6

      12:30 a.m.

      “Where’ve you been?”

      Harold Bean froze in the doorway, blinded by the glare of the kitchen’s fluorescent lights flashing on, and though he instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, he decided it was just as well that he couldn’t see. Looking at his mother at any time was a grim chore; it became downright painful at twelve-thirty in the morning when she wore only a nightgown and still had to stand sideways to fit through the hall doorway.

      “Jeez, Mama.” He squinted, then blinked hard to get used to the brutal glare. As his vision cleared, he stepped inside the double-wide trailer, shutting the door behind him. It was all about buying time, and when he turned back to face her again, he saw that at least this gown was made of a dark, opaque material, less transparent than some. Unfortunately, the huge orange-and-yellow flowers on it reminded him of gaping mouths screaming for freedom. He figured he and those flowers had a lot in common.

      “I asked you a question, young man. Where’ve you been?”

      “The usual.”

      He headed straight for the refrigerator. He hoped this would be one of those nights when she gave up quickly and went back to bed.

      “Don’t give me that. You should’ve been home hours ago. Ain’t nothing open this time of night.”

      No shit, he thought. That was another reason why he intended to get the hell out of Split Creek as soon as he graduated next year. This was a do-nothing town full of know-nothing people going nowhere. He might not be brain surgeon material, but he was smart enough to know he could make a good life for himself in the military—and not as a bottom-of-the-shitcan grunt, either. He was going to be an officer. Recruiters down in Tyler had convinced him of that. One more year, he fantasized as he took out the plastic gallon jug of skim milk from the top shelf, then it would be “Anchors aweigh!” for him.

      “Don’t drink all of that!” his mother cried. “I need some for my cereal in the morning.”

      Keeping his back to her, Harold rolled his eyes at the whiny demand. The sow drank no-fat milk and diet soda all day, bought everything and anything guaranteeing lower calories on the label, yet he was the one losing weight around here. Because I’m not scarfing down cookies and chips as a chaser to everything.

      In fact, he had trouble trying to keep a hundred sixty-seven pounds on his six-foot frame, while he regularly had to replace the extra boards under his mother’s bed to keep it from crashing through the floor of the trailer.

      As thirsty as he was hungry, but unwilling to listen to more of her yammering, he poured himself a mere half glass of the cold liquid, then returned the container to the refrigerator.

      “You were out sniffing after her again, weren’t you?” his mother demanded.

      “No.”

      “How many times do I have to say it before it sinks into that thick skull of yours? The girl’s done with you, stop chasing her. Ain’t you got no pride?”

      “I wasn’t anywhere near Faith Ramey.”

      “Well, her sister must’ve believed otherwise. Why else did she call here looking for her?”

      That got his attention. He stopped the glass inches from his mouth. “She didn’t.”

      “You calling your ma a liar?”

      “All I’m saying is that Mike knows Faith and I don’t drive up to school together anymore.”

      “Probably ’cause she got tired of you laying out and goofing off. So where were you? At some club drinking? I won’t have a drunk in my house! I got rid of your no-good father, and I’ll get rid of you if’n you’re turning that way.”

      “This is a trailer. Ouch!” She’d leaned into the kitchen just enough to slap him across the back of his head. White bursts of light exploded before his eyes and his eardrums ached. “Fuck it,” he groaned.

      She swung at him again. “No cussing under my roof, and don’t be correcting your superiors! Guess you figure you’re too old to answer to me, but let me tell you, Harold Bean, you’re nothing until I say you’re something. Got that?”

      Shaking from humiliation as much as fury, he almost spilled his milk as he stretched to set the glass on the counter. Somehow he resisted the temptation to commit violence, rubbed the back of his head and simply replied, “You’re gonna wake Wendy, Mama.”

      “Don’t you worry about her. Unlike you, she knows it’s a school night and went to bed at a decent hour. She’ll get her rest. Now I asked you a question.”

      A question he wasn’t about to answer, not truthfully, anyway. But he had a lie practiced and memorized. “I was at the school library until they closed. Did you forget that I told you I had a paper due as part of one of my finals and needed more footnotes?” He hadn’t said anything of the kind, but while his mother had the memory of a whole herd of elephants when it came to what happened on each and every TV soap opera, she couldn’t recall diddly about anything he told her regarding school. To keep it that way, he exaggerated shamelessly. “Remember, I explained all the instructors care about is footnotes, footnotes and footnotes?”

      “Oh…yeah.” Her eyes, thin slits in a moon-pie face, scanned the length of him. “Then where is it? You badmouth your teachers, but don’t bring in so much as one sheet of paper to prove you’ve been working? How dumb do you think I am, boy? You think I don’t remember that the library closes at nine, and that it only takes you forty minutes to get home from up there?”

      That voice. Sometimes Harold fantasized about wrapping his hands around his mother’s fat neck and squeezing, squeezing until her head popped like a ripe zit. His loathing for her incessant nagging was that strong. But this was hardly the time for her to know his darkest thoughts.

      “It’s late, Mama.” He reached for the milk again. “I left everything in the car so I wouldn’t have to tote it all out again, come morning. If you don’t believe me, take my keys out of my pocket and look for yourself. As for the rest of the time, if you’d given me a chance, I would have explained I had car trouble.”

      His mother snorted. “A likely story.”

      “If I’m lying, I’m dying.” To pledge himself, he held up his hand the same way she did hers at church. “Car battery went on me. It was deader than—” he barely stopped in time to save himself from earning another smack “—I had to wait until somebody came by who was willing to drive me all the way to the Wal-Mart in Mineola and back, which was the only place open at this hour.”

      She looked doubtful. “Who would go way out of their way to do something like that for you?”

      “Jack Fenton.” It had taken some thinking, but Harold had remembered his former high school classmate who lived on the far side of town. “Fenton” was a name his mother had heard before, since the guy had been the class valedictorian and had impressed everyone by doubling up on his college courses to graduate a year early. But most important, Fenton was someone his mother would probably, hopefully, never meet. “He happened to pass me on his way home from Texarkana