James Burke - Light of the World

A beef ? I wondered which movie he had learned the term from. “You and your father give jobs to former felons. I thought Kyle might know something about rapists and child molesters.”

“Why’d you come here? Was it because of what I did to your friend over there?” Caspian said.

“Clete? No. He did tell me about your throwing a cupful of Coca-Cola in his face, but I think he’s written it off.”

“That’s because he knows he’s out of his depth,” Caspian said.

“Do you have any idea how fortunate you are, Mr. Younger?” I asked.

“Before you give me a speech about how dangerous your pal is, let me explain something to you. I gave him a warning the first time he messed with my wife. I told him it wasn’t his fault. I also told him not to do it again.”

He had a point. Clete was sleeping with another man’s wife, a situation that gives the philanderer little claim to the high ground. I guess I should have walked away. Except I could not forget a detail from Wyatt Dixon’s account about the assault on him and his girlfriend by three masked men on the Blackfoot River.

“I have compulsions, Kyle,” I said. “I get something in my head, and it just won’t let go. With me, it’s your boots. I’d also like to know more about your history. You see, I know you’ve been up the road. You don’t like cops, you’re a wiseass, and you think you’re smarter than other people. That’s a profile of about ninety-eight percent of the people inside the system. My guess is you don’t like women, and the reason for that is they don’t like you.”

“What’s gonna make you happy?” Kyle said. “You want to get thrown out or beat up? There’s something about me that gives you a hard-on? You’re too old for it, man.”

It was none of the above. I was not sure what I felt toward Caspian and Love Younger and the employee named Kyle. They may have been the catalyst for the strange physiological and emotional change taking place inside me, but they were not the source. The change always started with a twitch under one eye, as though I were losing control of my facial muscles. Then I would experience a popping sound in my ears, one that was so severe I could not hear what others around me were saying. I would see their mouths opening and closing, but none of their words would be audible. I guess a therapist could call the syndrome a chemical assault on the brain, the same kind that supposedly occurs when a suicide goes off a roof or paints the ceiling by placing a shotgun under his chin. In my case, the inside of my head would fill with a whirring noise that arrived in advance of a red-black rush of color and heat that I can compare only to gasoline and oil igniting inside a confined space.

When those things happened in the sequence I described, I became someone else. I did not simply want to punish my adversary, I wanted to kill him. It gets worse. I did not want to kill him with a weapon, I wanted to do it with my bare hands. I wanted to break the bones in his face with my fists, to knock his teeth down his throat, crush his thorax, and leave him gasping for breath as I rose splattered with blood from the damage I had inflicted upon him.

When I told others these things, I saw a level of sadness and pity and fear in their eyes that made me vow to never again discuss the succubus that has lived inside me most of my life.

Over Kyle’s shoulder, I saw Clete and Alafair walking toward us, Clete pausing only long enough to place his sandwich and beer cup on a picnic table. He had polished his shoes and put on a suit for the occasion. His eyes were clear, the gin roses gone from his complexion, his porkpie hat at a jaunty angle. When Clete was off the dirty boogie, he looked almost as youthful and handsome as when he and I walked a beat in the Quarter.

“How’s your corn dog hanging, Casp?” he said, swinging his arm through the air, slapping Caspian Younger between the shoulder blades with such force that he almost knocked him down.

“It’s under control here, Clete,” I said.

“I grok what you’re saying,” he replied, easing himself between me and Kyle, his eyes sweeping the crowd, not looking at any of us. “I grok this whole place. I grok the food. I grok the people.”

“You do what?” Kyle said.

Clete’s gaze was still on the crowd. “Is Dave right, Caspian? Is everybody copacetic here?” he said.

“If you’re looking for her, she’s inside,” Caspian replied, arching his back from the blow Clete had delivered. “Why don’t you go talk to her, then get the fuck out of here?”

“ Who’s inside?” Clete said.

“You know who. She’s going to stay inside, too,” Caspian said.

“You got a trophy room in there, heads on the walls, stuffed cougars crouched on the beams, that kind of thing?” Clete said. “I get the feeling I’m standing in the middle of an ammo dump.”

Clete was like the baseball manager who comes out of the dugout, his hands stuffed in his back pockets, and starts yelling harmlessly at the umpire to take the heat off one of his players. In this instance, he had intervened in a situation on my behalf and perhaps saved me from getting hurt. But now he was testing the edges of the envelope.

“Go ahead,” Caspian said.

“Go ahead, what?” Clete said.

“Do what you’re thinking about and see what happens. I think you’re a lard ass and you’ve got a Vienna sausage for a penis. At least that’s what Felicity says. Yeah, you got it, she made her big confession. All sins are forgiven. I called a couple of guys in Tahoe. They say Sally Ducks kept you around for laughs and let you polish his car or clean his toilet, I don’t remember which. They say when Sally Dee met you, you were one cut above queer bait on the Strip.”

“Here’s the rest of the story: Sally Ducks got french-fried in his own grease, along with everybody else on his airplane,” Clete said.

Kyle removed a two-way phone from his pants pocket.

“Put it away,” Clete said. “Alafair and Dave and I are going back to our table. After I finish my beer and sandwich, we’ll motivate on down the road.”

“You’re gonna do what ?” Caspian said.

“Motivate. It’s from Chuck Berry, asshole,” Alafair said. She pushed past Clete and pointed in Caspian’s face. “Say one more word like that to Clete, and I’m going to rip you apart, you little twerp.”

How do you pull the plug on a situation like this?

“I came here to speak with Mr. Younger, and I did,” I said. “That’s it. We’re gone.”

I started walking as though our departure were a done deal. Alafair and Clete hesitated, then caught up with me.

“You’re just going to walk away?” Clete said.

“I appreciate what you did back there,” I replied. “Now we’re going home.”

“What was all that about, anyway?” Alafair asked.

“One of the men who attacked Wyatt Dixon and his girlfriend stole his Tony Lama boots. He said they were cordovan, just like the ones this guy Kyle is wearing.”

“He’s wearing Lamas?” Clete asked.

“He said they were Justins. He wouldn’t show them to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Clete said. “Hang loose.”

He turned around and headed straight for a tent where Kyle was standing by himself, lighting a cigarette, both hands cupped around the burning match. His eyes lifted above the flame as Clete came toward him. He flicked away the match and removed the cigarette from his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you something,” Clete said.

“I can’t wait to find out what that is.”

“You know what the Eleventh Commandment in New Orleans is?”

“Tell me, blimpo.”

“Don’t try to put the slide on the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.”