coming together into a single, slow-burning flame. It was a sensation he didn’t even have a name for, but he felt the heat of it in the bottom of his gut.
Donna moved backwards to give him a wide berth. She spoke quietly: He was just a loser. How do you think it felt to be me? Why do you think you didn’t live here for so many years? I couldn’t be here, Peter. I couldn’t.
Pete nodded. Hot water flowed over the bowl and the cup. Steam lifted through the sunlight.
— Peter?
— Never mind.
He turned from the sink and went out of the kitchen. He didn’t know if the boys had seen anything but they were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, conspicuously silent.
By half past noon, Pete was in town. He drove past Heron Heights, where a number of students were moving between the parking lot and the school doors. Emily was nowhere to be seen. What Pete did see was the wood- panelled station wagon. It drove past him into the lot and parked. Roger and one of his friends got out and walked into the school. Pete watched them.
Pete drove back downtown. He parked at the A amp;P and walked over to the variety store and went around back and rang the buzzer to the apartment. No one came. He went into the store. Mr. Yoon was stocking the refrigerator.
— You see my uncle?
— Not working today, said Mr. Yoon.
— You know where he’s at?
— He just walks around sometimes. I see him. Or he goes and plays pool. Bar around the corner.
— Okay.
— When is he going to work again?
— I don’t know.
Pete drove to the Corner Pocket, the only poolroom on the block. There was a small parking lot in back. He went in through the back door. The place was nearly empty this time of day. The man behind the bar was wiping down the sides of a jar of devilled eggs. The radio was on, or the jukebox, but Pete could only discern the dry sounds of the drum track. Finally he spotted Lee at a table across the room.
Lee was lining up a shot when Pete came over. Four empty beer bottles stood on the rail behind him. He was working on a fifth.
— Uncle Lee, said Pete.
Lee banked the six-ball into a pocket. He said: How are you, Pete?
— If I ask you something, will you level with me? Lee leaned the cue against the side of the table. He took a drink of beer.
— What are we talking about?
— I want you to tell me what nobody else will.
— You’re not making any sense.
— Look. You know that cop? Frank Casey? He came to my work. He says he knows what I am.
— That son of a bitch is a ball-breaker, Pete. He’s giving you a hard time because of me.
— That’s not it. There’s something nobody will tell me. My mom got real upset when I started asking-
— Don’t bother your mother about it.
— And Grandma won’t tell-
Lee slammed his beer bottle down. The noise drew casual glances from the few hang-abouts in the place. Lee pressed his finger into Pete’s chest.
— Do
Pete stared back. He felt blood come into his cheeks: Fuck this. One more person. The sooner I’m done with all of you the better.
He turned and went out the back door.
The afternoon was all the brighter for the brief minutes he’d been inside. He was opening his car door when he heard Lee say his name. Lee was standing at the back door of the poolroom.
— Maybe nobody tells you because they figure you don’t want to know. This was a bad thing, buck.
— Yeah?
— But I know what it’s like to be on the outside of everything. So I won’t lie to you. I won’t do that. But what you have to know is nothing will be the same if I tell you.
— I want to know, Lee. I can’t live my whole life like this. Maybe I used to think it didn’t matter, but it does now. People around me have made it matter, but they haven’t wanted to give me a choice in much of anything. So I’m choosing to know. I don’t know if you understand what I mean, but I’m choosing to know.
— Well, like I said, I won’t lie to you.
Pete followed Lee back inside to a table near the jukebox. On the wall above was a faded print of dogs shooting billiards. Lee went to the bar and came back carrying four beers. He gave one to Pete. Pete nodded at the bartender.
— He won’t mind?
— I’ll talk to him if he bitches. But he won’t. If I wasn’t having a drink, I don’t think I’d be able to get into any of this. If you’re going to hear it, you’ll want to have a couple too.
They drank in silence for a little while. Lee lit a cigarette. He said: You’re eighteen.
— Yeah. I am.
— Eighteen, that means you’re a man. Eighteen years ago I was twenty-two. I was on trial for capital murder. Six months was all it took. You’re born in, what, July? ‘62? Well, July ‘62 I’d already been inside for three months. Your grandmother sent me a snapshot of you in the hospital when you were born. There was this Indian in jail that I had some trouble with when I was first there. He thought he was a big man and he thought I was just some young goof. He got a hold of some of my stuff and he burned it. That picture was part of it. He did this when I was working in the mailbag shop, which is where all the new fish go. I don’t know why. But later on I got my chance at him in the shower. I did twenty days in the hole for what I did to him, but that big dumb Indian, anytime he saw me after that, he stayed away. I’m already off the subject. Look. When your mom and me were kids we didn’t have it too easy. I know everybody says that. But our old man-your granddad-even though he worked all the time, we never had enough money. I don’t know why. Maybe he could earn money okay but he couldn’t save it. He wasn’t bad to us, never beat us up or nothing, but I never knew him either, not really. When I was still pretty little, the old man had three heart attacks. He still didn’t quit working. The fourth heart attack killed him flat out. That was the end of that. The store went bankrupt and a year later we were on the dole. Do you know all that?
— Not like this, said Pete.
Lee finished his beer and started on another.
— Well. We lived in a boarding house on the other side of downtown, north of the river. Merritt Street. I think about that place a lot, I don’t know why. I went to see it awhile back but it’s different now. Your grandmother helped clean the place to take down the rent she was paying. And your mother wasn’t always so serious, Pete. Did you know that? How she is now, I wouldn’t of even known her. So quiet. So wrapped up. But she wasn’t always so serious.
— I don’t remember her ever being anything else. There were times when I was younger, I’d see her just staring off into space. Just blanked out.
— When she was young she was a lot of fun, and she was real pretty. A real knockout, they’d say. She didn’t care that she barely had two changes of clothes. She got along good with practically everybody. She was the only person, the only person … I mean, she cared for me. I was her older brother, the loser, the small-time hood, but none of that bothered her. I used to be afraid I would, you know, disappoint her, but I’d get drinking or doing something stupid, and no matter what, she was always there to pick me up and drive me wherever it was I needed to go, or if I needed to come back home for a little while, she’d give up her room and sleep on the couch …
Lee was peering into the tabletop, moving his beer bottle back and forth between his hands. Pete drank down his own beer. He left the dregs in the bottom of the bottle. A man weaved into the men’s room nearby and by the time he’d come out Lee had still not resumed.
