She’s hurting.”
“I’ll try. What about you and your Dad?”
“We’ll figure it out.” Way he says it, she’s not sure that he really gets what’s going on there. Or maybe he does but just won’t shine too bright a light in that corner. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Besides, she doesn’t mind shining that light. Not at all.
They hug. She gets back in the car.
* * *
Shane is sitting on their step when they pull into the driveway. He leaps up and bolts for her, fast as a bowling ball tumbling toward the pins. He wraps his arms around her.
“Uh, hey,” she says.
“What happened?” he squawks, but then sees Atlanta’s mother getting out of the car. “Oh. Uhh. Hey, Missus Burns, I was… just asking your daughter about… what happened in class yesterday?”
Atlanta’s mother smiles a sad smile and tells them she’ll leave the two of them alone.
“Go home,” Atlanta tells Shane. “Everything in class went… fine. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She leans forward, whispers in his ear: “The whole thing went sideways but somehow we got it righted again. Call Chris. He’ll give you the scoop—but give him a couple hours.”
Shane nods, clearly confused.
She kisses him on the cheek. His eyes open up and a bloom rises to his cheeks.
“Shoo,” she tells him, and runs him off.
As her mother goes inside through the garage door, Atlanta hurries after.
“Hey,” Atlanta calls. “Wait up.”
Her mother looks at her expectantly and unsure.
“You want dinner?” she asks the mother.
“You want me to cook?” Arlene asks.
“Not so much, no.” They both laugh. It’s awkward and uncomfortable but by golly, it’s a laugh. “How about we swing down to Dominick’s, maybe get one of those Hawaiian pizzas?” Up here in the Northeast, it’s pizza and Italian joints every fifteen feet or so.
“Sounds good, baby-bird. Sounds real good.”
* * *
It’s Monday afternoon—quittin’ time—when Atlanta meets Bill Coyne, Chris’s father, by his pickup truck. He parks in the back lot outside the factory where he works, a factory that makes little tools like tiny eyeglass screwdrivers and the itty-bitty screws that go with them. He parks out by where the weeds come up through the blacktop.
When he sees her, his voice goes low, low enough to be a growl.
“You.”
“Me,” she says.
Then he sees she’s got the .410 with her. Leaning up against his driver side door.
“I don’t think your son knows,” she says.
He’s cagey. “Knows what?”
“Don’t be coy, Bill. You’re a member of that gun club. I saw you in one of the pictures on the wall.” She’s lying about that. She didn’t see that picture. But she knows it’s true just the same, and the look on his face confirms it.
“I am,” he finally admits. “So’s a lot of people.”
“I heard some things. Saw some things. See? I can be coy, too.”
He keeps eyeing up that shotgun. Like it might leap up off the ground and bite him. And it just might.
“Get to the point,” he says.
“Back at your house. On the wall in your garage I saw this… license plate with the number 88 on it.”
Bill Coyne shifts from foot to foot. “Doesn’t mean anything. It’s Dale Jr’s number. In NASCAR.”
“Except that’s not a NASCAR plate. And it looks a helluva lot like one on the wall of Orly Erickson’s office. The one that says 14WORDS?”
“I said, get to the point.”
“You’re a Neo-Nazi white power asshole like the others. The number 88? I can Google. Learned how to from my smart little Venezuelan friend. Turns out, the eighth letter of the alphabet is H. Eighty-eight thereby corresponds with HH. And HH corresponds to Heil Hitler. Same way that 14WORDS is a veiled reference to some Nazi bullshit about securing a future for white children.”
“You don’t know what I’d do for my children.”
“I think I do know. I think I know that you’d hire the children of some of your White Power dickhole fuckface buddies to try to scare your son into going straight. Not straight like, don’t end up in jail, but straight as in, stop liking the look of other men and start getting down with the lady-parts.” He doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “They burned him with cigarettes, Bill. Then shoved stuff up his ass. Which, for the record, is about as gay as it comes. Methinks they doth protest too much.”
“Unless you got proof of something, you best leave this alone.”
“I got all the proof I need.” It’s right there in his face. She picks up the shotgun. Doesn’t point it