The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

There was a clutch of phone booths against the wall. I pushed him into one and stood in the doorway so he couldn’t get out. His hair was in his eyes, his face flaming. “Let me out.”

“I told you to shut up. Where’s your girl?”

“In the ladies’ room.”

“You have wheels?”

“My brother’s truck.”

I took off my hat and put it on his head. “Walk with me. Look at the ground.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re too dumb to take care of yourself.”

“You’re sure that kid is dead?”

“The knife wound was to the heart.”

“Jesus. I got to get my girl.”

“So she can get busted or torn apart with you?” I said.

People were streaming past us on their way toward the shoeshine stand. Through a window I saw the emergency lights on an ambulance, its siren dying as though descending into a well. I could almost smell the heat in the crowd, a collective stench that was close to feral.

“I saw one of them,” someone said.

“Where?” someone else said.

“By the can. He was just here. He came in with them.”

“Keep walking,” I said to Loren. “Don’t look back.”

I squeezed his upper arm tighter, but he no longer resisted. Someone heading in the opposite direction knocked against me; he didn’t apologize or even look at me but kept going, with others behind him. I could hear the mother wailing, which was drawing more and more people out of the stands into the concourse.

“I don’t like running away,” Loren said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“There’s another one of them!” someone yelled. “That greaser down there!”

A cop was blowing a whistle. The crowd that had been flowing past us seemed to shift into slow motion, their heads rotating slowly, their eyes coming to rest on us. I pulled Loren along with me. Up ahead was the entranceway that led to the loading area behind the chutes. “Hey, you,” someone yelled. “Somebody stop that guy! That’s their goddamn leader. The one with the duck-ass.”

We went through the entranceway, then through a side door that opened onto an empty space with a dirt floor beneath the stadium seating. I shut the door and pulled off my boots and unbuckled my chaps and peeled them off my jeans. “Put these on. I’ll get them back later. Don’t let anything happen to them. They were my grandfather’s.”

“I ain’t afraid,” Loren said.

“I am,” I said. “Now get these on. If you say anything back, I’m going to hit you upside the head.”

The band began playing “The Eyes of Texas,” then there was a great thumping that shook the floor and the girders, like elephants charging up a staircase, so thunderous it sent dust and grit cascading down on our heads. The crowd was either leaving the stands or flowing back, I couldn’t tell which. Someone kicked open the door and shone a flashlight inside. Behind the glare, I could see his badge and cap and holstered revolver. “What the hell y’all doing in here?” he said.

“Taking a leak,” I said. “We didn’t want to go into that mob in the concourse.”

“Why you got your boots off?”

“I went over the side and got dirt in them.”

“Well, get finished and get out,” he said. “We got a murdered boy up there. Maybe the guy who did it got away.”

“How old was the boy who got knifed?” Loren asked.