Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

He swept through the gates and the guard booths, back over the interstate, where the strip malls ended and the bargain stores began. Wings and burgers and even faster foods. Smoothies and yoga studios. The bar next to the other bar.

Just beyond a litter-strewn turnaround was a glint of chrome.

Danny locked ’em up, reversed the length of a football field, and pulled alongside a powder-blue, magnificently finned Cadillac stalled in the weeds.

Al Rubirosa, short for Álvaro, had failed Danny in sculpture. Hard to blame him, since Danny hardly ever showed up for class and even when he did knocked out dumb things like cock-bongs, the kind of things that would make a professor hate you. But Danny loved the way the professor seemed unsurprised to find him clomping toward the vintage Caddy. How he didn’t act like it was anything worth mentioning that Danny pushed him and his family into the BoxxMart lot and tried a jump, which failed, his whole affect more or less saying, I need help and you are providing it. Such is a transaction among honorable men.

The professor’s wife, Galena, walked to the store while they leaned under the hood, pointed at this wire or that valve and conjectured as to each one’s purpose or possible blame. She soon returned with bags of food. They laid out a blanket between two minivans for a picnic. Their little boy and two girls laughed and squealed and jumped in Danny’s lap, calling him el Cucuy. Danny didn’t ask what it meant and they didn’t say. A bottle of wine was opened. Then a second. It began to drizzle, but they pretended not to notice. Galena had a chipped tooth and freckled clavicles. She smoked and laughed at Danny’s jokes, which the professor did not, but in a way that seemed simply a matter of taste instead of a judgment.

“And why is it,” she asked, “you are such the terrible student?”

Danny told her.

School, knee, pizza, Steak.

Drugs, donkey, Miss Kay’s wage-garnishment plan.

The Rubirosas nodded, grunted, poured more wine.

They ate baguettes with ham and mayonnaise.

Galena finally suggested that all lives are messy, as are all loves. She referenced D. H. Lawrence, as well as H. L. Mencken. Álvaro described the exquisite flaws of Giacometti the Younger, the long and beautiful curves of Jean Arp.

They encouraged him to re-enroll, take more classes.

They encouraged him to cease his criminal behavior.

They encouraged him to call Steak, profess his love.

“You must settle things with this woman, or you will stagnate.”

“Yes,” Álvaro said. “To pine for someone without return is the worst of all afflictions.”

Danny dialed, hit speakerphone.

Lula answered. She described a standpipe that had given her trouble all day, talked about the difficulty of hiring laborers in winter. Danny told her about bad tippers and the price of gas. Finally, Lula wished him well. She also wished he wouldn’t call anymore.

“Like, ever. You know what I’m saying here, Danny?”

He did.

“So perhaps it was not to be,” Galena concluded, with a shrug that encompassed the folly of believing in salvation, but particularly as delivered at the foot of a woman.

“Yes,” Álvaro said, swirled his wine.

Eventually the tow truck came and a hard little man yanked the Caddy up onto his winch.

For once Danny was no help at all.

Al and Galena piled the kids into the backseat of the tow like the whole thing was a grand adventure. Danny kissed them all good-bye, especially the shy, brown-kneed daughters with their charming mispronunciation of Daniel, with their stoic knowledge of exactly who he was and how they would avoid his ilk when the time or puberty came, but for now cheek-to-cheek in the established continental style.

They waved and sang and were gone.

Danny’s phone buzzed.

It was a text, wrong number, five words.

IT’S A NEW DAY, BAE.

He decided that wisdom, if it ever came, would always be beamed down from above.

Without explanation or warning.

A pulse from a just God.

Or just god.

Maybe even a genial satellite.

He fired up the engine, mashed the gas, merged without signalling.

Prepared to go forth and deliver.

Jonelle’s pregnant, huge in a red one-piece, pissed because Cher came, too. In a bikini. Half of Ocean Beach staring. Also because there’s a dirt bike and packs of dogs. Because there’s a too-loud radio and abandoned food and herds of teenagers smoking cigarettes, one after another.

Someone yells, “Shark!” The lifeguard yawns. A little girl runs by with a Popsicle in her mouth. Her lips are blue.

“It’s dirty here,” Jonelle says.

“It’s called sand,” Cher says.

One of the teenagers walks over. He’s wearing a necklace.

“You Dillard?”

“Maybe.”

“You gotta go see Butterfly.”

I had no idea he was back in town. Or even alive.

“Who says?”

“The man do.”

A dog races in from the water, shakes itself off. Jonelle yelps, turns, presses her torpedo stomach into mine. The only thing to do is kiss her so much she can’t see straight.

“Stop, you’ll hurt the baby.”

“It’s okay, we’ll make another one.”

“So not funny,” Jonelle says, but lets me dry her legs. “And who in fuck is Butterfly?”

THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS in fourth grade Wade’s mom won a monkey in a card game, a scabby little thing in a wire cage, crazy eyes and a permanent hard-on. It shit every twelve seconds. We heard it screech all night long. The next morning the monkey was on its side, wouldn’t move. Wade figured it was either dead or hungry, slid the gate banana-wide. The thing elbowed through, sank its choppers into Wade’s nose, wouldn’t let go until the old lady in 6A shot it with a pistol so rusty it crumbled in her hand. At the clinic they made a graft, took eight inches of butt skin to close the hole, stitches and a pink butterfly in the center of Wade’s face, an ass-papillon, hard to look at, hard not to look at.

After that Mom was all, “Why don’t you go play with Wade?” Cher winked like, Because, um, yuk? and I poked her under the table like, Do I have to? and then Mom gave me the stare, rubbing her stomach like, How did something so stupid ever find its way out?

“Okay, fine.”

I walked down the hall. Wade’s mom cracked the door in a nightie. Skinny and bruised, pubic hair a mystery half-solved beneath shiny cotton.

“Yeah?”

“Butterfly around?”

She rested her hand on the front of my corduroys. “You’re a good kid.”

So me and Cher would hang with Wade on the front stoop, play Hold’em for dimes or Skittles until the bus came. You beat a king-high straight? Fuck, no. You beat trip sixes? Fuck, no. Wade liked to squeeze Cher’s wrist, Don’t let her deal, she cheats! I’d warn him to cut the shit and Cher would be like, I don’t need no protection , and sweep up all the dimes.

Older dudes on the stroll would check us out, laugh some, but never say much, like Wade was so messed up it wasn’t even worth it.

School was different. Before class, after class, recess. Hey, Monkey Chow! and Only the nose knows! and How’m I suppose to eat lunch if he don’t turn and face the wall? Wade kept getting infected. Walked around with a special bag of swabs and creams, constantly punched in the neck and behind the swings. He needed another graft. He needed a more sterile environment. The principal finally dialed up Stu Mayse, who’d been caught fondling twins but then found Jesus and opened Amayzing Grace and Grocery, mostly giving back to the community in the form of double coupons but in this case told he was funding a scholarship or else. Stu Mayse ponied the cash. There was a cut ribbon and flashbulbs in front of the register, a feel-good story that everyone would feel a whole lot better about once Wade was out of town. They handed him a train ticket and a Samsonite, a new hat and sweater, sent to a school for specials all the way down in Santa Monica, gone nearly eight years.