The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(33)

The place smelled of longago meals—fried chicken, oranges, grilled cheese sandwiches. A wall unit AC was humming and whining somewhere in back, but it made no difference. The house was hotter than the summer night outside.

To the left was a den, illuminated only by a television. Half a dozen schoolaged children reclined on sofas, eating Cheetos and watching The Magic School Bus.

To the right, where Chris and Amanda had run, a woman dominated a blue couch in the living room. A portrait of Jesus hung on the wall above her. At her feet, two toddlers sat Vlegged on the carpet amidst a Gettysburg of Legos and blocks. The last child—not counting however many might be packed into the closets—was an Anglo boy of about ten. He stood next to the woman, fanning her face with a piece of cardboard.

The woman smiled pleasantly at me. "I'm Mrs. Hayes. Are you Dwight's friend?"

She looked in her late fifties, paleskinned, not merely fat but big in every respect, from wrists to ankles to fingers. She wore a pink tentdress and gaudy makeup that struggled to create contours on her otherwise shapeless face. Her hair was the colour of diet cola, and looked like it had been cut and combed by a barber who usually did men.

I introduced myself, told her I'd given Dwight a ride after he'd had a minor accident at Scholz Garten.

Her pleasant smile didn't change. "Is my boy all right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Just a little scraped up. Dwight'll be fine."

She nodded contentedly.

I couldn't help thinking about a white lab mouse I'd once seen at A&M—a psychology maze graduate who'd figured out how to push the reward button. The mouse was allowed to sit there all day long, punching, gorging, punching, gorging, until it became an enormous, fuzzy mound of rodent complacency, its pink eyes glazed and disconnected with the world beyond that quarterinchdiameter red circle which gave him bliss.

Mrs. Hayes looked like a woman who had found the reward button.

Chris and Amanda did another lap through the living room.

Mrs. Hayes called after them halfheartedly, "Chris!"

The boy leapt over a toddler thumping blocks on the floor, knocked down a vase, kept running with the girl close behind. Mrs. Hayes blinked, mildly annoyed, like the food button was stuck.

"Chris!" she called again.

The next lap through the living room, Chris stopped. The girl ran into him. She pummeled his back while he waited for instructions.

"Chris," Mrs. Hayes said pleasantly, "what video will keep the children quiet for a while?"

"Star Wars!" he shouted.

"Austin Powers!" protested the girl, whapping him.

The two of them started arguing. Mrs. Hayes looked ever so slightly pained. "I don't approve of those choices, but I must have it quiet for a while. I'm getting my headache again."

Chris widened his eyes, as if Mrs. Hayes' headache was a thing to be avoided.

"We'll figure it out, Mrs. H.," he promised.

Chris and Amanda herded the two littler children out of the room, leaving us only the boy with the cardboard fan. Soon the sounds of screaming and chasing were replaced by roaring ships and blasting lasers.

I sat in the chair by the window. Mrs. Hayes smiled at me from her couch, the boy with the cardboard making her hair flicker with every sweep. My scalp started to itch from the heat. I wondered how much the kid charged.

"Well," Mrs. Hayes said, starting over. "You work for Matthew's company?"

She said Matthew with lazy familiarity—two warm, fluffy syllables.

"No, ma'am," I said. "You know Mr. Pena?"

"Oh, goodness, yes. Matthew's been wonderful to my Dwight. They went to college together, you know. Would you like some iced tea?"

"Don't go to any trouble, ma'am."

"No, it's no trouble." She waved toward the kitchen. "I believe I'd like some, too."

We sat there beaming at each other for a few seconds before I realized I'd received my marching orders.

The kitchen was all Formica and particleboard, the woodgrain veneer peeling away from the cabinets in large strips. The sink was piled with dishes. A Cheerios box was overturned on the counter.

It took me a minute to find two clean glasses, then to find a pitcher in the refrigerator that held anything resembling iced tea. I opened the freezer for ice. On the bottom, swirling in mist, were little strips of notebook paper, each one with a name in cursive: Marcy, Deborah, Chris, Amanda, John, Clement. There were others in the back, stuck there so long they were grafted to the frost. I scraped away one. It said "Dwight."

The kids in the den kept eating Cheetos, happily watching space ships detonate on TV. I filled two glasses and brought my spoils back into the living room.

I gave one glass to Mrs. Hayes, then sat across from her on a wicker rocker.

The kid with the fan said, "Are you cool enough yet, Mrs. H.?"

"You keep going, Clem."

The boy switched the cardboard to his other hand.

Mrs. Hayes smiled at me. "Clem stole money from my wallet last week. Now he's paying me back."

"Really."

"They all try it when they first come here. 'Do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.' "

Clem kept fanning her, his face weary and bitter.

"Proverbs," I said.