Hollands were a violent people, capable of turning their weapons on themselves as well as others. My grandfather was a Texas Ranger who put John Wesley Hardin in jail, something Wild Bill Hickok tried and couldn’t do. My mother often went to places in her head that no normal person dared visit. I believe Loren Nichols realized his mistake and wanted to undo it even as I drove him across the dirt yard onto the rotting steps of his house, even as I continued to beat and stomp him in front of the old woman, who had madness in her eyes but seemed to see nothing.
For the first time in my life, I understood that I was capable of killing a man with my bare hands. The world turned to a red and purple melt while Loren Nichols’s face was coming apart. Then I felt Saber’s arms grab me from behind, his hands locking on my chest, pulling me backward as I kicked at Loren and missed.
I tried to get loose, but I was finished, the adrenaline gone, my strength draining like water through the soles of my feet. The old woman was making a keening sound, her body shaking. Loren rolled into a ball on the ground. His face didn’t look human.
“We’re in the skillet,” Saber said. “Did you hear me? We’re deep in Indian country, Aaron. Snap out of it. His friends will pull our teeth with pliers.”
He carried me upright to the street as he would an upended hogshead, and body-slammed me on the swale. I stared up at him, the sky and the trees and the houses along the block spinning out of control.
“Is that you, Saber?” I asked. “Did you just throw me on the ground? What in the world is the matter with you?”
I MADE HIM DRIVE me to the alley that led behind Valerie Epstein’s house.
“You’re going up to her door like that?” he said, looking at my clothes and hands.
“I’m going to use her hose.”
Valerie’s yard was deep in shadow, the fronds of the banana plants next to her garage rattling in the wind. The air smelled of fertilizer and the damp soil in the flower beds, an odor like a fresh wound in the earth. An odor like a grave. I heard a siren several blocks away.
“They’re coming,” Saber said.
“Nichols started it.”
“I’m scared,” he said.
“They’re just cops. It’s our word against his.”
“No. It was the look on your face. It wasn’t you.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
But I couldn’t get his words out of my mind.
I squatted down by the garage and removed my shirt and turned on the garden hose. I washed off my hands and arms and soaked my shirt and squeezed it out and put it back on and dried my hands on my pants. I saw Valerie through the back screen. I got to my feet. I didn’t know what to say to Saber.
“I hurt Nichols pretty bad?” I asked him.
“He won’t want to look in the mirror for a while.”
“Was that his grandmother?”
“I think that’s his mother. I heard she was in the asylum in Wichita Falls.”
“If they catch you with me, they’ll put you in the can.”
“You’re telling me to beat it?”
“No, I’m saying I might not go home.”
“Because of Nichols?”
“I’m not supposed to bring problems into my house. It’s an unwritten commandment. My father once said if I ever run away, not to come back.”
“Your old man said that?”
“That’s the way he is sometimes.”
Valerie opened the screen and stepped outside.
“Want me to leave?” Saber asked. “Just tell me.”
“Do what you want.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Don’t be that way,” I said.
He threw his car keys in the air and caught them. “You sure know how to kick a guy in the teeth.”
He fired up his Chevy and drove down the alley, gunning the engine with the clutch depressed, as though the roar of his mufflers could shut out the injury I had inflicted on him.
Valerie was holding the door open with her rump. She wore a white dress with black trim and tiny red hearts all over it. “What happened to you?”
“I got into it with Loren Nichols.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not really.”
“Did Loren attack you?”
“He thinks I burned his car.”
“That’s ridiculous. You look awful.”
“It’s part of my mystique. Is your father home?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Over what?”
“Everything. I busted up Loren Nichols. Where’s your father?”
“Working in Beaumont. You did what?”
“If Saber hadn’t stopped me, maybe I would have finished the job. I don’t feel too good about