“You know who Tony Nemo is?”
“Who?”
“You may not know him, but he knows you. He says you ran over a child in Alabama.”
“That’s a damn lie.”
“It didn’t happen?”
“I got a DWI for driving drunk in a school zone there. I didn’t hurt nobody. I don’t drink no more, either.”
“But you were driving faster than forty-five when you hit my wife, weren’t you?”
Through the screen, I could see his wife and children staring at us. These were people for whom bad luck was not an abstraction but a constant; a knock on the door, a puff of wind, and their lives could be up the spout.
“You always got your eye on the speedometer when you’re driving at night?” he said. “I think I was driving forty-five. I cain’t say for sure. She come out of the dark.”
“Her lights weren’t on?”
He tried to hold his eyes on mine. “I cain’t remember.”
“Your lawyer told you to say that?”
“Suh?”
“You heard me.”
His expression turned into a pout, like a child’s. “I ain’t got nothing else to say.”
“I hear you tried to pump State Farm.”
“I missed eight days of work. Who’s gonna pay for that? You?”
“My wife was a nun in Central America,” I said.
His mouth moved, but no sound came out.
“She was a former sister. She devoted her life to helping the poor.”
“She’s a farmer—?”
How do you get angry at a man who cannot understand or speak his own language?
“If you were me, what would you do, Mr. Dartez? What would you feel?”
There was a big thickly leafed shade tree by his garage. It was filled with wind, its leaves dark green against an orange sun. He stared at it as though he wanted to hide inside its branches. “This guy you call Tony? He’s a dago gangster you using to scare me?”
“How do you know he’s a gangster?”
“I know what goes on.”
“I’m telling you he took an interest in you. I’m not sure why. I told him to butt out. I’m telling you to learn who your friends are.”
“You’re my friend? A man who comes to my house and scares my wife and children?”
I stepped closer to him. I couldn’t help my feelings, the surge of bile in my stomach, the visceral disgust I felt for his ignorance, my desire to do things with my fists that were ultimately a confession of defeat. He stepped back. “My old lady is calling the cops.”
The wind shifted. I could smell his odor, the barbecue smoke on his skin, the grease in his hair. “You lied to the state trooper. Until you admit your part in the accident, you’ll never have peace.”