The Unwilling(61)

So we brainstormed like we did on Saturday mornings with nothing to do, only the questions were more life-and-death than what movie to see or whether hoops in the driveway made more sense than sandlot ball with the Miller kids down the street. I told Chance everything I knew about Tyra and Jason, beginning with our day at the lake, and ending with a prison bus on a stretch of empty road, and Tyra falling drunk from the car at her condo on the rich side of downtown. He listened without interruption, then asked me to repeat the story.

“To be clear,” he said. “You’re saying she was naked in the Mustang?”

“Topless,” I replied. “She was naked at the lake. Can we focus now?”

“A grown woman, though. Come on…”

In other circumstances, I might agree. This was not the time.

“Did she have a job?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Family in town? Other friends?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“We should ask Sara.”

“Definitely.”

“She really screwed your brother right in front of you?”

“In the flowers, dude. Deep in the flowers.”

“What about enemies?” Chance asked, serious again.

“Probably a few. The lady had a streak.”

“What do you mean? How so?”

“A streak, man, this unpredictable wildness, like she could be playful one minute, and nasty the next. We know she dragged Jason into a bar fight, and I told you about the prison bus. She was shameless. Maybe she flirted with the wrong guy at the wrong place, or said the wrong thing at the wrong time. She was capable of anything. She crashed a car. She pulled a gun…”

“So she’s crazy.”

“Also selfish, provocative, and stupid drunk.”

Chance shook his head, unhappy. “I don’t see how any of this helps. It’s vague. There’s barely a place to start.”

“Somewhere, she met the wrong person.” I said it with a little heat. “At the Carriage Room, or at work. Maybe somewhere with Sara…”

“Maybe Jason didn’t like a gun shoved in his face.”

“Don’t joke like that.”

“Maybe I’m not joking.”

“Come on, Chance. Now you’re pissing me off.”

“Truth, then, the deepest kind. Your brother scares me, all right? He’s a dead-eyed, hard-core, scary motherfucker, and you need to think about that. Three years in Vietnam, two and a half in prison. You don’t even know him.”

“I know enough.”

“Do you, really?”

“This is what happened.” I raised my voice, but otherwise ignored the bait. “Sometime, somewhere, Tyra Norris met the wrong person or did the wrong thing. She made someone angry or stole something or screwed the wrong guy. We need to find out who and what and when. It’s that simple.”

“Simple? Really?” Chance frowned, looking washed-out, jaded, and afraid. “It’s a big world, man.”

“A big world,” I agreed.

But a fairly small city …



* * *



When we ran out of things to talk about, Chance walked me to the car, and tried to sum up the ideas we’d scraped together, the places we could theoretically start. “Bikers. Carriage Room. Sara.”

“Jason’s housemates.” I opened the driver’s-side door. “A job, if she had one. Old boyfriends. Any other places Jason might have taken her.”

“It’s not enough,” Chance said.

“It’s a start.”

We’d argued this point for a while. Swinging blind was dangerous.

“This whole thing,” Chance said. “It’s not hypothetical, is it?”

He leaned on the car, and I cranked the engine, gunning it hard to pretend I hadn’t heard.

“Look at me, dude.” He waited for my foot to come off the gas. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you’re lying to me. Do you think I’m afraid to go with you?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because things have been different between us,” Chance said. “Since the other day, I mean. We were in the car, coming back from Becky’s street, and we saw that billboard about the draft and all. You asked if I’d registered, and I said no, and I saw the way you looked at me.” Chance held my eyes, but swallowed hard. “Your brothers fought, and your father fought. I know you think about enlisting.”

“That doesn’t mean I think you’re afraid.”

“Do you remember the letter?” Chance asked. “The one requiring you to register for the Selective Service? I burned mine in the backyard. I’ve had two more since then, and I burned them, too. When I check the mail now, I want to vomit.” He looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be afraid, but I don’t want to die, either.”

What I was hearing made a sudden kind of sense. Chance and I used to follow the war together. We tracked the battles, the politics. We knew what carrier groups were deployed, and where. Lately, that had changed, and the more time passed, the starker those changes seemed to be. If I brought up the war, Chance got quiet. My talk of enlisting made him increasingly nervous.