The Last Karankawas(6)
As if Magdalena were not a rebel herself. Carly knows her grandmother’s independence like no one else—her no me digas que no a famous refrain around Fish Village—and here Carly tries to show her own yet earns nothing but a smack on the mouth. There must be pride in there somewhere, Carly thinks as she huffs and turns away, her lips smarting, listening to her grandmother call You’re not going because I said so y se acabó through the slammed door. Somewhere deep down, doesn’t she feel approval for her granddaughter’s grit? Doesn’t she marvel?
So the next morning, Carly steals the car. But steal is a strong word, really—as she insists later that evening, loudly over Magdalena’s howls—for what essentially amounts to slipping the spare key off its hook and coaxing Hector to give her a ride across the island, to where the Harris Elementary staff parking lot sits nearly empty except for her grandmother’s Grand Marquis and a handful of cars belonging to the other janitorial staff and library assistants preparing for the start of summer school, then unlocking the Grand Marquis with shaking hands and sliding into the driver’s seat, adjusting the mirrors and seat and easing out of the parking lot onto Broadway, heart jackhammering against her ribs with exhilaration and fear.
She feels the slaps already, hears the scolding and screaming she will be in for tonight, but still she believes that Magdalena will admire her spirit—how can she not, when it is hers, the one she gave Carly, the one she fostered when both parents cast her off? And even though Jess’s team will lose the game—despite him going three for four and snagging a line drive on a diving catch worthy of SportsCenter—and afterwards, under the bleachers as he tangles his hands in her hair and she presses against his sweat-stained uniform, when she confesses about the car and he laughs so hard he almost collapses, telling her You’re gonna be in so much shit, babe, I don’t know if this was worth it, she knows he is wrong. It is worth it. Not his game, not him, but the drive. Pushing down the gas pedal, on on on, climbing the causeway with Galveston Bay glinting gray and green beneath her, forward forward forward, the hot air whipping her hair, fingers clenched around the wheel. Please please please. Drivers zooming past and changing lanes at light speed without a care as she sings loudly along with 97.9’s hour of 2Pac to drown out the fear burbling in her throat, focusing instead on the delight, the joy of the road ribboning beneath her and unfurling in the rearview mirror into familiar shapes, nothing she recognizes up ahead.
THE WAYS OF MEN
Jess
William the Conqueror was a warrior, but according to the book, people called him a bastard. The Bastard. Jess doesn’t think that is such a bad nickname. Hell, maybe half the other kids in Fish Village are bastards—fathers living in the house but not legally bound to be there, or staying in their own place on the mainland and visiting every other weekend, or working on an Odessa oilfield and sending misspelled birthday e-cards. Or simply an empty space, having split long before, quit, for whatever reason, midway through father duties. So many states of gone.
The driver hits a pothole and the school bus stumbles. With one hand Jess tightens his grip on the book to keep it from falling, with the other grabs the duffel beside him on the seat. The rest of the team is asleep, and they don’t wake. Jess presses his fingertips to the window and lets the outside seep through, a slow warmth. He guesses they are on the causeway now; he thinks he can smell salt, but the windows aren’t open and he’s probably just being romantic, as Carly so often says.
She won’t be waiting for him. He told her there was no point—the game was a doubleheader up in Port Arthur and wouldn’t be done until midnight, most likely. Then there was an accident that completely blocked 73. Then general stupidity on I-10. And here they are, nearly three a.m. and barely arriving. As rain spits against the windows, he feels better knowing she isn’t sitting in her Corolla in the Ball High parking lot. Carly grows cranky and uneasy in the nighttime. She’d be blasting the radio, drumming her fingers impatiently on the wheel, trying to widen her eyes and cursing the bus driver for being so slow. When Jess arrived, she’d make him drive and then she’d be too tired to do anything anyway. Better to see her tomorrow at Sacred Heart for Mass and then fool around after. And in just another year—graduation. Once high school is done, they will have their whole lives to fool around.
About twenty minutes left, he figures, before they pull into the school lot. He opens the book and, with his Nokia as a light, finds his place again some 960 years ago.
He was called William the Bastard for much of his life, usually by his enemies, and always behind his back. He was the product of an affair between Robert I, duke of Normandy, and a woman named Herleva, a tanner’s daughter. After Robert died while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, William became duke of Normandy in his stead. He was only 8 years of age.
Life was rough even then without a father. Rougher, probably. But William’s father had left him a legacy worth having. So there was that.
When Mr. Collier began their unit on early British history, Jess thought it looked lame. Who gave a shit about the British? In seventh grade, Ms. Morton had taught them how Galveston held Native roots, Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan. Jess looked up more beyond class, devoured the information he found. The Karankawas roaming up and down the beaches; Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked on their shores; Jean Lafitte founding his own pirate kingdom; even the weatherman Isaac Cline denying the Great Hurricane of 1900 until it was bearing down. Juneteenth, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Maceo mafiosos during Prohibition. Nothing could be as interesting as their own story.