Jew, what Levi has done is a crime.”
Lyle took thoughtful sips. Maybe it was wrong to bury her in a mausoleum, but she was there now, so maybe she ought to stay.
“Do you really care about this girl?” Lyle asked.
“Would I be considering this if I didn’t?”
“It’s not just because you’re mad at Levi and Devon?”
“That’s part of it. A small part, I’ll admit it. But what pisses me off more is that he doesn’t care about a little girl! His own child! Mostly, I want to save her from eternal darkness. Even if I’m not a Jew. You’re supposed to take care of people when they die, to take care of your family. It’s important. The ceremony, the burial—it all has to be just right. You don’t just slop them someplace. It ruins their memory, it disrespects their life.”
Lyle blinked at him hard, as if he could see him clearly in the dark. “You’re right. I think that, too.”
“Sure I’m right. If we still care about people in this world.”
Martin didn’t seem like a teenager, with his baldness and double chin, his talk of art and religion, his worry and concern for a little girl who died so long ago.
“By the way,” Martin said, “did you know Devon said you’re a ridiculous redneck? He said his dad said so too. They say the same things.” He paused. “You know where I’m from? Grants Pass, Oregon. Home of the Cavemen. There’s actually a statue of a caveman, downtown.”
“Sounds like where I’m from. Marshal, home of the Savages.” He was pleased his friend was willing to own up to where he was from. Martin was no redneck.
“Let’s walk,” Martin said. Lyle hopped onto the loading dock and stepped aside for him to lead, and they continued up the street. The air howled around them. Gutter water hissed on a crossroad. Martin produced his BB pistol and shot ahead of them at nothing.
On the next block a street lamp burned. “I missed one.” He shot five times and the lamp darkened. “I forgot, I should have left that one burning. I’ll be more generous next time.” It seemed they were leaving the conversation on the loading dock behind them. Lyle was relieved, though he still felt giddy. It mixed nicely with the booze.
“You want to blow something up?” Lyle said. “I have pipe bombs and duct tape.”
“I used to play with those. How many do you have?”
“Three.”
“They’re noisy—that’s the problem. But maybe we’ll think of something,” he said. “I told Devon I shot out these lights, but he refuses to check my work—he’s jealous.”
“Let’s shoot out some more. I have an hour before I meet Rosa.”
“Rosa?” he said. “Little Rosa? Immature, superficial, slutty Rosa?”
All at once Lyle felt defensive of her and worried Martin knew something that he didn’t. “She’s all right,” he said.
Martin seemed to walk faster now. “I only date extremely bright girls who are also traditional. Hard to find. That’s why it didn’t work out between me and her sister.”
“Rosa’s just a kid. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re welcome to her, my friend. So you’ll be hanging out with her all the time, huh?”
“No. Once in a while.”
“Well, now that Dimitrious is done with her, somebody else might as well climb on. You know him, the black guy?”
“She’s not with him anymore, is she?”
“Who knows.”
“I don’t think she is.”
“Not that she’d tell you.” He drank. “Dimitrious is friends with Devon—you know what that means: they share each other, all around. They have their main partner, but it’s okay to sleep with the rest of the group. Boys on boys, girls on girls—whatever.” He slapped Lyle on the back. “I hope you know what you’re looking at.”
Lyle made a disgusted noise. He’d never heard of that kind of thing before.
“I doubt Rosa goes in for anything like that,” he said.
“We’ll see.”
“Monique, sure. But not Rosa.”
They turned onto a broad street that went along fields, toward the river. The telephone poles in the fields were like half crosses, shouldering heavy black tubes like grim bunting.
The odor of beets hovered in pockets of warm mist in the rain. A high gray building faced the water and they went alongside it. The windows near the sidewalk presented a basement network of conveyor belts where the workers on night shift stood in hairnets and earplugs, the bsh bsh of canning machines battering the air. It was his brother’s night off. He didn’t see his mom. Though Craig had shown them where he worked days after they arrived in town, Lyle hadn’t realized he was in the cannery part of town until now.
They crossed the river on a different bridge. In the grass on the other side, along the river path, a train engine hulked behind iron bars. A light flared above windy branches, patterns skipping across the engine, rain streaming down its rounded black sides.
“Let me shoot out this one,” Lyle said. He shattered the lamp’s casing in three shots.
“Excellent.”
They walked. Lampposts followed the curve in the river path, going out of sight around a bend. Martin popped out most of the lights along the way.
A footbridge crossed the river. There were many bridges. They took turns sipping at the bottle and smoked, leaning on the railing, the water giving back the bridge lamps, white moonlike circles quaking in the rain. After a while, Martin crossed the bridge on one side then came back on the other, putting out several of the lights. It made Lyle think of a military execution.
“I live with my mom right up the bike path, past the rose garden,” Martin said. “She runs a day care and I live in the house next door.” He sniffed. “She started voting Republican a few years ago—after years of journaling about her spirit animal. Now she reads Ayn Rand. She goes to gun shows. My mom’s a right-wing lesbian extremist.”
“You’re getting soaked.”
“This coat has a waterproof lining, and I have an extra shirt in my bag. Wish I’d brought my hat, though.”
Martin found the end of the bottle and threw it bouncing down the length of the bridge. It disappeared over the edge into the water.
“Have you ever noticed that when you drop something on accident it shatters, but if you drop something on purpose it doesn’t even crack? It’s what I call The Great Fuck You. The world knows who you are and it goes against you. When I used to ride a bike, for instance. The wind was always in my face, constantly. Never at my back. It was like this hunting, tracking force. There are currents of bad shit in the air. But sometimes it’s
