Tex (12 page)

“How's the baby?” I asked. Lem'd been doing grass himself—his eyes were reddish and the car smelled so strong I thought I was going to get a contact high. You know, even though I don't smoke grass much, I really like the way it smells. I always connect it with friendly people.

“Oh, he's fine. You know, that kid really is smarter than the average baby. Connie looked it up in a book. He's real advanced for his age. Big, too.”

I hadn't seen Lem in months, not since that time we went to the city to see about Mason's ulcer, but he didn't seem very excited about seeing me. When somebody's smoking it's hard to get them excited about anything except ice cream.

“Still like it in the city?”

“Yeah, there's always something going on. I miss havin' horses, though. I ain't had a chance to ride in a year. When you going to get another horse, kid?”

“I don't want another horse,” I said, my stomach tightening. “Losing Negrito was like losing my best friend.”

“Well, I know how that feels,” Lem said.

“Why don't you come by this afternoon?” I said. “Mason'd be glad to see you.” I didn't realize I was lying till I saw the look Lem gave me. I went quiet. Then Lem said, “You know, I used to think all Mason wanted was money. But that ain't it, or he'd be in this business with me, 'cause I'm rolling in it right now. But what he really wants out of life is to be respectable. If that ain't a hell of a goal.”

“Different people go different places,” I said, getting out. I had to be heading back to the office. “Say hey to Connie and the baby for me.”

Lem seemed to be thinking hard for a minute, then he said, “I'm making a delivery out here this afternoon. You want a good deal on white crosses?”

I shook my head and waved him off. Maybe I was just depressed about going back and sitting around the office, but I had a strong feeling that Lem didn't belong in the city. There are people who go places and people who stay and Lem should have stayed.

Mrs. Johnson called me into her office when I got back.

“Tex,” she began, then stopped. She sniffed suspiciously.

“Have you been smoking grass?”

Damn. I should have let my clothes air out a little before coming back in. “No, ma'am,” I said. “I wouldn't want this day to drag out any longer than it has to.”

“I suppose that's true. Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about was a job this summer. Mr. Kencaide of Kencaide Quarter Horses contacted the school, wanting to hire some kids for summer work. Would you be interested?”

“Sure!” I said eagerly.

“Mr. Kencaide wanted me to emphasize that he doesn't want a bronc buster, or people out to play cowboys and Indians. But for some reason I think you'd behave responsibly in a job like that. I don't know why I think that, except I did have one or two people you mowed lawns for last summer call me and say they were pleased with your work Here's Mr. Kencaide's card, give him a call and say I recommended you. Please don't give me any reason to be sorry I did.”

“No, I'll do a good job. I take horses serious.”

“That may be what saves you. Tex, would being expelled bother you?”

I almost dropped the card. “Expelled?” I managed finally. “Yeah, it would.”

“I was seriously considering it today. In fact I've seriously considered it several times during the last three years. I haven't, because I like you. But I like an orderly school even more, and if it comes down to a choice, you just might lose out. Understand?”

I nodded. Expelled—I didn't even know anybody who'd been expelled, except Paula Luiz, for jumping on her home-ec teacher with a rolling pin.

“It's not very long until school's out—but remember, it's never too late to be expelled.”

Mrs. Johnson's eyebrows twisted together in the middle when she was saying something serious not very seriously.

“Now just take your seat again. Your father ought to be here about four.”

About four. It was noon. I'd heard the phrase killing time, but now I knew what it meant. I felt like I had murdered a whole day. I could never hack an office job. You know how it feels when your foot goes to sleep? Well, by four I felt like my whole body had gone to sleep, including my brain.

Mason came stalking in, right at four. He didn't say much, but it was pretty clear that he'd used up his quota of self-control for the day.

“Come on in, Mason,” Mrs. Johnson said. “You, too, Tex.”

Almost everybody had gone home, except the sixth-hour gym guys. You could hear them out on the baseball field. Mrs. Johnson wanted to get us out of the way of the janitor, who was mopping the office.

“I don't know if the old man is going to show up or not,” Mason said abruptly.

“He said he would when I talked to him,” Mrs. Johnson said. “If I remember right, he came up here to talk to me about you a few times. Your big problem was fighting.”

It took all Mason's politeness not to scowl at her. He certainly didn't want to remind me that he'd been in trouble before, too.

“Yeah,” I said. “I've never been big on fighting.”

“But you've been in here for everything else since the seventh grade,” Mason said. He didn't get into fights much anymore. Nobody wanted to mess with him.

“Well, anyway, this is the first time Pop's had to come in and talk about it,” I said defensively.

Mason gave me a sarcastic grin. “It's not the first time he's been asked. It'll just be the first time he's showed up for it.”

Just about then Mrs. Seymore, from seventh-grade speech, stuck her head in the door and said, “Helen, come here and look. You won't believe what I've found in a locker…”

That stuff had been going on all day. I never realized how much running around the building was involved in an office job.

“I think I can trust you two to stay here.”

“Sure,” I said. Mason didn't say anything. I wouldn't have cared if he left. Instead he paced around the room, getting madder and madder.

“I don't know why you have to go poking your nose in,” I remarked. I was thinking it was a wonder he had any insides left. He'd had to go to the doctor again, just a few weeks ago.

“I am poking my nose in because I don't want to see you get expelled,” he said savagely.

I started. “You knew I might get expelled?”

“God yes—they were laying bets on it over at the high school.”

“Huh,” I said, amazed. I sure hadn't known what a big deal I was causing.

“You had just better wake up a little, man—” Mason began, when Pop walked in.

“Surprise, surprise,” Mason said. Pop took one look at him and decided to ignore him. When Mace was like that, sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.

“I hear you got into some trouble,” Pop said. He'd come straight from work, he was covered with oat dust and burlap fuzz.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I glued caps on the typewriter keys this morning. School started off with a bang.”

“Well, I wonder where you got that idea.” He was trying hard to keep from grinning. I had known all along that Pop wasn't going to think this was real serious—especially since he was the one who had told us about doing the same thing in high school. It probably never occurred to him that I'd try it, but it was a little late to make it the crime of the century.

I couldn't see what else he could do, besides take it calmly, but Mason was absolutely enraged.

“Okay,” he stalked around the room like a frenzied panther. “Okay, so you can't take Tex serious. So you can't give a damn about what happens to him. All right, I'm trying to live with that. Then think about me! For God's sake, how do you think I feel, seeing you being ‘nice' to him, like you'd be ‘nice' to a goddamn stray puppy! While I'm the one who has to look out for him and what's going to happen when I'm not here?”

Pop and I were both staring at him. I was ready to call in the straight jacket people.

“Geez, make it easier on me if nothing else! He is my brother even if he isn't your son!”

It was so quiet. Just the far-off sounds of the baseball game, and a wood-dove somewhere. It seemed like a long time went by before Pop said, “Who told you that?” and I didn't recognize his voice.

Mason looked like a person who had seen Death. His face was gray, even his lips.

“I asked you: Who told you that?” Pop said again. His voice was deadly. The voice of an ex-con.

Mason opened his mouth and shut it, looking strangely like a fish on land. Finally he managed, “Nobody had to tell me. I know when you went into prison and when you got out and I know his birthday. Nobody had to tell me.”

Oh, Mason had gotten some weird idea. He was Pop's kid and I wasn't. Man, he was ready for the funny farm. I looked confidently at Pop, waiting for the explanation, the real dates, waiting for him to laugh and say, “You're wrong there, Mace.”

He didn't say anything. He didn't move. He didn't look at me.

The room seemed to be getting black. Time stopped, then started back up again. I tried to wake up. What was happening?

I turned to Mason.

“Tex,” he said, fighting hard to sound normal, a normal voice coming from an ash-gray face. “I didn't mean … Texas, listen to me, kid—”

I didn't listen to him. I turned and ran instead. I didn't ricochet blindly down the hall, bouncing off the lockers like a stray bullet. I ran steadily, timing my breathing, not wild or crazy or particularly fast.

Almost like I knew where I was going. Almost like I had somewhere to go.

“Hey, Tex! Hey, kid, hey!”

I finally looked over at the car pulling up along side me. I opened the door and jumped in, even before I realized it was Lem. I just wanted out of here, fast.

“Goin' somewhere?” he asked.

“Wherever you are,” I said. My mind would go blank, and time would stop, then start up again with a sickening throb.

“You don't look too good, cowboy,” Lem said.

“Am I awake?” I asked. It seemed like I was, but I really couldn't tell.

“Yeah. Listen, Tex, I'm headed back for the city. I got another stop to make.”

“So make it,” I said automatically. I was flashing hot and dizzy one second, sick and cold the next. The grass smell in the car was making me sick. I pushed the button that rolled the window down.

“I mean, I can't give you a ride back here.”

“That's okay. Speed it up, willya?”

He was driving like a poke. A lot of stoned people do that. I'd rather ride with a drunk any day. If Lem didn't speed it up, I was going to reach over and bash his face in … I couldn't think straight. When I tried to think my mind turned into a crazy red mess.

“You know, I don't really hate ol' Mason.”

Lem said it, not me. After a few minutes I realized he was continuing the conversation we'd been having that morning.

That morning was years and years ago. I could barely remember it.

“You hate a lot of people?” I asked him. The word was taking on a whole new definition for me. Like the word “water” would change for somebody drowning.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. My old man, for one. And Connie's parents for a while, they ain't so bad now. I did hate Mace some back when he made the team his sophomore year and got to thinkin' he was such a hot-shot jock and him and Bob Collins got so thick. I thought he figured I wasn't good enough to be his best buddy anymore. But now, shoot, ol' Mace would have left me behind whether Bob was there or not … people change, I reckon. You know hate is a real funny thing. Like George Regis, I've hated him since grade school. And the only reason I can think of is because he had a lunch pail like I wanted. Weird, huh?”

All these years and I had never hated anybody. I was dumb! It suddenly dawned on me that I must be the dumbest person in the world. I was going to make up for it, though. I was going to smarten up real quick.

Lem didn't notice the conversation being a little strange. Stoned people are always having strange conversations.

“Tex, if you're that cold, put the window back up.”

“I ain't cold.” I tried to stop shaking. “I ain't cold.”

Mason had said, “He is my brother even if he isn't your son.” And Pop said, “Who told you that?” and that meant—oh, God, what did it mean? I couldn't think about it. I kept wiping my face off with my shirt sleeve, but the sweat kept pouring down.

“Look,” Lem began slowly, “would you mind comin' in with me at this next place? I got some deliveries switched around and have to do some explainin' and it'd help if I wasn't by myself, you know?”

“All right.”

“I wish you were a little meaner lookin'. You're big enough to scare somebody, though, if you just didn't look … who was that Connie's always saying you look like? Goofy, or—”

“Bambi,” I answered absently. My fingers dug into my knees so hard the nails bit through the jeans and into the skin. I concentrated on that.

Lem didn't have anything else to say until after we'd driven through the city awhile. “Look, Tex, you just go along with anything I say, okay? If it looks like there's going to be some hassle, we'll leave. I don't want any trouble.”

“You must have burned these guys bad,” I remarked, trying to appear interested. I had to be normal. If I wasn't Lem might guess … Lem might already know … who else knew…? Everybody? Jamie?

For a second I almost blacked out again. I wanted to wake up, real bad.

Lem was shaking his head. “It was just an honest mistake. I can fix it.”

“Don't worry about me,” I said, looking out the window without seeing anything. “They try to hassle me and they'll be sorry. I'd like to make somebody sorry.”

“Hey,” Lem said, “I like your attitude.”

By the time we pulled in the parking lot of a big apartment complex, I was really lost. I can't find my way around the city too good, anyway, even when my mind is working.

I wondered where I could go from here. Maybe Lem could use a partner. He could use some help. He wasn't exactly the smartest person in the world. I could make some money. And be doped up all the time. That sounded great. That sounded wonderful.

We went up the stairs to the second floor. There must have been a thousand apartments there. It reminded me of the time me and Mason went to see Lem. Mason never lied to me. Sometimes it drove me nuts, but one thing I could always count on was that Mason never lied to me. He never told me the truth, either.

Lem stopped in front of an apartment that had all the curtains pulled shut. He knocked twice, then twice more. The dramatics of it vaguely irritated me. There were more important things going on…

We heard footsteps stop at the one-way peephole, then the door was unlocked. “We'd been wondering where you were lately. Who's your friend?”

“A connection out in Garyville. He's cool.”

We went in and he chained the door shut behind us. The apartment was dark and an old Rolling Stones album was playing on the stereo. I remembered what Lem had said and tried to look mean. I couldn't concentrate on it, though. My brain was out of focus.

It seemed like right away Lem and this guy were into a heavy discussion about samples and deliveries and junk. Other than noticing that the guy seemed hacked off about something, I couldn't pay attention. It just seemed like a bunch of crap. This was not important.

I wasn't Pop's kid. That was what they were saying. My mother—why had I always thought of her as somebody really nice, somebody who would have loved me? I thought I remembered … but maybe I got what I remembered and what I imagined mixed up together. I had always thought she and Pop had been happy together. He never wanted to marry anybody else. And me—if I wasn't his kid, then who's? Did he even know?

It was going to be never. He was never going to care about me. It wasn't going to be next time he got back from a trip, or when Mason left or when I went on the circuit with him. There was nothing I could do to make him care.

I realized I was making a strange little sound, like a dying animal. I couldn't stop it; but Lem and his friend didn't hear.

I couldn't see how he could do that to me. Play like he cared, but not really. I couldn't help being born, I was more like him than Mason was, how could he do that? It wasn't my fault, I didn't deserve…

The guy Lem had been talking to started throwing a fit. He was jumping up and down, screaming, acting like he'd blown his mind. Even this took a couple of minutes to get my attention.

“I mean it man! You can't come in here giving out samples and come back with a bunch of crap! What do you think we are man, stupid? Where do you get off with this, buddy!”

Lem was stammering around, not scared, just too stoned to think clear. It annoyed the hell out of me. Mason was right. Lem was stupid. Mason was right about a lot of things. But then, he was the real kid, the one who counted…

“Now wait a minute, Kelly, just wait a minute,” Lem mumbled.

I wasn't in the mood for this. I gave up my idea of joining up with Lem. Not if you had to put up with weirdos.

A Chinesey-looking guy came out of the bedroom. “Keep it down, Kelly, keep it down.” He was almost too spaced out to talk.

“I'm leaving,” I said to Lem. “These people are nuts.”

I turned and started to unchain the lock.

“Where do you think you're going?” Kelly quit jumping up and down long enough to ask me.

“I'm leavin'. I don't have to take this stuff.” I reached for the doorknob, but Kelly set up such a racket I turned back to watch.

“He's going to narc! He's going to narc!” He raced around the room, yanking open drawers and cabinets, feeling around under the sofa, frantic.

I was amazed. I'd never seen anybody act like that in my life. He was screaming “Narc!” till it was a wonder one didn't show up.

“No, it's cool,” his friend kept saying. “It's cool.”

“Don't seem too cool to me,” I said. Lem nodded. “You're right. We better get outta here.”

Kelly found what he was looking for. It was a .22 pistol and he had it leveled at me.

“You ain't going nowhere, man!” he screamed.

I stood there for a second, not believing it. This was the last straw. I'd put up with a lot today and this punk pulling a gun on me was the last straw. Who the hell did he think he was? A white-hot rage flashed over me and I slammed across the room at him like a bull out of a pen.

He fired once, but he didn't get a chance to fire again because I yanked that gun out of his hand and backhanded him with it. Blood gushed out of his nose as he tripped backward across the coffee table. He struggled to get back up, half caught between the sofa and the table, until he looked at me. Then he froze.

I had both hands on the gun, aiming dead on. A .22's kick ain't that bad, it doesn't need a two-handed aim, but I was shivering all over and I didn't want to miss.

His face was gray, looking at the end of the gun. I was going to kill him. I wanted that turkey dead. The trigger was warm under my finger. This was going to feel good.

“Oh, gawd, Tex, don't,” Lem groaned. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shut his eyes and pray. My heart was pounding.

The Chinesey guy was chattering, “Look man, everything is cool. Just leave. Everything is cool.”

I didn't pay any attention. If he started anything I'd kill him, too. I'd like to kill him. I'd like to kill them all…

Kelly was too frozen to wipe the blood off his face. It seemed like I had just seen a face like that, waiting for something terrible, the color of ashes…

“Texas,” Lem begged me, “don't do it, kid, come on, let's leave.”

Not before I settled this. My finger quivered.

Then I wondered if anybody'd show up at his funeral. If he had a girl friend, a mother, a brother. And as soon as I thought that I knew I wasn't going to kill him. So there wasn't any sense in sticking around.

“We're leaving,” I said. “You try and stop us and I'll blow you away, man.”

“Okay, okay, it's cool. Everything's cool.” Kelly's friend went to help him up.

Lem and me backed out the door and ran down the steps. When we got to the car I realized I still had the damn gun and I threw it down the gutter.

“That is a real class set of people you hang around with, Lem. Real nice guys.” My voice was shaking. Lem yanked the car into starting and squealed off.

“Man, I didn't know anything like that was going to happen! Honest, Tex, he was on something. Holy cow! Really, kid, I been doing this stuff for over a year now and I never saw nobody pull a gun before! God Almighty! What if he hadn't missed!”

“He didn't.”

“What?”

“I said he didn't miss. He shot me and it hurts like hell.” For a while it'd been numb. Now it wasn't numb. I never thought about bullets being hot before.

Lem looked over at me and jumped when he saw the red stain seeping through my fingers. Blood was all over. It showed up bright on the car's white interior. It hadn't been real noticeable on my navy blue sweat shirt.

“Oh, shit,” Lem slammed on the brakes and stared at me. The car behind us honked loudly and we started up again with a sickening jerk. “Oh, shit. This is great, this is just great.”

“What's with you?” I asked angrily. What did Lem have to be mad about? He goes for a year without any trouble and my first time helping him in the wonderful world of drug dealing, some looney shoots me.

Besides I was starting to feel funny and it scared me.

“Now I got to take you to the hospital and they'll want to ask questions and call the cops and that's all I need right now, a bunch of cops—this is just great.”

We had pulled up at an intersection, but I think I would have jumped out of the car then if it'd been doing ninety down the freeway.

“Go ahead, Lem! Dump me! Everybody else has and I don't know why you should be any different!” I was shouting at the top of my lungs. “Now get the hell out of here!” I slammed the door.

I looked around. Where did I go from here? There was a shopping center across a parking lot. I spotted a phone on a wall. I wanted to call somebody. I felt really funny. There had to be somebody to call.

I got to the phone, staggering just a little bit. Nobody paid much attention, except for a lady tightening her grip on her purse. Somebody going into the grocery store stopped, stared, and went on. I think they were used to staggering kids around there.

I had trouble getting my quarter out of my pocket. There was blood over it, all over my hand. I looked down and blood was splattering on the cement in a slow drip. I was scared. I wanted Mason. I couldn't think clear, too many things had happened too fast. Mason would know what to do. I got the quarter in the slot and realized I couldn't remember my phone number. I never called it that much. I decided to call Johnny instead. He'd know it.

“Hello?”

It was Jamie. Her voice sounded so good to me. I wished I could kiss it.

“Hey, Jamie, this is Tex.”

She paused. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, listen, do you know my phone number? I can't remember it.”

“You sound funny. Are you drunk?”

“No. I been shot. Listen, I want to call Mason. I got to talk to Mason. So tell me the number. It starts off three-six-six…”

In a very small voice Jamie said, “Did you say you've been shot?”