“Satan,” I replied.
“Who?” she asked.
“It’s Mr. Krauser,” I said, more to my father than my mother.
My father was reading under a lamp. The book was Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway. “The teacher who tried to help you with these bad kids from the Heights?” he said.
“They’re more than bad kids, Daddy. And Mr. Krauser doesn’t help anybody with anything.”
He looked at his pocket watch. The ball game would soon be sta
rting on the small-screen television at the icehouse, although my father usually sat at one of the plank tables under the canvas awning and drank by himself and took little interest in the game. “So let’s see what he wants,” he said.
It was obvious that Mr. Krauser had not bathed or changed clothes before coming to the house. As I held the door for him, I could smell the dried sweat in his shirt, an odor that was as thick and gray and palpable as a towel left in a gym locker. His smile made me think of a grin painted on a muskmelon. “I hope I’m not disturbing anyone,” he announced in the middle of the living room. “I like your house. What do you call that overhang on the side?”
My father put away his book and rose from his chair to shake hands. “I’m James Broussard, Mr. Krauser. In Louisiana it’s called a porte cochere. What can I do for you?”
“I understand we have much in common.”
“Oh?” my father said.
“My tank was the first armored vehicle across Remagen Bridge. In the Great War, you were at—”
“No place of any import. What’s the nature of your visit, sir?”
In moments like these I believed my old man was the best guy on earth, although he hated the word “guy.”
“I work as a counselor at one of the summer camps on the Guadalupe River, up in the hill country,” Mr. Krauser said. “There’re a couple of slots available for assistant counselors. I had Aaron and his friend Saber in mind.”
Many high school and junior high school coaches worked at summer vacation camps and received twenty-five dollars for each kid they signed up. I pitied the kid who looked forward to camp all year and arrived only to find out that Mr. Krauser was his cabin supervisor.
“That’s good of you,” my father said. “Why did you choose my son for such an honor? Not to mention Saber.”
“Both have leadership potential. Lots of potential. We start the day with reveille at oh-seven-hundred hours. Boys learn discipline up there, Mr. Broussard. Not that Aaron needs it.”
My father had lean hands that were sun-browned and freckled and webbed on the backs with purplish veins that looked like knotted twine. Whenever he was bothered by an inconsistency in other people’s words, he rubbed the fingers of one hand on the back of the other, his thoughts known only to himself. “If I wanted to start a second American revolution, I’d turn loose ten like Saber Bledsoe in the middle of Boston.”
“Saber isn’t a bad boy. A little imaginative, maybe, but that’s why I’d like to work with him now. Catch things in the bud.”
“What did you say to all this, Aaron?” my father asked.
“I’m working at the filling station this summer,” I replied.
“So there you have it,” my father said to Mr. Krauser.
“One hundred dollars a month and room and board,” Krauser said.
He waited. My mother stood in the background, her eyes fixed strangely on the back of his head.
“I say something wrong?” Krauser asked.
“Not a thing. Have a fine evening, sir,” my father replied.
“What’s that McDougal boy doing in your car?” my mother said.
“He helps me with household chores and cutting the lawn,” Krauser said.
“He’s ill,” my mother said.