Charlie Huston - Six Bad Things

– Stacy would shit if she knew I had that thing, but I always keep it locked up.

I get a good look at the chambers in the cylinder before he closes and locks the drawer.

– It’s not loaded.

He looks at me like I’m an asshole.

– With three kids in the house? No, it’s not fucking loaded.

I open my Sprite, take a sip, and huddle a little closer to the space heater he fired up for me. I point at the side door.

– How did you?

– I was out here sneaking a cig before going up. Stace won’t let me smoke in the house. I heard all that barking, switched off the light to take a peek, and saw someone hop the fence. Went out and hid behind the woodpile. Stupid shit, should have called the cops, but I was pissed.

He fingers a gouge in the surface of the workbench, looks at me.

– You any warmer?

– Yeah.

– Good, let’s take a walk, I don’t want you in here if Stace wakes up.

WE STROLL around the block, our faces illuminated by streetlamps and the colored lights flashing on the rooflines of the houses. Wade left his smokes back in the garage and has to bum one of mine.

– Benson & Hedges?

– Uh-huh.

– Kind of an old lady cigarette. How’d you get started on those?

– Long story.

We pause while I light his cigarette, continue. Walking past houses I remember from my childhood. We stand in front of one with a particularly elaborate display: a mini Santa’s Village built on the lawn and spilling onto the driveway.

Wade looks down, sees something, bends, and picks up a pigeon feather. He tucks it into the zippered breast pocket of his jacket, sees the look on my face.

– I use them for work.

– What for?

– Marbling paint. You dip them in your dark color and run them over the base color while it’s still wet. Have to be real gentle, but you get a great effect. I save them in a little box.

He points at the display.

– Remember stealing Christmas lights?

– Yeah.

– What were we thinking?

– God knows.

We start walking again.

– What were you doing in my backyard, Hank?

WADE HILLER was the toughest guy I knew. The lead burnout in school. The kid in PE class who never dressed out. The guy with the mouth on him, who never wanted anyone else to have the last word. Corkscrew hair past his shoulders, thick arms and chest from hours of bench presses in his dad’s garage, a box of Marlboro Reds always rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt. He grew up around the block from me, went to all the same schools, but it wasn’t until I broke my leg that we had anything to do with each other. Jocks and burnouts: do not mix.

I couldn’t participate in PE and ended up sitting around with Wade and his pals Steve and Rich. And it turned out they were OK guys. Steve was really fucking smart, Rich was as mellow a person as I’d ever met. And Wade. High-strung, quickly violent, but just exciting and fun to be around. And then they got me into the whole burglary thing and me and Wade got busted, and I thought it was time for me to forget my new friends. Last I heard about Wade, he was well on his way to spending his life hanging out in Santa Rita County Jail.

I sit on the back bumper of one of his three trucks. Each of them with the words HILLER INTERIOR CONTRACTING painted on the side. Wade comes back out of the garage, a fresh beer in his hand.

– It’s cold, let’s get in.

He unlocks the truck and we climb into the cab. He hasn’t said much since I told him I thought he might have been spying on my folks for someone trying to find me. He sips at the beer.

– You know, I didn’t graduate from our school. I was way short on credits, had to go over to the continuation school where your mom worked. This would have been the year after you went off to college. She tell you about that?

– I guess I heard about it.

– She was great to me. I was a real fuckup. You know. She took me seriously, didn’t just write me off as a lost cause. And that was after we got arrested together. I figured she’d blame that shit on me, but she never even brought it up. I would never have graduated without her.

Mom always had a soft spot for the troublemakers, that’s why she took the job as principal at the continuation school in the first place.

– And after I graduated she was the one who convinced me to take some classes over at Modesto City. My dad did OK with me, but after my mom died.

I’m digging another smoke out of the pack and he reaches over and takes one for himself. I pass him my matches and he lights up.

– I’m gonna reek when I go in. Stace is gonna shit.

– Will she be worried where you are?

– I have insomnia, she’s used to me taking walks late. Besides, she sleeps like a rock.

We smoke.

– Yeah, Dad was a great guy, but he drank a lot after Mom died.

I remember raiding his dad’s booze after school. The handle-bottles of Jack Daniels, cases of Coors stacked in the garage.

– I remember that. Not your mom.

– Yeah she was gone before we were hanging out.

– Your dad drinking.

– He wasn’t mean or anything.

– I know.

– Just wasn’t there.

His dad, passed out on the couch by midday on the weekends.

– Yeah.

– Didn’t have much left over for me. Anyway. For a couple years, after I moved to San Jose, when I’d come home to visit him, I’d stop by the school to see your mom. She ever tell you that?

– No.

– Well, I did. And she was always encouraging me, always happy for me. Even when I got Stace pregnant and she was only eighteen and I was nineteen and we weren’t married yet. She sent us a card and a baby gift.

– I didn’t know about that.

– A little teddy bear.

– Yeah, that’s Mom.

– She kind of saved me, made a real difference in my life. I have my contractor’s license, my own business, been married for fourteen years. I have three great kids. Honestly, I don’t think I would have any of that if not for your mom.

He opens the window and flicks his butt out.

– So when that stuff happened in New York with you, I knew two things. I knew I’d do just about anything for your mom, and I knew there was no way that woman raised a killer. And I would have believed that even if I didn’t know you myself.

Wade takes the last swallow of his beer.

– So what did you think you were gonna do, coming over here in the middle of the night?

Kill you.

I finish my own smoke and toss it.

– I don’t know. I was pissed. Beat you up. Maybe.

He grunts.

– What now?

– I need to get out of town, take care of something.

He nods.

– I’d help, but. I have Stace and the kids to. I can’t.

– I understand.

– Maybe there’s something. Something small?

– Don’t suppose you know anyone in Vegas, someone could help me find someone else? Someone lost or hiding.

He laughs a little.

– You know, you know who’s in Vegas? Remember T?

T? Oh shit, T.

– The dealer we scored off? The spaz?

– Yeah.

– I thought he got three-striked and put away.

– No, no way. He had two convictions and was on parole when they busted him the third time. Somehow his lawyer got him bail, and he jumped it. Went to Vegas.

– I don’t know, man, he was such a…

– Such a fuckup?

– Yeah.

– Well, I guess that’s why we all got along.

I laugh.

– Yeah.

– You know what? He sends me, you’ll love this, he sends me Christmas cards, every year.

– No way.

– Yeah, complete, the guy is wanted here, and he sends me Christmas cards complete with a return address.

We’re both laughing.