The Orchid Eater (9 page)

“All I got
is your word for that. I sure don’t see no army. Where do we go?”

Edgar
pointed out one dark house among many. It was silent, unremarkable, the carport
empty. Hawk didn’t pull into it, but set the emergency brake on the hill and
left the engine idling.

“Watch the
car,” he told the men, then followed Edgar to the door.

“Where’s the
trouble?”

Edgar looked
over the edge of the porch, into the dark space between the houses. “They must
have gone back to Sal’s.”

“I noticed.
Can we go in or what? My patience is very short tonight. I had something
important going on.”

Edgar turned
to him with a pleading look. “We needed you, Hawk. We
needed
you. You always say if we
get in trouble, if we really need you, we can call. You always say that, man.”

“Yeah,
yeah.” Hawk shoved him toward the door, half fooling now. This wasn’t quite
what he’d expected. He felt like an idiot for bringing the shotgun, but what
the hell. It didn’t hurt to put on a show for the boys every once in a while.
That was the stuff legends were made of. They’d grow up talking about this
night for the rest of their lives, weaving him into their futures, telling
their children about him. And maybe they would learn something from it, pass a
useful lesson down through the years.

He raised
his fist and pounded on the door. “Okay, assholes!” he shouted. “Open up in
there!”

He heard
excited whispering beyond the door, then a voice he didn’t know: “They’re back,
you guys! And they have my key. They can get in without—”

Kurtis Tyre
said, “Open the door, you fuckin’ pussy. That’s Hawk out there.”

The door
opened and Hawk saw a cluster of boys standing around in the dark.

“What is
this,” he said, stepping in, “a slumber party?”

He
recognized Mad-Dog Murphy by his chattering laugh. He wasn’t sure about the
others. It was too dark.

“We didn’t
want them to know we were in here,” Craig Frost said.

“That’s all
over now. You can stop hiding.”

Someone
turned on a light. Hawk saw blank walls, unfurnished rooms.

“Jesus,
what’d you do, break into an empty house?”

“It’s his
place,” Kurtis said, jerking his thumb toward a kid Hawk had never seen before.
A smallish boy with horn-rimmed glasses was standing next to Edgar’s new pal,
the ironical Scott Gillette.

“They took
my key,” the kid with glasses said, as if Hawk was his big brother or his dad
or something. “It got stuck in the lock and they grabbed it.”

“You
practically gave it to them,” Kurtis said.

“Mike let us
hide here, Hawk,” said Edgar.

“I’ve got to
get it back or my mom will kill me! This is a new house! I can’t tell her we
have to change the locks already.”

“Why not?”
said Hawk, enjoying the slow terror that consumed the kid’s features. He
probably deserved whatever fear he felt.

“Okay,
relax,” he said a moment later. “We’re going up to visit Sal.”

“All right!”
said Edgar.

“Not you
twerps. Dusty and Stoner and me. We’re going to talk, not squabble. Can’t have
you kids hanging off my butt.”

“Talk,”
Howard Lean said, head bobbing.
“Riiiiight.”

“Stay here,”
Hawk told them, “’cause when I’m through with Sal, I’m coming back for you.”

“You’ll get
the key?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, yeah,
the key.”

Hawk went
back to the car, leaving the door open, a spill of light and voices following
him to the street. He got behind the wheel and shook his head, aiming the
chrome cross at the night, as if for target practice.

It took only
seconds to reach Sal’s house. Hawk shut off the engine and coasted to a stop at
the curb. Music and the sounds of a party came from inside. Maybe a victory
party.

“Dusty, you
got the gun. Stoner, give him some camouflage. Not too subtle, though.”

He climbed
out of the jeep and strolled slowly up the driveway, past Sal’s sleek black
van, which looked a million times better kept than Dusty’s. From the doorstep,
he glanced back at the jeep. Stoner was leaning against the bed of the truck,
grinning. The shotgun barrel poked out from under his armpit.

Hawk rang the
bell, heard chimes inside the house. A few seconds later the door opened a few
inches and Sal looked out.

Hawk said,
“I need to talk to you.”

“Is that
so?”

“I heard my
boys have been giving you some trouble.”

“They tell
you everything or just the parts they think you’ll like?”

“That’s what
I’m here to find out. I don’t have a gripe with you, Sal. I’d just as soon we
never had call to see each other. So can we iron this out right now?”

“You alone?”

“Not
exactly. But I left my friends at the car.”

Sal leaned
out and peered around the door. Stoner raised his arm to wave, revealing Dusty
crouched in back with the shotgun.

Sal
stiffened and started to withdraw, but Hawk caught him by the arm—or thought he
had. Before his fingers could close on Sal’s arm, it snaked up inside his reach
and swept him back. Hawk stumbled on the edge of the stoop and nearly fell on
his ass. Off balance, he threw himself at the door before Sal could shut it.
Sal must have stood aside at the last instant because his plunge carried him
into the house, meeting no resistance till he banged into the wall, bruising
his shoulder. Straightening up, he found himself surrounded.

He was in
the middle of a party. All the guests were male, most of them fairly young.
They didn’t look particularly menacing.

Except,
possibly, for Sal, who waited by the door. He looked more relaxed now that Hawk
was inside, on his territory.

“What it
comes down to, Hawk, is that my friends and I don’t like being called names.
Names don’t
hurt
us, we just don’t like them. I don’t see why we should put up
with that shit. Would you?”

“What kind
of names are you talking about?”

Sal grinned.
“They didn’t tell you that part, did they? You want me to repeat them?”

“No, I can
imagine. Look . . . on their behalf, I apologize. They’re a
bunch of smartasses, we both know that. You know how kids think. They don’t
know shit.”

“I just want
to be left in peace, Hawk. I want to be able to have my friends over without
the local chapter of the KKK, like your cute little ‘S.S.’ boys, coming around
my door—and then running away when we put up a little fight.”

“I don’t
even mind the names,” said Randy, who stood in the door to the kitchen, wearing
rubber gloves and holding a sponge. “What gets me is this mess.”

He pointed
to a wet green stain on the wall opposite the door. He wiped at it with the
sponge, but apparently he had removed all he could. The plaster had sucked it
up.

“Who did
that? What is it?”

“One of your
boys—with an avocado. I’m going to have to
paint.
”

Hawk reached
for his wallet, but Sal stopped him.

“Forget it,
Hawk. You want to make peace, I’ll accept that. But can you make your goons
stick to it?”

“I can tell
them that any more trouble they get themselves into with you . . . I
won’t be bailing them out.”

“Anyway,”
said Marilyn, inspecting his nails, “we wouldn’t have hurt them, even if we
caught them. It was enough to see them run.”

A ripple of
laughter went through the room.

“That’s good
to hear,” Hawk said. “I thought maybe it was something like that. But you know,
these little games you play . . . some people don’t necessarily take it as
lightly as you’d think. Sometimes the game goes too far. You know what I’m
saying?”

The record
that had been playing ended suddenly. Hawk was surrounded by silence; his words
hung there in the middle of the room. Everyone watched him.

“I’m talking
about the key,” Hawk said.

The silence
stretched on.

“The key?”
Hawk repeated.

Sal
shrugged. “So you said. What key?”

“You know
what key. The one that got left in the lock. Now, the kid it belongs to isn’t
one of my boys, and he’s shitting bricks right now, thinking his mother is
going to find out what he was up to.”

When nobody
answered, Sal took a stab. “Okay, boys, we’re looking for a little peace here.
Cooperation. If one of you has this kid’s key . . .”

Someone
nosed the needle back onto the album, pumping the room full of noise.

“Take it
off!” Sal shouted. The speakers screeched. The silence was more tense than
before.

Hawk looked
around. There were faces he knew, but more he didn’t. A few older men were
mixed in with the younger; Sal must have been entertaining some of his
customers tonight.

“Who has
it?” Sal said.

“We didn’t
see any key,” said Randy. “Someone would have said if they’d found it.”

“Hey, Sal,”
said a kid Hawk didn’t know. “What about your brother? He was there.”

“Lupe?” Sal
looked puzzled. “Yeah, where is he?”

“He didn’t
come back with us, but he hit that house first. Like, he was tracking Hawk’s
boys without us. If there was a key, he’s the one would have seen it.”

“So where is
this guy, this Lupe?” Hawk asked, though it already seemed clear from what
they’d been saying.

Nobody knew.

8

The painted
moon was pretty but it gave no light. Mike sat in the dark, listening to feet
pounding up and down the stairs. Mad-Dog’s howls echoed through the empty
rooms. He sighed and sank his head between his knees. After trying to keep
everything under control, warning the others about smudging the white walls,
he had finally given up and sought what peace he could in solitude.

The door opened
suddenly. The light switched on. Mad-Dog stood in the doorway. “Hey, guy. Heard
there’s avocados somewhere around here.”

Mike
gestured toward the walk-in closet. “Help yourself.”

Mad-Dog went
out with an armful of avocados, already peeling the woody skin of one with his
snaggle teeth. He left the door wide open. After a moment Scott came in and
dropped down heavily in a corner, followed by Edgar, who sat cross-legged in
the center of the room.

“Don’t worry
about your key,” said Edgar. “Hawk’ll take care of it.”

Just then,
the doorbell rang. By the time they got upstairs, Kurtis was opening the front
door. Craig and Howard rushed in laughing.

“So what
happened?” Kurtis said.

“Man, he
just murdered Sal!” Howard said.

“Murdered
him?” Mike repeated.

“You guys
missed the fight of the century!”

They
congregated in the living room. Craig nodded his agreement to Howard’s
breathless account: “We got there right as Hawk was going up to the door. Man,
you should have seen it. Dusty was back in the jeep with a shotgun—”

“A shotgun?”
Kurtis said.

“Yeah! Him
and Stoner standing there grinning, Hawk goes up to the door and
bam-bam-bam!
Wails on
it! Sal opens the door, just an inch, and he’s like—‘Please don’t hurt me,
Mister Hawk!’”

“Scared
shitless,” Craig concurred.

“But Hawk
whips around, snags him,
wham!,
he’s pulling him out of the house, then
bang!,
he barrels back inside with
him and slams the door. You could hear all these guys howling inside, glass
breaking—”

“So what are
Dusty and Stoner doing all this time?” Kurtis asked. “Standing around?”

“No way!
Dusty’s got a gun, remember? They run to the door, Stoner kicks it in, and they
crash inside. There’s two shots,
blam-blam,
just like that.”

Cold rushed
through Mike. “They shot somebody?”

“Naw, just
scared ’em, I think. But you could hear the place turning upside down. Stoner’s
laughing like—like Mad-Dog. All of a sudden someone comes flying through the
glass upstairs, spinning right over the balcony, and lands on the sidewalk. It
was Sal, man. Hawk threw him right into the street!”

“Sal?”

“You shoulda
been there, man, it was infuckingcredible!”

“Liked it,
huh?” said Hawk.

They turned
around suddenly. Hawk was standing in the front door; he had come in quietly
while Howard was jabbering.

“Uh, yeah,
Hawk,” Howard said. “I was just telling them how you took care of Sal.”

“How I threw
him through a window?” Hawk took a few steps into the house. “I appreciate the
legends, Howie, really I do. But I think the truth has more staying power.”

If Howard
had had a tail he would have tucked it between his legs.

Two men came
in after Hawk. One was dark and bony in a grubby sleeveless T-shirt, with
tattooed arms and a few gold teeth. The other was built like a refrigerator, so
tall he had to stoop in the doorway.

Mike held
back from Hawk. He was anxious to get his key, but Hawk seemed unpredictable.
Better to wait until he offered it.

“All right,
fellows, gather round,” Hawk said. “It’s time we had a little man-to-man.”

Hawk
gestured toward the dining room with its small square of gold carpet, and
everybody slowly flocked toward it. Mike sensed a scolding in the air, at which
his mood soured further. Who was this guy anyway, to chew them out? He wasn’t
their father, for God’s sake.

Hawk stood
in the middle of the thick yellow carpet as if he were taking center stage. The
boys sat down in a loose ring around him, leaning back against the mirrored
wall or the counter that divided them from the kitchen. Mad-Dog started wolfing
down another avocado, green sludge showing whenever he grinned. Hawk’s two
cronies crossed their arms and took posts near the door, like bodyguards.

Hawk smiled,
narrowing his eyes, looking down at them. “Okay. We’re all cool here, right?
We’re all so fucking cool ice won’t melt on our tongues.”

Mike thought
he looked a bit like a wolf, the Big Bad one, leering at them with some secret
knowledge hidden behind his slit eyes.

“Yeah. We’re
a bunch of hip, dangerous dudes, so don’t mess with us.” Hawk began to imitate
a strut, swaggering in place down an imaginary street. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep
on trucking. Cool, ain’t it? Cool, cool, cool.”

Howard and
Craig glanced at each other and shrugged.

“Yeah,
Hawk,” Howard said, “we’re cool.”

Hawk let his
mask slip; underneath it was nothing but disgust. “Not cool,” he said.
“
Fools
is what you are, trucking your way straight to Hell. That’s
another one-way trip, boys. One-way in the wrong direction.”

He jabbed a
finger at the carpet.

“You know
what I mean? The ground cracks open, fire licks up, and down you plunge. Sound
okay to you? Think your cool is gonna matter when you’re down there? You think
you can stay cool when everything else is on fire?”

“Snowball in
hell,” the big blond Neanderthal said, and guffawed.

Hawk turned
around and stared at him. “Thanks, Stoner, for that brilliant and original comparison.
That is pure poetry.”

Stoner fell
silent, hiding his smirk while Hawk shook his head.

“Sometimes I
think you guys don’t hear a word I say. I don’t know why you bother hanging
around me, let alone why I put up with you. Am I fooling myself thinking I can
make a difference in your lives? Is it totally asinine to think I can teach
you anything from my experience, or steer you away from the mistakes I made?
Am I wasting my time with you guys?”

Edgar spoke
up. “Uh, maybe, Hawk . . . maybe we think that, you know, if we want to be like
you, we gotta go through the shit that made you what you are. It’s sort of like
a paradox, right?”

Hawk looked
surprised and then disappointed by this logic. Suddenly Mike saw Hawk as
another typical adult saying the same old stuff:
I’m so disappointed in you kids
 . . . It was the same speech he got from his
mother when he’d done something wrong, now that he was too old to whack with a
hairbrush. But at least she had a right to say what she wanted, being his
mother and all. But now here was this Hawk, this nobody, trying to make Mike
listen to everything he had to say, trying to shake him up. And at the end of
the lecture, when Mike was supposed to be limp and grateful for Hawk’s
assistance, philosophical and otherwise, Hawk would finally hand over the key.

Recognizing
the routine sapped it of all possible impact. The boys weren’t just trying to
be like Hawk—he was trying to be like one of them. Mike saw it all the time:
teachers indulging in the latest slang, pretending to be “one of the gang,” as
if that would earn them kids’ respect. It was the kind of hypocrisy that drove
him nuts.
You’re not one of us!
he wanted to shout at Hawk.

Instead he
stifled a yawn and gave his mind permission to wander. Hawk seemed to have no
straight answer to Edgar’s question. It was cleverly posed, Mike thought. Chalk
one up for the boys.

Mad-Dog
finished one avocado and began gnawing on the pit, eyes rapt on Hawk. Shreds of
whitish matter dribbled from his mouth and onto the floor, next to a pile of
green skin. Mike would have to go over the whole house later, cleaning up after
these guys, hiding their tracks. Hawk’s boots were crusted with dirt; crumbs of
it speckled the bright, freshly shampooed carpet. His mother would think he’d
led an army in here. Which was closer to the truth than he wanted her to know.

“I’ve told
you my story,” Hawk said. “You know I understand you guys. I went through the
same shit you did, walked the same fucking streets, all right? Take it from me,
I know where the road you’re on leads. I did the drugs, the crimes, all that
shit, same as you. The drugs burned my brain, made me stupid, and the crime
just got me into jail. One leads to the other, men. And I’m not just talking
about jail. I’m talking about Hell. That’s where you’re headed. So you keep
right on truckin’!”

Behind Hawk,
Dusty and Stoner exchanged glances. They were laughing, it seemed, but
silently.

Somehow Hawk
heard them. He spun around.

“You think
what I’m saying is funny, Stoner?”

“No, Hawk!
No . . . It’s just, well, you’re always preaching.”

“Is that all
I do? Talk? You think I don’t set any good examples by my action?”

“I didn’t
say that.”

“Hallelujah,”
Scott whispered.

“What kind
of examples do you set, Stoner? What’re you going to tell Saint Peter when you
get to the pearly gates? What’s your great achievement in this lifetime?
What’re you gonna tell him? ‘Well, uh, uh, lemme see . . . duh . . . I
dunno, I . . . I swiped a crate of hand grenades from Camp Pendleton!’”

Everyone,
including Stoner, laughed at Hawk’s Stoner imitation.

“And what
about you, Dusty?” Hawk said.

Dusty stiffened.
“I’m not one of your baby boys, Hawk, that you can talk to me like that. I
don’t need no preacher-man on my ass. Plenty of shitwipes sitting in jail
figure they can get out faster if they start whacking off to the Bible ’stead
of beaver magazines. Keep on thumpin’ that ol’ black book, Hawk, I don’t care.
But leave me out of it. I’m a good Catholic, man, and you don’t know nothing
about us. I got my own road to Heaven.”

Hawk turned
away from him. “I’m glad you do, Dusty, because you sure need it. But these
boys here are different. They need role models, especially the primo example of
that righteous dude who lived and died for them two thousand years ago. I’m not
talking about some magic man who turned water into wine and brought the dead to
life; I’m talking about the real guy those stories are based on. I’m talking
about the real life of the straight-talkin’, woman-lovin’, two-fisted fightin’
Jesus.”

“Hey, Hawk,”
Edgar said suddenly, “do you think Jesus had ESP?”

Hawk said
nothing for a minute. He stared at Edgar, and shook his head. That disappointed
look again. “Edgar . . . 
”

“It would
explain some things, wouldn’t it? Maybe he made people think he was doing
miracles without actually doing them. I mean, getting inside their heads and
making them see what he saw. That would still be pretty miraculous, wouldn’t
it?”

“Edgar . . . ”

“Walking on
water, and that stuff with Lazarus, I mean maybe he was in like a catatonic
state and Jesus just—”

“Edgar!”

Edgar fell
silent.

Hawk looked
exasperated after yelling; he collected himself, taking a breath before
speaking again. Mike was afraid he might go on all night, and he would never
get the place cleaned up. The only way they were going to get out of here was
if they all pretended to take his lessons to heart. And if that was all it
took, it would be worth it. Out-hypocrisy the old hypocrite.

“I think
that’s really, really true,” he said to the other boys. “What Hawk’s been
saying.”

He could see
Hawk’s eyes brighten, snapping toward him.

“We should
all learn a lesson from this,” Mike said.

“Okay,
finally, someone’s hearing me,” Hawk said. “What is this, all you guys tired of
listening to me? Only makes sense to someone who’s never heard it before?”