The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“Yes, sir.”

I took the city bus up to North Houston. The previous winter a friend of mine had pointed out a one-story oak-shaded Victorian house with a wide porch on a residential boulevard, and said it was the home of Valerie Epstein. I couldn’t remember the name of the boulevard, but I knew approximately where it was. When I pulled the cord for the bus driver to stop, I felt my stomach constrict, a tiny flame curling up through my entrails.

I stood in the bus’s fumes as it pulled away, and stared at the palms on the esplanade and the row of houses once owned by the city’s wealthiest people, before the big money moved out to River Oaks. I was deep in the heart of enemy territory, my crew cut and dress shoes and trousers and starched white shirt and tie the equivalent of blood floating in a shark tank.

I started walking. I thought I heard Hollywood mufflers rumbling down another street. On the corner, a woman of color was waiting for the bus behind the bench, her purse crimped in her hands. She looked one way and then the other, leaning forward as though on a ship. There were no other people of color on the boulevard. These were the years when nigger-knocking was in fashion. I tried to smile at her, but she glanced away.

One block later I recognized Valerie’s house. There were two live oaks hung with Spanish moss in the front yard and a glider on the porch; the side yard had a vegetable garden, and in the back I could see a desiccated toolshed and a huge pecan tree with a welding truck parked on the grass under it. Behind me I heard the rumble of Hollywood mufflers again. I turned and saw a 1941 Ford that had dual exhausts and Frenched headlights and an engine that sounded much more powerful than a conventional V8. The body was dechromed and leaded in and spray-painted with gray primer. One look at the occupants and I knew I was about to meet some genuine northside badasses, what we called greasers or sometimes greaseballs or hoods or duck-asses or hard guys or swinging dicks.

What was their logo? An indolent stare, slightly rounded shoulders, the shirt unbuttoned to expose the top of the chest, the collar turned up on the neck, the drapes threaded through the loops by a thin suede belt buckled below the navel, shirt cuffs buttoned even in summer, a tablespoon of grease in the sweeps of hair combed into a trench at the back of the head, iron taps on the needle-nose stomps that could be used to shatter someone’s teeth on the sidewalk, the pachuco cross tattooed on the web between the left forefinger and thumb, and more important, the total absence of pity or mercy in the eyes. I know that anyone reading this today might believe these were misdirected boys and their attire and behavior were masks for their fear. That was seldom my experience. I believed then, as I do now, that most of them would go down with the decks awash and the cannons blazing, as George Orwell once said about people who are truly brave.

The Ford pulled to the curb, the twin custom mufflers throbbing. “Looks like you’re lost,” said a greaser in the passenger seat.

“I sure am,” I replied.

“Or you’re selling Bibles.”

“I was actually looking for the Assembly of God Church. Y’all know where that’s at?”

I saw his eyes take note of the bad grammar and realized he was more intelligent than I thought, and no doubt a more serious challenge.

“You’re cute.” He put a Lucky Strike in his mouth but didn’t light it. His hair was jet-black, his cheeks sunken, his skin pale. He scratched his throat. “Got a match?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“If you’re not selling Bibles and you don’t have a light, what good are you? Are you good for something, boy?”

“Probably not. How about not calling me ‘boy’? Hey, I dig y’all’s heap. Where’d you get the mufflers?”

He removed the cigarette from his mouth and pinched it between his thumb and index finger, shaking it, nodding as though coming to a profound conclusion. “I remember where I’ve seen you. That bone-smoker joint downtown, what’s it called, the Pink Elephant?”

“What’s a bone-smoker?”

“Guys who look like you. Where’d you get that belt buckle?”

“Won it at the junior RCA rodeo. Bareback bronc and bull riding both.”

“You give blow jobs in the chutes?”

My eyes went off of his. The street was hot and bright, the lawns a deep green, the air swimming with humidity, the houses an eye-watering white. “I can’t blame you for saying that. I’ve shown the same kind of prejudice about people who are made different in the womb.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“The Bible.”

“You’re telling us you’re queer?”

“You never know.”

“I believe you. You got a nice mouth. You ought to get you some lipstick.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I said.

He opened the door slowly and stepped out on the asphalt. He was taller than he had looked inside the car. His shirt was unbuttoned, the sleeves filling with wind. His stomach was corrugated, his drapes low on his hips. His eyes roved over my face as though he were studying a lab specimen. “Can you repeat that?”

I heard a screen door squeak on a spring and slam behind me. Then I realized he was no longer looking at me. Valerie Epstein had walked down her porch steps into the yard and was standing under the live oaks, on the edge of the sunlight, shading her eyes with one hand. “Is that you?” she said.

I didn’t know if she was talking to me or the greaser on the curb. I pointed at my chest. “You talking to me?”