Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (9 page)

I shrugged. “That’s it."

She frowned. “It doesn’t sound like anything
worth leaving town over."

"Beau Karnau probably had something to do with
it. He seems to like capitalizing on emotional stress."

"You just be persistent," she advised.
"Here, I’ll read the tea leaves for you."

Actually I’d been drinking beer, but Mother was
never one to let technicalities stop her. She poured me a cup of tea,
drank it herself, then turned the cup over on a napkin. I could never
figure out whether she was playing a game for her own amusement, or
whether she really had a system for making sense of the sediment from
beverages, but she studied the little brown flecks intently, making
meaningful 'hmm' sounds.

The basic trainees at the counter looked over briefly
while she was doing her divination. One made a joke under his breath.
Both laughed.

“
Not good, my son," Mother said in her best
gypsy accent. "The leaves spell ‘Adversity.’ A troubled time
is ahead."

“
Profound," I said. "And so unexpected?

She tried to look offended. "Scoff if you must."

"I must, I must."

At the end of dinner Mother insisted on picking up
the tab. Since I was down to spare change and a few maxed—out
credit cards, I didn’t argue too hard. The two men at the counter
paid for their meal and walked out behind us.

When you train long enough in
tai
chi
, you get to a point where your eyes and
ears start feeling like they wrap around you 360 degrees. You have to
develop this unless you want to get hit over the head from behind
while you’re protecting yourself in front, or turn a few inches too
far and run yourself through on your opponent’s sword. My senses
switched into that mode the minute we walked out of the restaurant,
but I wasn’t consciously worried until we got to the corner of
Queen Anne.

Mother was talking about the sorry state of the arts
in San Antonio. The two men from the restaurant were coming up behind
us, but they seemed to be at ease, joking to themselves, not paying
us much attention. The neon lights from Broadway dropped into
darkness once we walked onto my street. The two men stopped talking,
but turned the corner with us. Without looking back, I could tell
they were quickening their pace. They were about twenty-five feet
behind us now. My apartment was at the end of the block.

“
Mother," I said casually, "keep
walking."

She had just been warming up on the subject of
limited downtown gallery space. She glanced up at me, puzzled, but I
didn’t give her time to say anything. Instead, I did an about-face
and went back to meet our new friends.

They didn’t like their timing being messed up. When
they saw me coming toward them they stopped, momentarily off-balance.
Both were in their mid-twenties, with bland, square faces. They wore
jeans and untucked denim shirts. Both had crew cuts. Their upper body
development made it obvious they were bodybuilders.

They were trying hard to be twins, but one was a
red-headed Anglo, the other a Hispanic with a tattoo on his
forearm—an eagle killing a snake.

When I was five feet away they moved apart slightly,
waiting for me to act. Behind me I heard my mother call, more than a
little nervous: "Tres?"

“
Tres?" the one with the tattoo mimicked. The
red-head grinned. `

"Either you’re following us to get your tea
leaves read," I speculated, “or you’ve got something to say
to me. Which is it?"

I let Tattoo come closer, putting his chest close to
my face. He was still grinning. Red moved around to my left.

"Yeah sure," said Tattoo. "We heard
you’re one of those faggots from San Francisco. That true?"

He was about six inches away.

"You asking me to dance?" I blew him a
kiss.

He almost decided that was worth punching me for, but
Red stopped him.

Behind me I heard Mother call my name again. She was
trying to decide whether she should come back for me or not. I knew
she would eventually walk over and give these goons a piece of her
mind. Whatever went down, I needed to make it happen before she did
that.

"How hard you want to make this, buddy?"
said Red. “I’d hate smashing a guy’s face in front of his own
mom. The message is simple: Get the fuck out of town. Nobody wants
you here."

"And whom are these joyous tidings from?" I
said. I slid my left foot back slightly, rooting my weight more
solidly.

“
Anybody you want to guess." Red sneered.
"Just go back to Pansyland if you want your face in one piece."

"And if I don’t," I said, "I suppose
Tattoo here will chest-bump me all the way out of town?"

“
You little shit—" Tattoo moved forward,
meaning to grab my shirt with both hands.

The thing about bodybuilders is that they tend to be
top-heavy. They can be incredibly strong, but their overdeveloped
chests make their center of gravity, which should be right around the
navel, much higher and surprisingly easy to unbalance. It’s also
easier to grab someone who has lots of muscles; it’s like walking
around with built-in handles all over your body.

I swept my forearms up under Tattoo’s wrists before
they connected and redirected his arms out. When he was wide open, I
brought my left leg up and knee—kicked him in the groin. Then I
pushed. He went backward stiff as a cut tree. Red got my left elbow
in his nose as he came in to tackle me. I grabbed him by his triceps
and twisted my waist, shifting his momentum so he flew over my knee
and landed on top of his friend instead of me.

“
Tres!" my mother called. She was coming
toward us now.

Tattoo wasn’t used to having his balls kicked. He
stayed doubled over, communing with the pavement . But Red got his
balance much more quickly than I’d expected. He came at me, more
cautiously this time, taking a boxer’s stance, right fist out. I
let him miss twice, turning my body in quarter circles out of the
line of his punches. That screwed up his guard. He tried a left hook
but forgot to follow with his right. It was easy to step inside the
punch, turn into his chest as I grabbed his wrist, and send him
flying over my shoulder.

Holding on to his arm, I twisted the joints so he had
no choice but to roll over on his stomach or snap a bone. I put my
knee into his back, then pinched down on the nerve just below the
elbow joint with my thumb. He yelled.

"You want me to hold this until you black out?"
I asked. “Or do you want to tell me a little bit about yourself?"

"‘Go fuck yourself," he groaned.

It must’ve taken a lot of stamina for him to speak.
Or maybe he just knew that his buddy wouldn’t be down on the ground
forever. In fact, Tattoo was staggering to his feet now, and we both
knew I couldn’t pin Red down and deal with Tattoo at the same time.

I didn’t like it, but I twisted Red’s arm
sharply. He screamed. Maybe I broke it, maybe I didn’t. But I had
to give him something to worry about while I was busy with his
compadre
.

Tattoo was still walking funny. He tried his best to
get me in a wrestler’s hold, but I slid underneath and hit him in
the gut with my shoulder. I pushed up and forward, lifting him off
his feet. He fell backward again, harder this time.

I stepped back toward my mother, catching my breath.
Her face was hard to read. Her eyes were very wide, but not exactly
frightened. It was more the look of someone who had believed in
ghosts for years, but had finally had one shake her hand.

Red and Tattoo were still on the ground, cursing. I
asked my mother for a pen and paper. She stared at me, then rummaged
in her purse. On a large magenta Post-it note, I wrote: RETURN TO
SENDER. Then I signed my name.

I stuck it on the front of Red’s shirt.

"Thanks anyway," I said.

Before they could decide they weren’t so badly hurt
after all, I took my mother’s arm and we walked down Queen Anne. I
got her into her car before she decided it was time to talk.

"Tres, what exactly—"

“
I’m not sure, Mother," I said, a little
harsher than I meant to. “I’m sorry you got involved. It’s
probably some friends of Bob Langston, the old tenant I had to kick
out. Rivas said he was Army. So were those guys, probably. That’s
all."

I must not have sounded very convincing. Mother kept
looking at me, waiting for a better answer. I felt tired, the hazy
crashed feeling you get when adrenaline stops flowing. I tried to
muster up a smile. “Look, it’s fine."

She turned and stared through the windshield.

"You’re my only boy, Tres."

She has tremendous strength, my mother. Despite all
her eccentricities, she can harden to steel in sixty seconds flat in
a crisis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry, or look as shaken
as she had a few moments before. Now she smiled at me, reassuringly.
When I bent and kissed her on the cheek, I could feel the slight
tremble in her skin.

“
Call me tomorrow," she said.

After she drove away I went inside and locked the
door. Robert Johnson sniffed my legs for the strange odors of Red and
Tattoo while I sat in the dark and called Lillian’s number.

Her answering machine didn’t pick up after ten
rings. Lillian should have been home from Laredo by now. It was
almost ten o’clock. She was there, I decided glumly, choosing to
ignore the phone.

I stared at the coffee table, at the packet of old
news clippings Carlon McAffrey had given me that afternoon, my
father’s grinning face still on top. Looking at his picture, I
realized how badly I needed to see Lillian tonight. I needed
something clean and physical with her that wasn’t part of our past.
I pushed the news clippings onto the floor.

Then I went to the refrigerator and got two items I’d
picked up at Pappy’s Grocery in a moment of whimsy: a six-pack of
Big Red and a bottle of tequila. I went out to the VW. A summer
thunderstorm was coming in over the Balcones Escarpment, but I took
the top down anyway. Then I drove toward Monte Vista, thinking about
the future.
 

15

There is no place in San Antonio quite as lonely as
the Olmos Basin. You can drive across the dam road at night, looking
over an ocean of live oaks, and see no sign of the city that
surrounds you. Just you, your car, and the dam. Unless you are my
mother’s old high school chum, Whitley Strieber. Then I guess you
have the UFOs to keep you company.

Tonight, diffused flashes of lightning illuminated
the Basin, turning it from black to deep green. Thunder rolled over
the tops of the trees like oil over the surface of a hot pan.

Up and down Acacia Street, dogs were barking at the
storm. Lillian’s house was dark except for the small cranberry
glass lamp she kept on her bedstand. Fuchsia light seeped out through
the closed miniblinds. Her car was in the driveway.

Next door five or six Rodriguez children, fearless
and unattended, roller—skated up and down the sidewalk in
semidarkness, screaming with joy every time the thunder cracked. The
music from inside their parents’ living room was muted tonight, as
if in deference to the storm.

I pulled up to the curb and got out, carrying my Big
Red and tequila up to the front porch. Two grinning Rodriguez
children almost sideswiped me as I passed them.

In the basket Lillian used for mail was a stack of
letters and ad circulars. Two newspapers on the porch. She could’ve
come in through the back. Or maybe she hadn’t taken her own car to
Laredo; maybe she was still gone. I thought about whose car she
might’ve taken to the border instead, and I didn’t like the
options I came up with.

The buzzer didn’t work. I knocked as loudly as I
could on the frame of the screen door but it was very possible she
wouldn’t hear me. The wind was picking up. Ripped from their
branches, petals from Lillian’s crape myrtle and antique rosebush
were thrown across the yard like pink confetti.

After three knocks I tried the door and found it
open.

“
Lillian?"

I put my six-pack and Herradura bottle down on the
coffee table and called her name again. There were magazines strewn
around the floor by the couch, typical of Lillian’s "read and
dump” method.

Still the only light was the pink glow under the
bedroom door. I stuck my head in slowly, half expecting her to be
curled up under the covers. An unmade bed, a half-open underwear
drawer, but no Lillian.

An uncomfortable burning sensation started building
strength in my chest.

I checked the back room, then the kitchen. A small AM
radio was talking to itself on the cutting board. The sinkful of
dishes wasn’t surprising in itself, but they’d been scrubbed and
never rinsed.

Possibilities started occurring to me that I didn’t
want to entertain. I checked the front door again, then the windows
for signs of forced entry. Nothing obvious, though very little
would’ve shown up on tie scuffed and scarred doorjamb, and the
window latches were woefully easy to work open. The stereo equipment
was untouched. The answering machine had been turned off. No messages
to replay. Computer disks and files were strewn around her desk, but
no equipment seemed to be missing. Someone had been looking for
something here recently in a messy fashion, but it could easily have
been Lillian. I checked for toiletries in the bathroom and looked in
her closet. No signs that she’d packed for a trip, but no definite
proof that she hadn’t.