The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,98
of a man in slacks and a clip-on bow tie and a white shirt kneeling beside him, a Bible held open by his thumb. The boy’s face was drained of all color; there was a dark triangle in his jeans where he had soiled himself. The attendants got through the crowd just as the boy looked straight into the ceiling and stopped breathing, as though someone had pulled a plug loose from the back of his head.
Everyone in the crowd became silent, even those who could not see what was happening. They all seemed to sense at the same time that the boy had died. I stepped off the rail into the crowd. A man in front of me whispered to a friend, “Back home, this wouldn’t make the jailhouse.”
Someone touched me on the back. It was Loren Nichols. “What happened?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I grabbed his upper arm and pulled him with me toward the men’s room. He tried to free himself, craning his head to see over the crowd. “Answer me, Aaron. What’s going on?”
“One of those boys from Tomball is dead. Where were you?”
“In the seats. A girl and I used the passes you gave me. Are the cops busting somebody?”
“That’s the least of it.” I pushed him along the wall, away from the crowd. “Don’t look up.”
“What are you doing?”
“They know you. I said don’t look up.”
“Who knows me?”
“The cops.”
“Those are my friends back there.”
“Yeah, and one of them just killed a high school kid.”
“Over what?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s where all this hard-guy crap finally ends up. A kid makes some quacking noises and somebody sticks a knife in him. That was his mother screaming back there. You want to explain to her why her son is dead?”
“Lay off that. I never carry a shank.”
“Yeah, but those guys do. What do you think is going to happen if the crowd gets their hands on them?”
“They’re still my friends.” He started to pull away from me.
“They’re not your friends. They’re pack animals, just like the rich kids who hang with Grady.”
“I’m not like Grady Harrelson, and neither are my friends.”
“Shut up.”
There was a clutch of phone booths against the wall. I pushed him into one and stood in the doorway so he couldn’t get out. His hair was in his eyes, his face flaming. “Let me out.”
“I told you to shut up. Where’s your girl?”
“In the ladies’ room.”
“You have wheels?”
“My brother’s truck.”
I took off my hat and put it on his head. “Walk with me. Look at the ground.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re too dumb to take care of yourself.”
“You’re sure that kid is dead?”
“The knife wound was to the heart.”
“Jesus. I got to get my girl.”
“So she can get busted or torn apart with you?” I said.
People were streaming past us on their way toward the shoeshine stand. Through a window I saw the emergency lights on an ambulance, its siren dying as though descending into a well. I could almost smell the heat in the crowd, a collective stench that was close to feral.
“I saw one of them,” someone said.
“Where?” someone else said.
“By the can. He was just here. He came in with them.”
“Keep walking,” I said to Loren. “Don’t look back.”
I squeezed his upper arm tighter, but he no longer resisted. Someone heading in the opposite direction knocked against me; he didn’t apologize or even look at me but kept going, with others behind him. I could hear the mother wailing, which was drawing more and more people out of the stands into the concourse.
“I don’t like running away,” Loren said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“There’s another one of them!” someone yelled. “That greaser down there!”
A cop was blowing a whistle. The crowd that had been flowing past us seemed to shift into slow motion, their heads rotating slowly, their eyes coming to rest on us. I pulled Loren along with me. Up ahead was the entranceway that led to the loading area behind the chutes. “Hey, you,” someone yelled. “Somebody stop that guy! That’s their goddamn leader. The one with the duck-ass.”
We went through the entranceway, then through a side door that opened onto an empty space with a dirt floor beneath the stadium seating. I shut the door and pulled off my boots and unbuckled my chaps and peeled them off my jeans. “Put these on. I’ll get them back later. Don’t let anything happen to them. They were my grandfather’s.”