Andrew Vachss - Blossom

The fat man backed up under Lloyd's attack, grunting at the body-shots. The kid was holding his own until the fat man grabbed the boy's ears, butted him sharply in the face. Lloyd fell back, blood spurting. I grabbed a table with both hands, spun on my right foot, tilted my body parallel to the floor and shot my left boot into Fatso's ribs. He doubled over as I knife-edged my hand and chopped into his neck. Lloyd piled on, pounding with both hands.

The two guys on the other end started out of the booth just as Virgil slapped the nearest one with an open palm. It sounded like a rifle shot. Virgil flicked his hand. Bloody glass from the ashtray fell out.

The weasel-face in the middle got to his feet, back arched against the wall. His hand went to his pocket. Click of a switchblade. Smile twisting on his face. "Maybe you like to play with knives," he snarled, crouching and coming forward.

I backed off, giving him room, shrugging out of my jacket to wrap it around my hand.

"Try playing with this, boy!" Blossom's voice. A meat cleaver in her hand, face darkened with blood. Trying to push her way past me to get to the knife-man.

"That's all! Back up!" Leon. A double-barreled twelve-gauge in his hand.

The fat man got to his feet, breathing hard, one hand on his neck. "This ain't your beef, man," he said to Leon.

Leon held the shotgun steady. Said the most damning words in our language. "You ain't from around here. Get out. And don't come back."

They filed past us. Muttering threats they'd never make good on.

You ain't from around here. I'd heard that all my life. It was the first time I'd heard them shot at someone else.

We sat back down. Blossom and Cyndi cleaned up the mess. Leon sat by his cash register, watching. Cyndi switched over to him, gave him a big kiss. "You're a hero, Leon!" He turned red. Kept his eyes front.

Blossom brought some ice wrapped in a dish towel, held it against Lloyd's face. "You're quite a man," she said, her voice husky. The kid's chest swelled. She bent forward, kissed his forehead. Said "Thank you" in that same voice. And walked away.

Virgil looked over at Lloyd, chuckled, "Son, don't even be thinking about it."

"What?"

"One time, I was about your age, I saw this girl get slapped by her boyfriend on the street. I went over, told him to cut it out. We fought. He damn near beat me to death before they broke it up. Then one of my kin broke him up. Well, that girl gave me a kiss like you just got and I spent the rest of that summer looking for girls to rescue. There's easier ways, son."

He looked over at me. "But the boy sure as hell can hit, can't he, brother? Wasn't for that head butt, I figure Lloyd would've whipped him straight up."

"No question about it."

Jack Scott on the jukebox. "My True Love."

Blossom came back with a little penlight. Tenderly lifted the dish towel from Lloyd's face. He didn't make a sound. She could have done brain surgery on the kid without anesthetic.

She shined the light into his eyes, asked him some questions. Checking for a concussion. She hadn't been a waitress all her life. "You're going to need a few stitches," she said.

"It's okay."

"You get the stitches now. When the girls ask you where you got the scar, you tell them come around here and ask for Blossom. I'll tell them what a man you are."

The kid's face was a neon rainbow.

65

I SPENT THE next day in the library. Closing off the corners. Looking.

On the way back to the motel, the car phone purred. Sherwood.

I left his office with a thick manila envelope.

When I spread the papers out on the motel bed, I found a list of twenty-nine names. Red check-marks next to five of them. Photocopies of rap sheets, FBI investigative reports, reports from local detectives. The five were all members of something called the Sons of Liberty. Three were suspects in vandalizing a synagogue, never formally charged. All on the subscription list for racial hate sheets, mercenary magazines. And mail-order video-porn.

If the sniper wanted to join a club, he'd have to crawl under the right rock.

66

THE CAR PHONE went off the next morning. My pal the real estate broker? I picked it up.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Sloane?"

"Yes."

"This is Blossom. At the diner?"

"I'm here." Nothing in my voice. In my mind: how did she get the number?

"I need to talk with you. Can you come by this afternoon? After closing? I get off at four."

Not at six, like Cyndi? "Okay," is all I said.

"Come around to the back. You…"

"I know where it is."

67

I HAD THE WHOLE rest of the day to think about it. Eight hours.

A day to a citizen, a lifetime to a convict. I was born sad— I don't remember another time. Sadness was never my friend, never coming into me like those electric fear-jolts when I needed them. It was just always there. Ground-fog on my spirit. I'd go deep into myself, the only safe place I knew in the places where I grew up. Dropping so far down nobody could see me. But the sadness would float on gray tendrils too soft to tear, finding its way between the cracks. I'd feel its misty wet weight settle on me. I could never chase it, so I lived in it. Surviving.

There was something fine about being where I was. Not in Indiana. With my brother. In a place where I wasn't a stranger, an outsider. New York was a rancid underbelly turned on its back— the maggots at home, not running from a sun that would never shine. A city of ambulatory psychopaths, choking on ethno-insanity. Unsafe even for predators.

A city that taught me whatever ugliness prison left out.

You want to make obscene calls, you go where the phone book's the thickest.

68

SHE WAS STANDING just to the side of the back entrance when I pulled up to the diner. Wearing her white uniform, a canvas sack that looked like a horse's feedbag slung over one shoulder by a thick strap. I wheeled the car around so the passenger door was parallel to the steps. She climbed in without a word. Reached up and snapped her seat belt into place. Tilted her chin toward the highway. I pulled out into the light afternoon traffic.

"You know how to get to Hammond?"

She didn't seem surprised when I turned left at the first light. I let the Lincoln find its rhythm inside the knots of cars, not pushing her. A pickup truck rolled past on our left, two high school girls in the back in shorts and T-shirts, their legs draped over the side, giggling girls' secrets.

Blossom sat straight-backed in her seat, knees together primly under the white skirt. A faint trace of lilac perfume mingled with cooking smells.

"You mind if we wait until we get to my house?"

"It's your play."

She nodded, calm inside herself. Her face straight ahead, eyes sweeping the interior of the Lincoln, the big car as anonymous as a motel room. If she was looking for clues, it was a dead tie at zero.

Something about the way she sat in the big car. With me, but by herself.

Just outside Hammond, we drove up on a freestanding drugstore, as big as some supermarkets. "Can you pull up there for a minute? I need a couple of things."

I nosed the Lincoln into the mostly empty parking lot, figuring to stay in the car and wait for her. A car engine roared on my left, freezing Blossom to her seat. Screech of tires. An orange Camaro was leading a black Ford and a blue Nova in a tight circle, pebbles and dirt flying off the blacktop. The Camaro pulled out of the circle, looped back and shot toward the center, bisecting the other two cars. It looked like aerial maneuvers on the ground, the cars peeling off to dive-bomb the center.

The cars fanned out and we both saw it at the same time. A seagull, one wing extended, dragging on the ground, awkward on its webbed feet. Trapped— beak hanging open, its orange eyes watching the cars.