Sometimes Saber had inclinations and said things I didn’t like to dwell on. Saber never had girlfriends or asked a girl to a dance. He didn’t even go on Coke dates. He talked about movie actresses but always eased away from the group when we visited a slumber party or hung out with a mixed crowd in the back row at the drive-in theater, drinking beer and necking and sometimes having to lift a car bumper to get rid of a discomfiting condition.
“Loren Nichols didn’t give us up,” he said.
“Maybe he has character,” I said.
“Save it for Mass. This isn’t nearly over.”
A Cadillac pulled up to one of the pumps; the driver honked. I ignored him and said to Saber, “Will you take the collard greens out of your mouth?”
“This is about Grady Harrelson. It’s always about a guy like Harrelson, not a greaseball from North Houston.”
“You don’t like rich people, Saber.”
“Why should I?” he said.
I thought about it. I couldn’t come up with an answer.
DETECTIVE JENKS PULLED into the station in an unmarked car at six that evening, just as we were closing up. The only other employees, two black men, were rolling dice in back on a flattened cardboard box for fun. In those days white kids were hired in filling stations because black men were not allowed to handle money or deal with the customers. Other than making change, our skills were virtually nil. The owner of the station had already gone home. I looked at the two black men and wondered at the composure that seemed to characterize their lives in spite of the hard times they’d had. The younger man had been with the Big Red One in Korea and come home with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. The older man had a scar like a braided rope on the back of his neck, where he had been stabbed by a cuckolded husband in Mississippi. Both men, like most men of color in that era, knew a cop when they saw one. They put away their dice and began washing up under a faucet, their backs turned to me and Jenks. I was on my own.
“Get in,” Jenks said.
I tossed my sponge into a bucket and slung a chamois over my shoulder. I even tried to smile. “What for?”
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
I got into the front seat. The inside of his car was hot and smelled of dust and old fabric. With his fedora and necktie and suit coat on, he looked like he wouldn’t fit inside the car and was about to break the seat or headliner or steering wheel with his size and weight. “Close the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You beat the crap out of the Nichols kid?”
“I defended myself.”
“You use a two-by-four?”
“I got lucky. Is he all right?”
“No thanks to you. You ought to be in the ring. Know who Lefty Felix Baker is?”
“The best boxer in Houston. Middleweight Golden Gloves champion of Texas five years running.”
“I was one of his coaches. Lefty is a good kid. He could have gone the wrong road, like some kids he grew up with. But he didn’t.”
“Am I in trouble, Detective Jenks?”
“As a detective, I cover the entire metro area. You know the kids I have the most trouble with? You pissants in Southwest Houston. You think you’re better than other people. I’ll take the nigras or the Mexicans over y’all any day. They might steal, but some of them don’t have much choice. Y’all vandalize property because you think it’s your right. Sometimes I fantasize about stuffing the bunch of you into a tree shredder.”
“What do you want from me?”
“For starters, you’d better choose your words more carefully.”
As bad luck would have it, Saber’s 1936 Chevy roared out of a side street and bounced up the dip into the station lot. Saber had a bottle of Jax in one hand, the radio and the stolen speakers from the drive-in theater blaring. His face lost its color when he saw me in the car with the detective.
“Turn off your engine, lose the beer, and get in the backseat,” Jenks said to Saber.
Saber got out and set the beer down by his front tire.
“I said, lose it.”