第2章

Shit happened

one

It's hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news. Don't even try to guess who stood all Tuesday night in the road. Clue: snotty ole Mrs Lechuga. Hard to tell if she quivered, or if moths and porchlight through the willows ruffled her skin like funeral satin in a gale. Either way, dawn showed a puddle between her feet. It tells you normal times just ran howling from town. Probably forever. God knows I tried my best to learn the ways of this world, even had inklings we could be glorious; but after all that's happened, the inkles ain't easy anymore. I mean–what kind of fucken life is this?

Now it's Friday at the sheriff's office. Feels like a Friday at school or something. School–don't even fucken mention it.

I sit waiting between shafts of light from a row of doorways, naked except for my shoes and Thursday's underwear. Looks like I'm the first one they rounded up so far. I ain't in trouble, don't get me wrong. I didn't have anything to do with Tuesday. Still, you wouldn't want to be here today. You'd remember Clarence Somebody, that ole black guy who was on the news last winter. He was the psycho who dozed in this same wooden hall, right on camera. The news said that's how little he cared about the effects of his crimes. By 'effects' I think they meant axe-wounds. Ole Clarence Whoever was shaved clean like an animal, and dressed in the kind of hospital suit that psychos get, with jelly-jar glasses and all, the type of glasses worn by people with mostly gums and no teeth. They built him a zoo cage in court. Then they sentenced him to death.

I just stare at my Nikes. Jordan New Jacks, boy. I'd perk them up with a spit-wipe, but it seems kind of pointless when I'm naked. Anyway, my fingers are sticky. This ink would survive Armageddon, I swear. Cockroaches, and this fucken fingerprint ink.

A giant shadow melts into the dark end of the corridor. Then comes its owner, a lady. As she approaches, light from a doorway snags a Bar-B-Chew Barn box in her arms, along with a bag of my clothes, and a phone that she tries to speak into. She's slow, she's sweaty, her features huddle in the middle of her face. Even in uniform you know she's a Gurie. Another officer follows her into the corridor, but she waves him away.

'Let me do the preliminaries–I'll call you for the statement.' She slides the phone back to her mouth and clears her throat. Her voice sharpens up to a squeak. 'Gh-hrrr, I am not calling you a moron, I'm explaining that, stuss-tistically, Special Weapons And Tactics can limit the toll.' She squeaks so high that her Barn box falls to the floor. 'Lunch,' she grunts, bending. 'Only salad, poo–I swear to God.' The call ends when she sees me.

I sit up to hear if my mother came to collect me; but she didn't. I knew she wouldn't, that's how smart I am. I still wait for it though, what a fucken genius. Vernon Genius Little.

The officer dumps the clothes in my lap. 'Walk this way.'

So much for Mom. She'll be pumping the town for sympathy, like she does. 'Well Vern's just devastated,' she'll say. She only calls me Vern around her coffee-morning buddies, to show how fucken tight we are, instead of all laughably fucked up. If my ole lady came with a user's guide it'd tell you to fuck her off in the end, I guarantee it. Everybody knows Jesus is ultimately to blame for Tuesday; but see Mom? Just the fact I'm helping the investigation is enough to give her fucken Tourette's Syndrome, or whatever they call the thing where your arms fly around at random.

The officer shows me into a room with a table and two chairs. No window, just a picture of my friend Jesus taped to the inside of the door. I get the stained chair. Pulling on my clothes, I try to imagine it's last weekend; just regular, rusty moments dripping into town via air-conditioners with missing dials; spaniels trying to drink from sprinklers but getting hit in the nose instead.

'Vernon Gregory Little?' The lady offers me a barbecued rib. She offers half-heartedly, though, and frankly you'd feel sorry to even take the thing when you see the way her chins vibrate over it.

She returns my rib to the box, and picks another for herself. 'Gh-rr, let's start at the beginning. Your habitual place of residence is seventeen Beulah Drive?'

'Yes ma'am.'

'Who else resides there?'

'Nobody, just my mom.'

'Doris Eleanor Little…' Barbecue sauce drips onto her name badge. Deputy Vaine Gurie it says underneath. 'And you're fifteen years old? Awkward age.'

Is she fucken kidding or what? My New Jacks rub together for moral support. 'Ma'am–will this take long?'

Her eyes widen for a moment. Then narrow to a squint. 'Vernon–we're talking accessory to murder here. It'll take as long as it takes.'

'So, but…'

'Don't tell me you weren't close to the Meskin boy. Don't tell me you weren't just about his only friend, don't you tell me that for one second.'

'Ma'am, but I mean, there must be plenty of witnesses who saw more than I did.'

'Is that right?' She looks around the room. 'Well I don't see anyone else here–do you?' Like an asshole I look around. Duh. She catches my eyes and settles them back. 'Mr Little–you do understand why you're here?'

'Sure, I guess.'

'Uh-huh. Let me explain that my job is to uncover the truth. Before you think that's a hard thing to do, I'll remind you that, stuss-tistically, only two major forces govern life in this world. Can you name the two forces underlying all life in this world?'

'Uh–wealth and poverty?'

'Not wealth and poverty.'

'Good and evil?'

'No–cause and effect. And before we start I want you to name the two categories of people that inhabit our world. Can you name the two proven categories of people?'

'Causers and effecters?'

'No. Citizens–and liars. Are you with me, Mister Little? Are you here?'

Like, duh. I want to say, 'No, I'm at the lake with your fucken daughters,' but I don't. For all I know she doesn't even have daughters. Now I'll spend the whole day thinking what I should've said. It's really fucked.

Deputy Gurie tears a strip of meat from a bone; it flaps through her lips like a shit taken backwards. 'I take it you know what a liar is? A liar is a psychopath–someone who paints gray areas between black and white. It's my duty to advise you there are no gray areas. Facts are facts. Or they're lies. Are you here?'

'Yes ma'am.'

'I truly hope so. Can you account for yourself at a quarter after ten Tuesday morning?'

'I was in school.'

'I mean what period.'

'Uh–math.'

Gurie lowers her bone to stare at me. 'What important facts have I only now finished outlining to you, about black and white?'

'I didn't say I was in class…'

A knock at the door saves my Nikes from fusing. A wooden hairdo pokes into the room. 'Vernon Little in here? His ma's on the phone.'

'All right, Eileena.' Gurie shoots me a stare that says 'Don't relax' and points her bone at the door. I follow the wooden lady to reception.

I'd be fucken grateful, if it wasn't my ole lady calling. Between you and me, it's like she planted a knife in my back when I was born, and now every fucken noise she makes just gives it a turn. It cuts even deeper now that my daddy ain't around to share the pain. My shoulders round up when I see the phone, my mouth drops open like, duh. Here's exactly what she'll say, in her fuck-me-to-a-cross whimper, she'll say, 'Vernon, are you all right?' I guarantee it.

'Vernon, are you okay?' Feel the blade chop and dice.

'I'm fine, Ma,' now my voice goes all small and stupid. It's a subliminal plea for her not to be pathetic, but it works like pussy to a fucken dog.

'Did you use the bathroom today?'

'Hell, Momma…'

'Well you know you get that–inconvenience.'

She ain't so much called to turn the knife, as to replace it with a fucken javelin or something. You didn't need to know this, but when I was a kid I used to be kind of unpredictable, for 'Number Twos' anyway. Never mind the slimy details, my ole lady just added the whole affair to my knife, so she could give it a turn every now and then. Once she even wrote about it to my teacher, who had her own stabbing agenda with me, and this bitch mentioned it in class. Can you believe it? I could've bought the farm right there. My knife's like a fucken skewer these days, with all the shit that's been added on.

'Well you didn't have time this morning,' she says, 'so I worried that maybe–you know…'

'I'm fine, really.' I stay polite, before she plants the whole fucken Ginzu Knife Set. It's a hostage situation.

'What're you doing?'

'Listening to Deputy Gurie.'

'LuDell Gurie? Well, tell her I know her sister Reyna from Weight Watchers.'

'It ain't LuDell, Ma.'

'If it's Barry you know Pam sees him every other Friday…'

'It ain't Barry. I have to go now.'

'Well, the car still isn't ready and I'm minding an ovenful of joy cakes for the Lechugas, so Pam'll have to pick you up. And Vernon…'

'Uh?'

'Sit up straight in the car–town's crawling with cameras.'

Velcro spiders seize my spine. You know gray areas are invisible on video. You don't want to be here the day shit gets figured out in black and white. I ain't saying I'm to blame, don't get me wrong. I'm calm about that, see? Under my grief glows a serenity that comes from knowing the truth always wins in the end. Why do movies end happy? Because they imitate life. You know it, I know it. But my ole lady lacks that fucken knowledge, big-time.

I shuffle up the hall to my pre-stained chair. 'Mister Little,' says Gurie, 'I'm going to start over–that means loosen up some facts, young man. Sheriff Porkorney has firm notions about Tuesday, you should be thankful you only have to talk to me.' She goes to touch her snatch, but diverts to her gun at the last second.

'Ma'am, I was behind the gym, I didn't even see it happen.'

'You said you were in math.'

'I said it was our math period.'

She looks at me sideways. 'You take math behind the gym?'

'No.'

'So why weren't you in class?'

'I ran an errand for Mr Nuckles, and got kind of–held up.'

'Mr Nuckles?'

'Our physics teacher.'

'He teaches math?'

'No.'

'G-hrrr. This area's looking real gray, Mister Little. Damn gray.'

You don't know how bad I want to be Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ram her fucken gun up her ass, and run away with a panty model. But just look at me: clump of lawless brown hair, the eyelashes of a camel. Big ole puppy-dog features like God made me through a fucken magnifying glass. You know right away my movie's the one where I puke on my legs, and they send a nurse to interview me instead.

'Ma'am, I have witnesses.'

'Is that right.'

'Mr Nuckles saw me.'

'And who else?' She prods the dry bones in her box.

'A bunch of people.'

'Is that right. And where are those people now?'

I try to think where those people are. But the memory doesn't come to my brain, it comes to my eye as a tear that shoots from my lash like a soggy bullet. I sit stunned.

'Exactly,' says Gurie. 'Not real gregarious, are they? So Vernon–let me ask you two simple questions. One: are you involved with drugs?'

'Uh–no.'

She chases the pupils of my eyes across the wall, then herds them back to hers. 'Two: do you possess a firearm?'

'No.'

Her lips tighten. She pulls her phone from a holster on her belt, and suspends one finger over a key, eyeing me all the while. Then she jabs the key. The theme from Mission: Impossible chirps on a phone up the hall. 'Sheriff?' she says. 'You might want to attend the interview room.'

This wouldn't happen if she had more meat in her box. The dismay of no more meat made her seek other comforts, that's something I just learned. Now I'm the fucken meat.

After a minute, the door opens. A strip of buffalo leather scrapes into the room, tacked around the soul of Sheriff Porkorney. 'This the boy?' he asks. Like, fucken no, it's Dolly Parton. 'Cooperational, Vaine, is he?'

'Can't say he is, sir.'

'Give me a moment with him.' He closes the door behind him.

Gurie retracts her tit-fat across the table, turning to the corner like it makes her absent. The sheriff breathes a rod of decay at my face.

'Bothered folk, son, outside. Bothered folk are quick to judge.'

'I wasn't even there, sir–I have witnesses.'

He raises an eyebrow to Gurie's corner. One of her eyes flicks back, 'We're following it up, Sheriff.'

Pulling a clean bone from the Bar-B-Chew Barn box, Porkorney moves to the picture on the door, and traces a line around Jesus' face, his bangs of blood, his forsaken eyes. Then he curls a gaze at me. 'He talked to you–didn't he.'

'Not about this, sir.'

'You were close, though, you admit that.'

'I didn't know he was going to kill anybody.'

The sheriff turns to Gurie. 'Examine Little's clothes, did you?'

'My partner did,' she says.

'Undergarments?'

'Regular Y-fronts.'

Porkorney thinks a moment, chews his lip. 'Check the back of 'em, did you, Vaine? You know certain type of practices can loosen a man's pitoota.'

'They seemed clean, Sheriff.'

I know where this is fucken headed. Typical of where I live that nobody will come right out and say it. I try to muster some control. 'Sir, I ain't gay, if that's what you mean. We were friends since childhood, I didn't know how he'd turn out…'

A no-brand smile grows under the sheriff's moustache. 'Regular boy then, are you, son? You like your cars, and your guns? And your–girls?'

'Sure.'

'Okay, all right–let's see if it's true. How many offices does a girl have that you can get more'n one finger into?'

'Offices?'

'Cavities–holes.'

'Uh–two?'

'Wrong.' The sheriff puffs up like he just discovered fucken relativity.

Fuck. I mean, how am I supposed to know? I got my fingertip into a hole once, don't ask me which one. It left memories of the Mini-Mart loading-bay after a storm; tangs of soggy cardboard and curdled milk. Somehow I don't think that's what your porn industry is talking about. Not like this other girl I know called Taylor Figueroa.

Sheriff Porkorney tosses his bone into the box, nodding to Gurie. 'Get it on record, then hold him.' He creaks out of the room.

'Vaine?' calls an officer through the door. 'Fibers.'

Gurie re-forms into limbs. 'You heard the sheriff. I'll be back with another officer to take your statement.'

When the rubbing of her thighs has faded, I crane my nostrils for any vague comfort; a whiff of warm toast, a spearmint breath. But all I whiff, over the sweat and the barbecue sauce, is school–the kind of pulse bullyboys give off when they spot a quiet one, a wordsmith, in a corner. The scent of lumber being cut for a fucken cross.

two

Mom's best friend is called Palmyra. Everybody calls her Pam. She's fatter than Mom, so Mom feels good around her. Mom's other friends are slimmer. They're not her best friends.

Pam's here. Three counties hear her bellowing at the sheriff's secretary. 'Lord, where is he? Eileena, have you seen Vern? Hey, love the hair!'

'Not too frisky?' tweets Eileena.

'Lord no, the brown really suits you.'

You have to like Palmyra, I guess, not that you'd want to imagine her humping or anything. She has a lemon-fresh lack of knives about her. What she does is eat.

'Have you fed him?'

'I think Vaine bought ribs,' says Eileena.

'Vaine Gurie? She's supposed to be on the Pritikin diet–Barry'll have a truck!'

'Good-night, she damn near lives at Bar-B-Chew Barn!'

'Oh good Lord.'

'Vernon's in there, Pam,' says Eileena. 'You better wait outside.'

So the door flies open. Pam wobbles in, bolt upright like she has books on her head. It's on account of her center of gravity. 'Vernie, you eatin rebs? What did you eat today?'

'Breakfast.'

'Oh Lord, we better go by the Barn.' Doesn't matter what you tell her, she's going by Bar-B-Chew Barn, believe me.

'I can't, Pam, I have to stay.'

'Malarkey, come on now.' She tugs my elbow. The force of it recommends the floor to my feet. 'Eileena, I'm taking Vern–you tell Vaine Gurie this boy ain't eaten, I'm double-parked out front, and she better hide some pounds before I see Barry.'

'Leave him, Pam, Vaine ain't through…'

'I don't see no handcuffs, and a child has a right to eat.' Pam's voice starts to rattle furniture.

'I don't make the rules,' says Eileena. 'I'm just sayin…'

'Vaine can't hold him–you know that. We're gone,' says Pam. 'Love your hair.'

Eileena's sigh follows us down the hallway. My ears flick around for signs of Gurie or the sheriff, but the offices seem empty; the sheriff's offices that is. Next thing you know, I'm halfway out of the building in Palmyra's gravity-field. You just can't argue with this much modern woman, I tell you.

Outside, a jungle of clouds has grown over the sun. They kindle the whiff of damp dog that always blows around here before a storm, burping lightning without a sound. Fate clouds. They mean get the fuck out of town, go visit Nana or something, until things quiet down, until the truth seeps out. Get rid of the drugs from home, then take a road trip.

A shimmer rises off the hood of Pam's ole Mercury. Martirio's tight-assed buildings quiver through it, oil pumpjacks melt and sparkle along the length of Gurie Street. Yeah: oil, jackrabbits, and Guries are what you find in Martirio. This was once the second-toughest town in Texas, after Luling. Whoever got beat up in Luling must've crawled over here. These days our toughest thing is congestion at the drive-thru on a Saturday night. I can't say I've seen too many places, but I've studied this one close and the learnings must be the same; all the money, and folk's interest in fixing things, parade around the center of town, then spread outwards in a dying wave. Healthy girls skip around the middle in whiter-than-white panties, then regions of shorts and cotton prints radiate out to the edges, where tangled babes hang in saggy purple underwear. Just a broken ole muffler shop on the outskirts; no more sprinklers, no more lawns.

'Lord,' says Pam, 'tell me why I can just taste a Chik 'n' Mix.'

Fucken yeah, right. Even in winter the Mercury stinks of fried chicken, never mind today when it's like a demon's womb. Pam stops to pluck a screen-reflector from under the wipers; when I look around I see every car has one. Seb Harris rides through the haze at the end of the street, distributing them from his bike. Pam opens the thing out and squints at the writing: 'Harris's Store,' it reads, 'More, More, More!'

'Lookit that,' she says. 'We just saved us the price of a Chik 'n' Mix.'

Deep fucken trouble keeps my euphoria at bay. Pam just molds into the car. Her soul's already knotted over the choice of side-order, you can tell. She'll end up getting coleslaw anyway, on account of Mom says it's healthy. It's vegetables, see. Me, I need something healthier today. Like the afternoon bus out of town.

A siren wails past us at the corner of Geppert Street. Don't ask me why, they can't save any children now. Pam will miss this corner anyway–it's fucken traditional, look, there she goes. Now she'll have to cut back two blocks, and she'll say, 'Lord, nothing stays put in this town.' Reporters and camera people roam the streets in packs. I keep my head down, and scan the floor for fire ants. 'Far aints,' Pam calls them. Fuck knows what other fauna climbs aboard in the century it takes her to get in and out of the fucken car. Wild Fucken Kingdom, I swear.

Today everybody at the Barn wears black, except for the Nikes on their feet. I identify the different models while they box up the chicken. Town's like a club, see. You recognize fellow members by their shoes. They won't even sell certain shoes to outsiders, it's a fact. I watch these black forms scurry around with different-colored feet and, just like when anything weird screens through the Mercury window, Glen Campbell starts to sing 'Galveston' from Pam's ole stereo. It's a law of nature. Pam only has this one cassette, see–The Best of Glen Campbell. It jammed in the slot the first time she played it, and just kept on playing. Fate. Pam sings along with the same part of the song every time, the part about the girl. I think she once had a boyfriend from Wharton, which is closer to Galveston than here. No songs about Wharton I guess.

'Vern, eat the bottom pieces before they get soggy.'

'Then the top pieces will be on the bottom.'

'Oh Lord.' She lunges for the tub, but doesn't get past the refresher wipes before we turn into Liberty Drive. She must've forgot about Liberty Drive today.

Look at all the girls crying by the school.

Galveston, oh Galveston…

Another luxury wagon parks up ahead, with even more flowers, even more girls. It maneuvers slowly around the stains on the road. Strangers with cameras move back to fit it all in.

I still hear your sea waves crashing…

Behind the girls, behind the flowers are the mothers, and behind the mothers are the counselors; senior brownies at a petting zoo.

While I watch the cannons flashing…

Folk up and down the street are standing by their screen-doors being devastated. Mom's so-called friend Leona was already devastated last week, when Penney's delivered the wrong color kitchen drapes. Typical of her to go off half-cocked.

'Oh my Lord, Vernie, oh God–all those tiny crosses…' I feel Palmyra's hand on my shoulder, and find myself sobbing spit.

The picture of Jesus that hangs behind the sheriff's door was taken at the crime scene. From a different angle than I last saw him. It doesn't show all the other bodies around, all the warped, innocent faces. Not like the picture in my soul. Tuesday breaks through me like a fucken hemorrhage.

I clean my gun, and dream of Galves-ton…

*

Jesus Navarro was born with six fingers on each hand, and that wasn't the most different thing about him. It's what took him though, in the very, very end. He didn't expect to die Tuesday; they found him wearing silk panties. Now girls' underwear is a major focus of the investigation, go figure. His ole man says the cops planted them on him. Like, 'Lingerie Squad! Freeze!' I don't fucken think so.

That morning crowds my mind. 'Hay-zoose, slow the fuck up!' I remember yelling to him.

A headwind worries our bikes on the way to school, weights them almost as heavy as this last Tuesday before summer vacation. Physics, then math, then physics again, some stupid experiment in the lab. Hell on fucken earth.

Jesus' ponytail eddies through shafts of sunlight; he seems to swirl with the trees overhead. He's changing, ole Jesus, turning pretty in an Indian kind of way. The stumps of his extra fingers have almost disappeared. He's still clumsy as hell though, and his mind's clumsy too; the certainty of our kid logic got washed away, leaving pebbles of anger and doubt that crack together with each new wave of emotion. My buddy, who once did the best David Letterman impression you ever saw, has been abducted by glandular acids. Sassy song and smell hormones must fume off his brain, the type that curdle if your mom senses them. But you get the feeling they ain't regular hormones. He keeps secrets from me, like he never did before. He got weird. Nobody knows why.

I saw a show about adolescents that said role models were the key to development, same as for dogs. You could tell whoever made the show never met Jesus' dad, though. Or mine, for that matter. My dad was better than Mr Navarro, until the end anyway, although I used to get pissed that he wouldn't let me use his rifle, like Mr Navarro let Jesus use his. Now I cuss the day I ever saw my daddy's gun, and I guess Jesus cusses his day too. He needed a different role model, but nobody was there for him. Our teacher Mr Nuckles spent all kinds of time with him after schoolb ,ut I ain't sure ole powder-puff Nuckles and his circus of fancy words really count. I mean, the guy's over thirty, and you just know he sits down to piss. He spent all this time with Jesus, up at his place, and riding in his car, talking softly, with his head down, like those caring folk you see on TV. One time I saw them hug, I guess like brothers or something. Don't even go there, really. The point is, in the end, Nuckles recommended a shrink. Jesus got worse after that.

Lothar 'Lard-ass' Larbey drives by in his ole man's truck, flicking his tongue at my buddy. 'Wetback fudge-packer!' he yells.

Jesus just drops his head. I sting for him sometimes, with his retreaded, second-hand Jordan New Jacks, and his goddam alternative lifestyle, if that's what you call this new fruity thing. His character used to fit him so clean, like a sports sock, back when we were kings of the universe, when the dirt on a sneaker mattered more than the sneaker itself. We razed the wilds outside town with his dad's gun, terrorized ole beer cans, watermelons, and trash. It's like we were men before we were boys, back before we were whatever the fuck we are now. I feel my lips clamp together with the strangeness of life, and watch my buddy pull alongside me on his bike. His eyes glaze over, like they do since he started seeing that shrink. You can tell he's retreated into one of his philosophical headfucks.

'Man, remember the Great Thinker we heard about in class last week?' he asks.

'The one that sounded like "Manual Cunt"?'

'Yeah, who said nothing really happens unless you see it happen.'

'All I remember is asking Naylor if he ever heard of a Manual Cunt, and him going, "I only drive automatics." We dropped the biggest fucken load.'

Jesus clicks his tongue. 'Shit, Vermin, you always only thinkin bout dropped loads. Just loads, and shit, and girl tangs. This is real, man. Manual Cunt asked the thing about the kitten–the riddle, that if there was a box with a kitten inside, and if the box also had an open bottle of death-gas or whatever, that the kitten's definitely going to knock over at any moment…'

'Whose kitten is this? I bet they're pissed.'

'Fuck, Verm, I'm serious. This is a real-time philosophy question. The kitten's in this box, definitely gonna die at some moment, and Manual Cunt asks if it may as well be called dead already, technically, unless somebody's there to see it still alive, to know it exists.'

'Wouldn't it be easier just to stomp on the fucken kitten?'

'It's not about wasting the kitten, asshole.' You can tick Jesus off real easy these days. His logic got all serious.

'What's the fucken point, Jeez?'

He frowns and answers slowly, digging each word out with a shovel. 'That if things don't happen unless you see them happening–do they still happen if you know they're gonna–but don't tell nobody…?'

As the words reach my ears, the mausoleum shapes of Martirio High School slam into view through the trees. A bitty chill like a worm burrows through me.

three

Too fucken late. When you spot a jackrabbit it automatically spots you back; it's a fact of nature, in case you didn't know. Same goes for Vaine Gurie, who I spy in the road by my house. Storms clouds park over her patrol car.

'Pam, stop! Leave me right here…'

'Get a grip, we're nearly home.' Pam don't stop easy once she's going.

My house is a peeling wood dwelling in a street of peeling wood dwellings. Before you see it through the willows, you see the oil pumpjack next door. I don't know about your town, but around here we decorate our pumpjacks. Even have competitions for them. Our pumpjack is fixed up like a mantis, with a head and legs stuck on. This giant mantis just pump, pump, pumps away at the dirt next door. The local ladies decorated it. This year's prize went to the Godzilla pumpjack on Calavera Drive, though.

As Pam throttles back the car, I see media reporters up the street, and a stranger lazing next to a van in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. He moves a branch to watch us pass. He smiles, don't ask me why.

'That man's been there all morning,' says Pam, squinting into the willow.

'He a stranger, or media?' I ask.

Pam shakes her head, pulling up at my house. 'He ain't from around here, I know that much. He has a camcorder, though…'

Fuck, fuck, fuck goes the mantis, like it does every four seconds of my life. Gas, brake, gas, brake, Pam berths the car like a ferryboat. Fuck, fuck, gas, brake, I'm snagged in the apparatus of Martirio. Across the street, Mrs Lechuga's drapes are tightly pulled. At number twenty, ole Mrs Porter stares from behind her screen-door with Kurt, the medium-size black and white dog. Kurt deserves a place in the fucken Barking Hall of Fame, although he ain't made a sound since Tuesday. Weird how dogs know things.

Next thing you know, a shadow falls over the car. It's Vaine Gurie. 'Who do we have here?' she asks, opening my door. Her voice plays from deep in her throat, like a parrot's. You want to check her mouth for the little boxing-glove kind of tongue.

Mom scurries across our porch with a tray of listless ole joy cakes. She's in Spooked Deer mode. She looked this way the last time I saw my daddy alive, although Spooked Deer can mean anything from her frog oven-mitt being misplaced, to actual Armageddon. But her mitt's right there, under the tray. She heads down the steps past our willow, the one with her wishing bench under it. The wishing bench is quite a new feature around here, but already the damned thing's listing into the dirt. She pays no mind, and flounces up to Pam's car.

'Howdy pardner,' she says to me, dripping with that cutesyshucksy Chattanooga-buddy-boy shit she started when I first showed evidence of having a dick. Feel the bastard shrivel now. I pull away, in vain because she chases me, covers me with spit and lipstick and fuck knows what else. Placenta, probably. All the while she smiles a smile you know you've seen before, but just can't put your finger on. Clue: the movie where the mother visits this young family, and by the end they have to grapple fucken scissors from her hands.

'Gh-rrr.' Vaine steps between us. 'I'm afraid your pardner here absconded from our interview.'

'Well call me Doris, Vaine! I'm almost a Gurie myself, I'm so cozy with LuDell, and Reyna and all.'

'Is that right. Mrs Little, let me explain where things stand…'

'Well these cakes are just singing out to be tasted–Vaine?'

'I'm afraid I don't make the laws, ma'am.'

'At least come up to the house–no point getting hot and ornery, we can straighten things out,' says Mom. I stiffen. You don't want Gurie poking around my room or anything. My fucken closet or anything.

'I'm afraid Vernon will have to come with me,' says Gurie. 'Then we need to take a look through his room.'

'Well, God, Vaine–he hasn't done any wrong, he always does like he's told…'

'Is that right. So far he's done nothing but lie, and when I trust him alone he absconds. We still can't account for him at the time of the tragedy.'

'He wasn't even there!'

'Not what he told us, he told us he was in math.'

'It was the time of our math period,' I correct. Print me a fucken T-shirt, for chrissakes.

'Then there's no need to worry,' says Gurie. 'If you have nothing to hide.'

'Well but Vaine, the news says it's open and shut–everybody knows the cause.'

Gurie's eyelids flutter. 'Everybody might know the effect, Mrs Little. We'll see about the cause.'

'But the news says…'

'The news says a lot of things, ma'am. The fact is we've run this county dry of body-bags, and I, for one, hold the opinion that it'd take more than a single, unaided gunman to do that.'

Mom stumbles to her wishing bench, abandoning her cakes to the side. She overbalances a little as the bench settles unevenly into the dirt. The fucken bench settles a different way every week, like it's indexed to her head or something. 'Well I don't know why everything has to happen to me. We have witnesses, Vaine–witnesses!'

Gurie sighs. 'Ma'am, you know how accessible the so-called witnesses are. Maybe your boy knew. Maybe not. The fact is, he absconded before our interview was over–people with airtight alibis just don't do that.'

This is how long it takes Pam to lever herself out of the Mercury. It grunts with relief as she lets go the frame. Fire ants catapult across the seat.

'I took him, Vaine. Found him near dead from starvation.'

Gurie folds her arms. 'He was offered food…'

'Fiddledy-boo, the Pritikin diet wouldn't even feed the nose on a growing boy.' One sweaty eye snaps to Gurie. 'How's it going, Vaine–the Pritikin diet?'

'Oh–fine. Gh-rr.'

That's Gurie stuck through like a bug. The crumpled-looking stranger with the camcorder catches my eye from under the Lechugas' willow, then looks at Vaine. He still has a smile without promise, a chalk smile that strikes me edge-ways, don't ask me why. Gurie pays no mind. She just fixes him in the corner of her eye. The guy wears tan overalls with a white dinner jacket, like ole Ricardo Moltenbomb, or whoever Mom's favorite was who had the dwarf on Fantasy Island. He eventually penguin-walks over the road, fixing his camcorder onto a tripod. It tells you he's either a tourist, or a reporter. Only way to tell reporters these days is by their names–ever notice how fucken bent your local reporters' names are? Like, Zirkie Hartin, Aldo Manaldo, and shit.

'So,' says Gurie, ignoring Moltenbomb. 'Let's get this child into town.' Child my ass.

'Well wait,' says Mom. 'There's something you should know–Vernon suffers from a kind of–condition.' She rasps it like it's cancer.

'Heck, Momma!'

'Vernon Gregory, you know you get that inconvenience!'

Jesus, fuck. My overbite grows a yard. Moltenbomb chuckles from the roadside.

'We'll take care of him,' says Gurie, wiping a hand on her leg. She nudges me down the driveway with her body; effective law-enforcement if you have ass-cheeks like fucken demolition balls.

'But he hasn't done any wrong! He has a clinical condition!' Clinical condition my fucken ass.

Just then, Fate plays a card. The hiss of Leona Dunt's Eldorado echoes up the street. The uterus-mobile from hell. It's full of Mom's two other so-called friends, Georgette and Betty. They always just drop by. Until Tuesday, Mrs Lechuga was the leader of this pack; now she's indisposed until further notice.

Leona Dunt only shows up when she has at least two things to brag about, that's how you know your position in life. She needs about five things to go to the Lechugas', so we're junior league. Fetus league, even. Apart from having the thighs and ass of a cow, and minimum tits, Leona's an almost pretty blonde with a honeysuckle voice you know got its polish from rubbing on her last husband's wallet. That's the dead husband, not the first one, that got away. She never talks about the one that got away.

Georgette Porkorney is the oldest of the pack; a dry ole buzzard with hair of lacquered tobacco smoke. We just call her George. Right now she's married to the sheriff, not that you'd want to imagine them doing anything. And get this: just like the rhinos you see in the wild on TV, she has a bird that lives sitting on her back. It's called Betty Pritchard, Mom's other so-called buddy.

Betty just has this mopey face, and tags along saying, 'I know, I know.' Her ten-year-ole is called Brad. Little fucker broke my PlayStation, but he won't admit it. You can't tell him fucken anything; he has an authorized disorder that works like a Get Out of Jail Free card. Me, I only have a condition.

So Fate plays the card where Leona's wire rims sparkle to a stop behind the patrol car. Ricardo Moltenbomb, the reporter dude, makes a flourish like a bullfighter, then steps aside as an acre of cellulite drains onto the dirt we call our lawn. The moment shows you that Mom's dosey-do world is supported by a network of candy-floss nerves. Now watch them fucken melt.

'Hi, Vaine!' calls Leona. She leads the way on account of being youngest, which means under forty.

'What, Vaine?' calls Georgette Porkorney. 'My ole man grow weary of you at the station?'

Mom takes the catch. 'Vaine's just doing a routine check, girls–come on up for a soda.'

'More trouble, Doris?' asks Leona.

'Well gosh,' says Mom. 'These cakes are perspiring!' Believe me, there ain't the life in those cakes to perspire.

Vaine Gurie preps her throat to speak, but just then Moltenbomb steps up to her with his camcorder and his alligator smile. 'A few words for the camera, Captain?'

An audience forms around them, consisting of Pam, Georgette, Leona, and Betty. Georgette's cigarettes appear. She's settling in. Betty's mope turns into a scowl, she steps back. 'You're not going to smoke on TV, are you–George?'

'Shhh,' says Georgette. 'I ain't on TV–she is. Don't piss me off, Betty.'

Deputy Gurie's lips tighten. She draws a long breath, and frowns at the reporter. 'Firstly, sir, I'm a deputy, and secondly you should consult the media room for updates.'

'Actually, I'm doing a background story,' says Moltenbomb.

Gurie looks him up and down. 'Is that right. And you are…?'

'CNN, ma'am–Eulalio Ledesma, at your service.' Sunlight strikes some gold in his mouth. 'The world awaits.'

Gurie chuckles and shakes her head. 'The world's a long way from Martirio, Mr Ledesma.'

'Today the world is Martirio, ma'am.'

Gurie's eyes dart to Pam. Pam's mouth jacks wide open like a kid in a fast-food commercial. The shape of the word 'TV!' shines out. 'Your Barry'll be so proud!' she says.

Deputy Gurie looks herself over. 'But I can't just go on like this, can I?'

'You're spotless, Vaine–get a grip,' tuts Pam.

'Is that right. Gh. And precisely what am I supposed to say?'

'Relax, I'll lead you right in,' says Mr Ledesma. Before Gurie can object, he sets down his tripod, aims the camera at her, and steps in front. His voice ripens to melted wood. 'Once again we don the cloak of mourning–a cloak worn ragged by the devastating fallout of a world in change. Today, the good citizens of Martirio, Central Texas, join me in asking–how do we heal America?'

'Gh-rr,' Gurie opens her mouth like she has the fucken answer. No, Vaine, duh–he ain't finished.

'We start on the front line, with the people whose role in the aftermath of tragedy is changing; our law-enforcement professionals. Deputy Vaine Gurie–does the community relate differently to you at a time like this?'

'Well, this is our first time,' she says. Like, fucken duh.

'But, are you increasingly called upon to counsel, to lend moral as well as civil support?'

'Stuss-tistically sir, there are more counselors in town than officers of the law. They don't enforce laws, so we don't counsel.'

'The community is meeting the challenge, then–pulling together?'

'We have some manpower over from Luling, and the dogs are here from Smith County, sure. A committee in Houston even sent up some home-made fudge.'

'Obviously freeing valuable time for you to spend with survivors…' Ledesma motions me over.

Gurie falters. 'Sir, the survivors have survived–my job is to find the cause. This town won't rest until the cause of the problem is identified. And corrected.'

'But surely it's open and shut?'

'Nothing happens without an underlying cause, sir.'

'You're saying the community has to search inside itself, maybe face some hard truths about its role in the tragedy?'

'I'm saying we have to find the one who caused it.'

Twinkles stab Ledesma's eyes. He reaches for my shoulder and pulls me into the frame.

'Did this young man cause it?'

Gurie's chins recoil like snails shot with vinegar. 'Gh-rrr–I didn't say that.'

'Then why should the American taxpayer bankroll you to detain him, on the first day of his probable lifelong trauma?' Other reporters move toward us down the street. Sweat brews on Gurie's face. 'That'll be all for now, Mr Lesama.'

'Deputy, this is the public domain. God Himself can't stop the camera.'

'I'm just afraid I don't make the laws.'

'The child has broken laws?'

'Well, I don't know.'

'You'll detain him just in case?'

'Gh-r.'

The frown on the sheriff's wife is almost down to her tits. Which is way down. Ledesma sizes her up, his tongue lolls restless in his cheek. Gurie tries to shuffle away, but he swings the camera like a gun.

'Perhaps you'll tell us the name of the sheriff who briefed you?'

The way Georgette Porkorney talks you wouldn't think she gave a shit about the ole sheriff. She gives one now, though. Her phone flies out of her bag in a shower of Kleenex.

'Bertram? Vaine's on TV.'

After a second, Gurie's phone rings in her pocket. 'Sheriff? No sir, I swear to God. Bandera Road? About two blocks from here. Dogs? Yes sir, right away.'

Ledesma folds up his camera and watches Vaine shuffle to her car, defeated. Then, as a crack of thunder chases the last shine from the pumpjack, he turns to me and winks in slow-motion. It has to be slo-mo for how fucken fast it is. I try not to smile. Or drop a load the size of fucken Texas.

'You owe me a story,' he mouths silently, pointing a short, puffy finger. I just nod, and follow my ole lady onto the porch with Leona, George, and Betty. She ushers them inside, then hangs back at the screen to see if ole Mrs Porter, childless Mrs Porter, out-of-the-spotlight Mrs Porter, is still watching from her doorway. She is, but she's pretending not to. Kurt the dog's watching, though. He don't care to pretend.

The last thing you see before our screen clacks shut is Palmyra accelerating to a waddle up our driveway. She passes Gurie, and jabs a finger at the stain around her badge.

'Uh-oh, Vaine–barbecue sauce.'

In a black and white world, everything in my room is fucken evidence against me. A haze of socks and underwear riddled with secret dreams. My computer has history to wipe from the drive, like the amputee sex pictures I printed for ole Silas. He doesn't have a computer, see. Silas is a sick ole puppy–don't even go there, really. He trades stuff with us kids in return for pictures, if you know what I mean. I make a note to wipe the computer, or 'Perform some Virtual Hygiene,' as Mr Nuckles would say. My eyes crawl around the rest of the room. Last week's laundry sits in a pile by my bed, Mom's lingerie catalog is under it; I have to return it to her room. And hope like hell she never tries to open page 67 or 68. You know how it is. Then there's my closet, with the Nike box in back. Inside are two joints, and two hits of LSD. Don't get me wrong, I'm only holding them for Taylor Figueroa.

Muddy light breaks through the gloom outside my window. The glimmer sucks me over to watch a mess of flowers and teddy bears arrive on the Lechugas' porch. Now it looks like Princess Debbie's place, or whoever the princess was who died. It's all just in a pile, still wrapped. So you know the Lechugas paid for it. Nobody else sent flowers for Max, that's the sadness of the thing. Pathetic, really.

I'm studying this whole tragedy routine, in back of my jellified brain. The Lechugas have to send themselves teddy bears, for instance. Know why? Because Max was an asshole. Saw-teeth of damnation I feel just thinking it, waiting for fiery hounds to unleash mastications and puke my fucken soul to hell. But at the same time, here's me with water in my eyes, for Max, for all my classmates. The truth is a corrosive thing. It's like everybody who used to cuss the dead is now lining up to say what perfect angels of God they were. What I'm learning is the world laughs through its ass every day, then just lies double-time when shit goes down. It's like we're on a Pritikin diet of fucken lies. I mean–what kind of fucken life is this?

I drag the crusty edge of a T-shirt over my eyes, and try to get over things. I should clean up my mess, seeing as everybody's so antsy, but I feel like smeared shit. Then a learning jumps to mind, that once you plan to do something, and figure how long it'll take, that's exactly how long Fate gives you before the next thing comes along to do.

'Vern?' Mom hollers from the kitchen. 'Ver-non!'

four

'Ver-non?'

'Do what?' I yell. Mom doesn't fucken answer. A typical mother thing, they just monitor the notes of your voice. If you ask them later what you said, they don't even fucken know. Just the noises have to sound right, like, dorky enough.

'Ver-non.'

I close my closet door, and step down the hall to the kitchen, where a familiar scene plays around the breakfast bar. Leona's in the kitchen with Mom, who's messing with the oven. Brad Pritchard is on the rug in the living room, pretending you can't see his finger up his ass. Everybody pretends they can't see it. See the way folks are? They don't want to smutten their Wint-O-Green lives by saying, 'Brad, get your fucken finger out of your goddam anus,' so they just pretend it ain't there. Same way they try and avoid the sting of mourning around this ole town. They can't, though, you know it. Their ribs are pressed tight with the weight of grief. The only hopeful sight is Pam, beached on dad's ole sofa at the dark end of the room. A Snickers bar appears from the folds of her moo-moo.

I go to the kitchen side of the bar, where Leona's still working up to her brags; she has to empty Mom out first, so her voice slithers up and down, 'Oh how neat, wow, Doris, oh great,' like a foam sireen. Then, when Mom's all boosted up, she trumps her.

'Hey, did I tell you I'm getting a maid?'

Mom's mouth crinkles. 'Oh–hey.'

Hold your breath for the second thing. George blows ultra-slim cigarette smoke over Betty as they pretend to watch TV; their ultra-mild smiles come from knowing how many things there are. Mom just frets over the oven. Gives her somewhere to stick her fucken head if no more things turn up. A bug of sweat crawls down her nose, 'Thk,' onto the brown linoleum.

'Yeah,' says Leona, 'she starts when I get back from Hawaii.'

The house sags with relief. 'Well gosh, another vacation?' asks Mom.

Leona flicks back her hair. 'Todd would've wanted me to do nice things, you know–while I'm young.' Like: yeah, right.

'Hell, but I can't believe today,' says George from the living room. That signals the end of the brags.

'I know, I know,' says Betty.

'You think things have gone as far as they can go, then–boom!'

'Oh golly, I know.'

'Six pounds if it's an ounce, and I only saw her last week. Six pounds in a week!' George weaves a trumpet of smoke around the words. Betty waves them away with her hand.

'It's that diet, all those carbs,' says Leona.

Pam grunts darkly in back.

'I know,' says Betty. 'Why didn't she stick to Weight Watchers?'

'Honey,' says George, 'Vaine Gurie's lucky to stick to the seat of her damn shorts. I don't know why she tries.'

'Barry threatened her,' says Pam. 'She has a month to ditch her flab, or he's gone.'

George points her mouth into the air, so the words will fly over her head to Pam. 'Then forget Pritikin–she needs the Wilmer Plan.'

'But Georgette,' says Mom from the kitchen, 'the Wilmer didn't work for me–not yet, anyway.'

Leona and Betty level eyes at each other. George coughs quietly. 'I don't think you quite got the hang of it, Doris.'

'Well, I guess I'm still trying it out, you know…Anyway, did I tell you I ordered the side-by-side fridge?'

'Wow,' says Leona, 'the Special Edition? What color?'

Mom's eyes fall to the floor. 'Well–almond on almond.'

Look at her: flushed and shiny with sweat, hunched under her brown ole hair, in her brown ole kitchen. Deep inside, her organs pump double-time, trying to turn bile into strawberry milk. Outside, her brown ole life festers uselessly around the jokey red bow on her dress.

I prompt her from the laundry end. 'Ma?'

'Well there you are–go ask that TV man if he'd like a Coke, it must be ninety degrees outside.'

'The one dressed like Ricardo Moltenbomb?'

'Well he's much younger than Ricardo Montalban–isn't he, girls? And better-looking…'

'Hnf,' says Pam.

George leans out of her chair to catch Mom's eye. 'You're going to ask a total stranger inside, just like that?'

'Well Georgette, we Martirians are known for our hospitality…'

'Uh-huh,' snorts George. 'I didn't see many of those cheerleaders up here, after their bus broke down that time.'

'Well but this is different.'

All the girls except for Pam exchange lip-tightenings. George clears her throat a little.

Brad Pritchard finishes with his ass. Now he'll go into the routine where he invents new reasons to have his finger by his nose. As I slip through the kitchen door, I catch his eye, point to my ass, then suck my finger.

'M-om,' he squeals.

Beulah Drive is spongy with heat. I wander over to a lemonade stand some kids have set up on number twelve's driveway; they ask fifty cents for information about the reporter, so I wander back, and check the red van under the Lechugas' willow. My nose flattens to the rear glass. You can see a lunchbox behind the seat, with half a brown apple in it. Some wires on the floor. A chewed-up ole book titled 'Make It In Media'. Then you see Ledesma's head rested on a pair of ole boots. He splays naked across a canvas mat inside, eyes closed, muscles heavy and slick. He jackrabbits when I spot him.

'Shit!' He jerks up onto an elbow, rubbing his eyes. 'Big man–come round to the door.'

I tap a stray teddy onto the Lechugas' lawn, and move around to the side. A blast of sweat hits me when the door opens. The guy's face is waxy. Definitely over thirty. I can tell my ole lady likes him, but I ain't so sure.

'You live in the van?' I ask.

'Tch–the motel's full. Anyway, it gives my corporate Amex a break.' A bunch of glass phials tumble across the floor as he grabs his clothes.

'Mom says you can come up for a Coke.'

'I could sure use your bathroom. And maybe a bite to eat.'

'We have joy cakes.'

'Joy cakes?'

'Don't ask.'

Ledesma grabs a handful of the tiny bottles from the floor, stuffing them into a pocket as he stretches into his overalls. He studies me through quick, black eyes. 'Your mom's stressed today.'

'This is one of her better days.'

He gives a laugh like asthma, 'Hururrr, hrrr,' and slaps me on the arm. Kind of slap my dad used to give me, when he was feeling friendly. We move back over the road and up the driveway, but Ledesma stops by the wishing bench to adjust his balls. Then he shakes his head, and looks at me.

'Vern–you're innocent, right?'

'Uh-huh.'

'I don't know why it gets to me, tch. All this shit raining down on you, I can't help thinking–what kind of fucking life is this?'

'Tell me about it.'

He puts a hand on my shoulder. 'I'd be prepared to help.'

I just stare at my New Jacks. To be honest, intimate moments aren't my scene at all, especially when you just saw a guy naked. Next thing you know you're in a fucken TV-movie, quivering all over the place. I guess he senses it. He takes his hand away, tweaks his crotch again, and leans against the wishing bench, which sharply tilts away.

'Shit,' he says, pulling back. 'Can't you stand this somewhere flat?'

'Yeah, like–back at the store.'

He laughs. 'You should tell your story, little big man, clear your name–the world loves an underdog.'

'What about the spot we just did, with Deputy Gurie?'

'Tch–camera wasn't running.'

'Get outta town.'

'Call it a favor–between underdogs.'

'You're an underdog?' Mrs Porter's door opens as I say it; Kurt's nose snuffles out.

'Only underdogs and psychos in this world,' says Ledesma. 'Psychos like that fat-assed deputy. Think about it.'

I don't think long. You have to quiver on TV, it's a fucken law of nature. You have to quiver and be fucken devastated all the time. I know it for sure, and you'd know it too if you saw Mom watching Court TV. 'See how impassive he is, he chopped up ten people and ate their bowels but he doesn't show a care in the world.' I personally don't see the logic in having to quiver if you're innocent. If you ask me, people who don't eat your bowels are more likely to be impassive. But no, one learning I made is that juries watch the same shows as my ole lady. If you don't quiver, you're fucken guilty.

'I don't know,' I say, turning to the porch.

Ledesma hangs back. 'Don't underestimate your general public, Vern–they want to see justice being done. I say give them what they want.'

'But, like–I didn't do anything.'

'Tch, and who knows it? People decide with or without the facts–if you don't get out there and paint your paradigm, someone'll paint it for you.'

'My what?'

'Pa-ra-dime. You never heard of the paradigm shift? Example: you see a man with his hand up your granny's ass. What do you think?'

'Bastard.'

'Right. Then you learn a deadly bug crawled up there, and the man has in fact put aside his disgust to save Granny. What do you think now?'

'Hero.' You can tell he ain't met my nana.

'There you go, a paradigm shift. The action doesn't change–the information you use to judge it does. You were ready to crucify the guy because you didn't have the facts. Now you want to shake his hand.'

'I don't think so.'

'I mean figuratively, asshole,' he laughs, punching out six of my ribs. 'Facts may seem black and white by the time they hit your TV screen, but professional teams sift through mountains of gray to get them there. You need positioning, like a product in the market–the jails are full of people who didn't manage their positions.'

'Wait up, I have a witness, you know.'

Ledesma heads up the porch steps. 'Yeah, and Deputy Lard-ass is so interested. Public opinion will go with the first psycho who points a finger. You're butt-naked, big man.'

We creak through the screen into the cool of the kitchen. Mom's here, all wiped dry with her frog mitt, a smudge of joy cake on one cheek. The other ole flaps are in the background acting natural.

'Ladies!' says Lally, grinning. 'This is how you lounge, while I'm outside like a slave?'

'Oh, Mr Smedma,' says Mom.

'Eulalio Ledesma, ma'am. Educated people call me Lally.'

'Well can I get you a Coke, Mr Lesma? Diet, or diet-decaf if you prefer?' Mom loves it when important people call by, like the doctor and all. Her lashes flutter like dying flies.

Lally hoists his ass onto the kitchen bench, makes himself comfortable. 'Thanks, just water for me–and maybe one of these cakes. Actually I have something exciting to share with you ladies, if you're interested.'

'Wake me when it's over,' mutters Pam in back.

Lally pulls out the glass bottles, filled with like piss. 'Siberian Ginseng Compound.' He jams one into my hand, winking. 'Better than Viagra.'

'Hee, hee,' go the girls.

'So, Lally,' says Mom, 'do you sleep in the van, or…?'

'Right now I do–motels are full between here and Austin. I hear some generous townsfolk are taking in guests, but I haven't come across them yet.'

'Well, ahem,' Mom looks down the hall. 'I mean…'

'Doris, you're not going to let Vernon drink that stuff, are you?' It's George's distraction technique, look at it. It gives me mixed feelings. I mean, I'm glad she interrupted my ole lady from inviting Ledesma to stay. But now everybody's attention snaps to me.

'Oh, it's harmless,' says Lally. 'Great stress-buster.'

George watches me fondle the phial. Her eyes narrow, which is a bad fucken sign. 'Like you're real stressed, Vern. Got a job for the summer?'

'Nah,' I say, downing the ginseng. It tastes like dirt.

'Doris, you hear the Harris boy bought a truck? Paid cash for it too, a Ford truck. All the boys I know have summer jobs. Course, they all have haircuts too.'

'It ain't a Ford,' says Brad from the floor.

'Bradley,' says Betty, 'I wish you wouldn't say "ain't".'

'Pluck off.'

'Don't you talk to me like that, Bradley Everett Pritchard!'

'Goddam what? I said "Pluck" for chrissakes, I mean, shit!' He spits and squirms across the rug, then stomps up to Betty and smacks her in the gut.

'Bradley!'

'Pluck off, pluck off, PLUCK OFF!'

I just stay quiet. Lally looks over, sees my eyes fixed longingly up the hall. He gulps his ginseng and says, 'I appreciate your help, big man–maybe your room would be a better working environment.' He turns to Mom. 'I hope it's no problem–Vern agreed to collate some local data for me…'

'Oh, no problem Lally, gosh,' says Mom. 'Quickly, Vern! Hear that girls? It's a job for Lally, he's colliding data for Lally!'

I scurry away like a pack of rats. 'Only job he'll get looking like that,' says George. 'Guilty-looking hair, if you ask me. And those shoes don't help none either, same shoes as that psycho Meskin…'

Fuck her. I kick a pile of laundry, and slam my bedroom door. What I'm seriously considering, in light of everybody's behavior, is just to evacuate through the laundry door; hop a bus to Nana's, and not even tell anybody. Just call up later or something. I mean, the whole world knows Jesus caused the fucken tragedy. But because he's dead, and they can't fucken kill him for it, they have to find a skate-goat. That's people for you. Me, I'd love to explain the sequence of events last Tuesday. But I'm in a bind, see. I have family honor to think of. And I have my ma to protect, now that I'm Man of the House and all. Anyway, whoever points a finger at me, just for being a guy's friend, has some deep remorse coming. Tears of fucken regret, when the truth comes marching in. And it always comes, you know it. Watch any fucken movie.

I still hear everybody through my bedroom door, talking like bad actors, the way they do. 'It's a challenging time for everyone,' says Lally.

'I know, I know.'

'And Vaine's pushing things so hard,' says Leona. 'Can't she sense our grief?'

George barks a cough. 'My ole man's pushing Vaine hard–he gave her a month to pump some life into her conviction average, or she's history.'

'You mean he'd throw her off the force,' asks Mom, 'after all this time?'

'Worse. He'd probably make her Eileena's assistant.'

'Oh my God,' says Leona, 'but Eileena's like–the receptionist. That's as low as Barry's job!'

'Lower,' Pam chuckles darkly.

You hear a quiet gap. That means everybody's sighing. Then Mom goes, 'Well this is sure a big month for Vaine. And I can't say it's going too well, the way she's handling Vernon and all.'

'Tch,' goes Lally. 'Maybe the dogs'll shed some light.'

'Dogs?' asks Leona.

'Sniffer dogs, from Smith County.'

'Well but, what can dogs do now?' asks Mom.

'Can I call you Doris?' asks Lally. His voice drops a tone. 'You see, Doris, people are asking how anyone in their right mind could orchestrate such a rampage. They're starting to wonder if drugs were involved. If rumors about a drugs link are correct, these specialist dogs will tie it up as fast as cock a leg.'

'Well good,' huffs Mom, 'I feel like calling them over here right now, and putting a stop to this ridiculous business with Vernon.'

I take the drugs out of the shoebox in my closet, and drop them into my pocket. The joints leave my hand wet. Kurt barks outside.

five

To be fair, the rumors about ole Mr Deutschman didn't say he'd actually dicked any schoolgirls. Probably just touched them and shit, you know. Real slime though, don't get me wrong. He used to be a school principal or something, all righteous and upstanding, back in the days before they'd bust you for that type of thing. Maybe even before talk shows, back when you'd just get ostracized by word of mouth. He probably used to get his hair cut at the fancy unisex on Gurie Street, with the coffee machine and all. But not anymore. Now he slinks through the valley behind the abattoir, to the meatworks barber shoppe. Yeah, the meatworks has its own barber on Saturdays. It's just ole Mr Deutschman and me here this morning. And Mom.

'Well don't listen to Vernon, the unisex usually takes off a lot.'

Her head-scarf and shades supposedly make her invisible. The invisible twitching woman. Me, I wear the reddest T-shirt you ever saw, like a goddam six-year-old or something. I didn't want to wear it. She controls what you wear by keeping everything else damp in the laundry.

'Well go ahead, sir, it'll only grow back.'

'Hell, Ma…'

'Vernon I'm only trying to help you out. We'll have to find you some decent shoes too.'

Sweat starts to pool in my ass. The lights are off, just one ray glows sideways through the door onto these green tiles. The air reeks of flesh. Flies guard two historical barber chairs in the middle of the room; white leather turned brown, cracked and hardened to plastic. I check them for arm clamps. I'm in one, Deutschman is in the other; his hands creep around under his gown. He seems happy to wait. Then a whistle blows outside, and the meatworks' marching band assembles on the gravel in the yard. 'Braaap, barp, bap,' band practice starts. One majorette I see through the door is about eighty-thousand years ole, her buns smack the backs of her legs as she marches. My eyes flee to a TV in the corner of the room.

'Look, Vernon, he doesn't have arms or legs, but he's neatly groomed. And he has a job, look–he even invests on the stock market.'

They ask the kid on TV what it feels like to be so gifted. He just shrugs and says, 'Isn't everybody?'

The barber mostly slashes mid-air; two halves of a fly hit the deck. 'Barry was here. Said there could be a drugs link.'

'A drug slink, yes,' says Mr Deutschman.

'A drugs link, or another firearm.'

'Another farm, uh-huh. I heard it was a panty cult–you hear it was a panty cult?'

On balance, today sucks. You don't want to be here if they find any drugs. So I'm here with two spliffs, and two acid pearls in my pocket; nasty gels, according to Taylor, like your mind would projectile-exit your nose if you took one. I tried to ditch them on the way down, but Fate was against me. Fate's always fucken against me these days.

Load my pack, and lope away is what I'll do; all crusty and lonely, like you see on TV. Ditch Taylor's dope, and lope away. More successfully than last night, with Lally and the world's media camped outside. I only got four steps away from my porch before they came a-sniffing. Now they think I take out the trash in my backpack. Last night was long, boy, long and shivery with ghosts and realizations. Realizations that I have to act.

'Vaine's coming down with they dogs,' says the barber. 'I'll tell her we need a SWAT team, with some of they automatic guns, that rip the meat off offenders' bodies, not any ole dogs.' Click, slash; he evens up my skull. I scan the floor for ears.

'Meat's better'n dogs,' says Deutschman.

'Sit still, Vern,' says Mom.

'I have stuff to do.'

'Well, Harris' store might take you on.'

'What?'

'For a job, you know–Seb Harris even bought himself a truck!'

'That ain't what I'm talking about. Anyway, Seb's dad just happens to own the whole store.'

'Well, you're the man of the house now, I'm counting on you to make good. All the boys I know have jobs, that's all.'

'Like which boys, Ma, like just who?'

'Well–Randy and Eric?'

'Randy and Eric are dead.'

'Vernon Gregory, I'm just saying if you want to prove you're all grown up it's about time you got wise to the way things work in this world. Be a man.'

'Yeah, right.'

'And don't you get smart either, in front of everybody. Don't let's end up like that other time after I found those underpants.' Deutschman's hand twitches under his gown.

'Damn, Momma!'

'Go ahead, cuss your mother!'

'I ain't cussing!'

'My God, if your father was here…'

'Here's Vaine,' says the barber. I spin out of the chair, ripping the gown off over my head.

'Well go ahead, Vernon–go right ahead and humiliate your mother, after all that's happened to me.'

Fuck her. I bang out through the screen into the sun. Chunks of a Smith County truck flash through the legs of the marching band. Martirio may be a fucken joke, but you don't mess with the boys from Smith County. Smith County has armored personnel carriers, for chrissakes. Trombones spit glare, horns throw back pictures of me puckering, melting, shrinking into the bushes at the steep end of the compound.

Hot grasses heckle my face on the way up the hill; skeeterhawks twitch through the air, but dust is too bored to rise up. One cloud hangs in the sky, over my empty, desperate body. My ole lady won't run after me. She'll stay back, tell all my slime to the boys, so they can wear a knowing smile next time they see me. Underpants my ass. And there's no drugs link, is there fuck. Jesus never had the damn money. See Hysteriaville here? Science says there must be ten squillion brain cells in this town, but if you so much as belch before your twenty-first birthday they can only form two thoughts between them: you're fucken pregnant, or you're on drugs. Fuck it, I'm outta here. Life's simple when I'm angry. I know just what to do, and I fucken do it. Underpants my fucken ass.

I'll tell you a learning: knife-turners like my ole lady actually spend their waking hours connecting shit into a humongous web, just like spiders. It's true. They take every word in the fucken universe, and index it back to your knife. In the end it doesn't matter what words you say, you feel it on your blade. Like, 'Wow, see that car?' 'Well it's the same blue as that jacket you threw up on at the Christmas show, remember?' What I learned is that parents succeed by managing the database of your dumbness and your slime, ready for combat. They'll cut you down in a split fucken second, make no mistake; much quicker than you'd use the artillery you dream about. And I say, in idle moments, once the shine rubs off their kid–they start doing it just for fucken kicks.

I stop dead. Something crackles around the bend on the track. It's the red van, spinning a trail of fluff-balls down the hill. Like somebody with oldtimer's disease, who doesn't remember what's good for them, I glance at my T-shirt. 'Ping,' it jackrabbits to Lally. He stops with a crunch, forcing down the electric window with the flat of his hand. Tappets mark time with my heart, tic, tic, tic.

'Big man!'

I wave, like I'm in the freezer section at the fucken Mini-Mart or something. I should drop the drugs where I stand, but the dogs are close by. They'd know. Anyway, I ain't that decisive in life, not with all this grief on board, not with my anger evaporated. It fucken slays me. Van Damme's your man if you want the drugs dropped right here.

Lally calls me over. 'See those cops? They came from your place–jump in.'

Ginseng clinks around the floor as we cut a fresh trail toward home.

'Where's the rest of your head?' Lally slicks down his eyebrows in the mirror. You can tell the mirror hasn't pointed at the road awhile.

'Don't ask,' I say.

'You going somewhere?'

'Surinam.'

He laughs. 'How'd you get down here? I didn't see a car this morning…'

'We walked.' I'm supposed to say Mom's car is in the shop. But it ain't in the shop. The car paid for the new rug in the living room, the one Brad wipes his fingers on.

'What do you think the cops want?'

'Search me.'

'Tch.' Lally shakes his head. 'Things won't get any easier, you know. Take my advice–I could cut a report by sundown, it could air by tonight–Vern? I think it's time to tell your story. Your real, true story.'

'Maybe,' I say, slouching low in the seat. I feel Lally watching me.

'You don't even have to appear, I can patch it together from clips of friends and family. Camera's loaded, big man. Just say the word.' I hear Lally's offer, but just sit wishing Marion Nuckles would tell his damn story. He knows I'm clean, he was there. I can't believe I get all the heat–me, who has family secrets to watch out for–while he lounges around in goddam silence. I mean, what's he holding back?

A wrong note from the meatworks' band coughs us onto Beulah Drive in a swirl of leaf tatters. A baby marketplace has grown around the pumpjack since I've been gone. One stall sells Martirio barbecue aprons, just like Pam's. Next to it, some media men pay a buck a hit for some fudge from Houston. One of the fudge sellers gloomily puts on an apron. The apron sellers gloomily munch fudge. My face goes Porked Monkey. It's the face for when life around you travels in fucken dog years, but you stay frozen still. For instance, a whole mall grows around the pumpjack, but I'm here with the same problems I went out with this morning. I just look down, herd ginseng with my foot.

'Take one,' says Lally.

'Say what?'

'Take some ginseng, keep your strength up.'

As he says it, I notice the ginseng is the same shade of piss as the acid pearls in my hand. Dogs would never smell through the ginseng. I reach down for a bottle, but Lally brakes to avoid a stray teddy under the Lechugas' willow; I overbalance, the dope cigarettes fall from my hand.

Lally switches off the engine, looks at the joints, picks one off the floor, sniffs it, and grins. Then he looks at me. 'Tch–you could've just said you didn't want to share.'

'Uh, they ain't mine actually.'

'Not for long, anyway,' he says, frowning into his mirror.

I spin around to see the Smith County truck nose onto Beulah Drive, a block behind us. Velcro fucken ant-farms seize my gut.

'Here, give them to me,' says Lally. He lifts himself up, and stashes the joints through a tear in the seat.

'Thanks–I'll be right back.' I fly across our lawn, into the house, and up the hall to my room, where I pick the cap off the ginseng. I take Taylor's LSD pearls and poke them into the bottle. They blend right into the piss, and the cap replaces like new. I drop the bottle into the Nike box, next to my padlock key, and hide it back in my closet. As I stroll onto the porch, all nonchalant, cooled by a sweat of relief, I see Vaine Gurie, Mom, and a Smith County officer arrive in the truck. Air-conditioning blows their hair like seaweed underwater, except Mom's, which blows more like one of those tetchy anemone things. Lally sits quiet in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. I guess he turned out okay, ole Lally, in the end. 'A good egg,' as the once-talkative Mr Goddam Nuckles would say.

Fate suddenly plays its regular card. Leona's Eldorado sashays past the pumpjack, full of musty, dry wombs and deep, bitter wants. Mom withers. The fucken timing of these ladies is astounding, I have to say, like they have scandal radar or something. They foam out of the car like suds from a sitcom washing machine, except for Brad, who stays in back. He's eating a booger, you can tell. Betty Pritchard gets out and starts to strut around the lawn like a fucken chicken.

'I think I need the bathroom–I just can't be sure with this infection.'

Leona and George take the high ground by our willow. 'Hi, Doris,' they wave. I almost make it back into the house, but Vaine Gurie unfolds faster than you'd expect from the cab of the truck. 'Vernon Little, come down here please.'

'Another setback, Doris?' asks Leona, hopefully.

'Well it's nothing, girls,' says Mom. 'There's some fudge inside.'

'We don't have long,' says Leona, 'they're coming to lay the sunken patio at three.'

'Well, I thought it was the people with my Special Edition,' says Mom, scuttling over the dirt. 'I saw the car, and thought the new fridge was here…'

'Ma?' I call. She doesn't hear.

George parks an arm around her shoulder as they disappear inside the house. 'Honey, of course they'll come after him if he insists on looking like that–that haircut's the pits.'

The screen clacks shut, Mom's voice trails away into the dark. 'Well I couldn't sway him, you know how boys are…'

'Vernon,' says Gurie. 'Let's go for a little ride.'

I search her face for signs of uncovered truth, imminent apology. None appear. 'Ma'am, I wasn't even there…'

'Is that right. Makes it difficult to explain the fingerprints we found then, doesn't it.'

Picture a Smith County Sheriff's truck with me inside, sitting quiet on a road between three wooden houses. Bugs chitter in the willows, oblivious. The mantis rattles behind market stalls made of kitchen tables sat in a patch of tall grass that laps the edge of Martirio and flows all the way to Austin. Then Brad Pritchard appears at my window; nose to the sky, finger pointed at his shoes.

'Air Maxes,' he states. 'New.'

He stands with his eyes shut, waiting for me to blow a fucken kiss, or break down weeping or something. Asshole.

I lift my leg to the window. 'Jordan New Jacks.'

He squints momentarily before pointing at my Nikes. 'Old,' he explains patiently. Then he points at his. 'NEW.'

I point at his, 'Price of a Barbie Camper.' Then at mine, 'Price of a medium-range corporate jet.'

'Are not.'

'Are fucken too.'

'Enjoy jail.'

His shuffle across the lawn turns into a scamper up the porch steps. A single raised finger shines back at me through my own front doorway, until the screen cracks shut in front of it. Then, just as the officers start the truck, the screen swings open again. My ole lady bursts out, and hurries down to the road.

'Vernon, I love you! Forget about before–even murderers are loved by their families, you know…'

'Heck, Ma, I ain't a murderer!'

'Well I know–it's just an example.'

Lally shoots me a stare from his van, motioning like a camera with his hands. 'Just say the word!' he yells.

Mom stands helpless in the road behind us, and parks her chin on her chest. Her lips prime up for tears. The pain of it ploughs me over, inside out. I spin to see Lally through the back window as he rushes to her, puts a hand to her shoulder. Her ole soggy head leans toward it. He slides his shoulder under to absorb her tears, then stands tall, and stares gravely at my truck disappearing.

I can't take it. I lunge across Gurie and holler back through her window with all the air in the fucken world: 'Do it, Lally–tell 'em the fucken truth.'

Jail is sour tonight. Dead like the air between your ass and your underwear when you're sitting down. A TV buzzes somewhere in the background; I listen out for a news-flash about my innocence, but instead the weather report theme plays. I hate that fucken theme. Then a voice bangs down the corridor. Footsteps approach.

'Don't you let me find them burgers gone, I mean it. Sure, right, it's Dr Actions Diet Revolution now, huh. All your noise about Prettykins, and now–don't tell me–it's a fuckin burger diet, right? Sure, fuckin protein, uh-huh. What? Because there is no other news except your fuckin barn of an ass…'

The man stops outside my cell. Light through the grille outlines a fuck-you pout crowded with teeth. Barry E Gurie–Detention Executive, says the badge. He sees me awake, and presses the phone into his neck.

'You ain't pullin your rod in there are ya, Little? You ain't chokin your chicken all day and night, are ya?' He laughs this smutty laugh, like Miss goddam Universe just sucked his boy or something. Even at long range his breath hits you like a solid block, just slithers down your face leaving a trail of onion-relish and lard. What a disgusting human being, I swear. If this is how much of an asshole everybody's going to be, about such a devastating fucken issue, then I better get the hell out of town. Maybe even out of Texas. Just until they get the story straight. Nana's ain't even fucken far enough, the way folk are behaving right now.

Barry continues his rounds, lingering for the rest of the night down by the TV. I lay back onto the bunk in my cell, and drift into the important and scary business of my future. Remember that ole movie called Against All Odds, where this babe has a beach-house in Mexico? That's where I can run. Mom can visit after things die down. There she is, sobbing with joy, ole spanky-cheeked Doris Little, who could be played by Kathy Bates, who was in that movie Misery. Tears of pride at the excellent sanitation, and at my decent, orderly life. See how it works? It's the future now, young Vernon has been vindicated. Now he's buying her a clay donkey, or some of those salad utensils Mrs Lechuga makes such a big deal about. The salad utensil seller would say to me, 'You want the same kind Mrs Lechuga got, or you want the Deluxe edition?' There's a fucken point up Mrs Lechuga's ass. See? That's definitely my new plan. I like the food just fine, burritos, and cappuccinos and whatever. They say money's cheap down there, hell–I could really make good. Folk must live in those beach-houses, for real.

But the pessimist in me says, 'Kid, forget vacations, what yez need is a cake wid a fuckin bomb in it.' My pessimist has a New York accent, don't ask me why. I ignore it. The question of the babe needs thought; you never see guys running alone, admit it. Who to take is Taylor Figueroa. She's in Houston now, in college or something, on account of being older than me. But she's the fox to take. Moist air stirs me through the bars of my cage, and in my mind it becomes a shunt of hormone from the lip of her skirt. I'll take that girl to Mexico, see if I don't. Now that I'm grown up, now that I've been to jail and all. I wasn't close to her at school, even though we nearly made out once. I say nearly because, fucken typical of me, I had her on a plate and I let her go. You're just never taught when to be an asshole in life. There was this senior party that I wasn't invited to, and Taylor was there, face as soft as panties, just her big wet eyes seeped out. She left the party and crashed on the back seat of a Buick in the Church parking lot, where I just happened to be with my bike. She was wasted. She called me over. Her voice was sticky like freshly bitten cake. Some drugs fell out of her clothes onto the ground by the car. I picked them up. She said to keep them for her, in case she passed out or whatever. I kept them too, you know it. Boy was she fucken bent though. She started saying my name, and writhing around the back seat of the car. Don't even ask me who drives a fucken Buick at our school, but she added some value to his back seat. I helped unpeel her shorts a little, 'So she could breathe'–her words, not mine–I didn't even know you could breathe from down there. Brown Wella Balsam hair licked her body all the way down to her buns, where gray cotton tangas peeped out; clefted heaven in workaday dew. She was wasted, but conscious.

So guess what your fucken hero did, take a shot. Vernon Gonad Little went into the party and sent her best friend out to mind her. I never got a finger to her panties, even though I was close enough to catch the lick-your-own-skin-and-sniff-it disease that wastes me today; fucken hauntings of hollows between elastic and thigh, tang ablaze with cotton and apricot muffin, cream cheese and pee. But no, duh, I went inside. I even kind of strode in, like a TV doctor, all fucken mature. It fucken slays me, she was right there. I tried to look her up again, but Fate deployed the shutdown routine you get whenever you miss a ripe opportunity in a dumb way. A billion reasons she can't be located, and fucken blah, blah, blah. So much for Taylor Figueroa.

Tonight, though, my hand is her mouth. Every stroke of my boy brings her cotton closer, burrows vents for her fruit-air to escape and waste me. Mexican fruit-air, boy, if I have my way. As I abandon myself to the dream, muffled wisps of the TV-news fanfare travel the corridor like an infection. Then a prisoner snorts with laughter.

six

'You touch bag? Make fingerprince?' This is what Mr Abdini asks me. Don't even ask me the rest of his name.

'Fingerprints? Uh–I guess so.' I'm uneasy enough today, without having to meet folk like this.

Abdini is fat the way an anvil is fat, but his face is probably swept back by the velocity of his talking. He's my attorney. The judge appointed him. I guess nobody else works Sundays around here. I know you're not allowed to say it anymore, about other places being different and all, but, between you and me, you can tell Abdini is the product of centuries of fast-talking and double-dealing. Ricochet Abdini, 'Bing, ping, ping!' He's dressed in white, like the Cuban Ambassador or something. A jury would convict on his fucken shoes alone, not that his shoes are my biggest problem. They're the least of my fucken problems, know why? Because if you take a bunch of flabby white folk, of the kind that organize bake-sales and such, and put them in a jury, then throw in some fast-talker from God-knows-where, chances are they won't buy a thing he says. They can tell he's slimy, but they're not allowed to officially do anything, on account of everybody has to pretend to get along these days. So they just don't buy what he says. It's a learning I made.

Therefore, Mr Something Fucken Abdini Something stands sweating in my cell, getting ready to say 'Therefore' probably. His eyes bounce across a file in his hand, which is all about me. He grunts.

'You tell me whappen.'

'Uh–excuse me?'

'Tell me whappen in school.'

'Well, see, I was out of class, and when I came back…'

Abdini holds up a hand. 'You went batroom?'

'Uh–yeah, but that wasn't…'

'Very impotent evidence,' he hisses, scribbling in the file.

'No, see, I was…'

Just then the guard clanks at the door. 'Shh,' goes Abdini, patting my arm. 'I fine out. You don tsetse fly today. We try bail.'

Barry ain't around this morning; another guard escorts us through the sheriff's back door, and down the alley behind Gurie Street. Abdini said there couldn't be any media in court today, on account of me being a juvenile. Anyway, everybody's at the funerals. 'An option holding limited appeal,' as the now-dumbstruck Mr Asshole Nuckles would say. It's bitterly hot today; unusual this early in summer. And quiet like when you hold your breath, though you can still sense cotton dresses over on Gurie Street, and kids jumping through sprinklers. Typical Sunday things, but with the damp fizz of tears about them. They come with their own wave of sadness.

Three buildings along from the sheriff's office stands Martirio's ole whorehouse, one of the Wild West's most beautiful buildings. The fun gals are gone though, now it's next to the courthouse. The only gal left is Vaine Gurie, a whole barrel-load of fucken laughs. She waits for us at the back. Her eyebrow rides high today. I'm led up some stairs into the mostly empty courtroom, where the guard maneuvers me into a small wooden corral, with a fence around it. It's almost possible to be brave in here, if you add up your Nikes, your Calvin Kleins, your youth, and your actual innocence. What shunts you over the edge is the smell. Court smells like your first-grade classroom; you automatically look around for finger-paintings. I don't know if it's on purpose, like to regress you and freak you out. Truth be told, there's probably an air-freshener for courtrooms and first-grade classrooms, just to keep you in line. 'Guilt-O-Sol' or something, so in school you feel like you're already in court, and when you wind up in court you feel like you're back in school. You're primed for finger-paintings, but what you get is a lady behind one of those sawn-off typewriters. Court, boy. Fuck.

I look around while everybody shuffles papers. Mom couldn't make it, which ain't such a bad thing. I learned that the authorized world doesn't recognize the knife. Your knife is invisible, that's what makes it so convenient to use. See how things work? It's what drives folk to the blackest crimes, and to sickness, I know it; the thing of everyone turning the knife just by saying hello, or something equally innocent-sounding. The courts of law would shit their pants laughing if you tried to say somebody was turning the knife just with their calendar-dog whimpers. But here's why they'd laugh: not because they couldn't see the knife, but because they knew nobody else would buy it. You could stand before twelve good people, all with some kind of psycho-knife stuck in them that loved-ones could twist on a whim, and they wouldn't admit it. They'd forget how things really are, and slip into TV-movie mode where everything has to be obvious. I guarantee it.

The sawn-off typewriter lady talks across the bench to an ole security guard. 'Oh my, it's a fact. We had a copy of that same catalog, me and my girls.'

'No kidding,' says the guard, 'that same one, huh?' His tongue pushes some spit around his mouth. That means he's picturing whatever she just said. He shunts some spit around, picturing it for a moment, then he says, 'Don't forget the judge has girls too.'

'That's a fact,' says the typist.

They turn to stare daggers at me. The typist's daggers come wrapped in Kleenex, I guess so they don't get shit on them. I just stare at my Nikes. Things have gone beyond a fucken joke. You just know the justice system ain't set up for folk like me. It's set up for more obvious folk, like you see in movies. Nah, if the facts don't arrive today, if everybody doesn't apologize and send me home, I'll jump bail and run over the fucken border. Against All Odds. I'll vanish into the cool of tonight, see if I fucken don't, hum cross-country with the moths, with my innocent-headed learnings and my ole panty dreams.

'All-a rise,' says an officer.

A bright-eyed lady with short gray hair and bifocal glasses glides behind the tallest desk. Judge Helen E Gurie says the sign. Her swivel chair rattles politely when she sits. The Chair of God.

'Vaine,' she says, 'it'd have to be one of your cases, now wouldn't it?'

'Gh-rrr. We have a suspect, Judge.'

Abdini stands. 'We apply pearlymoney herring, your honor.'

The judge squints over her glasses. 'A preliminary hearing? Wait one darned minute, I draw both your attentions to the Texas Family Code–this is a juvenile matter. Vaine, I sure hope you observed the provisions for service of process that apply in this instance.'

'Gh-r.'

'And why is no record of interview filed with the complaint?'

Just now the main door creaks open behind me. Sheriff Porkorney scrapes into the room and takes off his hat. Vaine stiffens like a bone.

'We hoped a particular piece of evidence would come in first, ma'am,' she says.

'You hoped the evidence would come in? You hoped it would just fly right in? How long has this young man been in custody?'

'Gh…' Vaine's eye flicks back to the sheriff. He just stands by the door, arms folded, real quiet.

'Good Lord!' Judge Gurie snatches a paper from her desktop. 'You're seeking indictment?' She removes her glasses, fixing a stare at Vaine. 'And fingerprints is all you have?'

'Let me explain, ma'am, that…'

'Deputy, I doubt you'll cook up a grand jury on one set of prints. Won't even defrost 'em.'

'It's more than one set, your honor.'

'Doesn't matter how many you have, they're all from the same exhibit, the sports bag. I mean–please. Maybe if it was a gun…'

'Ma'am, some new information came into the public domain last night, which I thought…'

'The court isn't interested in what you thought, Vaine. When you take the pointed end of a stick and wake this whole tangled process up with it, we want to hear what you damn well know.'

'Well, the boy also lied, and he ran away from his interview…gh…'

Judge Gurie clasps her hands like a first-grade teacher. 'Vaine Millicent Gurie–I remind you the child is not on trial here. Given the particulars before me, I'm inclined to release your suspect and have a damn long talk with the sheriff about the quality of procedure reaching this bench.'

Her gaze penetrates Vaine's every hole, however many that is. At the back of the room, the sheriff's lips tighten. He puts on his hat and creaks back out through the door. I don't know about where you live, but around here we teach life's hard lessons with our lips.

Abdini stands. 'Objection!'

'Pipe down, Mr Abdini, we have other attorneys on call,' says the judge.

Gurie lifts her eyebrow. 'Your honor, this new information, you know…'

'No, I do not know. What I know ain't a whole lot so far.'

The typist and Gurie exchange a glance. They sigh. The ole court officer immediately turns to frown my way. 'She ain't seen it yet,' the guard behind me says under his breath. Everybody tightens their lips.

'What is going on here?' asks the judge. 'Has this court slipped into a parallel universe? Have I been left behind?'

'Ma'am, some new facts came to light–we're following them up right now.'

'Then I'm going to release your suspect until you can show me some particulars. I also expect you to apologize for all this trouble.'

A high-voltage tremor cracks through me, of hope, excitement, and ass-naked fear. You think I'm going to stick around for the so-called justice system to get its shit together? Am I fuck. Buses leave Martirio every two hours for Austin or San Antonio. The automatic teller machine with fifty-two dollars in it, from Nana's lawnmowing fund, is a block from the Greyhound station. Which is five blocks from here.

The typist sighs, and tightens her lips some more. Then she leans up to the bench and cups a hand to the judge's ear. Judge Gurie listens, frowning. She puts on her glasses and looks at me. Then at the typist.

'When's the next report? Lunchtime?'

The typist nods; one righteous eye darts to Vaine. The judge reaches for her hammer. 'Court is adjourned until two o'clock.'

'Bam.'

'All-a rise,' says the guard.

Men hardened by the friction of learning, steel men of savvy quietly applied, crusty ole boys of rough-hewn glory, probably smoke a lonely cigarette in their cells during lunch breaks from court. They probably don't have to talk to their moms.

'Well Vernon, what I mean is, do you have your own room, or did they put you with other–you know, other men…?'

Barry stands leering by the phone, eyes puckered into goats' cunts. It seems Eileena's eyebrows perch high this lunchtime too, as far as her wooden hair allows. I don't know about where you live, but around here we take the moral high ground with our eyebrows.

'Well you know,' says Mom, 'you hear about the nice boys, the clean boys, always getting–you know, you hear about bigger men, hardened criminals, always getting the nice boys and…'

After God-knows-how-many years of life in this free country she doesn't have the tools to just say, 'Have you been taken up the ass yet by some lifer?' That's how pathetic things are. Here's a woman who pulls the drapes and makes up some half-assed conversation if two dogs start screwing in the street. Yet, for all I know she probably takes a fucken fire-hydrant up the ass every night, just for kicks. Boy, I tell you.

Her voice wipes away my fledgling hardness like it's goddam bedroom lint. What kind of fucken life is this? Light through the window calls me, sings of melted ice-cream on the sidewalk outside, the ghost of little tears nearby. Summer dresses full of fresh air, Mexico down the way. But not for me. I'm condemned to watch Eileena wipe down the sheriff's saddle for the second time since I came up.

I find myself wondering if the sheriff's saddle usually gets so much attention, and if it does, why it ain't worn away to nothing. Then I see the room has a TV. Eileena's eye snaps to it.

It's the lunchtime news. You hear the fanfare of trumpets and drums, then the face of an asshole appears in the far distance, staring through the back window of a departing Smith County Sheriff's truck.

'Vernon, I have some bones to pick with you,' says Mom.

'I have to go now.'

'Well Vernon…'

'Click.'

My eyes latch onto the screen. A breeze rustles cellophane on the Lechugas' teddy farm, then snags a wire of Lally's hair and floats it off his head. The pumpjack squeaks rhythmically under his voice. 'This proud community takes a decisive step from the shadow of Tuesday's devastation, with the arrest of a new player in the deadly web of cause and effect that has brought the once-peaceful town to its knees.'

'Ain't see me on my fuckin knees,' says Barry, straddling a chair.

'To his neighbors, Vernon Gregory Little seemed a normal, if somewhat awkward teenager, a boy who wouldn't attract attention walking any downtown street. That is–until today.'

Lush pictures fill the screen, of crime-scene tape dancing under a blackened sky, body-bags punctuating drag-marks of blood, moist ladies howling pizza-cheese bungees of spit. Then a school photo of me, grinning.

'I definitely saw changes in the boy,' says George Porkorney. You can see her cigarettes hidden behind the fruit-salad plant on the breakfast bar at home. 'His shoes got more aggressive, he insisted on one of those skinhead haircuts…'

'I know,' says Betty in back.

Cut to Leona Dunt. Her handbag needs to be a yard taller for how big the word Gucci is written on it. 'Wow, but he seemed like such a regular kid.'

Black, disordered xylophone music joins the soundtrack as the camera bumps up the hallway to my room. Lally stops by my bed to face the camera. 'Vernon Little was described to me as something of a loner; a boy with few close friends, given more to playing on his computer–and reading.' The camera takes a vicious dive into the laundry pile by the bed. Out comes the lingerie catalog. 'But we find no Steinbeck, no Hemingway in Vernon Little's private library–in fact, his literary tastes run only to this…' Pages flap across the screen, sassy torsos cut me that once tugged chains of shameful sap through my veins. Then we hit page 67. Flapping stops. 'An innocent prop,' asks Lally, 'or a chilling link to the confused sexuality implied by Tuesday's crimes?' Twisted violins join the xylophone. The shot pans over my computer screen to the file marked 'Homework'. 'Click.' Cue the amputee sex pictures I saved for ole Silas Benn.

'Well golly,' says Mom. 'I had no idea.'

Lally sits beside her on my bed, cranking his brow into a sympathetic A-frame. 'As Vernon's mother, would it now be fair to number you among the victims of this tragedy?'

'Well, I guess I am a victim. I really guess so.'

'Yet you maintain Vernon's innocence?'

'Oh God, a child is always innocent to his mother–well even murderers are loved by their families you know.'

Some fucken powerdime shift. Lally lets it sit there. Even Barry Gurie knows it's all over, he just sighs out of his chair and says, 'Time to go down.' He steadies me to the door, but I turn for the blow I know is coming. Things could've been different if I'd learned to spell earlier, if I'd just been a smarter, more regular kid. But as things turned out, I was almost seven before I could spell The Alamo. So there's no title at all on the finger-painting I gave Mom when I was five. Just a bunch of stick-corpses and a shitload of red.

'Well, you can see he was just a normal little boy, in almost every way.'

'All-a rise.' The court officer detours around my computer, and a boxload of other shit that turned up on the courtroom floor. Mom's panty catalog has a table all to itself. Even my ole finger-painting is here, but they don't seem to have bothered with my Nike box. The ozone in court has a new, unhealthy crunch to it.

'Mr Abdini,' says the judge, 'I trust your client understands he is being arraigned–I draw your attention to the various issues of waiver that might apply.'

Abdini cocks his head. 'Your honor?'

'The matter will proceed to indictment, sir. Might be time for you to act.'

'Ma'am,' I say, 'this whole thing can be cleared up with a call to my witnesses, my teacher and all…'

'Shhh,' hisses Abdini.

'Counsel, please inform your client that he's not on trial here. Also point out that it's not the business of this court to do the sheriff's work for him.' She sits back for a moment, then turns to Vaine.

'Deputy–you have checked alibi witnesses?'

'I'm afraid the last witness, Miss Lori-Bethlehem Donner, passed away this morning, Judge.'

'I see. What about the boy's teacher?'

'Marion Nuckles didn't mention the suspect's whereabouts at the time of the tragedy.'

'He didn't mention, or you didn't ask?'

'His doctors say he won't be able to talk until the end of March next year. We couldn't get more than a few words, ma'am.'

'Well dammit Vaine. What were those words about?'

'Another firearm.'

'Oh good Lord.'

Vaine nods, tightening her lips. She can't fucken stop herself glancing at me as she does it.

'We apply bail your honor,' says Abdini.

'Is that right,' says Gurie. 'Judge, the boy has a history of absconding, from before he was even in trouble…'

Abdini throws out his arms. 'But little man is part of family home, with plenty things in the house–why he won't stay?'

'It's a single-parent family, Judge. I don't see how a woman on her own can override the will of a teenage boy.' She ain't seen the fucken knife in my back.

'It's nothing short of tragic,' says the judge. 'Every child needs a man's hand. Is there no way to contact the father?'

'Gh–he's presumed deceased, Judge.'

'Oh my. And the boy's mother couldn't make it to court today?'

'No, ma'am–her car is under repair.'

'Well,' says Judge Gurie. 'Well, well, well.' She leans back into her throne and makes a church with her fingers. Then she turns to me. 'Vernon Gregory Little, I'm not going to turn down your application for bail at this time. But neither am I going to release you. In light of the facts here presented, and commensurate with my responsibility to this community, I am remanding you in custody pending a psychiatric report. With reference to any recommendations in that report, I may consider your application at a later date.'

'Bam,' goes the hammer.

'All-a rise,' says the officer.

Muzak plays near the cells tonight. It fucken lays me out and buries me alongside my friends. It goes: 'I beg your par-den, I never promised you a rose gar-den.' Hot weather always brings these fucked ole tunes, always in the background, in fucken mono. Fate. Like, notice how whenever something happens in your life, like you fall in love or something, a tune gets attached. Fate tunes. Watch out for that shit.

I lay on the bunk and imagine this tune playing at a Greyhound terminal. In the TV-movie of my life, I'd be the crusty, mixed-up kid, all rugged and lonely, older than my years; dragging long shadows to hop a bus out of town, a bus with Mexico written on it. 'Pssschhh,' the crusty ole driver opens the door of his motor-coach, and smiles like he has a secret, that everything turns out fine. The kid's boot steps out of the dirt. His guitar swings low. A cowgirl with blond hair and Levi's sits alone, halfway down the aisle, probably wearing blue cotton panties under. Bikinis, or tangas. Probably bikinis. Nothing crusty about her. See what I mean? It's this kind of strategic vision that separates us from the animals.

My ole lady calls, but I can't make my imagination deal with her. I have until fucken Wednesday to do a little dreaming. That's when the shrink can see me. I survive two and a half days with Jesus' leaden soul in the shadows, and three rubber nights atwanging with soundbites of his death. In the end, I pass the time practicing faces for the psychiatrist. I don't know if it's better to act crazy, or regular, or what. If the shrinks on TV are anything to go by, it'll be fucken hard to find out, because they just repeat every damn thing you say. If you say, 'I'm devastated,' they go, 'I hear you saying you're devastated.' How do you deal with that? All I know is what I learned last week, that a healthy life should feel spongy, like a burrito. This Tuesday night, the first-week anniversary of the shootings, my life feels like a fucken corn chip.

I hear Barry's keychain swinging up the corridor, clink-a-clink. He stops by the grille of my door, out of sight, just breathing and clinking. He knows I'm waiting for him to say I have a call. But he starts to walk away, then shuffles back again. See?

'Little?' he finally says.

'Yeah, Barry?'

'That's Officer Gurie to you. You ain't porkin the preacher in there are ya? You ain't tossin the ham javelin all night long, thinkin of your Meskin boy? Grr-hrr-hrr.'

Fuck him to death. He walks me upstairs to the phone, and I fantasize about ramming his baton up his goddam ass. Not that he'd probably even feel it.

The weeping sax from the TV weather plays in the office, just to cheer me up. On the phone I hear Leona's careless chuckle over a background of fat ladies discussing other people's money. The weather plays at their end too. I get it in fucken stereo. Then comes the skidmark of my ole lady's voice.

'Vernon, are you all right?'

Her sniffling feels like she physically has her tongue in my ear, like an anteater or something. Makes me want to puke and bawl at the same time, go fucken figure. Here's why she's going for gold, let me tell you: it's because now I'm not only in jail, but I might be fucken crazy as well. What a bonanza for her if I'm fucken crazy as well. Then her problem would be that she already spent her best whimpery moves; like, she'd have to shred a tit or something, just to keep up with the Unfolding Tragedy of Her Fucken Life. Out of kindness, I absorb the maximum number of sniffles before speaking.

'How could you do that to me, Ma?'

'Well I only told the truth, Vernon. Anyway young man, how could you do all this to me?'

'I didn't do anything.'

'Well, famous actors put toothpaste under their eyes to help them cry. Did you know that?'

'Say what?'

'I'm just telling you for court, in case you look too impassive. You know how impassive you can look.'

'Ma–just don't talk to Lally anymore, okay?'

'Hold on,' she takes her mouth from the phone, 'it's all right Leona, it's the fridge people.' You hear questioning noises in back, about the time of night, then Mom comes on the line again. 'Well it's ridiculous–I've waited days for you people!'

'Goodnight, Ma.'

'Wait!' She presses her mouth to the phone, whispering. 'Vernon–it's probably best not to mention anything about the, er…'

'Gun?'

'Well yes, probably best to keep it between us, you know?'

My daddy's gun. If only my ole lady had let me keep it at home. But no. The fucken gun gave her the tremors. I had to stash it far from the house, way out in the public domain. Nuckles must know it's there. Jesus must've used it as a wild card, must've mentioned it to stop him following, to make him think there was an arsenal stashed away. But then Jesus died. Took the information, the context, all our innocent boyhood times with him. Took the truth with him.

Just my gun's left behind, with all the wrong fingerprints on it. Left behind, just waiting.