“I can walk.”
“Stay where you’re at. The Army of Bledsoe does not leave its wounded on the field. Did you do anything we need to worry about?”
I reached into my back pocket. The knife was still there. I removed it and pressed the release button. The blade leaped into the air, clean and glazed with a clear lubricant, the way I bought it. “Everything is copacetic.”
“Keep a cool stool. I’m on my way.”
MY PARENTS WERE furious. I told them I fell asleep in the hammock in Saber’s backyard and that he and his parents thought I’d gone home until I knocked on the screen door, confused and mosquito-bitten.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were going to Saber’s?” my father asked. He was wearing his pajamas; the lights were on all over the house.
“I’m sorry I made y’all worry,” I said.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he said, his mouth bitter.
My mother’s eyes were full of tears, her nails hooked into the heels of her hands. “You’re going to give me a nervous breakdown. I’ve had a lifetime of your father’s drinking, and now this. I can smell it on you. Where did you go?”
“You saw Saber drive me home,” I replied.
“Don’t lie,” she said.
My father went into his office and turned on the desk lamp and stared at the manuscript pages on the desk blotter. He picked up a page and read it, then sat down at the desk and looked out the window into the darkness, like a man for whom a black box was a way of life.
THE NEXT MORNING I missed the first three periods at school and barely made metal shop before the bell rang. I dropped my book bag on my worktable. With luck, Mr. Krauser would give me a hall pass to the restroom so I could wash my face and sit on the toilet and deliberately turn my head into an ice cube. But hall pass or not, I was safe from my parents and the consequences of my actions, whatever they were, until three P.M. I sat at my worktable and lowered my eyes and tried to doze. The windows in the shop were ajar, and I could smell mowed grass on the wind, like a pastoral hint of summer vacation and release from all my problems at school. When I opened my eyes, I saw Mr. Krauser framed against the open door of his office, his finger pointed at me. “Inside, Broussard,” he said.
He closed the door behind me and turned the key in the lock. There were streaks of color in his face and perspiration on his upper lip, as though he had been standing over the foundry.
“I do something wrong, sir?” I asked.
“I want to get something straight before I walk you across the street to the River Oaks substation.”
“The police station?”
“You guys aren’t dragging me into your shit, you got that?”
“I don’t know what we’re talking about, sir.”
“A plainclothes cop was just here. He called your house, and your mother said you overslept and were on your way to school. I told him I’d deliver you to the station. I also told him you had never been in trouble and were a good kid. You owe me a big favor.”
“What’s a cop want with me?”
“That is not the issue. The issue is the conversation we had with the four hoods in the souped-up Ford. I told them they were on school property without authorization. I told them to get off campus. That was the entire substance of the conversation. Right?”
He was nodding while he spoke, waiting for me to agree with him, his eyes as hard as marbles, locked on mine. There was no window in his office; his body odor seemed to eat up the oxygen in the room.
“You made out I was a snitch. You set me up, Mr. Krauser. Has something happened?”
“Don’t you dare lay this on me, you little son of a bitch.”
“You told Loren Nichols you’d rip out his package and wrap it around his throat. Has somebody hurt him? Is that why you’re so afraid?”
“I hope that cop sticks a baton so far up your ass, you’ll be coughing splinters.”
AT THE SUBSTATION, a patrolman ushered me into a small room and left me alone with a huge thick-necked man gazing through the window at the high school campus across the street. He wore cowboy boots and a brown suit and white shirt and a tie with a swampy sunset painted on it. Behind him, a fedora rested crown-down on an army-surplus metal desk that was otherwise bare. He turned around and stared into my face, his eyes the color of lead. A snub-nose chrome-plated revolver and a badge were clipped on his belt. “I’m Detective Merton Jenks. Sit down,” he said.
“Are my folks here?”
He pawed at his cheek, his gaze never leaving my face. The skin around his eyes was grainy, like scales fanning back into his hairline. I thought of a reptile breaking out of its shell, perhaps millions of years ago. I sat down and looked up at him. He had not answered my question. I tried to hold his stare.