The Twelve

“Sometimes he does. When he’s on the lick. Rose says he doesn’t mean to. It’s on account of my mama.”

“Because she left you?”

“On account of she died having me.”

The boy’s words seemed to hang in the air. It was true, or it wasn’t true; either way, now his plea was nothing they could refuse.

Cruk held out the knife. “Go on, take it. I don’t want your daddy’s knife.”

The boy returned it to his pocket.

“I’m Cruk. Dee’s my sister. The other two are Boz and Vor.”

“I know who you are.” He squinted uncertainly at them. “So am I in the club now?”

“How many times I have to tell you,” Cruk said. “We’re not a club.”

Just like that, it was determined: Tifty was one of them. In due course they all came to know Bray Lamont, a fierce, even terrifying man, his eyes permanently lit with the illegal whiskey everyone called lick, his drink-thickened voice roaring Tifty’s name from the window every night at siren. Tifty, goddamnit! Tifty, you get in here before I have to come looking for you! On more than one occasion the boy appeared in the alley with a fresh shiner, bruises, once with his arm in a sling. In a sodden rage, his father had hurled him across the room, dislocating his shoulder. Should they tell the DS? Their parents? What about Aunt Rose, could she help? But Tifty always shook his head. He seemed to possess no anger over his injuries, only a tight-lipped fatalism that they could not help but admire. It seemed a kind of strength. Don’t tell anyone, the boy said. It’s just how he is. No changing a thing like that.

There were other stories. Tifty’s great-grandfather, or so he claimed, had been one of the original signatories of the Texas Declaration and had supervised the clearing of the Oil Road; his grandfather was a hero of the Easter Incursion of 38 who, mortally bitten in the first wave, had led the charge from the spillway and sacrificed himself on the battlefield in front of his men, taking his own life on the point of his blade; a cousin, whose name Tifty refused to give (“everybody just calls him Cousin”), was a wanted gangster, the operator of the biggest still in H-town; his mother, a great beauty, had received nine separate proposals of marriage before she was sixteen, including one from a man who would later become a member of the president’s staff. Heroes, dignitaries, criminals, a vast and colorful pageant of assorted higher-ups, both in the world they knew and in the one that lurked below it, the world of the trade; Tifty knew people who knew people. Doors would fly open for Tifty Lamont. Never mind that he was the son of a drunken hydro from H-town, another skinny kid with bruises on his face and ill-fitting clothing he never washed, who was looked after by a maiden aunt and lived in Assisted, just like they did; Tifty’s stories were too good, too interesting, not to believe.

But seeing Coffee—that was simply too much. Such a claim flew in the face of the facts. Coffee was unknowable; Coffee was, like the virals, a creature of the shadows. And yet Tifty’s story possessed the tincture of reality. He had gone with his father to H-town, its lawless, shantied streets, to meet Cousin, the gangster. There, in the back room of the machine shed where the still was located—a colossus of a thing, like a living dragon of wires and pipes and huffing cauldrons—among men with dangerous eyes and greasy smiles of blackened teeth and pistols tucked into their belts, the money changed hands, the jug of lick was procured. These excursions were routine, Tifty had described them many times before, yet on this occasion something was different. This time there was a man. He was distinct from the others, not on the trade—Tifty could tell that right away. Tall, with the erect bearing of a soldier. He stood to the side, his face obscured, wearing a dark overcoat belted at the waist. Tifty saw that his head was shorn. Evidently this man, whoever he was, was there on urgent business; usually Tifty’s father lingered, drinking and trading stories of H-town days with the other men, but not tonight. Cousin, his great round form wedged behind his desk like an egg in its nest, accepted his father’s bills without comment; no sooner had they arrived, it seemed, than they were hustling out the door. It wasn’t until they were well clear of the shed that his father said, Don’t you know who it was you saw in there, boy? Huh? Don’t you? I’ll tell you who that was. That was Niles Coffee himself.

“I’ll tell you something else.” The five of them were crowded into the shelter in the alleyway. Tifty was carving in the dust with the pocket-knife, which had, after all, stayed his. “My old man says he keeps a camp below the dam. Right out in the open, like being outside was nothing. They let the dracs come to them, then crisp ’em in the traps.”

“I knew it!” Boz burst out. The younger boy’s face practically glowed with excitement. He swiveled on his knees toward Vorhees. “What did I tell you?”

“No fucking way,” Cruk scoffed. Of all of them, his role was the skeptic’s; he wore this mantle like a duty.

“I’m telling you, it was him. You could just feel it. The way everybody was.”

“And what would Coffee want with a bunch of traders? You tell me that.”

“How should I know? Maybe he buys lick for his men.” A new idea came into Tifty’s face. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Or guns.”

Cruk gave a sarcastic laugh. “Listen to this kid.”

“Joke all you want, I’ve seen them. I’m talking real Army weapons, from before. M16s, automatic pistols, even grenade launchers.”

“Whoa,” Boz said.

“Where would Cousin get guns like that?” Vorhees asked.

Tifty eased up on his knees to look around, as if making sure no one could hear them. “I’m not sure I should be telling you this,” he continued. “There’s a bunker, an old Army base near San Antone. Cousin runs patrols up there.”

“I can’t listen to this another second,” said Cruk. “You didn’t see Coffee or anybody else.”

“You saying you don’t believe he exists?”

The idea was sacrilege. “I’m not saying that. You just didn’t see him is all.”

“What about you, Vor?”

Vorhees felt caught. Half of what Tifty said was pure bullshit—maybe more than half. On the other hand, the urge to believe was strong.

“I don’t know,” he managed. “I guess… I don’t know.”

“Well I believe him,” Dee proclaimed.

Tifty’s eyes widened. “See?”

Cruk waved this away. “She’s a girl. She’ll believe anything.”

“Hey!”

“Well, it’s true.”

Tifty leveled his eyes at the older boy. “What if I said you could see Coffee for yourself?”

“Just how would I do that?”

“Easy. We can go through one of the spillway tubes. I’ve been down there lots of times. This time of year, they don’t release until dawn. The vents go right to the base of the dam—we should be able to see the camp from there.”

The challenge had been laid down; there was no way to say no.

“There’s no goddamn camp, Tifty.”

* * *

It took them three days to work up the nerve, and even then Cruk forbade his sister from coming. The plan was to sneak out after their parents were asleep and rendezvous at the shelter; Tifty had plotted a route to the dam that would keep them out of site of the DS patrols.

It was after midnight by the time Tifty arrived. The others were already waiting. He appeared at the end of the alleyway and made his way toward them quickly, the hood of his jacket drawn up over his head, hands stuffed in his pockets. As he ducked into the shelter, he withdrew a plastic bottle.

“Liquid courage.” He unscrewed the cap and passed it to Vorhees.

It was lick. Vorhees and Boz’s parents, prayerful people who went to church at the sisters’ every Sunday, wouldn’t have it in the house. Vorhees held the open bottle under his nose. A clear liquid with a harsh chemical odor, like lye soap.

“Give it here,” Cruk commanded. He snatched the bottle and sipped, then handed it back to Vorhees.