The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“Obviously your son told you what happened, or you would not know the purpose of our visit,” my father said.

Mr. Bledsoe gazed through the screen, a tired man whose vocabulary was probably no more than a few hundred words, a man with no self-knowledge and neither moat nor castle except for his shack and the broken screen that separated him from the rest of the world.

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“Will you invite us in?” my father said.

“They took my job. They’ll take my house and they’ll take my boy, too. Don’t tell me they won’t, either.”

“We need to go to the police,” my father said.

“Like heck I will.”

“You’re putting the burden on my son, Mr. Bledsoe.”

“It’s not him that’s at risk. If he wants to go to the cops, that’s his damn business.”

“You just admitted Saber threw the brick.”

“I didn’t admit anything. No, sir.”

“My son isn’t an informer.”

Mr. Bledsoe’s gaze had shifted into space, as though he saw content there that no one else did. “We look after our own.”

“Would you step out here and talk to me, please?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I already took a belt to him.”

“For telling you the truth?”

Mr. Bledsoe tilted up his chin, defiant. “Maybe if you’d disciplined your own son, he wouldn’t have drove Saber to a nightclub, then to a park where they didn’t have no business.”

“So Aaron must either inform on your boy or bear the consequence of Saber’s throwing the brick?”

“I didn’t say anything about a brick. You want to talk about that, you take your conversation somewhere else.”

“I’d like you to forgive me for what I have to say, Mr. Bledsoe.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

My father started to speak, then stopped. “We wish you and your family the best. If we can be of assistance to you, please call.”

“That won’t be happening,” Mr. Bledsoe said.

My father put his hat back on. It was a classic fedora, the front brim bent down. He had small eyes and dark hair and clean features that belied his age and the alcohol he consumed. I wondered what he would look like if he didn’t drink or smoke. We got into the car and he started the engine. He looked up at the gaseous yellow glow of the moon; it had a peculiar radiance, like a campfire burning inside snow.

“What were you fixing to say to Mr. Bledsoe?” I said.

“That his conduct is dishonorable.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He’s an uneducated and poor man. We won’t make him a better one by criticizing him.”

We drove home in silence. After he pulled into the garage, I hoped he would follow me into the house and the two of us would clean up the kitchen, working as a team. Instead, he said he had to check the tire. Ten minutes later, I went back outside. The moon had gone behind clouds, and the yard was filled with shadows as pointed as swords. My father was sitting in the passenger seat, the car door open, drinking from a paper cup one sip at a time, his eyes closed as though he were involved in a secular benediction whose nature no one else would ever understand.

I WENT IN TO work early the next morning so I could get off that afternoon and take Valerie to play miniature golf. I wasn’t expecting to see Cisco Napolitano’s black-and-red Olds convertible coming down the boulevard. Miss Cisco was behind the wheel. She turned in to the station and stopped at the pumps. She was wearing a scarf and shades and white shorts and a pink halter that barely contained her breasts. “What’s the haps, darlin’?” she said to me.