The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“This morning.”

“For doing what?”

“Nothing.”

“You think these criminals are behind it?”

“Or Grady Harrelson’s father.”

My father cleared his throat again and stared at the garage.

“Want me to get you a glass of water?” I asked.

“The boy’s name is Atlas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s no good.”

“Did you have words with his father in the nightclub?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re not to have any contact with them. If they try to talk to you on the street, if they yell insults at you from a car, if they make threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, you do not respond, not under any circumstances. Clear?”

“Yes, sir, but what does it matter?”

“Every word you utter to an evil man either degrades you or empowers him. Evil men fear solitude because they have to hear their own thoughts.” He glanced at the evening sky. The moon was yellow, surrounded by a rain ring that looked like a halo on the painting of a Byzantine saint. “Get an umbrella. I’ll back the car out and meet you in front.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?”

I was beginning to regret confiding in my father. Maybe Saber had been right. My father belonged to that generation of Southerners drawn to self-destruction and impoverishment as though neurosis and penury represented virtue.

“You want your hat and coat?” I asked.

“Yes, I’d appreciate that. Thank you,” he said. “Tell your mother we’ll be back soon.”

MY FATHER PULLED to the curb in front of Saber’s house. The only light inside came from the television set. The same was true of most of the houses on the street. Saber’s house looked like a railroad shack someone had forgotten to bulldoze before building a modern subdivision around it. The television had a small black-and-white screen encased in plastic and had been manufactured by a man named Madman Muntz, who came to Houston in 1951 and sold thousands of them for fifty dollars apiece. The warranty was thirty days. The lawn mower was dead-stopped in the grass, a long swath behind it. The garbage can, emptied that day or the day before, was still on the swale.

My father removed his hat and tapped on the screen door. I could see Saber and his mother sitting on the cloth-covered couch in front of the television. Neither of them looked away from the program. Mr. Bledsoe got up from his stuffed chair and came to the door in slippers and cutoff shorts and a T-shirt. His hair looked like weeds growing on a rock. He stared straight into our faces and did not unlatch the screen. “I know why you’re here.”

“We’d like to talk with you and Saber,” my father said.

“We’re fixing to go to bed.”

“Our difficulty is not going away that easily, sir,” my father said.

“We don’t have difficulty. Nothing happened.”

Neither Saber nor his mother looked in our direction.

“That’s right, isn’t it, Saber?” Mr. Bledsoe said.

Saber didn’t answer or turn around.