drifters and their cars, and couldn’t have gone out in the street to claim Nola: Without a car of equal beauty and sophistication, I could not have competed.
I sat down on the couch and poured myself another shot of whiskey. I let my glass rest on my teeth and I felt, along with the burning trickle of booze, the throbs from the radical Ford as it eased away from the house.
My heart speeded up, anticipating Nola, but as minutes passed I realized that she had gone off with the Drifter again. My irate-father-at-the-light-switch act probably meant something altogether different to her than it would have meant to a girl from a decent family. She probably thought it was her mother, or a sister or brother, warning her away from the house because her father was on a blood-letting rampage.
I left Mr. Dakeman sunk into the comer of his sofa, his sagging face pale in the TV’s gray flickering light. When I crossed our lawn, Pershing grazed my knee with his big sad head. I knelt beside him and hugged him until he trembled with anxiety. He wasn’t accustomed to physical demonstrations of emotional need. Then I took his rope and unhooked it from his collar. “You’re free, Pershing,” I said. “Go piss on a tire.” But Pershing just stood next to the mulberry tree and quivered.
I was very sick the next day. Physically more than emotionally, but as my strength came back, this order was reversed. I packed, halfheartedly, the things I needed to take to Keesler Air Force Base. Civilian clothes were not permitted in basic, but in technical school we would be allowed to spend weekend passes out of uniform. Not that I looked forward to weekends. I didn’t look forward to anything. I had made the mistake of waiting for the Drifter to bring her back. I’d waited out on the porch, talking to Pershing, who stayed under his protecting tree, tethered to his own timidity. I waited an hour. Then the customized Ford turned the comer and rumbled down the street. The Drifter eased up to the curb in front of the Dakeman house and turned off his lights. Then he turned off his engine. I watched the dark, unmoving car. A silence, like the hush of conspirators, sealed our neighborhood from the rest of the universe. But Pershing’s keen ears twitched and he glanced quickly at the Ford, then guiltily back at me.
I imagine he heard the secret friction of flesh, the fluid roar of hearts. He looked at me in alarm, his sorrowful eyes understanding, but not quite condoning, my apparent complaisance. “I don’t own her, you idiot,” I said.
I tried to eat breakfast and failed. After picking at a four-egg cheese omelet for a few minutes, I had to run to the bathroom. Mom seemed sympathetic, but her sympathy came from a distance. She’d lost faith in me. I was not going to be a robust eater with a positive outlook like Dad or my lumberjack uncles. I skipped lunch, went for a long walk instead. When I got home, I saw Nola sitting on her front porch. She was wearing her cutoffs, her round white thighs held wide in brave unconscious welcome.
“Hey, Miles,” she said.
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just waved. I was wearing my uniform. The crisp, silvery-blue sheen of it had a good effect on me. It took away some of my bitterness. The uniform reminded me that I belonged to something much larger and far more dependable than this narrow street with its tense little lawns and hedges and the Dakemans’ dust-bowl eyesore. I was an airman third class, soon to be a trained specialist, destined to fly in the RC-121-C Super Connies, the radar picket planes that defended the coastlines of our nation from sneak attack. I felt sorry for Eldon, who had lost his chance with the Navy. But it was the kind of pity that gives you a warm feeling of comfortable self-regard.
“You look sharp, Miles,” she said.
I stopped. I pulled my cigarettes out and lit up. “Thanks, Nola,” I said. Then, touching the bill of my cap, I added, “For everything.” It was a scene from a movie, an airman’s goodbye to the things that would grow small and quaint as he rose higher and higher into the blue yonder. It was the right thing to say. It was exactly what Rory Calhoun would have said.
Aliens
A salt tide broke through Hombeck’s antiperspirant and the high reek of the hot afternoon was on him. He parked his truck in the driveway and went into the house. Roberta met him inside the door. “Your son mutilated his new teddy bear with a steak knife,” she said.
He followed her into the kitchen. The table was set. Hornbeck was hungry and dazed with fatigue. He had skipped lunch because he’d had to help Cosmo Minor take a pair of vintage Corvettes from Mexicans in Boyle Heights, and things had gone from tense to freaky when the Zambrano brothers locked themselves into the cars and the tow trucks and cops had to be called in.
Hornbeck took off his jacket and sat at the table. The hot kitchen smelled of old grease and Lysol, and now, of him. A covered aluminum pot rattled on the stove, steam jetting from the lid.
“Beam me up, Scotty.” He sighed.
Roberta, a thin woman with a long, angular face etched with disappointment, opened a beer and put it on the table within his reach. “Get Lance washed up before your shower, will you?” she said, adjusting the heat under the pot. “Say something to him about teddy. He thought teddy had one of those horrible creatures living in its chest, like in that movie you brought home last week.”
Hornbeck carried his beer out to the backyard, where Lance and another preschooler were playing trucks. Both boys were cranky and overheated. The few rules of order they had created for their game were crumbling. Lance was using his truck as a hammer against the other boy’s truck. The other boy was trying to withdraw his truck from the onslaught, but Lance followed it with relentless blows. The other boy was on the verge of tears.
“Hey, soldier,” Hornbeck said. “Time to wash up for din-din.”
Lance ignored his father and swung his truck with increasing savagery, rising up on his little haunches for added leverage.
“Whoa, big guy!” Hornbeck said, chuckling a bit at the boy’s determination. “Time out, my man! Mommy’s got our dinner almost ready.” He set his beer down on the lawn and stepped into the circle of combat. He caught Lance’s truck on the upswing. Lance, enraged, pulled his truck back, but Hornbeck picked up the boy and carried him toward the house. Lance kicked and punched. His round cheeks shined explosively red. He twisted away from his father’s mild rebukes, arching his back and holding his breath between screams. Hornbeck, a tall, slope-shouldered, bearish man, held the boy at arm’s length and gave him a light shake. “That’s enough, son,” he said, and Lance hiccuped once and was quiet. “All right, that’s fine. You’re safe now in a Federation Starship tractor beam. The war with the Klingons is over, okay?”
Hornbeck put his son down. As soon as his feet to
uched the ground, Lance ran over to the other boy, who was still on his knees making truck noises, and swung his truck into the side of the boy’s head. The crack of hard plastic on flesh made Hornbeck wince. The boy ran screaming from the yard, leaving his truck behind. Lance sat down and resumed hammering the other boy’s truck, all hindrances finally removed.
Hornbeck sipped his beer and waited for his son to exhaust himself. Then he called and the boy came running happily to his dad. “Okay, war’s over, soldier,” he said. “The Federation wins. But look, you can’t be giving major headshots to your little buddies, okay?” He scooped the boy into his arms. “Let’s beam up to the Enterprise for our pseudo-soup and miracle-meat.” Hornbeck made the high-pitched hum of the transporter beam and Lance giggled with delight.
“Lance has the attitude of a Klingon warrior,” Hornbeck said to Roberta later that evening. They were in bed, reading the paper.
Roberta put her section of the paper down. “The attitude of a Klingon warrior,” she repeated. “And just what is that? Tell me, I’d honestly like to be educated about this.”
Hornbeck leaned his head back into his pillows and looked at the ceiling. “Beam me up, Scotty.” He sighed.
“No, I mean it. I’d like to know, really. Let me in on how you see us. I’m really curious.”
“You’re a Vulcan beauty,” Hornbeck said, turning toward her. “I’m insane over Vulcan women. Vulcan women drag the one-eyed nasty from Neptune out of me.”
He reached for her, but Roberta pushed him away and got out of bed. She lit a cigarette. “I don’t think I can deal with this,” she said.
“Captain Kirk won’t like to hear that, Roberta,” Hornbeck said. “Maybe you’d better report to Bones for attitude rehab.”
Though it was often not possible, Hornbeck preferred to work alone. This, and his addiction to science fiction movies, had earned him the nickname Han Solo. Most of the repo men at the Bolton Agency liked to work in pairs. Especially when they had to go into the neighborhoods. Having gone into Boyle Heights for the vintage Corvettes with Cosmo Minor had made a difficult situation nearly impossible. Cosmo, a stocky, impatient black man, and Hornbeck, a six-foot-six-inch hulk, had created a confrontational atmosphere that eliminated any chance for calm negotiations. And while two men were needed to get the cars back to the bank that had financed them, the presence of both Cosmo and Hornbeck at the front door of the Zambrano residence lit an us-against-them fuse that couldn’t be snuffed. There was the exchange of insults, the inevitable shoving match, the gathering of hostile neighbors.
Borrowed Hearts Page 26
