Less Than Human (21 page)

Just one ball.

Jesse watched the striped ball turn, the number fifteen slowly appearing, disappearing, as though it were an eye winking at him.

"C'mon, you son of a bitch," Jesse whispered. "Come on." He leaned over the table closely tracking the progress of the ball, throwing all the body English he could muster as he urged it toward the pocket.

The fifteen was going to make it.

A few more inches.

That was when the three ball clipped the fifteen, stopped it.

And just like that, the game was over. At first no one could believe that Jesse had made nothing on the break. They stared at the table, waiting for something to fall, but all the balls were still now.

"Tough break, son," Earl said softly. "I thought you had that fifteen."

Jesse didn't answer. He didn't know if he could, even if he wanted to, because there was this sudden, vast emptiness inside of him. He looked at the money for a second before stripping off a hundred and handing it to Earl. "That okay with you, Bobby?"

"Give him another hundred. He's got to get some work done on his car." Bobby grinned. "Besides, I kind of like the old bastard."

"Much obliged," Earl said. He stuck the money into the pocket of his ratty old jacket. "You boys put on a good show tonight."

Before Bobby could pick up the money on the table, another stack of bills landed beside it. "There's twenty grand there," Steven Adler said, "against your ten grand." His grin outshone Bobby's. "You made a hundred and twenty-six balls. Here's the deal: I say I can make two hundred and fifty-three balls, that's twice your count plus one, and I can do it in fifteen minutes." Steven picked up the money and fanned it beneath Bobby's nose. "I'm giving you two-to-one odds. We play for thirty grand. What do you say, Bobby, you got the cojones?"

It was Bobby's turn for a case of cotton mouth. The guy was fast, Bobby had seen him snatch that beer bottle out of the air like it was nothing. Could anyone really make that many shots in fifteen minutes? Bobby searched the faces in the crowd, trying to find the answer, and saw Amy Warrick standing beside Jesse. She had her arm around Jesse's waist, but her taunting expression was meant for Bobby alone.

This wasn't going as Bobby had planned.

Everyone waited for him to answer.

"All right, mister, you got yourself a bet," Bobby finally said. "You got fifteen minutes, not one second more." He pulled off his watch and announced the time. "There's no way you can sink two hundred and fifty-three balls in fifteen minutes."

Bobby was right.

Steven Adler did it in fourteen.

Chapter 12

B
obby Roberts was not in a good mood when he dropped Kevin, Nash, and Boyce in front of the bunkhouse. They climbed out of the car without a word, slammed the door.

Bobby turned off the Caddy and waited for them to say what was on their minds. He already had a pretty good idea what that was. Nobody had said more than two words on the way back from Jake's place, and now, as they stood huddled in the predawn chill, all was quiet except for a few fitful gusts of wind pushing a squeaky weather vane around.

Somewhere in the distance, the clatter of a passing train came. It was a lonesome sound.

Bobby took in the familiar sights and smells of the ranch and yet they all suddenly felt alien to him, as though he had become a stranger here at the Broken R. From the bunkhouse, the smell of wood smoke carried on the night air. The outlying buildings were a solid presence. Everything looked the same but it was somehow changed. Different.

Bobby kept waiting for his friends to say something.

But they held their silence, and this time, it had the ring of judgment in it.

Bobby started up the Caddy, put it in drive, changed his mind and slammed the lever into park. "Anybody got anything to say about tonight, go on and say it."

The three hired hands looked at each other as though trying to decide who would speak Finally, Nash stepped forward. "That was a bad thing you did to Jesse tonight. He's been your buddy ever since he took the fall for you in high school. Ever since you trashed old man Denton's car. Christ, Denton was the principal. They wanted to kick your ass out of school over that one, or have you forgot? Do you know what your old man would have done to you?"

"Screw the car," Boyce said. "Jesse's one of us. You backed him into a corner, Bobby. You made him bet every cent he had."

"I gave him an out."

Nash spat on the ground as though he tasted something bad. "It wasn't much of an out. You knew he couldn't take it, not with his girl standing there."

Looking from face to face, Bobby saw their anger. "Is that the way the rest of you feel? That I did wrong?"

They wouldn't look at him.

Kevin seemed more sad than angry. "You went too far this time, Bobby."

"You can go straight to hell, all of you. I didn't make Jesse bet all his money." Bobby, stung, drained his beer and threw the empty can at their feet. "I thought you were my friends, but I can see I was wrong." He ripped the Caddy into drive and punched the gas, raising a cloud of dust that swallowed the three ranch hands. When he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw they were gone, as though the wind, which had blown the dust away, had blown them away, too.

Bobby tried desperately to hold on to his anger so he wouldn't feel the hole their words had left in him, but he couldn't do it. Because he knew what they had said was true.

The sprawling two-story Spanish ranch house swam into the Caddy's lights, materializing into the Marlboro Man's wet dream, all stucco and adobe on the outside, leather couches, fake Western macho decorations of cowhide and steer horns on the inside. Bobby hated it. Many times as a kid he had dreamed of burning it down.

Once, after a particularly savage beating, he had almost found the guts to do the job. That had been years ago, a sweaty July night. After his first rodeo. He had been eleven at the time, scared to death, and he had peed his pants during the calf riding, embarrassing his dad.

Later on that night, Chester had beaten Bobby with his fists. Bobby was filled with shame and rage.

He held on to that rage.

Held on to the only thing that kept him from fading away. Even then, he had felt the hollowness inside eating at him.

Watching the heat lightning out of his window had given him the idea. He saw the pale smudges of anger behind the clouds, flickering yellow, as though someone had set the night sky on fire, and he knew what he had to do. Knew with perfect clarity.

He had entered his dad's room and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at the man who lay there. In Bobby's hands was a box of matches. He struck one, and then another, match after match, holding them until they burned down to his fingers, and he watched the flames with bright, shiny eyes, feeling the pain. Savoring it. He smiled when the skin curled and peeled away from his fingers and the scent of his burning flesh filled his nostrils. When his flesh turned black, his smile turned to laughter. He struck every match and held them over the bed until the box was empty.

Dropping a match on the bed would have been easy, so easy. Everyone knew Chester smoked in bed. It would have been a perfect murder.

The next morning, over breakfast, Chester kept staring at Bobby's blistered hands, as though he were seeing his son for the first time, and Bobby knew his dad had found the curled, burned matches at the foot of the bed.

Neither of them ever said a word about it, but from that day on, his dad never touched him again.

Now they lived in the big house together, existing in an uneasy truce, just the three of them, the unholy trinity as Bobby called it: the father, son, and the holy ghost. The ghost was Bobby's mom.

Bobby cruised up to the oil slick that marked his parking spot and turned off the motor. Punching the lighter in his Caddy, he jammed a cigarette in his mouth. The lighter popped out of the dash with an audible click. Bobby guided the cherry red metal to the cigarette, took a deep breath, dragging the smoke down into his lungs while he tried to get up enough courage to go into the house.

Over the cigarette smoke, the odor of burning flesh filled the car. He looked down and saw he had ground the lighter into the palm of his hand.

It stayed there until the metal went cool.

There were two cars in the driveway and that was the reason Bobby didn't want to go into the house. His dad had returned from that stock-buying trip down in Dallas. One car was a late-model Caddy with a broken R on the door; the other was a silver BMW with Texas plates on it. Old Chester must have found more than just a good breeding bull this time out. Bobby was glad his bedroom was at the other end of the house so he wouldn't have to listen to his dad's drunken rutting.

Bobby thought about all the nights that his dad had come home drunk, of all the times his dad had beaten his mom. After the beatings came the creaking of the bedsprings, followed by the crying. Elizabeth Roberts had been gone a little over eight years now. Nobody knew where. The last Bobby had heard from her was a letter postmarked Cedar City, Utah, on his sixteenth birthday. It said she was sorry he'd had to grow up on his own, and that she hoped he'd forgive her.

Bobby loved his mom.

And hated her.

She had been the only one to escape this place. Sometimes Bobby wondered if he would ever get away from here, but he didn't like to think about that too much, because if he did, his head might start hurting again. And if that happened, there was only one thing that could stop the pain—a box of matches.

Bobby said a prayer that his old man was passed out drunk or upstairs with his latest bimbo.

Things had gotten out of hand back at Jake's, and Bobby hadn't meant for that to happen. Jesse and Amy were his friends, always had been. They had been drawn together by the fact they had grown up with only one parent.

As the years had gone by, he and Jesse had become friendly rivals for Amy's affections.

Friendly, until Amy chose Jesse.

Bobby knew she would never pick him over Jesse. He had seen the hatred in her face tonight.

Then, if things weren't bad enough, those hustlers from Texas had made him look bad in front of his friends.

Tonight had been the worst night he could remember.

Still drunk, Bobby pushed through the front door of the house and almost fell over a chair feeling for the light switch. He froze in place when he heard the faint sound of a TV.

His dad was awake.

Bobby eased through the darkness, trying to get to his room without being heard. On the way he stopped by the refrigerator and grabbed a cold beer. The way his head felt, he would need it before morning.

The sound of TV lured Bobby toward the family room and he felt a ball of ice form in the pit of his stomach when he peeked in and saw the shapeless bulk of his dad stretched out on the recliner. The big rancher stirred, causing the chair to creak.

This was just great, Chester was awake. The perfect end to a perfect day.

"Son of a bitch," Bobby whispered with feeling, "I can't believe it. What else can go wrong tonight?"

But Chester didn't move again.

Bobby felt a ray of hope.

He tiptoed a little farther into the family room, avoiding a loose floorboard by long habit, trying to see if his old man was really passed out or just faking it. Chester Roberts was out, his hat was tipped forward over his face as he lay stretched out on the recliner.

Bobby turned to head for his room, when quite suddenly, for no good reason, he felt something was wrong.

It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, but he felt uneasy just the same. The only real light came from the stone fireplace at the far end of the room and it was beginning to burn low, so he really couldn't see much of anything. Bobby looked over at the TV; saw it held flickering black-and-white images of long-dead cowboys riding their long-vanished celluloid range. It was one of those fifties Westerns, the kind where the good guy could pull a guitar faster than a six shooter, the kind where the good guy never kissed a girl. Bobby could identify with that.

And then it came to him what was wrong; his old man hated those kind of Westerns almost as much as he did.

Bobby moved closer to the recliner. Slowly, carefully, reached for Chester's hat.

"Morning, Bobby. You're up kind of late."

Bobby jumped and then started laughing with relief when he recognized the voice of the man in the chair. "Jesus Christ, Mr. Strickland, you scared the crap out of me. I thought you were my dad." He wiggled the light switch in the family room and discovered that someone had removed the bulb. "You seen the old fart tonight?"

"He's upstairs taking a little rest with his lady friend."

"Good. What're you doing sitting here in the dark all by yourself?"

"Nothing much, just watching a little TV, waiting for you to get home." Martin stared at the screen for a moment, watching the cowboys ride into the black-and-white sunset, and his voice grew wistful. "You like old Westerns, Bobby?"

"You mean that Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy crap?"

"Yeah, that kind of crap."

"No, I hate the things."

"I guess most young people today feel the same way as you. Me, I love 'em. They take me back to when I was a kid, back to Saturday matinees… before the world changed and everything got complicated." He sighed. "Before Doralee left. Back in the old days you went to the movies and you watched the good guys kick the shit out of the bad guys. You got a happy ending every time. Guaranteed." Martin laughed, then caught himself, as though he was embarrassed by his little confession. "Sometimes I think it's too bad real life's not like that."

Bobby was becoming uncomfortable at Martin's rambling and more than a little uneasy. "Mr. Strickland, it's getting kind of late. Did you want something?"

"I'm sorry; I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes before you hit the sack."

"Yeah, about what?

"About this knife I've been looking for."

"What kind of knife?"

"It's from the Navajo graveyard, got a handle carved into a red snake. I thought you might have seen it. I can't seem to find it anywhere."