The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,45

things somehow translated into a confidence that seemed to dispel mortality itself, even though Joseph McCarthy was ripping up the Constitution and GIs were dying in large numbers in places no one could locate on a map or would take the time to spit on.

I walked over to Saber and placed my hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to trust me, Sabe. If we do the right thing, we don’t need to be afraid.”

“You’re going to tell your dad what happened?”

“What if I do?”

“My old man worries when baloney goes up ten cents a pound. Your old man thinks it’s noble to burn your own house down while the band plays ‘Dixie.’ Gee, who’s about to get it without grease?”

Chapter

11

MY MOTHER DIDN’T allow my father to keep liquor in the house. In order to drink, he went to the icehouse or the bowling alley or the garage, where he kept a bottle under the spare tire in the trunk of the car. It was a shameful way for him to live, and a shameful way for my mother to behave, but it was the only way they knew.

After supper I sat at the redwood table in the backyard and played my Gibson. By chance I once heard Lightnin’ Hopkins playing in front of a bar on Dowling Street, in the heart of Houston’s black district. He was singing “Down by the Riverside.” It was the saddest and most beautiful blues rendition I had ever heard. I did not know the song’s origin, but I understood its content, and when I would feel one of my spells coming on, I would get out my Gibson and sing it:

Gonna lay down my sword and shield,

Down by the riverside,

I ain’t gonna study war no more,

Down by the riverside,

Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Somehow I knew he was not singing about war but about something even worse, perhaps the destruction of the spirit or the mortgaging of one’s soul. I wondered how anyone could prevail over the unhappiness that had been imposed on Lightning and his people. I wondered if the Texas prison he had served time in was worse than the prison I had constructed for myself.

I heard my father open the screen door and head for the garage. “Daddy?”

He looked at me, startled.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” I said.

He looked at the garage door. “I might have a low tire. Can it wait a few minutes?”

“Yes, sir.”

I heard him scrape the door back on the concrete, then pause and push the door in place without going inside. He walked across the grass toward me, fishing in his pocket for his Lucky Strikes. He had left them in the house.

“Go get a smoke if you want one,” I said.

“It’s all right. I’m trying to cut down. What’s on your mind?”

Saint Augustine said not to use the truth to injure. I don’t think he used those words lightly. My father tried to remain impassive as I described the events at the Copacabana and in Herman Park, but his expression was like that of a man walking barefoot on a rocky road. There was a tremble in his right hand, the fingertips vibrating slightly on the tabletop, a blue vein pulsing in his temple.

When I finished, he cleared his throat and looked at my mother’s silhouette in the kitchen window, where she was washing dishes. “You and I are supposed to be doing that.”

“I’ll go help her.”

“No, she’ll understand. The boy is going to lose his eye?”

“He’s not a boy.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what the detective said.”

“And Saber wants to keep quiet about it?”

“He’s scared. His father just got fired.”

“Fired? When?”

“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,