T. Parker: California Girl

The Vonns were waiting for them by the railroad tracks. Lenny had his T-shirt tucked in tight and his cigarettes rolled into his right shirtsleeve, Levi’s cuffs rolled into two-inchers, work boots. His brothers more or less the same. Black hair and big round ears. Lenny flicked his smoke into the gravel and stared at Nick.

Nick figured it was him against Lenny, Clay against Casey, and David the oldest against the middle Vonn kid, Ethan. “What do you say, Lenny?” he called out.

“I say fuck you.”

“That’s all?”

“And your whole ugly family.”

Casey Vonn laughed. Then Ethan.

Nick stopped at the bottom of the railroad berm, where the gravel led up to the ties and tracks. David and Clay came up beside him. Sweat rolled down David’s cheek. Nick turned to see young Andy hanging back in the orange grove.

“You know, Lenny, we could just apologize to you and not fight.”

“It’s too late for apologies. The dog ate the hat. It was new.”

“Then you apologize to us,” said Clay. “How about that?”

“For what?” asked Lenny.

“For being so dumb,” said Clay. “Look at you dumb shitheels trying to be cool.”

War screams, then, and gravel chattering and dust rising as the Vonns hurled themselves down the berm.

Nick figured on a left from Lenny because of where Lenny kept his cigarettes. Lenny flew toward him and Nick stepped away and got him with a left hook. Lenny wheeled and came back at him and Nick drove a straight right into his nose. Felt the crack. Lenny went to one knee, wiped the blood off his face, and looked at it. Pouring like a faucet thrown on.

“Gung fuggin kiw you.”

The blood unnerved him and Nick let Lenny stand up. Knew it was a mistake but let him up anyway. He caught Lenny coming in with a big left haymaker that landed high above the ear and sent a bullet of pain up his hand.

Then someone clobbered Nick from behind and he was down before he felt or heard it. Looking back, he saw Clay pummeling Casey, David down and looking his way but no opponent in sight, Andy still watching from the trees. Then a shadow falling above him and Nick understood someone was about to club him again.

This time he heard it. Ethan behind him with something big and heavy. Felt the jolt, then the loud whine in his ears. Lenny kicked him in the face. Kicked him again in the ribs. Nick felt the fight huff out of him.

Clay slugged Casey one more time and climbed off. Saw Ethan Vonn swing the short thick branch at Nick and his brother crumple like something dead and Lenny kicking him hard.

Clay covered the distance fast and jumped Ethan the clubber from behind. They fell onto Nick and rolled off. Clay came up with the club and caught Lenny low. Lenny stumbled back, two disbelieving eyes wide open through the blood as Andy rocketed through the air and knocked him to the ground.

Ethan struggled to his feet, turned, and labored up the berm.

Nick got himself upright as Lenny shrugged off Andy and sidled away, half crawling and half falling after his brother.

Clay kicked at him but missed.

Andy, on hands and knees, breathed fast and hard.

“Yer fuggin dead,” said Lenny.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Nick.

“Dumb shitheels,” said Clay.

Nick picked up the club, then took a knee like they did in football. His head hurt and he felt the vomit stirring inside. He watched two Lennys make the top of the berm, faces and sideburns and shirts soaked in blood. Twin Caseys clambered up next, both blubbering, eyes swollen and lips cut. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he knew without turning it was David.

Nick looked up to see four girls looking down at him from the tracks. Then just two. The bigger one had brown braids and wore a dirty pink blouse. The younger one was dark-haired and dimpled and had an inquisitive look on her face.

The older one stepped down the berm a few feet toward the Becker brothers and launched a white rock that flew wild. Then another. She scurried back up and ran away.

The younger one followed her sister’s footsteps almost exactly. She had a faded blue dress and a red ribbon in her hair and a pair of scuffed brown cowboy boots. An orange in each hand. The SunBlesst girl’s baby sister, thought Nick. Looked about five.

“I am Janelle Vonn and those are my brothers,” she said.

She dropped the oranges and scrambled back up the gravel and out of sight.

THAT NIGHT MAX and Monika Becker loaded their four sons into the Studebaker and drove across town to the Vonns’ house. The Studebaker was a green fifty-one Champion with the big conical nose for a front end and an oddly sloping rear. They called it the Submarine. They cruised along Holt Avenue through the groves, Max erect behind the wheel and Monika’s straight yellow hair lifting in the window breeze.

Nick sat on the scratchy backseat, felt his knuckles throbbing all the way up into his ears. Still seeing double sometimes, his neck thick with pain and a big lump risen on the back of his head. Didn’t say anything to his parents about the vision trouble because he hated doctors.

David sat up front beside his mom, thinking he’d be glad to get to State, out of this stupid small-town stuff, into something more than oranges and fistfights.

Clay sat in the back, pummeling Casey Vonn again between thoughts of this Dorothy girl in his homeroom. Wished he could smoke like his dad was doing. The Vonns were shitheels.

Between Clay and Nick, young Andy sat with the pride of the new warrior, his heart beating hard and true. He had fought alongside Nick, and they had won. The world outside the windows of the Studebaker now seemed not only larger but more attainable.

The Vonns’ house was old but it sat right around the corner from a new tract freshly cut from an orange grove. The house was wood-not stucco like the new ones-and the white paint was peeling and the roof sagged and two of the windows were plywood. The lawn was just dead weeds. The new tract had streetlights but they stopped short of the Vonn place.

“We’re staying here, boys,” said Monika Becker, turning her pretty face to the backseat.

“I’m not going to apologize,” said Clay.

“You’ll do exactly what your father told you to.”

“I won’t mean it.”

“That’s another topic, Clay. For now, keep a civil tongue in your head and mind your manners.”

Nick watched his father flick his cigarette butt into the curb and start up the dark driveway. Khaki trousers and a white shirt tucked in with the sleeves rolled up. Irish Setter boots and a belt the same color. Nick had always liked the old man’s walk: loose and casual but his head always up and steady. His father didn’t miss much. He could tell what was wrong with an orange grove by looking at one leaf from it, tell a grower how to up the yield without running down the sugars or ruining the soil. Hardly needed his lab over at the SunBlesst corporate building for things like that. He could see his wife’s depressions coming days before they hit, would rearrange his work hours to be there for her. Or, if they stood in the corner of an orange grove in early September with their Remington pumps, it was always his father who saw the birds way out in the blue, his father who could tell a dove from a nighthawk through a hundred yards of twilight. And of course he’d knock it down before you were really sure you saw it.

A porch light went on and the door opened. Nick saw a small woman, then a tall man with overalls and no shirt. The woman’s hair was dark and pulled back tight. She looked older than his mom, but Nick figured they must be about the same age. Mr. Vonn had long, active muscles that bunched when he shook Nick’s father’s hand. A dark triangular face, small chin. He looked to Nick like a man from another country.