The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“Yes, sir?”

“The most frightened I’ve ever been was the first time I had to go over the top in early 1918. I went over it four more times, but nothing could equal the fear I felt the first time. No one who was not there can understand what that moment is like. No one.”

He rarely spoke of the Great War, and when he alluded to it, he never mentioned his experiences as a soldier. Most people who thought they knew him well were not even aware he had been to Europe. When others began to speak of war—especially when they spoke in a grandiose fashion—he left the room. The paper bag was folded in an oblong, humped shape, as though it might contain a rump roast or a couple of odd-sized books.

“You think I’m quitting school and joining the army?” I said.

“No, I think you’re worried about evil men coming into your life. That’s what I want to talk to you about. When we went up the steps on the trench wall, it was likely that the man in front of you had soiled himself. You had to breathe his odor and stiff-arm him in the back so he didn’t fall on you, and you hated him for it. Once you were in the open, there was no going back. You had to run through their wire into hundreds of bullets while your chums fell on either side of you. I did it once and thought I could never do it again. I told this to the lieutenant. He was a Brit serving in the AEF and a fine fellow. He said, ‘Corporal Broussard, never think about it before it happens, and never think about it after it’s over.’ I remembered that the rest of the war. It gave me peace when others had none.”

I didn’t know why he was telling me any of this, and I said so.

“Can’t blame you,” he said. “These men who wish us harm may come to see us or they may not. If that happens, we’ll confront them as necessity demands.”

He unfolded the paper bag and removed a heavy blue-steel sidearm with checkered grips stuffed in an army-issue canvas holster. “This is the 1911-model .45-caliber automatic. It’s simple to operate. Its effect can be devastating. You drop the magazine from the frame, you load the magazine by pressing these cartridges here against the spring, then you reinsert the magazine and pull back the slide. You do not take it from the holster unless you plan to shoot it.”

“Does Mother know about this?”

“She’s the one who told me to buy it. Aaron?”

“Yes, sir?”

“When you kill a man, his face stays with you the rest of your life.”

“Can I hold it?” I said.

He placed the .45 in my hand. The magazine was not in it. The frame and checkered grips felt cold and heavy. There was a reassuring solidity about its heft, a potential that was dreamlike and almost erotic. I put my finger through the trigger guard and aimed at a caladium in the flower bed my mother had dug along the neighbor’s garage wall, just as my dog, Major, emerged from the plants and stared at the gun’s muzzle and at me. He backed among the caladiums and elephant ears as though he didn’t know who I was.

“It’s all right, Major,” I said. “Hey, come out here, little guy. Don’t be afraid.”

My father took the .45 from me and shoved the magazine into the frame with the heel of his hand, returned it to the holster, and snapped down the flap.

“Why is Major scared?” I said. “He’s never seen a firearm.”

“They have an instinct,” my father replied. “It will be in the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk. It will stay there unless we have urgent need of it. Do not play with it. Do not show it to your friends. You with me on that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “A woman named Cisco Napolitano came by the station today. She’s mixed up with the guys who run Las Vegas. She said Jaime Atlas won’t rest till he gets his pound of flesh.”

My father got up from the steps. “Good. Tell her thanks for the advance notice. If any of these criminals call, would you tell them I’m at the icehouse and I’ll have to get back to them?”

I LOVED MINIATURE GOLF, and I loved playing it with Valerie. It was fun putting down the lanes of pale red fabric, watching the ball rumble over tiny bridges and waterways and through the bottoms of Dutch windmills, then see it plunk neatly into the cup.

The evening was cool and breezy and smelled of water sprinklers and meat fires, and after we played nine holes, we ate watermelon at the stand across the street while Tommy Dorsey’s “Song of India” moaned from a loudspeaker in the fork of an oak with its trunk painted white. Then I heard a pair of dual exhausts that were like none other—operatic, deep-throated, throbbing like the motorized equivalent of a classic ode, produced by Saber’s homemade mufflers and the oil he had set aflame inside them. He pulled his heap to the curb and got out wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and half-top boots with chains on them, combing his hair with both hands, affecting a confidence I suspected would crumble any second.

I was happy to see him. I couldn’t bear to think of Saber as a Benedict Arnold. People like Saber died on crosses or were lobotomized but were never compromised or absorbed by the herd.

“Thought y’all would be here,” he said, his eyes going from me to Valerie.

“This is Saber, Valerie,” I said.

“How you, Miss Valerie?” he said, sitting down at the picnic table.

“You don’t have to call me ‘miss.’?”

“I get it from Aaron.” His eyes went everywhere except on her face. Saber was a wreck around girls. One time he climbed out a second-floor window when a girl tried to drag him onto a dance floor.

“What happened to your arms?” Valerie said.

“Fell off the roof.” He folded his forearms and tried to cover the stripes on them. There was a fresh stripe on his cheek, the same shade of red as the ones on his arms, all of them the width of a belt. “I could stand some of that melon. Those are Hempstead melons. That’s the best kind.”