The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“Those guys need a lesson,” he said.

“What kind?”

“One they’re not expecting. We need to put our mark on them. If we don’t, we’re going to be anybody’s pump.”

I didn’t try to argue with him. I had never felt comfortable with the pacifism of my father, as much as I respected it. He had earned his in the trenches. When I tried to forgive those who transgressed against me, I felt weak and insignificant and deserving of the injury done to me. Now the seats and door handles and steering wheel, and even the radio knobs of my car stuck to my skin like adhesive tape, courtesy of Grady Harrelson and his friends.

We drove down South Main.

“Go to Herman Park,” Saber said.

“What for?”

“Harrelson rat-races out there. He’s probably going to give Atlas a thrill.”

“What are we going to do when we get there?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“No.”

“There’s a faucet and a garden hose by the zoo. I cain’t go in the house smelling this way.”

/> Herman Park was a spacious urban forest full of live oaks and pine trees, located right off South Main Boulevard not far from Rice University; it contained a zoo and a playground and picnic tables and barbecue pits. It sometimes hosted another culture at night, one in which kids fought not for the fun of fighting but to do felonious levels of injury to one another. It also offered crowned asphalt-paved roadways that wound through acres of trees strung with Spanish moss, their leaves flickering in the headlights, their shadows as shaggy as the outlines of mythic behemoths.

I heard two cars coming fast beyond a bend. One sounded like a smaller vehicle, the engine whining, the driver squeezing everything he could from his lower gears, shifting up and then down, squealing into the turn, a bigger car coming hard behind him, the chassis swaying on the springs, a hubcap bouncing loose, clanging on its rim along the asphalt.

“It’s him,” Saber said.

“How do you know?”

“I got a sense. It’s us against them.”

“We’re not talking about the big picture, Sabe. This is about Grady Harrelson and his punks.”

“You saw the look on his face after you hit him. I’d like to do him in. I’d like to pop a cap on every one of them. Pull over. Here those cocksuckers come.”

He was right. A red Austin-Healey came around the bend, sliding sideways, three guys in the front seat. They were laughing and had beer cans in their hands. Hard behind them was Grady’s pink convertible, one guy standing up, holding on to the windshield. I thought he was yelling and shaking his fist. He wasn’t. He was holding a firecracker while a guy in back was lighting it. He threw it just before it exploded, almost in his face.

I pulled onto the grass and cut the lights. Both cars went past us.

“We’re going to find that hose and get out of here,” I said.

“You know the edge they’ve got on us?”

“They don’t have an edge.”

“They never have to pay a price,” he said. “We do. That’s why we always back off. They’ve got a lock on the game before it starts, and they know it.”

I stared at Saber. He had a gift for seeing the corruption in people’s hearts when others saw only the monk’s robe.

“That’s a breakthrough?” he said. “Why would a rodent like Vick Atlas start a beef in front of a flatfoot?”

“I get the point.”

“No, you don’t get anything, Aaron. My old man said it. You and your old man are water-walkers.”

“Cut it out.”