Coronado - Dennis Lehane [24]
Somewhere.
GONE DOWN TO CORPUS
THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I go up the walk to Lyle Biddet’s house and ring the doorbell. I’m hoping Lyle answers and not his mother or father, because I really don’t want to think of him as someone’s son. I want Lyle to answer the door so I can convince him, real friendly-like, that we’re having an off-the-cuff celebration to commemorate our four years playing football together for East Lake High. I’ll tell Lyle there are no hard feelings for him dropping that pass on the one and coughing up the ball on the thirty. No hard feelings at all. And Lyle’ll follow me back down the walk where Terry Twombley waits behind the wheel of his Cougar with the Lewis brothers sitting in back, and we’ll take Lyle on a little ride and find someplace real quiet and kick the shit out of him.
Ain’t much of a plan, I know. Best I could come up with after months of stewing on it, though, which again, ain’t saying much. Only time I was ever much of a planner was on the football field, and that’s over now, over and done, which is pretty much the reason we need to beat up on Lyle, the dumb fuck with the bad hands and all.
Lyle lives in this new suburb called Crescent Shores where there ain’t no body of water, ain’t no shore, ain’t much of anything but all these shiny white houses that all look alike on these shiny white streets that all look alike, which is how come we got lost about six times trying to find his house until one of the Lewis brothers remembered there was a plastic squirrel glued to the roof of the Biddets’ mailbox.
I ring the doorbell a second time. It’s raining, the drops soft and sweaty, and there don’t seem to be anyone around on the whole street. It’s like they all left their white houses at the same time and drove off to the same golf tournament. So I turn the knob to the Biddets’ front door and—I ain’t shitting—it opens. Just like that. I look back over my shoulder at Terry. He sees the open door and his big grin lights up the whole car.
It’s been three weeks since graduation. Fourth of July weekend, 1970. I’m eighteen years old.
MY DADDY FOUGHT in Korea. Only thing he ever says about it is that it was cold. Colder’n an icebox. He lost a finger to the cold. Lost half a thumb. In the summer, when everyone is hiding from the sun in dark rooms and under trees and tin porch awnings, my old man’s lying out in the backyard with a cooler of beer beside him, eyes closed, chin tilted up. One time, my mother looks out the window at him and gives me a small, broken smile. “Damn,” she says, “but he looked fine in a uniform.”
TERRY AND THE Lewis brothers park the Cougar a block over and then come back to the house, streak up the walk and inside, and I shut the door behind them. It’s cool in the house, the air blowing from these vents cut high up in the walls, and for a minute we all walk around looking at the vents, marveling. Morton Lewis says, “I gotta get me a setup like this.”
His brother Vaughn goes, “Shit. We take just one of those vents, it’ll be good enough for our whole place.”
He actually climbs up on the couch, looks like he’s fixing to rip one out of the wall, take it home with him. I can picture him a few hours later with the thing sitting in front of him on the kitchen table, trying to find a place for the batteries.
You put the brains of both Lewis brothers together and you still come up with something dumber than a barrel of roofing tar, but those boys are also tear-ass fast and my-daddy’s-a-mean-drunk crazy off the snap count, kinda boys can turn a starting left tackle into the town gimp, come back to the huddle not even breathing hard.
Terry says, “Nice house,” and walks around the living room looking at everything. “Got a bar too.”
There’s a small swimming pool out back. It’s the shape of a jellyfish and, like I said, none too big, but we have a few drinks from the bar and then we all go out and piss