Warren pointed at Jimmy. “Because bubba here never told you? So I’ll tell you now. Here’s what happened: Jim’s buddy Ralph got beat up by two college boys. Beat up for no reason except that he was a townie.
“He was working at the Strike Zone, and these two frat boys showed up drunk. They were acting stupid, acting like they were better than everybody. Laughing at everybody. You know the drill.”
Arthur nodded. “I do.”
“So Ralph told them to leave. A few minutes later, he went out to make sure they were gone, and they jumped him. Beat him up real bad. So the next night, him, Jimmy, me, and some other guys went up there to take care of business.”
“To the college?”
“Yeah.”
Arthur asked, “How did you find them? There’s gotta be a thousand people up there.”
“It wasn’t that hard,” Warren explained. “They got those college bars on the main road, heading up to that big gold dome. We figured two drunken frat boys would be there drinking, and so they were! Ralph spotted their car after about five minutes. Then we all waited until they came out.”
Warren smiled, remembering. “I believe it was a Ford Mustang. A bright red one. Jimmy took a tire iron to the front and back windows. We gave them college boys as good as Ralph got and then some. Then the bar owner came out, yelling that he had just called the cops.
“So we left them on the sidewalk, bleeding and crying for their mommies. We jumped into the back of Jimmy’s truck and peeled out of there.”
Jimmy added somberly, “Somebody coulda got my tag number. I kept waitin’ for the cops all the next day. Waitin’ to get arrested.”
Warren told him, “Don’t matter if you got arrested or not. We did what we had to do.”
Jimmy agreed, “Yeah.”
“They hit us, so we hit them back.”
“Amen.”
Arthur nodded angrily. “Yeah, I hear that.”
Warren raised up his Ziploc box in a friendly wave. “Well, enough townie history. You guys have a good time up there. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t play with matches. All that stuff.” He started up the incline to his trailer, calling, “Anybody needs me, I’ll be at the Drunken Monkey.”
I followed Arthur and Jimmy through the door. Arthur veered left toward his bedroom. He pointed to the right and said, “Go sit in there. I need to find me some zombie rags.”
I said, “Okay,” and walked into the living room. It was surprisingly large—with a long cloth-covered couch along the right wall, a big TV straight ahead, and a pair of recliner chairs to the left.
Aunt Robin was sitting on the floor in front of the chairs. She is a small, feisty lady with long black hair and multiple ear piercings. She was playing with Cody—a cute, squirmy boy about two years old.
She looked up at me, “Why, Tom Coleman! As I live and breathe!”
I waved awkwardly. “Hi, Aunt Robin. Hi, Cody.”
“Did I just hear you’re going to a party?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No drinking or drugs!”
“No, ma’am.”
I had seen Aunt Robin often over the years—at the Food Giant and at other public places—but I had never been in her living room before. Nobody ever said it out loud, but we all knew that Mom and Aunt Robin did not get along. Going way back. We had never spent a holiday together, or any other day, for that matter.
Jimmy walked in from the kitchen holding a jar of Gerber’s baby food and a spoon. He grinned at me, but he spoke to Aunt Robin. “Here I am, out bustin’ my butt at work all day, and I got to come home and work here, too?”
Aunt Robin got instantly riled, like this was an ongoing argument. “Don’t you start that, Jimmy Giles! Especially in front of company!”
She shot an offended look at me. “Don’t think I haven’t been working, Tom. I just finished a job driving a school bus.” She pointed a red nail at me. “The trouble is, you need a second job if you drive a school bus, because the pay is so low. But you can’t get a second job because you always have to be on call for the school bus job.”
Jimmy interjected, “But having one job was better than having none, wasn’t it?”
She answered angrily, “No. Not that job. It was terrible. You never knew what they were gonna throw at you. Especially if you were new, like me. You might have to drive the gangbangers, or the teenage girls with the babies, or the just plain old troublemakers up to the county school. With no security on board. Just you.
“Or you might have to drive the retarded bus.” She assured me, “I got nothing against those kids, Tom. They’re just fine. But some of them need helpers with them, and they don’t have helpers.”
She stopped talking.
I felt like I should say something, so I commented, “Bobby Smalls has Down’s syndrome. He’s the bag boy at the Food Giant.”
“Yeah. I know who you mean. But he’s a smart one, right?”
“Yeah. He’s real smart.”
“Well, I’m not talking about him, Tom. I’m talking about these poor kids who still wear diapers. And they’re big kids! I just couldn’t handle driving them every day. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it was just too sad for me.”
Arthur came out of his bedroom. He was dressed pretty much the same as before, in his camo pants and boots, but he had ripped up an old white shirt and pulled it on over his hoodie. And he had smeared black stuff under his eyes, like football players do for glare.
He said, “Let’s roll, cuz,” and exited quickly, without a word to Aunt Robin, Jimmy, or Cody.
I muttered, “I’ll see everybody later,” and followed him out.
But we could not roll.
A car had pulled in and parked behind Arthur’s Geo Metro. A white Saab convertible.
Arthur was really annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. We just stared at the car uncomfortably until we heard voices from above. Two tall college-age guys emerged from Warren’s trailer. Despite the dim light, I could see that one of them had a Baggie in his hand. Of marijuana? Probably. They were all laughing about something. Then they exchanged some goodbye stuff, like “Later, bro,” “Be cool,” and so on.
Warren stepped back inside and closed the door. I don’t think he even saw us.
But the college boys did.
They kept walking toward us, but the one with the Baggie stuffed it into the pocket of his Blackwater U jacket. They got into the Saab, backed out, and roared away down the road.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Arthur cut me off. “You didn’t see that. You didn’t hear that. You know nothing.”
I agreed, “Okay.”
Arthur opened the driver’s-side door. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
We both got inside. I assured him, “I don’t even know what you’re saying, because I didn’t see or hear anything.”
He mumbled, “Good. What Warren does is his business. Always has been.”
“Okay.” Arthur dropped the Geo Metro in gear, and we began a tense drive up to the party.
I guess you could say that Blackwater University is the most famous thing around here, but I had never heard a good word spoken about it in my life. The university people look down on us, and we hate them for it. That’s the way it is, and always has been.
We drove for about twenty minutes, mostly through farms and woodlands, until the highway narrowed. Then we turned onto a two-lane road leading to the main gate. College-kid businesses lined both sides of the road— used-book stores, coffeehouses, trade-or-sell music stores, and several bars. (I wondered where, exactly, Warren and Jimmy had found those guys and beaten them up.)
We entered the campus and veered right, following a perimeter road around academic buildings, dormitories,
