“They’re just cops. It’s our word against his.”
“No. It was the look on your face. It wasn’t you.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
But I couldn’t get his words out of my mind.
I squatted down by the garage and removed my shirt and turned on the garden hose. I washed off my hands and arms and soaked my shirt and squeezed it out and put it back on and dried my hands on my pants. I saw Valerie through the back screen. I got to my feet. I didn’t know what to say to Saber.
“I hurt Nichols pretty bad?” I asked him.
“He won’t want to look in the mirror for a while.”
“Was that his grandmother?”
“I think that’s his mother. I heard she was in the asylum in Wichita Falls.”
“If they catch you with me, they’ll put you in the can.”
“You’re telling me to beat it?”
“No, I’m saying I might not go home.”
“Because of Nichols?”
“I’m not supposed to bring problems into my house. It’s an unwritten commandment. My father once said if I ever run away, not to come back.”
“Your old man said that?”
“That’s the way he is sometimes.”
Valerie opened the screen and stepped outside.
“Want me to leave?” Saber asked. “Just tell me.”
“Do what you want.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Don’t be that way,” I said.
He threw his car keys in the air and caught them. “You sure know how to kick a guy in the teeth.”
He fired up his Chevy and drove down the alley, gunning the engine with the clutch depressed, as though the roar of his mufflers could shut out the injury I had inflicted on him.
Valerie was holding the door open with her rump. She wore a white dress with black trim and tiny red hearts all over it. “What happened to you?”
“I got into it with Loren Nichols.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not really.”
“Did Loren attack you?”
“He thinks I burned his car.”
“That’s ridiculous. You look awful.”