The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(102)

"Uh-hmm."

He flipped a few more pages, set aside that magazine, and picked up another.

"We don't have Nickelodeon," he told me. "Jem borrowed me these."

"What're you doing?"

He shrugged.

"Can I look?"

He flexed his scissors thoughtfully a few times, then nodded.

The clippings showed action figures. Play-Doh kits. A Christmas tree that sang karaoke. Several other Christmas items. He must've found the December issue.

I thought about the little crumpled picture of a Christmas tree I'd found in Michael's cleaned-out room, two Saturday evenings ago, the last remnant of the sheet cave.

"Is this what you do when you're not zapping aliens with your ray gun?" I asked gently. "You collect art?"

Michael deliberated over an advertisement for an Erector set. "My wish list."

He looked as sleepy and grim as a late-night driver — no joy in his face, no indication that this toy-browsing was anything but deadly serious work. He started to cut out the Erector set.

"You want all these things for Christmas?" I asked.

He pulled his head in, rubbed his ear on his shoulder.

"Mommy threw the old list away," he muttered. "It wasn't invisible. I have to start over now. Daddy said, 'What would you rather have for Christmas — a lot of toys or a new home in San'tonio? If you don't get it, you can put it on your wish list.'"

The house was strangely silent. A rustle of palm fronds outside the window. From the other bedroom, the faintest trickle of water from Ines' shower. I focused on Michael Brandon's little fingers as they worked. I tried to remember if Jem's hands had even been that tiny.

"Do you want to know a secret?" I asked.

Michael's scissors stopped snipping.

"When I was younger," I said, "my father died, too."

There it was. Laid out in front of a five-year-old. Way to go, Navarre.

"I wasn't as young as you," I amended. "Not nearly. But it was very hard. For a long time."

Michael's pale, inscrutable eyes stayed on me for a heartbeat, then drifted back to the hole he'd cut in the magazine. "I'm making a wish list."

"I know," I said. "You want some privacy?"

He pondered that. He'd probably never had anybody ask him that question before. "No," he decided. "That's okay."

Then, almost inaudibly, he added, "Did you make a cave?"

I nodded. "A very big one. Called California."

Michael scratched a chigger bite. His fingernails left red streaks against the pale skin of his ankle. His lower lip started to tremble. "Daddy asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted San'tonio."

He finished cutting another picture, flattened it on top of the other toy advertisements.

"And I'm sorry," he whispered. "Were you sorry?"

It took me a minute to get my voice to work.

"Yeah, Michael," I said. "Yeah, I was."

He pulled up one knee and rested his chin on it. He made the scissors do a one-bladed pirouette on his big toe.

"We need more Christmas pictures, Tres," he decided.

"It's April," I croaked. Then I realized how little that would mean to Michael — how the last four months in San Antonio had been one hellish Christmas present this little boy wanted with all his heart to put back in the box.

"More Christmas pictures," I repeated. "Yeah. All right. Hand me a magazine."

For the next thirty minutes, until his mother got out of the shower, Michael Brandon and I flipped through toy circulars, looking for things worth wishing for.

FIFTY-THREE

Final exam week at UTSA came too quickly. In all three of my classes, the students scrambled when they realized that there actually would be an evaluation for the term — that the chances of me getting blown away before grades were due were not as likely as they'd once thought.

Gregory the Radish Boy led the grad seminar in a rousing discussion of Marie de France. We decided that maybe Bisclavret's wife had gotten a bad deal, but they kept asking why Marie de France had chosen to tell such a depressing tale and why Aaron Brandon and I liked to teach it.

The last class before the final, Morticia Addams and the two housewives brought casseroles to class. Sergeant Irwin brought some pastries and made a big deal out of handing me a purple-sugar pan dulce, telling me it was my medal for combat wounds in my first term. The sergeant pounded me on the shoulder and said he was damn proud to have had my class.

Professor Mitchell sat in the back, smiling, taking notes, sipping a Sprite one of the students had given him, while we went through some last-minute questions from the study guide.

After the class broke up Mitchell offered to walk me back to my office. "You're a hell of a teacher," Mitchell told me.

I refused to blush. I looked straight down the hallway of yellow bolted panels, thinking about the corridor as it had been a few weeks ago, filled with FBI and bomb-squad men and police.

"You should see me on semesters when I don't get shot."

Mitchell chuckled. As we walked he brought out some student evaluation forms, the kind they use to assess each class.

"I hope I get that chance," he said. "These reports are excellent — the dean was very pleased to see them after such a hard beginning to the term. There've already been quite a few questions about your classes for next fall."