The Queen of Everything (18 page)

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Cassaday right then, about any of the things
she had told me. I didn't care about anything but getting the hell out of
there.

We walked past the patch of movie-watchers, who
had returned their attention to the screen. I could see Heck Kwa and his wife in
their lawn chairs, watching the movie, their shoulders moving up and down with
laughter.

Big Mama says that male salmon grow hooks on
their jaws to protect their eggs against predators. It seemed to me then that
God had left us all only half-equipped. We could have come with all the options,
if He'd wanted. Instead we were all on this big survival campout, but some
animals got only a knife, some a tent, or a can of insect spray. The game was,
no one got it all.

My father could have used one of those, those
hooks. When I went off with Kale, he didn't even turn around.

"It's cool. This hard-to-get stuff," Kale said.
"I could use a change like the next guy."

Kale and I sat in the dark on the hood of his
car, in Parrish Island Historic Park. Parrish Island Historic Park is basically
this huge stretch of straw grass that ends at the widest sandy beach on the
island. The place is so full of rabbit holes that walking around in the dark
will earn you a sprained ankle for sure. What's historic about

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the place is that it was the site of a near war
between the British and the Americans, who still hadn't figured out who owned
the place. The war almost began when a British pig rooted around in an American
settler's potato patch. For that wrong move the pig was shot, which made both
sides mad enough to bring in the armies. I'm not kidding. You can see why the
park rangers there have a chip on their shoulders.

Kale's car looked like it had a mean streak.
I'm not good with car names, but it was one of those oldish cars shaped like a
shark, the kind that make a lot of noise when you step on the gas. The year
before, it was dull gray with primer. I remember it in the school parking lot.
Now it was painted a slick black.

We'd dropped Melissa home and brought Wendy and
the gang back to Jason's house, and then Kale had brought me to the park and
tried to convince me to have sex. I couldn't do it; down deep I thought I had
better love Kale, and down deep I knew I was having trouble even liking him. So
instead, Kale had a smoke, then laid a soft, red plaid blanket on the hood of
his car. Climbing up, I tried to be careful of the paint. It was so shiny, even
in the dark.

Kale leaned back on his elbows, checked out the
black starry sky. I circled my arms around my knees, set my chin there. Kale
tilted his head at me. "So," he said.

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"So," I said.

"No, you're supposed to spill your guts,
remember? You promised."

"Oh," I said. I didn't remember
promising.

"Hey, it's okay," he said. He rubbed my bare
ankle with his hand. "You know, I'm here."

I thought for a while. "Well, it's my father,"
I said.

"That, I could've guessed," Kale said. "He's
just gonna have to get used to the fact you're a big girl now. It's not right,
following you around and everything. I'd tell him, 'Hey, I'm grown up. You got
to give me some room. I make a mistake, I make a mistake. You can't protect me
every second.'"

"It's not that," I said.

"It's not?"

"Most people think he's just this regular
optometrist."

"And he isn't?" Kale said. "Uh-uh."

"So what is he, some secret agent?"

That would have been good. "No. When he was in
his twenties? He was a marine." The thought of my father as a marine cracked me
up. It'd probably take him being chased by a herd of pissed-off elephants to get
him over a rope wall and into a sand pit, like you see those guys do in the
movies.

"No shit," Kale said.

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"Yeah. Hard to believe, huh?"

"Fucking unbelievable." Kale's eyes gleamed in
the dark shiny as the paint on his car. I heard a boat out on the strait. The
putting of an engine. That gasoline-on-water smell floated over.

"Well," I said. "They were doing this
reconnaissance training once, and tilings got out of hand. He got into a fight
with one of his superiors." I paused. "A
bad fight."

"A bad fight?"

"Let's just leave it at that," I said. "Shit,
he killed him?"

I put my hands around my own neck and made
strangling sounds. Kale's eyes danced happily. His foot jiggled back and forth
at the end of the car hood. "He ran," I said. "He's been hiding here since. The
secret's about to kill him."

"I thought your family was from
here."

"You'd think this is the first place they'd
have looked, wouldn't you? If you knew what I do about the armed forces, you
wouldn't sleep so good at night."

Kale seemed to like this. "Anyway" I said. "His
conscience has been bothering him. He's been talking about giving himself up. I
mean, can you imagine? He's an
optometrist."
I paused, looked at Kale,
who was thinking this over. "And on top of that he's been in this dangerous
situation with this married woman."

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Kale chuckled. "Go, Pops," he said. I stopped
then.

"So anyway," I said. I rubbed my arms from the
cold. I wanted to go home. "Just a sec," Kale said.

He inched himself off the car, then opened the
front door and leaned inside to get his keys out of the ignition. He smiled at
me from the back of his car. His teeth were really white in the dark. He popped
the trunk and disappeared from view. I though he was getting me another blanket,
or a jacket, maybe. That's actually what I thought. Oh God, a jacket.

He slammed the trunk down. Smiled again. He
held up something. I didn't think it was real. A rifle. What he held up was a
rifle. He put it to his eye.

"God, Kale," I said. I started getting real,
real nervous then. I regretted the story about the marines. I regretted the lie
about violence.

He slung the rifle over his shoulder, casual as
if it were a beach bag stuffed with cartoon-stenciled towels. "Watch this," he
said.

"No Kale," I said. "That's not loaded,
right?"

Kale sat back inside the car, one leg still out
the driver's side door.
Shit,
I thought.
Shit, shit, Jordan. You've
got yourself in some mess now.

My heart started pounding. I had no idea what
he might do. None. I thought he might start the car and drive off, with me still
on the

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top. I scrambled off the hood. I thought about
running. I pictured one of those old westerns, a bullet in my back, arching
forward with the impact.

"No, stay there," Kale called. "You'll see
better."

See. I did not want to see anything. Nothing
that involved a rifle. I knew that gun had bullets in it, all lined up one
against the other, end to end. That's how I pictured them anyway.

I did not climb back on top of the hood.
Instead I just stood where I was, backed up against the front fender of Kale's
car. The engine thundered to life. The sound made me jump. I wanted out of
there. Badly. This was the wrong, wrong place for me.

Kale gunned the engine, just for show, making
it roar like an angry giant. Then it quieted to a low rumble.

Kale stuck his head out the driver's door.
"Okay, watch!" he called.

He flicked on his headlights, two bolts of
light so sudden and bright it was like looking directly into the eye of the
Point Perpetua lighthouse. My arm went instinctively up to my eyes. I blinked.
That light was horrible. Painful bolts. But not bright enough that I didn't see
them, at the same time as I heard the sound, the tremendous
crack, crack
of Kale's gun.

The rabbits. Dozens of rabbits.
Rabbits

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emerging from their holes, some frozen blind,
some stupidly nibbling at the ground as if it had merely suddenly become
morning.

"Jesus, Kale!" I yelled. "Jesus! Stop
it!"

Pieces flying. Actual pieces of animal flying,
and the thud of something hitting the ground. Oh, Jesus. A rabbit skittered
under the car. Kale raised the gun to his eye. I screamed. I must have moved; I
remember clapping my hands over my ears at the sound, turning my head
away.

"Stop it!" I cried. "Stop it, stop it, stop
it!"

"Got him," Kale said.

He drove me home. He was full of a bouncy
energy. He kept apologizing. He thought I would think it was cool, he
said.

It was going on midnight by the time we reached
my house. The moment we drove up the street, the Beenes' electric garage door
rumbled up and showed its bright cheery contents--bikes and Mr. Beene's car and
the lawn mower and fertilizer and equipment from various sports Mrs. Beene
bought Mr. Beene that he never used. Jackson stepped out of the garage, hauling
the garden hose and a sloshing bucket of water, which he set down next to his
truck.

I got out of Kale's car. Kale yanked the
parking brake and got out too. He leaned his back against the driver's door.
"Aren't you gonna kiss me good-bye?" he said.

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I kissed him, I'm ashamed to say, but I did it.
Mostly because I wanted him to go away. Mostly because I never wanted to see him
again. His lips were cold and dry. He tossed his keys in the air and caught them
in his fist. He looked at my father's Triumph, sitting under the
tarp.

"I want that car," he said. "That's a
fantastically great car."

"It's my dad's," I said.

Down the street, Jackson had turned on the
hose. I could hear the sound of the hard spray hitting the metal side of his
truck. I could feel his eyes on me.

"Fuck, that guy's a spook," Kale
said.

After a few minutes of stupid talk, Kale got
back in his car and left. In the streetlight, I could see that my feet were
speckled with blood. Blood from the rabbit that had tried to escape under the
car. It was my fault, those rabbits.

I walked to the curb, where a stream of soapy
water from Jackson's hose had trickled across the slope of street and was
gaining speed in the gutter. I stepped into it, let it wash over my
feet.

I looked up the street toward Jackson, but he
had his back to me. I heard the Beenes' upstairs window slide open, and Diane
Beene's voice jump out loudly into the darkness.

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"What in the world are you doing, Jackson?" And
then, more muffled, "He's washing his truck, Larry. Twelve fifteen at night and
he's washing his truck."

"Do mine while you're at it!" Mr. Beene
shouted.

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Chapter Nine

Grandpa Eugene had Elvis hair.

Except for the times he'd just come from
underneath someone's car or out of the laurel hedge with his pruning shears, his
hair was sculpted like the King's, the sides swept back like wings, a swoop of
meringue on top. Dyed black as the habits of the Franciscan nuns who work the
ferry terminal. His hair just got stuck there in the fifties and never came
out.

I leaned against the office door of Eugene's
Gas and Garage, and I looked at that hair and the stubble on his cheeks that
felt as prickly as stickers on a rosebush when he'd rub it against your face on
purpose. Even though things turned out the way they did, right at that moment I
felt like I was doing the right tiling. I

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was sure I was. Because Grandpa Eugene could
fix things. He wore that capable feeling, the way a lot of old guys do, as if
they slap it on their face every morning along with the Aqua Velva. Like they
had already seen plenty of broken dishwashers and insurance policies and car
mufflers, and none had gotten the better of them yet. When Grandpa Eugene was in
his unisuit (like Custodian Bill's, except gray) and was gripping a wrench, you
knew both you and the wrench were in good hands. Whenever Grandpa Eugene was
fixing a stalled car or leaky pipes, or cleaning gutters choked with leaves, I
got that reassured feeling, just seeing him work the problem.

Grandpa Eugene leaned back in his chair, which
complained with a long squeak. He scratched at a wide roll of packing tape with
one finger. "How much time you figure we spend trying to find the end of the
tape roll? Three, six months out of our life?"

"Here, give it to me," I said.

He tossed me the roll of tape, and I caught it.
"That ass-wipe Marty Abare got a bunch of ordering catalogs for candy and snacks
and crap. You want Ritz Crackeeos or what the hell, you go to the supermarket.
You don't go to Eugene's. I'm packing them up and sending them back, thank you
very much." He leaned back up with another long squeak and thumped

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the brown box on his desk. Marty Abare's
desk.

"Good for you," I said, although I wasn't sure
it was. I found the end of the tape roll, transferred the sticky end from my
finger to his.