T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

“A gook motherfucker,” Colin corrected.

“Well, you know how the wind’s been blowing, especially in the canyon — and I told you how the mother sends the kid out there every night to start up the grill?”

Colin nodded. His eyes were like the lenses of a camera, the pupils narrowing and then dilating: click. He was drunk. He’d have to call his wife to drive him home again, Sanjuro could see that. And he himself would soon have to push the beer aside and gear himself up for the freeway.

“You know it’s been gasoline all week, as if they couldn’t afford charcoal lighter, and I tell you last night he nearly blew the thing up.”

Colin let out a short bark of a laugh before he seemed to realize that it wasn’t funny, that Sanjuro hadn’t meant to be funny, not at all — that he was worried, deeply concerned, nearly hysterical over it and right on the verge of calling the police. Or the fire department, Sanjuro was thinking. The fire marshal. Wasn’t there a fire marshal?

“And there was a rat in it, in the grill, and he set the rat on fire.”

“A rat? You’re joking, right?”

“No joke. The rat was like this flaming ball shooting across the driveway and right on into the weeds behind the garage.”

“No,” Colin said, because that was the required response. And then he grinned: “Let me guess,” he said. “Then the weeds caught fire.”

Sanjuro felt weary suddenly, as if an invisible force, cupped to fit round his back and his shoulders and arms like a custom-made suit, were pressing down on him with a weight he couldn’t sustain. He was living at the top of a canyon, far from the city, in a high-risk area, because of Setsuko, because Setsuko was afraid of Americans, black Americans, Mexicans, whites too — all the people crowding the streets of Pasadena and Altadena and everyplace else. She watched the TV news, trying to learn the language, and it made her crazy. “I won’t live in an apartment,” she’d insisted. “I won’t live with that kind of people. I want nature. I want to live where it’s safe.” She’d sacrificed for him in coming here, to this country, for his career, and so he’d sacrificed for her and they bought the house at the end of the road at the very top of a wild canyon and tried to make it just like a house in Mitaka or Okutama.

He paused to give Colin a long look, staring into the weed-green shutters of his eyes — Colin, his friend, his amigo, the man who understood him best of anyone on the team — and he let out a sigh that was deeper and moister and more self-pitying than he’d intended, because he never showed emotion, or never meant to. That wasn’t the Japanese way. He looked down. Made his face conform. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s just what happened.”

—

So tonight it was chicken — and three of those hot Italian sausages he liked, and a piece of fish, salmon with the skin still on it his mother had paid twelve dollars for because they were having a guest for dinner. One of the teachers who worked with her at the elementary school. “His name’s Scott,” she said. “He’s a vegetarian.”

It took him a moment to register the information: guest for dinner, teacher, vegetarian. “So what does he eat — spinach? Brussels sprouts? Bean burritos?”

She was busy at the stove. Her wine glass stood half-full on the baked enamel surface between the snow peas sautéing in the pan and the pot where she was boiling potatoes for her homemade potato salad. He could see the smudge of her lipstick on the near side of the glass and he could see through it to the broken clock set in its display above the burners and the shining chrome-framed window on the door of the oven that didn’t work anymore because the handle had broken off and there was no way to turn it on, even with a pair of pliers. “Fish,” she said, swiveling to give him a look over her shoulder, “he eats fish.”

She’d come straight home from school that afternoon, showered, changed her clothes and run the vacuum over the rug in the living room. Then she’d set the table and stuck an empty vase in the middle of it—“He’ll bring flowers, you wait and see: that’s the kind of person he is, very thoughtful”—and then she’d started chopping things up for a green salad and rinsing the potatoes. Dill was afraid she was going to add, “You’re really going to like him,” but she didn’t and so he didn’t say anything either, though after the fish comment he’d thought about pitching his voice into the range of sarcasm and asking, “So is this a date?”

Her last words to him as he slammed out the door with the platter of meat, the matches and the plastic squeeze bottle of lighter fluid that had appeared magically on the doorstep that morning, were, “Don’t burn the fish. And don’t overcook it either.”

He was in the yard. The wind had died, but now it came up again, rattling things, chasing leaves across the driveway and up against the piece-of-shit Toyota, where they gathered with yesterday’s leaves and the leaves from last week and the week before that. For a long moment he just stood there, halfway to the grill, feeling the wind, smelling it, watching the way the sun pushed through the air one layer after another and the big bald rock at the top of the canyon seemed to ripple and come clear again. Then he went to the grill, set down the platter of chicken and sausage and the fat red oblong slab of fish, and lifted the heavy iron lid, half-hoping there’d be another rat in there — or a snake, a snake would be even better. But of course there was nothing inside. It was just a grill, not a rat condo. Ash, that was all that was there, just ash.

The wind jumped over the garage then and the ash came to life, sifting out like the sand in The Mummy Returns, and that was cool and he let it happen because here was the grill, cleaning itself. And while that was happening and the meat sat there on its platter and the plastic container squeezed in and out like a cold nipple in his hand, he was back in school, last spring, and Billy Bottoms, who wasn’t scared of anybody or ever showed any weakness or even a flaw — not a single zit, nothing — had a black thumbprint right in the middle of his forehead. It was an amazing thing, as if Billy had turned Hindu overnight, and Dill couldn’t resist calling him out on it. Or no, he didn’t call him out on it. He came up behind him and wrestled one arm around his neck, and before Billy knew what was happening Dill had touched his own thumb to the mark there and his thumb came away black. Billy punched him in the side of the head and he punched back and they both got sent to the office and his mother had to come pick him up after detention because there was no late bus and it was your hard luck — part of your punishment — to have to have your mother come for you. Or your father.

Her face was set. She didn’t ask, not right away. She was trying to be understanding, trying to make small talk so as not to start in on him before they could both have a minute to calm themselves, so he just came out and said, “He had this spot of ash on his forehead. Like a Hindu, like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I wanted to see what it was, that was all.”

“So? A lot of kids in my class had it too. It’s Ash Wednesday.” She gave him a glance over the steering wheel. “They’re Catholic. It’s a Catholic thing.”

“But we’re not Catholic,” he said. There were only seven cars left in the parking lot. He counted them.

“No,” she said, shaking her head but keeping her face locked up all the same.

“We’re not anything, are we?”

She was busy with the steering wheel, maneuvering her own car, her Nissan Sentra that was only slightly better than the piece-of-shit Toyota, around the elevated islands that divided the parking lot. The radio gave up a soft hum and a weak voice bleated out one of the easy-listening songs she was always playing. She shook her head again. Let out an audible breath. Shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I believe in God, if that’s what you’re asking.” He said nothing. “Your grandparents, my parents, I mean, were Presbyterian, but we didn’t go to church much. Christmas, Easter. In name only, I guess.”