The Last Karankawas(39)
As they approach the turnoff for Garner State Park, a possum in the distance ambles into the road—they can tell it from its scuttling walk. “Tlacuache!” Kristin shouts and, as Dad taught her, aims the truck for its wedge-shaped head, the black triangle flicks of its ears.
Pete has lost his smile. His voice is thready, quick. “Come on, kid, don’t hit it,” he says, shouting over the accelerating car. The tlacuache shuffles across the road directly ahead. “What’s it doing? Nothing. Is it hurting anyone? No.”
“They’re pests.” She’s echoing her father. “Come on.” Worse than scorpions around here, they’ve been taught. They burrow inside the walls of buildings, clatter around on roofs, spread disease, and eat cats. So Dad says. She steps on the gas. She aims. Then she looks at her brother.
He has closed his eyes tight, turned his face to the side window. He is biting his lips. He looks so stricken that she stares at him for too long, fear clutching her throat, and by the time she turns back to the road, the possum has scurried into the brush on the other side.
“Damn it,” she mutters. Pete opens his eyes like a shot. He presses his nose to the window and watches the possum zoom past.
“Grow up, Kristin.” His voice rings with a harshness she’s never heard before. He spins the volume knob on the radio once more, Patty Loveless this time.
* * *
It’s college that doesn’t suit him, Pete says: “The teachers have it in for me.” When he brings home his term paper from Intro to Business Concepts 1301 at the junior college, he sneers. “‘Too confessional’? ‘Off-topic’? It was all analysis! I fight for my country, but I can’t express my opinions now?” He excels in philosophy classes. He talks for hours about social justice, criminal cases, theories in law and education that Kristin has never heard of. He fails every single practical application course, anything that relies on information he cannot argue or flirt into submission. He changes degree tracks from business to veterinary medicine. To physical therapy. To K–12 education. To law enforcement certification. Until one day he just doesn’t enroll; he meanders through town in the passenger seat of his buddy’s Jeep. The two of them spend their days circling the high school, going from H-E-B to Walmart, from Whataburger to the stretch of murky river where DPS troopers never patrol. To one friend’s house to score weed, another’s to smoke it.
Near the end of her first year in the nursing program, he visits people in San Marcos and stays two weeks. He returns bright-eyed, excitement sparking in his voice. A friend of a friend who was in the Army with him manages a kayak-rental business on the Guadalupe, he says. The guy needs a security guard for the warehouse—someone who has a background in retail and can do some light bookkeeping. It was decided, over what was likely several days’ worth of Lone Star and sativa, that Pete is the man for the job.
“You’ve never worked retail,” Dad says over dinner. “Pues, you don’t even know how to keep books, do you?”
Mom eyes the beer Pete is popping open and, nodding at Kristin, taps three fingers against her cheek. His third since they sat down at the table.
“I’ll learn. It’s not that hard.”
“What about school, mijo?” Mom purses her lips as he takes a long pull from the bottle.
“I can always go back. School’s not going anywhere.”
Dad grunts. He uses his fork to spear at them across the table. “N’hombre, your sister’s going to be done with college before you. At this rate, she’s more on track than you’ve ever been. What do you think of that?”
This gives him pause, her big brother—she can tell. Something in his face flickers, like the ghost of a thought he won’t say out loud.
“That doesn’t matter. She can do anything she wants,” he says. He turns to look at her, but his eyes focus on her nose, her left ear. Anywhere but her eyes. “You know I always taught you how to take care of yourself.”
No, you didn’t. The words pulse in her throat, but the expression on his face—she knows it would be the tlacuache, again. So she says nothing. Show respect. Treat him with honor.
“None of this matters. Not right now. Don’t you see, Dad?” He drums his hands against the bottle. “This is my shot. I can get into business from this way, get it all from the experience side instead of the education side. Work my way up. Security guard, salesman, then quién sabe?”
“Quién sabe,” Dad echoes. He means it skeptically, but Pete is smiling, his sister’s eclipse of him forgotten. He lifts the beer and his gaze reaches far away, to a future he is weaving for himself as they watch from the sidelines. The first stop: a warehouse full of kayaks and rafts and canoes, a caliche parking lot. A river.
* * *
2002. She is fourteen and foolish. She will get older but will not outgrow the foolishness.
It is like this: Her brother will ship out in days. Their parents have thrown him a going-away party in Concan. His friends and his current girlfriend have attended. The mood: cheerful and false. The group is grilling burgers and hot dogs, passing cold Cokes and surreptitious beers to sip on. Pete is laughing, and they are revolving around him like planets, circling some six-foot, dark-haired sun they know is leaving. Desperate for warmth, they hover. They cling.