You Believers (8 page)

He studied the sandwich. “Thanks, man,” he said. “You make a neat sandwich. All the edges perfect.”

Mike smiled. Jesse was all right on a good day. You just had to keep on his good side. Jesse cut the sandwich in half, dabbed his finger in the yolk running on the plate, tasted it, gave a nod. He took a bite, chewed and swallowed it. “That’s a good egg. Not store-bought.”

Mike gestured toward the backyard. “She’s got Rhode Island Reds back there. She’s kinda known for selling her eggs around here.”

Jesse bit again into the sandwich. He ate it all without stopping. He told Mike he’d take some sweet tea now. He sighed. “Fuck of a day, man. All that planning just to get there five minutes too late.
Have to see that Larry closing up, pulling the metal door down over his storefront, locking it up like he runs Fort Knox. We could’ve taken him. But no, he goes walking down that sidewalk, and a damn cop pulls over just to say hey.” He took a cracker from the pack. “Some of Zeke’s best customers are cops. He’s good at playing both sides of the law. Says to me, ‘What’s the difference between a cop and a crook? Nothing, man, a cop’s just a cop until he gets caught, and then he’s a crook like anybody else.’” Jesse stood and looked out the kitchen window. “Hey, Larry,” he whispered. “Yeah, you, Larry of Larry’s Pawnshop and Trade, not you other Larrys out there. You, Larry Watts. You were one lucky bastard on this day. The blue truck, it saved your ass. And you, Larry, you just walk on down that sidewalk and talk to your cop. But they’ll be another day, Larry boy.”

“They’ll be looking for who stole her truck,” Mike said. He was doing the dishes.

Jesse ate another cracker. “Nobody gonna worry about that truck sitting by Lake Waccamaw. First thing her fiancé is gonna think is she ran off to Randy. He said the name like he hated it. Randy. Can’t any bitch besides Nicki Lynn and my mom be happy with one man? And meanwhile, cops will be looking all over Lake Waccamaw. She told me herself she went there all the time.” He raised a finger to Mike. “Her pattern, man. She gave it right to me. You gotta work your pattern into her pattern, that’s the way you disappear.”

“What about the girl?”

“What the hell is she gonna say?” Jesse shook his head. “Positive, think positive. We gonna be just fine, Michael Man.”

Mike smiled. He liked the way Jesse called him Michael Man. Back in juvy, Jesse wouldn’t let anybody give him shit. “That’s my boy,” he’d say. “Nobody gonna fuck with my boy.” Then he’d call him Michael Man.

“So what’s the next hit gonna be?”

Jesse kept staring out the window. “I’ve got another little piece of action in mind. Right there in Land Fall, just around the block.” He glanced at Mike. “I’m doing this one on my own. It’s a big house. Just a mom and her daughter. They gotta have all kinds of jewelry, crystal, silver. I fit it in my backpack. Zeke fences it. There you go. And that daughter, man, she’s hot. Nice ass, always running around the block. Looks at me, don’t even see me, man. No, the princess, she sees only what she wants to see. Jenny says nobody knows what they’re looking at when they think they’re looking at me.”

Mike took the dishes to the sink, turned on the faucet. “Doesn’t Jenny get nervous around you sometimes?”

Jesse looked at him, squinted like he was making up his mind about something. He refilled his glass with tea, took a long drink. “Not Jenny,” Jesse said, “I’ve known her since we were kids. A hippy chick. Why would I screw things up with a girl who gives me free massages anytime I want? Says she has to practice on somebody to get her license.” He smiled. “And she likes that somebody to be me.”

Mike washed the dishes, set them in the drain, kept his eyes off Jesse. “So you two really have something. She ain’t just some chick.”

Jesse rummaged in the cabinet, found a bag of cookies. Mike knew there were just a few left. He’d been saving them for his granny “Yeah, we got a thing. None of that going-steady shit, just a thing.” He shoved the last of the cookies into his mouth and rubbed the back of Mike’s head the way he would a dog. “I’m staying here tonight,” he said. “In the morning you gotta drive me back home.”

“Man, I can’t take my car. Cops might be looking for my car. I get pulled over just for being in your neighborhood in that piece of shit I drive.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody remembers half the shit that walks right by. They just see what they want. People don’t notice anything. I thought you knew that an eyewitness is the worst lead a cop can
have. How many people notice what kind of car you drive?” Jesse walked across the kitchen and looked out the window toward the lights of a distant neighbor’s house. “Take you and me here. You think anybody noticed us pull up in your granny’s drive? No, they’re all watching some trash on the television. Shit, you think the folks in my hood see who I am?”

“You don’t live in a hood.”

“No, it’s a gated community. I’m inside the gate keeps the bad dudes out, right? My daddy’s got money. People see him, think he’s my old man. People see me, think I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world.”

Mike wished he had some more dope. The only weed left was in Jesse’s pocket. “So,” he said, “you want to finish up that weed?”

“Nah,” Jesse said. “I’m saving it.” He turned, stared out the kitchen window into the darkness. From where Mike sat, he could see Jesse’s distorted reflection. The eyes narrowed, sharp cut of his jaw. He was good-looking, but sometimes when his face went a certain way, he looked like some kind of fiend. Mike wished he had that. If he lost some weight, worked out, maybe if he changed his hair, he could be something like Jesse: the guy the chicks wanted, the man who didn’t give a damn.

Jesse exhaled a whistling breath between his teeth. “This place I’m gonna hit. Rich lady. College girl, long red hair. Nice. Drives around in this silver Sebring with the top down.” Jesse leaned against the counter, rubbed his belly. “Man, my stomach still ain’t right. Your granny got any Coke? I could use a Coke. That always eases me.”

Mike shrugged. He knew there was one Coke in the fridge behind the milk, but that was his granny’s Coke. She liked to save it for when she got a sour stomach. “Ice water might help.” He took out some ice cubes, dropped them in a glass, ran the water cold. Jesse drank a few sips, ran his tongue over his teeth, and wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. “I know they got some good shit in that house, man. It’d be easy. Her momma works, spends evenings out, I’ll bet in one of those I’m-rich-and-divorced-so-help-me support groups. And this chick, she’s in and out of school, out with this baby-faced boyfriend. And man, she’s running around in these shorts. Whew. Runs right by me, doesn’t even look.” Jesse rubbed his belly again, looked around the kitchen.

Mike nodded. “Just don’t get caught, man. Like Zeke told you, it ain’t smart to mess around in your own hood.”

“My folks, they’ll always cover me.” Jesse grinned. “Remember that crack whore? The one they popped me for?” Jesse opened the refrigerator, and as if he knew where it was, he pushed the milk aside, grabbed the Coke. Mike knew he’d have to slip out in the morning and buy another one for his granny. Jesse twisted the top off, sipped. “Good thing she had a record. Drugs, shoplifting, bad checks, credit cards. I nearly did time for that one.” He went into the living room, opened the front door, looked out, took in a long breath, let it go. “Now I’ve got two years suspended hanging over my head.” He stood in the doorway, rolled his shoulders. “Is that fucked or what?”

Mike could see the tension in his back just by the way he moved. When he got this tight, Mike had to be careful. Jenny at the marina had to be a pretty cool chick if she was willing to rub Jesse’s back. Mike took the quilt off his granny’s chair, laid it on the couch. He arranged a pillow and gave Jesse a grin so he wouldn’t take things too seriously. “You put her in a coma for two weeks.” Jesse rolled his head to loosen his neck. Mike could hear a pop. “You scare me sometimes, the risks you take, man.”

“Don’t you worry.” Jesse drained the Coke. He stood there, muscles bulging as he squeezed the doorframe in his hands “You ever just want to pull a house down?”

Mike shook his head.

“I want to be like the night, man. Be like the dark seeping into everything when the sun goes down.” He turned, shut the door, locked it, and grinned. “What this world needs is a little more awareness.”

Mike stood. “What I need right now is some sleep.”

Jesse walked to the couch. “I’m crashing. Take me home in the morning.”

“All right,” Mike said. “I’ll take you home, but I got to leave you at the gate. I don’t like the way that guard looks at me. That all right with you?”

“Yeah. That’ll be all right.” Jesse dropped flat on the couch and closed his eyes. “Thanks, man.”

Mike knew that was Jesse’s way of saying goodnight. He stood in the doorway, waited until he could hear the regular deep breathing of Jesse asleep, then crept down the hallway leading to his granny’s room, where he would turn off the TV, sit in the big chair at her bedside, and take comfort in the quiet sound of her breath until he sank into his own sleep, forgetting the awful mess of the day. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to the darkness of his grandmother’s room. She had turned off her light. Hadn’t waited for him to come tuck her in the way she liked. He wanted his granny to be awake; just her voice would give a little comfort. Still, he crept into her room, sat in the chair, hoping being near his granny would make him feel all right. But there was no consolation, just the memory of that blue-truck girl. The touch of her hand on his arm. He tried to think of her running in the dark, trying to get to some guy’s house. Some guy named Randy. So what if she screwed around on her fiancé? He closed his eyes and tried to see her finding her way in the dark, knocking on some guy named Randy’s house. Then he felt the touch of her hand again, her saying he should know her name. It wasn’t over with the blue-truck girl. He was pretty sure of that.

He shuddered, tried to shake off the feeling. But he could still
see Jesse standing out in that field. Calling to the girl to come on. She stood by the car. Mike told her to go on, to do what Jesse wanted, and it would be all right. He wanted her to get away from his car, wanted to roll up the window, lock the door. He could feel her looking at him. But he wouldn’t look up from his hands gripping the wheel. “Talk to me,” she said. “What’s your name?” He glanced up, looked away. Then she reached in, squeezed his arm. He flinched, said, “What you doing?” He pulled away from her, ducked down, leaned closer to his hands on the wheel. “My name is Katy,” she said. “You need to know my name.” He kept his head down, didn’t want to look at her, and when he looked up, she was gone. And before he knew it, Jesse was throwing a screwdriver at him, giving him all kinds of hell.

Mike pulled the chair closer to his grandmother’s bed. He told himself it was like Jesse said, there were always worse things. He leaned back in the chair, listened to the soft sound of his granny’s breathing. It would be all right. Yeah, it was a waste of a day. Nothing went like they’d planned, but it would be all right. But he couldn’t shake the feel of that girl’s hand. There’d be no leaving that girl named Katy behind.

Just Nature She Loved, Flowers and Fangs and All

The old woman liked to watch the night from her back porch. In the old days, she did laundry there, wringer washer, hung clothes on a line out back, strung them up in the kitchen in winter months. Now she had an electric washer, dryer, heat, and air conditioners. All stuff her daughter bought her, insisted that she have. Now her daughter was trying to talk her into getting a burglar alarm. “Everybody knows you live out there by yourself. Anything could happen to you.”

But the old woman wasn’t worried. She’d lived a long life and seen a lot of things. Sure, she lived alone, but folks knew she had nothing in her house worth stealing, and they probably figured she had her husband’s old .22. She could still see clearly and wasn’t afraid of pulling a trigger.

And she loved this land. Her husband had courted her with this five acres, and before long they’d had fifty. It was a home built on love, and much as her daughter wanted to her to sell and move to be with her in Poughkeepsie, she wasn’t budging. She knew she’d freeze half to death up there. This was her land, and the only way they’d get her out was in a box. Or a bag, she guessed. She watched police shows. They used black bags these days.

She walked down into the yard to look up at the sky. Saw the Big Dipper. The top end of Scorpio and the other one she liked, Orion’s belt. Her husband had taught her to see these things.

A hoot owl swooped in moonlight, grabbed something up and rose. She figured it had to be a field mouse scurrying toward the brambles out by the trash heap. She liked the predatory birds. Ospreys, red-tailed hawks, owls that sometimes looked big as boys sitting up in those trees. She’d watched a show on Discovery about these birds. Raptors was what they were called. She liked the way talons clutched the furred things, lifting them up against the sky to somewhere they could plunk them back on the dirt and eat. She liked the nature shows. Bears scooping salmon from the streams, stripping the skins off. The way the big cats stalked. The hammerhead shark and the way it used some kind of sonar to sniff out things to eat buried under the sand. They were smart. Every creature in the world was smart when it came to feeding time. That was one thing she’d learned from the nature shows.

Her daughter thought she was strange. But the old woman said it was just nature she loved, flowers and fangs and all. Now she looked up at the full moon.
You should see this
, she thought to her husband, who had died twelve years before. He probably saw the moon. He probably saw the whole world, giraffes in Africa, the northern lights in Finland, and he probably saw all that meanness too that went on in the cities. That went on everywhere. But then there were always babies laughing somewhere, and that made things easier to bear. She liked to think that was what death might be like. It would be like the moon that sees everything, that circles around and around this world, just watching, waxing, waning, circling back around to see it all.