Such a Good Girl and Other Crime Stories

The Way It Used to Be

Private coon hunting. That’s all the note said, the note passed three desks back in last hour study hall, that lazy hour when half the students dozed off.

When Boze Douglas opened the note and read the three words, he smiled. No doubt who’d sent the note. No doubt what it meant. No doubt.

Boze kept right on smiling.

He couldn’t concentrate on his comic book any more. Boze was a master at laying a comic book inside a textbook and then pretending to be studying his ass off. He liked superheroes especially. In his own mind, he was a superhero. The fact that nobody else at Duncan County Consolidated saw him as a superhero only proved what lame bastards they were. Duncan County Consolidated was one of those country high schools where kids from five small towns went to school together. Farm kids, too. Lots and lots of farm kids. Kids who didn’t know, kids who weren’t cool, not the way Boze and his friend Gunner (a.k.a. Eugene) Preston were cool. Boze and Gunner were wearing nose rings and earrings long before anybody else at Duncan County Consolidated was. And they were way into heavy music and street drugs before most of the other kids, too. And they were tough. Even the big loping farm boys were smart enough to walk clear of Boze and Gunner. Most students — and teachers — considered them dangerous and, man, they loved that shit, people seeing them as dangerous. Absolutely loved it.

“He’s gonna be surprised,” Gunner said, lighting up a Camel as soon as they cleared the school door.

There was a big football game tonight and so part of the east parking lot was given over to last minute work on the float where the King and Queen would sit tonight. King and Queen, Boze thought. That was crap for little kids. King and Queen. In the distance, he could hear the marching band practicing in the field to the north of the large red brick school. He had to admit, reluctantly, that marching band music still gave him a little-kid thrill. He’d always liked parades. His father had always taken him to parades... At least when he was sober. But padre was long gone. Living over in Keokuk with wife number three, selling mobile homes. Now, marching band music — as much as it still secretly thrilled Boze — embarrassed him, too.

Then they were in Boze’s five-year-old Firebird and driving fast. This was the best way for Boze to avoid thinking about things — thinking about long-gone Dad, thinking about all the bullshit his sixteen-year-old sister Angie had fallen into — driving fast. Not even drugs were as good as driving fast.

Farm fields in sunny October. Pumpkins and scarecrows and the green John Deere working the hills, preparing for spring planting. And that melancholy smoky smell down from the hills where the trees were on fire with colors so beautiful — reds and yellows and golds and ambers — that they were almost painful to see.

And Angie — little Angie, his own little sister — was going out with a black guy. He still couldn’t believe it, though he knew it was absolutely true.

Boys could handle going to Cedar Rapids. There were a lot of temptations for farm kids in a town that size but boys knew how to stay away from them. Or if they couldn’t handle them, it still wasn’t so bad. They were boys, after all. A white boy and a black girl going out together, much as Boze was against such a thing, that was all right. No harm done. The boy wasn’t likely to get all emotional with the black girl. But a white girl with a black boy... once you go black, you’ll never go back? Wasn’t that what he’d heard his old man say to a friend of his, laughing and winking, one beery night?

Boze drove a good ten miles out into the countryside. He hit 104 mph crossing the old Miller bridge. Even the horses and the cows and the sheep seemed to stand still and watch with awe as the Firebird blazed by. The radio was up all the way. Country music all the way. He used to listen to rock but now it was all fairies or coons. Now he was strictly country. On the way back to town, Gunner said, “You scared?”

“About what?”

“You know. Tonight.”

Boze looked over at him. “No. But you are.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit yourself, man. If you weren’t scared, you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I just mean we could get caught there. You know, down there with all those black bastards.”

“Yeah, we could. But we’re not gonna. We’re gonna do it and get the hell out of there.” That was Gunner for you. Everybody thought he was like this really fearless dude. But he wasn’t. He talked big and he had big ideas. But when it came to actually doing them, Boze was the one who always led the way. Gunner wouldn’t have done anything if Boze didn’t drag him along.

Boze dropped Gunner off. Gunner lived in a small housing development. Most of the people here worked in nearby Amana — factory jobs and good paying ones. New or at least newer cars in the drives now that the day shift was over. And new siding on a lot of the houses. Boze had always envied Gunner his industrious and sober old man. Gunner had it made here and didn’t seem to know it. As he was getting out of the car, Gunner said, “I’m really not scared, man. I’m really not.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“Fuckin’ right.” Trying to sound tough, hard. But Boze could see the fear in his eyes. This was a couple steps up the criminal ladder from the shoplifting and minor vandalism they were usually into. This was quite a ways up the criminal ladder, in fact.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Boze said.

“Cool,” Gunner said, closing the door. Cool, Boze thought to himself as the Firebird squealed away from the curb. Sometimes Gunner was such a lame, he couldn’t believe it.

Mom wasn’t home yet. Sometimes Al at the restaurant, a slow afternoon, he’d let her off a little early and pay her for the whole day. Mom liked Al despite the fact that the old bastard was always putting the moves on her. He wasn’t alone, of course, Al wasn’t, Mom being a good-looking woman and lots of men hitting on her. But she said it was “sweet,” a seventy-two-year-old guy hitting on a thirty-eight-year-old woman. Plus, it was the best waitressing job she’d ever had. Great tips and nice family-style restaurant. She’d burned out on butt-pinching truck stops and stingy-ass truck drivers.

On a sunny day like this one, the trailer park didn’t look so bad. The dirt roads winding between the half mile of mobile homes were dry and not muddy; and fresh wash hanging on clotheslines looked white and clean; and even the battered trailers themselves — screens missing, some graffiti here and there, cracked windows taped up — looked reasonably clean and tidy, tiny strips of lawns covered with dirt roads.

When he got inside, he heard music coming from Angie’s room. Rap music. He should have taken that as a sign for sure, last year when she’d started listening to that crap. White girls, at least not good white girls, didn’t listen to blacks who couldn’t (a) sing (b) write songs, or (c) look like anything but the street punks they were.

At least she’d cleaned up the house. Angie was the neat freak of the family, mostly because she had friends over a lot — she even had a couple of fairly rich friends from in town; she was a friendly and bright and popular girl, she was — and she hated it the way Mom and Boze always left ashtrays overflowing and half-drunk cans of beer and pop strewn everywhere. Not to mention magazines and newspapers and even the occasional half-eaten sandwich. Dad was a neat freak too, unlikely as that was. Angie had inherited the tendency from him.

He knocked on her door and then pushed in without waiting for her to answer.

“Damn you!” she cried when he burst in.

She was standing at her bureau mirror, combing her long, chestnut-colored hair. Her hair was her pride, as were the high proud breasts she’d sprouted last summer. She was dressed only in a white slip now. Despite the anger he felt— how the hell could she go out with a black guy, anyway? — he wished now he hadn’t broken in like this. He looked uncomfortable seeing his fetching sister half-undressed this way. He wanted to think of her the way he used to... as a sweet little kid he was always very protective of. He’d even walked to school with her, to make sure she was all right, even though the other boys used to make fun of him. When it started to storm, he’d always panicked, searched frantically through the trailer park until he had her inside and safe. And when she’d been sick with flu or a sore throat or something, he’d always brought her stupid little gifts, and tried to make her laugh so she’d feel better. And then she changed. Last year, it was. Maybe it was her breasts. Maybe her breasts had made her crazy or something. Suddenly, she resented all his fondness, all his protectiveness. How many times in the past year had she screamed at him. It’s my life and I’ll do what I damned well please! He always felt vaguely sick — even mysteriously fearful — when she screamed this. He felt deserted, more alone than he ever had in his life, even more alone than when Mom and Dad split up six years ago.

And now she was going out with a black guy.

“I’m really getting tired of this, Boze,” she said. “You’re supposed to knock.”

He kept his eyes from her as much as he could. What he really wanted to do was say it. Say he knew about the black guy he had seen pulling away from the trailer here on two different occasions. Linn County plates. Cedar Rapids. Boze hadn’t gotten all that good a look at him. But he didn’t have to. The guy was black, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that enough?

But Boze didn’t say it because if he did say it she’d run right to Mom and tell her everything, and Mom didn’t need any more grief than she already had. It wasn’t easy, holding the family together this way, let alone your daughter going out with a black guy. Obviously, there was no way Angie was going to tell Mom — I been going out with this black guy, Mom. And wouldn’t Mom just love that? Mom knew a lot about men and men problems. She’d dated a lot of different guys since Dad left. She knew all the ways a woman could get screwed up over a man. And that certainly included dating someone not of your own race. Mom would tear Angie a new one if she ever found out about the black guy.

Boze decided to be coy. “Where you going tonight?”

“Out.”

“I know ‘out.’ I mean where?”

She looked angry a moment and then she smiled sentimentally at him in the mirror. She was putting on bright red lipstick. Blood red. The color she’d be if the black guy ever cut her up with his switchblade. Boze knew all about black guys and their knives. “I’m not six years old any more, Boze. You don’t have to protect me.”

“I have to protect you more than ever,” he said gently.

She turned and came over to him. He tried not to look at her breasts loose beneath her white silk slip. No bra. She kissed him. “I’m sorry I got so mad a minute ago.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled sweetly of perfume. It was like she wasn’t his sister at all. She was as full of wiles as any other girl, now. He felt sad for some reason. He wanted her to be six or seven or eight again, and have her tiny hand in his, and be helping her. He’d liked to help her. It made him feel important somehow. He hadn’t felt important much lately at all. “And since you asked,” she said, withdrawing, going back to the mirror and the comb and her hair, “I’m going to Cedar Rapids with Donna and Heather.”

“You should stay away from that place.”

She watched him coolly in the mirror. “So should you. You’re the one who got in trouble there. Not me.” The edge was back in her voice now.

He was about to defend himself — pointing out that all he got charged with that time was underage drinking and public intoxication, not exactly murder one — when the front door opened and Mom said, “Hi, kids!”

It was always good to hear her voice. “Hi!” they both said back to her.

Mom set the sack of groceries on the table and then walked back to the bedroom. “How do vegetable burgers and a salad sound for tonight?”

She smelled of perfume, too, and then Boze realized that Angie was wearing Mom’s perfume. Mom was short, slender, with long, dark hair and turquoise eyes. She usually wore jeans and crisp white blouses and argyle socks and a pair of comfortable walking shoes. The saddest he’d ever seen her was when Dad gave her that black eye that time. Usually when he beat her up, you couldn’t see anything. But the black eye had really embarrassed her. That had been near the end of the marriage.

Mom said, “I take it you’re both going out tonight?”

Boze smiled. “No, I thought I’d stay home and do a little knitting.”

Mom loved it when he joked with her. When her marriage had been good, before Dad really got going on the booze, Dad had kidded around a lot with her, too. “Oh, you,” she said, poking Boze in the ribs. But she looked tired, despite the smile and the kidding, and sometimes he worried about her, how tired and suddenly old she could look. A great sorrow overcame him at such times and all he could think of was funeral homes when he was little, the mysterious adult ritual of putting the dead to rest, the choking-sweet smell of flowers and the whiskey-breath of the working men as they bent down to kiss their little nephews and nieces and the smell of his mother’s Kleenex damp with Hail Mary tears when she’d knelt next to the coffin.

Half an hour later, they ate. The burgers were delicious. Part of the time Boze looked out the window. Dusk was falling and it was beautiful, the sky gorgeous golds and salmon pinks and rich purples behind a few full thunderheads. Dusk made Boze sad, too, but it was a good sad somehow, not a bad sad like with Angie or Mom or Dad or Molly Cantrell when he was in love with her last year. That was just one more crazy thing in an already crazy world; how there could be good sails and bad sails. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you ever talked about because people would think you were crazy.

Mom said, “You remember you’re supposed to be home by eleven tonight?”

“Oh, Mom,” Angie said. “That’s not fair.”

“It certainly is fair, Angie,” Mom said. “You were late last Friday night by an hour, so tonight I’m taking an hour off the time you’re supposed to be in.”

“But eleven o’clock. Nobody else has to come in by eleven o’clock.”

“I’m sorry, Angie. But that’s the way it’s got to be.”

Boze lifted weights for twenty minutes while he watched The Nashville Channel (say what you want, Dwight Yoakam was still the coolest of all the male country singers) and then he took a shower and then he got dressed for the night. He put change and a ten-dollar bill in his right pocket (Mom always gave him a ten-dollar bill on Friday) and his twelve-inch switchblade in his left pocket. Anything over twelve inches, the cops could bust your ass for carrying an illegal weapon. Then he got down on his haunches and opened the bottom drawer. There was a small grey metal lockbox in there. He opened it up. The .38 snub nose pistol looked as imposing as ever. Mom’d kick his ass if she ever found out he had it. Same way she’d kick Angie’s ass if she ever found out Angie was going out with the black guy.

He loaded the .38 and stuffed it down the front of his pants. Down in black town, man, you couldn’t have enough weapons. Not on a Friday night, you couldn’t.

Angie was in the living room still arguing with Mom about eleven o’clock. Boze gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. Angie looked beautiful, purple blouse, hip-hugger slacks, high heels. Her sexuality was overwhelming. He imagined black hands on that white flesh. The image sickened him.

“You’ve got hours, too, Boze, don’t forget,” Mom said. “Twelve o’clock.”

Boze grinned. “You make a great boot camp instructor, I ever tell you that?”

Mom grinned back. “Many times.”

Then Boze was out of there. In the car. Driving fast on empty country roads just as the half-moon was rising above the cornfields and all the little farmhouses whose lights seemed curiously lonely in the gloom. Dwight Yoakam was singing his ass off. Boze had half an hour by himself driving this way — a can of beer from the trunk in one hand, a cigarette in the other — just driving, driving fast all by himself before he had to pick up Gunner.

There was a certain part of the Interstate when you were coming into Cedar Rapids... if you looked fast enough, it was like coming into a really big city... the way three or four tall buildings were silhouetted against the moon... and the way the neon chain of lights seemed to stretch forever into the prairie night and the way crosstown traffic was almost bumper-to-bumper on a Friday night like this.

Boze waited until they pulled up in front of the pool hall before he told Gunner. He just wanted to see his face. See how pale he would turn. See how sick and scared he would look. While they had bad reputations for being dangerous, Boze was the only truly dangerous one of the duo. And both of them knew that.

“Guess what I brought tonight?”

“What?” Gunner said.

“Guess.”

“You steal some more booze from your Mom?”

“Huh-uh. Somethin’ else.”

“Shit, I hate guessin’ games, Boze.”

“My .38.”

Boze got the reaction he wanted. Instant terror on Gunner’s face.

“Are you crazy, man? A gun?” Gunner said.

“Scare him a little.”

“You know what the cops’d do to us if they found a gun on you?”

“They’ve all got guns down there. We’ll need one, too.”

“This is the kinda shit they put you in jail for, man.”

Boze was suddenly tired of Gunner’s whining. Boze really was the only dangerous one here. He felt especially dangerous tonight, the .38 stuffed down the front of his jeans this way. That bastard was never going to bother Angie again, that was for sure.

“C’mon,” Boze said, “let’s go shoot some pool.”

Boze loved the atmosphere of the place. It was mostly bikers and they looked fierce as hell in their beards and tattoos and their chains and leather vests. They never bothered Boze and Gunner either, which Boze thought was pretty cool. Just let them play. There was a good jukebox, too, a lot of heavy metal from the seventies and eighties, the only kind of rock and roll Boze could stand. No blacks.

They shot for two hours. Gunner was lame as usual. Especially so tonight. Boze could see the gun thing was really working on him. Gunner could barely concentrate on his game. Gunner kept running back to the john all the time. Pissing. Nerves.

When they were out in the night air again, leaning on the Firebird and smoking cigarettes and watching the Friday night traffic, all the beautiful wan city girls cruising past and gracing Boze and Gunner with the most disinterested of glances, and the whole city redolent of fuming ripe Indian summer, Gunner said, “Man, that gun of yours scares me.”

“Don’t be such a chickenshit.”

“I didn’t sign on for no gun, man.”

“We’re gonna scare him a little is all.”

Gunner looked at Boze. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You give me your word, Boze?”

“I give you my word.”

“You better not use that thing,” Gunner said. “You better not man.”

Another planet.

At least that’s what it felt like to Boze. Everything looked darker, for one thing. The lights in the houses didn’t seem to burn quite so bright. The glow of TV sets seemed dulled, somehow. Even the headlights of the battered cars that prowled the streets like wounded animals... even they had a gauzy, faint cast to them. Boze had expected a lot of noise. Shadowland. Blacks dancing in the street maybe to rap music and throwing their doped-up bodies this way and that. But the streets were mostly empty. And dark. And silent. The only sound was the occasional car radio thundering rap music. Or the sound of the muffler long perforated scraping sparks on the black street.

The little houses seemed to cower in the night as they had cowered ever since they’d been built.

Another planet.

The houses small, hunched together. Large empty lots here and there. The occasional brand new car parked proudly in a driveway. Eyes, gang eyes, peering at Boze and Gunner as they passed by in their white-boy tourist arrogance. Don’t belong here motherfucker. Don’t belong here. Even Boze now feeling a tightening in his groin, a hammering in his heart.

The way Boze’d known how to find the black guy was because he’d followed him. Saw the guy pulling away from the trailer one day and whipped around and followed him all the way back to Cedar Rapids. Twenty or so the guy was, no flashy black clothes bullshit or any of that. Kinda straight-looking, actually. But still a coon. Boze’d followed him right to his door. Boze wondered if he lived with his folks. Guy pulled into his driveway and never seemed to notice Boze at all. Boze just went right on by. But he sure knew where to come next time. He sure did.

This was next time.

Boze parked half a block away. They had to be careful of the gang members they’d seen here and there. Or maybe they weren’t really gang members. Just kids. But kids who’d gladly whump on two country boys like themselves.

Boze figured it’d be safer if they took the alley. In the moonlight the garages spoke of other eras, dating all the way back to the twenties when cars had been big and boxy. Cats sat on garbage cans watching them. Boze whispered to them. He liked cats.

“So when we get there—” Gunner was saying.

“Real simple, man,” Boze said. “When we get there, we try the back door. If his car’s there, we go inside and scare the shit out of him.”

“Scare him and that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“And if he’s not there—”

“Then we leave him a note and tell him to leave Angie alone.”

“I just wish you didn’t have that gun, man.”

“The gun’s just for show, Gunner. Just fucking relax, will you?”

Boze recognized the house from the back. How many dark green houses were there on this block?

He also recognized something else. The dude’s car. The same one Boze had followed here.

“The lights’re out,” Gunner said, as if Boze was blind and couldn’t see for himself.

“Yeah,” Boze said.

The lights out and Angie inside... Well, just as Boze wasn’t blind, he also wasn’t stupid. He didn’t have to wonder much about what his sister was doing.

“You really sure you want to do this?” Gunner said.

“Really sure.”

“I’m scared, Boze.”

“You bastard.”

“I can’t help it. The gun and everything, man. What if he has a gun.”

“Yeah, but we’re gonna surprise him. He won’t have time to pull a gun.”

“I can’t help it, Boze, I’m just scared.” Gunner sounded on the edge of crying. Little-boy crying. The bogeyman was after him.

Then Gunner said, “I’m goin’ back to the car, Boze.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“I can’t do it, Boze. Not breakin’ in like this. And havin’ a gun and everything.”

“You really are a chickenshit.”

“I don’t even care if I have to walk home, Boze. I’m goin’. I really am. I just don’t want to do this.”

Boze just shook his head, couldn’t friggin’ believe it, and watched Gunner walk away.

Then he sighed. He was the dangerous one, after all, and he should’ve realized that a long time ago. Gunner wasn’t dangerous. He just liked pretending he was. But somehow Boze couldn’t hate him. They’d grown up together. He said, “Just wait in the car, man. I won’t be long.” Gunner, shambling moon-mined against the ancient sagging garages that smelled of so many dusty and decaying decades, stopped and turned back. “You better leave this one alone, Boze, I just got a feeling. A real bad feeling. The gun and all, man. That gun’s gonna get you in trouble. It really is.”

Then he was gone, caught up in shadows, and then he was vanished, one with the night.

Boze took the gun from inside his belt. He was gonna scare the guy. And kick Angie’s ass out. That was all. Nothing more.

He walked to the back door, ducking under a clothesline. The support poles were rusty. There were dried dog turds on the autumn-brown grass.

He heard it, then. Coming from inside. Music. Faint. Not rap but black. Definitely black. That heavy bass. That rhythm and blues beat. A sexy black song. For lovers. The fucker. The black fucker. He gripped his gun tighter.

There was a small screened-in porch, the screening old and brown and curling up from the edges. He went up on the steps and went inside. The porch was empty except for three flats of empty Budweiser cans waiting to be cashed in at a supermarket.

The music was louder. And for the first time, he heard voices. The voices were even fainter than the music. Coming from inside.

He peered between the curtains hanging in the back door. A kitchen. Dishes piled high. Beer cans all over the place. No, the guy didn’t live here with his mother. He lived here alone. Bachelor pad.

Boze tried the doorknob. Locked.

He stood still for a moment, considering the various ways he could get inside. Easiest would be just breaking down the frigging door. But he wanted to surprise the guy. Just to see his face. How scared he’d be.

Boze took out his switchblade and went to work. The lock mechanism was very old and vulnerable. There was no skill or grace in what Boze did. He simply jiggled and jammed and twisted and jabbed the point of his switchblade around inside until the doorknob turned all the way to the right. He went inside.

Cigarette smoke. Stale beer. Even staler wine. Pizza. Vomit. For sure, the guy lived alone. Nobody’s mother would put up with this kind of crap.

He heard them much more clearly now. The voices. Coming from the other part of the house. Boy and girl voices. Having-sex voices. Boze felt sick.

He gripped the gun even tighter and started walking carefully through the small house. Didn’t want to bang into something and give himself away. Not that they’d be able to hear. Not with the soft, sexy music going. Not with the sex they were having, the unmistakable sounds of pleasure that seemed at least occasionally to also include pain.

And then he couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t take the idea of those black hands all over his little sister’s white body. He jerked his gun up and ran straight into the lone bedroom off the living room. Ran straight in swearing and screaming and threatening. Ran straight in and put the gun right in the guy’s face.

Right in the fucker’s face.

Then all three of them were swearing and screaming.

Angie got home right at eleven o’clock, the way Mom had told her to. She was sort of drunk. Her clothes were wrinkled and her make-up was a mess.

But Boze didn’t care. He just sat in the recliner staring at the TV — country western videos — and sipping from the fifth of Old Grandad he’d found up in the cupboard.

Even drunk, Angie could tell something was wrong. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” But he wasn’t all right and that was clear.

“I think I had too much to drink tonight.”

He raised his eyes to her. “Yeah? No shit? I could hardly tell.”

“I hate it when you’re sarcastic.”

He started watching videos again.

She stood and stared at him for a time and then she all of a sudden clamped her hand over her mouth and rushed into the bathroom and puked all over the place.

He wasn’t going to help her but then he stood up anyway and went into the bathroom and took down a wash cloth and got it hot and soapy and then he wiped off her face and got her all cleaned up. She was sagging, drunk and drained, against the far wall. He got her arm around him and half-carried her into her bed. He got her dress off and put her to bed with her slip and panties. He wanted her to be a little girl again. And him to be a little boy again. But time didn’t let you go back. It always pushed you on ahead in the darkness. And there was always something terrible waiting there for you in that darkness. Sometimes there were good things but they were never good enough to compensate for the bad things. For how people changed on you. For how people let you down.

He went into the bathroom and cleaned it all up.

Then he went back to the living room and sat in the recliner again and drank whiskey and stared at the TV. He should be tearing this fucking place apart is what he should be doing. But somehow he didn’t have the energy.

She didn’t get home until nearly three A.M.

Boze still sat in the recliner. He’d finished the bourbon and was now drinking the remnants of the scotch.

When she saw him from the doorway, she said, quietly, “I’m sorry you had to find out that way. I mean, I probably should be mad at you for breaking in that way but—”

She shook her head. She looked very sad. “Roger’s a very nice guy. He comes into the restaurant all the time on his way back from Iowa City. That’s how we met.”

Boze looked up and smirked. “That’s his name? A black guy named Roger?”

“Oh, God, Boze. He’s a very nice man. He’s assistant professor at Iowa.”

“And he lives in a place like that, all those beer cans and stuff?”

She came into the trailer, closing the door behind her.

“He had a birthday party for his nephew earlier. That’s why the mess. He’ll clean it up tomorrow. He really will.”

She came over to him and stood above him. “I want you to give me the gun, Boze. You terrified us tonight. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw you standing there.”

He looked straight up at her, all his hatred and hurt in his eyes, and said, “My own mother, sleeping with a black guy.”

She slapped him, then, harder than she’d ever slapped him in her life.

Boze should have been the one who cried, the slap and all being hard.

But it was Mom who cried. Mom who went into the bedroom and quietly closed the door and cried and cried and cried.

Boze just sat in the living room all by himself and didn’t cry at all.