Southland (18 page)
Jackie still didn’t know what to say. Everyone, it seemed, had something awful in their lives—some death or misfortune that shaped them. But she had nothing; her life had been flat and textureless as a starched white sheet. And while she’d always considered herself lucky to be so blessed, now she felt that she was somehow not real. She couldn’t bring herself to comment on what Lanier had just told her, so she tried to take their thoughts in another direction.
“So you have a sister?”
Lanier looked at her in disbelief. He’d told her about his family and this was her response? But he managed to answer her, in a much colder voice than before. “Alice. She’s three years younger than me. She manages a Sears out in Riverside County.” He looked away, and Jackie followed suit. In the silence that followed, Jackie became aware of the conversation at the table just behind them, of the rustle of a skirt as the waitress walked by. She looked up at Lanier again and tried to pull herself together. “Lanier,” she said. “James.” He raised his eyes. “I’m sorry about your dad.” She didn’t know if this was the appropriate thing to say about a man who’d killed eight people, but Lanier smiled. His anger faded. He was back with her again.
“Thanks.” And as they sat there looking at each other, silently, Jackie felt something shift. She didn’t have time to ponder this, though, because just then, from behind her, she heard Laura’s voice.
She spun around and saw Laura turn the corner with Kristine, both of them a step behind the waitress. Laura spotted her right away. Jackie watched Laura take in the scene; watched confusion fill her face. The waitress led the two women past the table, but they stopped for a moment, and Jackie and Kristine exchanged hellos. Then Kristine went on to their table, and Laura stood there, looking at Jackie, her lips pressed tightly together. “Hi,” Laura said. “What are you doing here?”
Jackie saw the red spots of anger rising in Laura’s cheeks, and it occurred to her how intimate this scene must have looked. But Laura knew—Jackie knew she knew—that she had no reason to worry.
“Laura,” she said, before the silence got too uncomfortable, “this is James Lanier. He works at the Marcus Garvey Community Center down in the Crenshaw district. James, this is my friend Laura.” She was afraid, briefly, that Laura would jump in here and make a crack about just what kind of friend she was. Laura didn’t, though. She nodded at Lanier without speaking to him; her attention was all on Jackie.
“I called you a little while ago,” she said. “I thought you were staying in tonight.”
The words were accusatory. Out of the corner of her eye, Jackie saw Lanier glance up at Laura and then look down at his plate. “I was,” she replied. She tried to look her girlfriend in the eye and assure her that there was nothing to worry about, but she knew it was precisely this, the consciousness of her effort, that made it appear like she was lying. “I was just sitting there reading, when James called. He was in the neighborhood on business, so…” She was just digging herself in deeper. “Anyway, I’ll be home in a little bit. Can I call you later?”
Laura pressed her lips together. “I won’t be home. Kristine and I are going to a movie after this, and then we might meet Marie for a drink. So who knows what time I’ll be back.”
“Well, then, do you want to call me when you get in?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you. I’m sure you’ll be busy.”
They just looked at each other, Jackie half-annoyed and half-amused at Laura’s jealousy. Finally, she said, “All right. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye,” Laura threw at her, hostilely, and then she went on to her table. Jackie watched her sit down and lean toward her friend; watched Kristine look over at her and Lanier, then turn back to Laura and whisper. She was afraid to look at Lanier, so she stared at her fork as it pushed noodles around on her plate.
But Lanier’s mind wasn’t totally on her. He felt slashed open by what he’d said about his father. He so rarely thought of him, was only sometimes aware of a series of vague half-images from a time that was almost pre-memory. A pair of large hands hoisting him over a shoulder. The faint hint of bitter smell from the thick, conked hair. The face he couldn’t conjure, but he remembered the way it clouded over, the way a man’s deep yelling shook the house. The enveloping, stifling silence when he was finally gone for good. “She seems pretty attached to you,” he finally said, cautiously. He wasn’t sure what he’d just seen.
Jackie looked at him and saw the bewilderment, and something else, in his eyes, and wondered how much he suspected. “Yeah, well, she’s pretty intense.”
Their plates were empty, and the air had shifted again; they got the bill and paid up quickly. They walked out of the restaurant together, and when they reached Jackie’s car, they just stood there, not knowing what to say. Finally, wincing at the awkwardness of the gesture, Jackie stuck out her hand. Lanier smiled a bit and shook it. They agreed to talk in a couple of days, and Jackie suggested that they meet over the weekend—after she got in touch with Lois—so she could show him the contents of the box.
Less than an hour later, just as Jackie was finally losing herself in the reading she’d been trying to do all night, the phone rang and made her jump off her chair.
“What the hell was that all about?” Laura demanded without saying hello.
“It wasn’t a date, Laura.”
“Well, I know that,” said Laura, although Jackie wasn’t convinced that she did. “But who was he, and what were you talking about? Seems like you were pretty comfortable with this person, and I don’t even know who the hell he is. It would be nice,
honey
, if you could let me in on a little of your life.”
Jackie sat down in her desk chair, spun around, and watched the phone cord wrap around her ankles. “I’m sorry. You’re right. He’s just…We’re both…I mean…He’s from the Crenshaw district, where my mom and Lois used to live, and he’s helping me find someone who worked for my grandfather.”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
Spinning herself around again, Jackie gave Laura a brief, selective summary of the family’s history in Crenshaw. She mentioned the store and the kids who used to frequent it, and the family’s move to Gardena. She told Laura that her grandfather had willed some money to one of the kids. Listening to herself cut, edit, censor, distort, she wondered why she wasn’t telling the truth. There were plenty of things she didn’t share with her girlfriend, but those were just silences, acts of omission. This was a flat-out lie. Even the summary she was giving, though, she began to regret. What little she revealed to Laura now was already too much.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Laura demanded. “Why’d you keep it a secret? Now I know why you’ve been so preoccupied the last couple of weeks, and I thought…well, you can imagine what I thought. I would have been understanding, you know. It’s great that you’re doing this, but why don’t you ever share things with me?”
Jackie thought,
this is why,
but what she said was, “I’m sorry.” Laura was appeased for now, and after a few more minutes of catch-up and chatter, they said their goodnights and hung up. Jackie turned to the clock: it said 10:40. She hoped that James had made it home safely.
F
RANK WAS sitting behind the cash register when he heard the noise at the back door. It was late afternoon, about five o’clock; Victor would appear in a minute for their afternoon smoke. The noise was light and clattering, as if a sudden gust of wind had blown the screen door against the frame. He lowered the paper he’d been reading, listened for a moment, and then looked back at the
Times
. But then he heard it again, a light
bang bang bang,
someone appealing very gently. He put his paper down and walked to the back door, thinking about the new shipment of ice cream that sat in the back freezer, which he needed to move to the smaller freezer out on the floor.
It was the blood he saw first, a cascade of red against the bright white shirt, wide as a tucked-in napkin. The boy was resting his head on his forearm, which was pressed flat against the door frame, and when Frank approached, he pulled his head up to reveal the smashed face. The jaw was huge and purple, like some overripe fruit. The upper lip was split open and his cheek was cut. One eye was swollen, swirled in purple, and there was blood everywhere, obscuring his face.
“Curtis!” Frank managed. “My God, what happened to you?”
He pushed the screen door open and pulled the boy in quickly, as if the attacker might still be out in the alley. He took him into the office, sat him down on the couch, and retrieved towels, ice, a basin. The boy who was working that day, David, was out at the moment, delivering groceries to a neighborhood widow, and Frank was glad for this; his immediate instinct was to keep Curtis hidden.
He dropped ice into a plastic bag and wrapped the whole bundle in a towel. He filled the basin with warm soapy water. Then he made the boy strip off his shirt, so he could determine that the dark caked blood had come from his nose and mouth and not from a hidden wound on his neck or chest. Frank knelt before the boy, mumbling to himself, dipping a cloth into the basin and dabbing the boy’s cheeks and forehead. By the time he finished, the liquid in the basin was as pink as cherry smash, each touch of the cloth sending swirls of red through the water. Frank examined the cleaned face now—the black eye, the cut cheek, the bruised but not broken jaw, a few abrasions to the forehead and nose. There were other, not visible wounds—the bump on the back of the boy’s head, the bruised leg Frank only knew about because of the way the boy had limped. Looking at Curtis’s face, he thought of his father, lying sideways, bruised and beaten on the gurney. He felt that old anger fuse with this newer one and coil through him, twisting and twitching.
“Who did this to you?” he asked finally, after giving Curtis the cold pack to hold against his jaw. “If their parents don’t punish them good for this, I’m…”
“Nobody,” said Curtis.
“What do you mean, nobody?” He thought of the flat-eyed young men who huddled together on corners and in alleys, beckoning people over to exchange bags for money, or keeping them at a distance with their glares. He thought of the knife the boy always carried, and was thankful he hadn’t used it.
“I mean nobody, all right? It’s no big deal.” His voice was getting fluttery and high.
Frank, who’d been leaning in close to the boy, now sat back on his feet. He stood, walked over to the desk, and hit the side of the bookcase, hard. Several books fell off the shelves, and bills and papers fluttered down to the floor. He bit his lip, clenched and unclenched his fists, and wondered if he and Victor still had it in them to take on a group of punks. He leaned in toward the boy and beckoned softly: “Come on, Curtis. Tell me what happened.”
“They kicked me in the back of the
head
, man,” he said, voice quivering. “And in my thigh, and in my face. And they punched me a couple times, and I was just scared they were gonna kill me. I don’t know why they were trying to mess me up like that, I wasn’t doin nothing, we were just hanging out.” With his other hand, he covered his eyes, and Frank heard the low, pained sobs. Frank felt like a fist had plunged through his chest and thrust its nails into his heart. He sat on the couch and put his arms around the boy, who collapsed against him, crying. They stayed like that for several minutes.
Finally, Frank spoke again. “We have to call your mother.”
Curtis shook his head no against Frank’s chest. “She’ll do something stupid. She’ll start a damn protest or something and get me into worse trouble.”
Frank was torn. Curtis was right about his mother—there was no way she’d sit still on this. And if she
did
go after the punks who’d done this, or after their parents, they’d do nothing but laugh—or worse, take their displeasure out on Curtis. “Well, what do you want to do?” he asked. “You can stay here until you feel a bit better. But you’ve got to go home sometime.”
“I just wanna lie down for a while,” Curtis said. “And I don’t wanna go home until my mama’s asleep. Can you tell her I’m working late?”
“She’s going to see your face sometime. It’s not going to be much better tomorrow.”
“I just can’t talk to her now. Not yet. All right? You go on back out to the store, Mr. Sakai. I’m sorry to be bothering you like this.”
Frank stood looking for a moment while the boy lay down. Then he reached behind the door, pulled out a clean white shirt, and placed it on the arm of the couch. Finally, he went back out to the store, shutting the door behind him.
The boy was asking him to lie. He needed Frank to back him up with Alma, to not call her, to pretend he didn’t know what had happened. It was a strange position to be in, especially since he’d given Curtis the job in the first place as a favor to his mother. Alma had been concerned about Curtis, and had told Frank about the suspension during his final year in junior high, about the more complicated messes his friends had gotten into. She’d been less worried in the last year or so, since he’d started watching his brother and cousin, but she still thought he needed structure, useful things to fill his time, and to keep him away from the flateyed boys, who were aging fast and growing in number. Curtis liked Frank, it was obvious; he always brightened on seeing him and started dropping by the store on his own. So it was only a matter of time before Alma asked Frank if he needed another boy to help out. And he did, since Akira Matsumoto was gone, starting college at UCLA.
This job was for Alma, a favor to her. But it was also true that Frank had always kept an eye on the boy from afar; had worried over his slips and rejoiced at his triumphs. By having Curtis work there, he could see him more often. Curtis worked three days a week, and David three, and Derek Broadnax two, overlapping one day with each of the others. Frank loved being at the store, preferred it to his house, his tense, accusing wife and older daughter. Sometimes, on Sundays, he and Victor would collect all the boys—along with Lois if she was willing, and Kenji Hirano if it was one of his good days—and take them to a Dodgers game, or bowling, or fishing up in Baldwin Hills.
Curtis had been there for six months now, and was already the best worker that Frank had ever had. Like his mother, the boy was totally focused. She was right about him—he needed things to do. So Frank kept him busy—unloading shipments, stocking shelves, cleaning the freezer, running the register. He even started showing him how to keep books, the invisible skill that kept a business afloat.
Frank had not given him, though, the gift he had for people. At fifteen, Curtis Martindale was a boy who appealed to everyone. Men liked him because he was about to become one of them—funny, cocky, and roughnecked, but too young to be a threat. Women liked him because he was considerate, a listener, a well-reared boy, but with something sly and flirtatious in his manner. Boys liked him because he was good at getting over with adults but still knew the latest baseball scores and dance steps. Girls loved him because of his sleepy eyes, his big, articulate hands, his taut body, which was not much bigger than their own. They would follow him through the aisles of the store, throwing their sass, and Frank would tease him, asking how he ever got anything done. And he had the magic with children, who watched him, big-eyed and admiring, until he flashed them his radiant smile. His cousin Jimmy worshipped him, but every child might have been his cousin, his nephew, his niece. A couple of times he’d caught kids stealing things—candy or yo-yo’s or gum—and he’d always coax them gently to put the things back and then go apologize to Mr. Sakai.
Frank loved the boy, detecting in him both the drive and caring of his mother, but also a humor, an ease that she lacked. He saw how she looked at her son with worry, and with a love so intense it was almost crushing. And he saw how the boy wanted so much to please her, and how impossible she was to live up to. He sympathized with both of them, but was glad that Curtis had come to him when he was hurt. There was no question he’d be loyal to the boy.
When David returned, Frank told him Curtis was lying down in the office because he didn’t feel well. Then he asked David to watch the store for a while, and to tell Victor he would be right back.
Frank walked over to Crenshaw, then paced the street for twenty minutes. He patrolled one side of the boulevard, crossed, walked back down the other. Then he turned onto Rodeo, moving toward the still-high sun. He wondered if he’d gotten his timing wrong, but then he saw it—the squad car, inching down Rodeo, looking for trouble and usually finding it.
Frank stepped off the curb, flagging the squad car down. It slowed, stopped, and a
hakujin
got out. It was the wrong one, though. Not the friendly Irishman who always waved at him, who’d caught the perpetrators the one time the store had been robbed, but the other one. The green-eyed blonde who came into the store sometimes and knocked things off the shelves. Who only sometimes rode with his partner, which only sometimes curtailed his actions. Who told him leeringly how nice his daughters looked.
The cop recognized him. Stomach shaking, fully aware that it was probably useless, Frank waved him over. Lawson, looking bored, sauntered up onto the sidewalk. “What’s the problem, grocery man?”
Frank looked up at him and met the hollow eyes.
Hakujin
in uniform always reminded him of Europe and the war. “I want to report an assault,” he said. “A boy named Curtis Martindale was beaten up by some other boys.”
Lawson looked at him, barely interested. “What do
you
care, grocery man? He’s just a little nigger punk.”
Frank glared. “I know him. He works for me.”
The cop shrugged. “So? What do you want from me? Worker’s comp?” He laughed.
Frank stepped up to him, felt the cop’s bitter breath on his forehead. “Well, why don’t you do something about it? Instead of driving around doing nothing all day.”
The cop looked down over his long, slender nose. Then he started to laugh mirthlessly, wrinkles creasing the skin around his eyes. “You telling me how to do my job, grocery man?” He touched Frank lightly on the forehead, one cool round fingertip against the heat of Frank’s skin. “Well, don’t. I don’t tell you how to arrange your fucking vegetables.” He glared at Frank for a moment, holding his finger in place. Then he walked back over to the squad car and drove away.
Frank watched him go, arms twitching with rage, his forehead still burning where the
hakujin
had touched him. He thought of Europe again, the place he’d been allowed, no,
instructed
to kill. And he wondered, not for the first time since he’d come back to the States, if he’d defeated or even recognized the enemy.