Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Well, according to Rose, the thirties are still going on in Robbens County. And that family stuff-Christ, I got some of that crap from my folks. College girl, think you know everything…"

"Gosh, good thing we don't have anything like that in our family."

"Oh?" said Marlene. "What exactly do you mean by that remark?"

"Nothing, dear. There is absolutely nothing in common between the Red and Dan show and the Marlene and Lucy show. Not a thing."

"You're horrible." Marlene got up. "I'm getting another beer. Do you want anything?"

"Only your happiness," he said, so she kicked sand in his face as she departed.

Now real darkness fell. Heeney had, of course, brought all kinds of dangerous fireworks, which he and Emmett now set off, with drunken yells, while the twins vied with one another to see how close they could skip to exploding objects and white-hot missiles, Zak in the lead, Giancarlo following each dare, but in such a way as to constrain his brother from doing something really stupid.

Karp watched all this with a fair calm, suppressing his Jewish-mother instincts as he had learned to do during his many years of marriage to a shiksa desperado. Marlene was in charge of danger chez Karp. Karp was actually waiting for the Red Heeney finale and was not at all surprised at the form it took.

The fireworks ended, the exhausted boys and the little girl collapsed on the blankets with their mothers. Emmett and Red sat together, Lucy and Dan a little distance away. A Coleman lantern had been lit. By its light, Karp observed that Red Heeney had switched to sucking from a pint bottle. Emmett was still guzzling beer, and tossing the empties upon a large pile of the same, punctuating the night with tinny clangs at remarkably short, almost metronomic intervals. Heeney began to sing. He had a fine voice, a dramatic tenor, a whiskey tenor actually, but pleasant. He sang union songs, "Joe Hill" and "Dark as a Dungeon" and "Spring Hill Disaster," in which his family joined, and also, to Karp's surprise, Marlene and Lucy, and then Irish ballads and rebel songs, "Kevin Barry," "Four Green Fields," and others more obscure. Then Marlene and Lucy did "Rose of Tralee," like angels in harmony, which made Karp happy, but which took the center of attention away from Heeney, who replied with an angry "Come Out Ye Black and Tans," at the end of which he flung his empty pint arcing into the night.

"You're not singing, Karp," he declared.

"I can't sing. I can't carry a tune."

Heeney stuck out an accusing finger, a digit like a center punch. "Nah, you can't sing 'cause you're a fuckin' lawyer. Lawyers got no songs. You know why?" He thumped his chest. " 'Cause they got no hearts. No songs, no hearts. Isn't that right, Karp?"

"Maybe we have little small ones."

Rose said, "Red, it's late, maybe-"

"Shut up!" snarled Heeney. "I'm talking to my pal, the lawyer. Let me tell you what the law is. The law is nothing but the padding on the hammer the rich uses to bash in the heads of the working people. They don't care to see the blood and the brains, oh, no, they're too delicate for that, so they disguise it with lots of words, and they get a bunch of pimps and make them judges and lawyers to confuse the people so no one knows they been robbed. Property is theft, did you know that, Mr. Lawyer Man? That's what your lawyer is, a conveyancer of stolen property. But when some poor boy steals a crust of bread, oh, that's when the majesty of the law gets all riled up and grabs him and throws him in the dungeon, because property is sacred once it's legally stolen."

"Sneakers," said Karp.

"What?"

"Sneakers, is what they steal. Expensive sneakers. Or gold chains. Or designer jackets, those are big now. Now that you mention it, I have not once locked up a poor boy for stealing a crust of bread. I'd like to, of course, but in twenty years the opportunity has never come my way."

Heeney got up on his knees and leaned over the lantern. "Oh, smart guy. You wouldn't be so smart if I punched you in the nose, would you? Huh? Smart Jew lawyer. Huh?" He held up his fist to demonstrate the punching apparatus.

Karp didn't move. He said in a calm voice, "That would be an assault, Red. That would be against the law."

"Fuck the law and fuck you!"

"You're drunk, Heeney," said Karp in the same tone. "Settle down."

"And you're fuckin' yellow, Karp," Heeney said, staggering to his feet. "Get up, you fucker. Fuckin' Jew lawyer. I can take you, drunk or sober."

Heeney put up his fists and lunged forward, kicking over the lantern. Rose uttered a little scream and grabbed at her husband's arm. He flung her away with a curse. Instantly, his two sons were on him, Emmett tackling him to the ground, and Dan dropping onto his chest and securing his arms. Rose snatched the lantern out of harm's way, and the three Heeneys rolled and heaved on the ground, grunting and cursing. Marlene could see Rose was crying and, in a low voice, said to Karp, "I think the party's over. Let's scram."

Which they did, leaving all their gear to be gathered tomorrow. As they walked away, Karp noticed Lucy flip aside a bat-sized length of driftwood. She had been going to wade in with that if the bunch of them had jumped me, he thought with a shock. He didn't know whether to be ashamed or proud.

"What's wrong with you, now?" asked Marlene unsympathetically. She was bustling around the kitchen, fully dressed, having already done an hour or so of work. He was elbowing at the table, robed, unshaven, grainy-eyed, head on fist, eyeing a bowl full of raisin bran and wondering whether to make the irrevocable commitment to pour milk in it.

"I'm crapulous without having been gloriously drunk," said Karp. "It's unfair. And if you want to know, I'm feeling unmanly."

"Oh, yeah, what a pussy! You didn't coldcock a helpless drunk. I've lost all my respect for you."

"Real men drink themselves into oblivion when they have a problem and take it out on bystanders."

"When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade," said Marlene, who was in fact making lemonade and handed him a lemon to demonstrate.

"Thank you," he said, and mimed an epiphany. "Gosh, I think… I finally understand that saying."

"Good. Now cheer up. It's a nice day, you're on vacation, so vacate!"

"Even though we have a dual system of criminal justice, one for the rich and one for the poor?"

She stopped her squeezing and turned to face him, hands on hips. "Oh, please! You're not telling me he got to you with that drunken ramble?"

"But it's true. I got up this morning and I was thinking obsessively about the congressman, how to get him, strategies, how to slowly weave the web, laws I could use, pressures I could put… and then it hit me-okay, let's say I do get him. Realistically, the best outcome is, he does eighteen months, most in a minimum security prison, and then a halfway house. Then he runs again as a victim of racism and takes 80 percent of the vote. I mean, what's the point?"

The answer (if she knew it) did not come then, for the screen door crashed open and Giancarlo burst in. He grabbed two doughnuts from a box on the table and announced, "Zak shot a crow. We're going to nail it to the barn."

"No, you are not," said the mother.

"Yes, Dan Heeney says that's what they do in West Virginia."

"Fine, if you're ever in West Virginia, you can nail all the crows you want, but not here."

Giancarlo snatched up a table knife and stabbed it into Karp's bowl several times, while laughing maniacally.

"What are you doing?" cried Karp. "Stop that!"

"Guess what I am, Dad."

"An idiot?"

"No, a cereal killer. Mom, can we tape the crow up?"

"Get out of my sight! Shoo!" Marlene yelled. The boy departed, hooting.

"He took the last two chocolate doughnuts," Karp said. "Two, not one."