9 PM, Parking Lot

“Look,” he says and launches, with admirable accuracy, a volley of spit that lands between my feet.  Smart-ass comments scroll through my head, the kind of comments that pissed Dean off in the first place.  Over it all, though, I’m thinking, Why did he miss my shoe?

            He’s staring at me levelly and I’m staring down at the wet circle of pavement between my shoes.  He starts almost every sentence with “Look” and I’m always obedient.

            The vanilla-covered gym wall behind him.  Rows of lights across the parking lot flicker on against the blue-orange dusk.  We have, supposedly, the best school in our district, if not in all of Central Texas.  Our district has tons of money since the Californians and New Yorkers started moving in, bringing their cash and their business expertise.  So many people moved in so fast, my mother always says, that one day she went to the store and when she got home our yard was a neighborhood.

            Almost everybody we go to school with now was born outside Texas, or at least their parents were.  Everybody but me and Dean.  Our families were always here and won’t ever leave.  All the other natives moved, fled, south towards San Antonio or west toward the lake.

            My father’s company owns the house Dean’s family rents, so in a way my father is their landlord, but I don’t really think about it.  Half the rental houses in the neighborhood belong to the company and my father’s just the manager.  Dean’s father has two jobs – fallen preacher and drunkard.  Years ago, when he first turned from cloth to bottle, he did his drinking in a plastic-yellow folding lawn chair in his driveway, yelling at us kids as we whirred back and forth on our bikes.  Now, in full-fledged suburbia, such behavior isn’t tolerated, and Dean’s father has to do all his drinking indoors.

            I decided at the end of last year that I was going to move, to leave, go out of state for college or right after.  My brother graduated and still lives at home.  I drive past my grandparent’s house every day.

            “Shit,” Dean says, still watching me although I haven’t looked up.  We grew up three blocks from each other, our whole lives, but his accent is thick, is like motor oil.  “Why don’t you go home?”

            I’m still staring at the blotch where it is drying on the warm pavement.

            “You racist motherfucker,” I say, although I’m not sure why.  I don’t know if Dean is a racist or not, and I’m as white as he is.  The words just keep flipping out of my mouth.  “You goddamned stupidfucking asshole bitch.  You fucking prick.”

            His arm goes back and I think, I’ve never been hit in my life.  His arm goes back, he leans back, he rises up on the ball of his left foot like a pitcher.  I can tell by the angle of his arm that he’d kill me if he could.

            Our family went to the church where Dean’s father was a minister, it was where we had always gone, a Methodist church that used to be right off the highway, where the community college building is now.  We left the church, along with most of the others, when Dean’s father started predicting the end of the world.  The majority of the congregation, then the Methodist church at large, left alone Dean’s father, his few followers, and his prediction that God would take, on a certain Saturday in June, 1980, all the Good Christians to their Salvation and leave the Earth in fiery rubble for a thousand years.

            The fist hits my cheek and there is a crack and the warm taste of blood before any pain.  I’m knocked off balance, just catch myself from falling over completely with my right hand.  The pebbles of the pavement dig into the meat of my palm.  I stay like that – in a sloppy fullback’s three-point stance – for what must be a full second before dropping to one knee.

            “Go on home,” Dean says, but he doesn’t move, so I don’t move.  I let blood slip out of my lips, drip to the cement.  The heal of my hand is, I’m sure, pink and black.  I can hear Dean breathing.

            Noon of that Saturday in 1980, my brother and I were playing outside.  By twelve-thirty, convinced at last that God’s judgment was again delayed, Dean’s parents let him run outdoors.  His eyes were puffy and wet.

            “It wasn’t because I was scared,” was all he would say about it.

            He moves finally, walks past me.  Five feet in front of me he spits, but it’s just out of habit.  He is almost out of the parking lot, almost to the grassy, curbed-in median, when I bolt.  My shoes scratch at the pavement as I start and I slip, but stay up.  I am on him before he can turn.  My shoulder hits him in the back.  As we fall together, my knee cracks sharp on the curb.

            He’s down, face down in the grass.  Reaching up, I grab his hair, which I half expected to be greasy, and shove hard.  It is my honest desire for that one moment to force him to eat dirt, to force mud and rock and grass into his stupid slack mouth.  But as soon as his face is down, I let go.  With just a shudder he rolls me off of him, pushes me away.

            He lets me get up, lets me turn my back on him, lets me walk to my car.  As I pull out of the parking, my headlights brush over him where he is still sitting on the curb.  He’s crying, though I know I didn’t hurt him.  As I pull out onto Seneca Drive, I see Dean flip me off in the side mirror.

            At home my mother freaks out, panics almost, but only says, “I don’t understand why you have to hang out up there during the summer.”  My chin is covered in blood.  That’s what makes my mother “sick with worry.”  But the blood is really nothing, just from biting my tongue.  It is my knee that hours later forces me to ask to be taken to the doctor.

            I didn’t change my clothes.  My mother is upset by this.  I’m still wearing the same shirt with blood streaks down the chest.  I didn’t do anything between the time my mom cleaned off my chin and the time I asked to go the doctor, just sat on the edge of my bed.

            The emergency center is still and well-lit and air-conditioned like a grocery store.  Next year, I think as I lie back on the paper-covered examining table, I’m getting the hell out of here.  The doctor, dark-haired, younger than my father, smelling of iodine and a faint whiff of cigarettes, gently fingers my swollen knee.

            A thought strikes me and I crane my neck, trying to see the wall behind him, but there’s no diploma, no frame.

            “Where did you go to medical school?”  His fingers pause.

            “Why, don’t you trust me?”  There is some genuine tone in his voice that he tries to cover up with a condescending chuckle.

            “No, it’s just … I was just wondering …,” I really don’t know why I asked and he was still watching me, so I lie.  “I was thinking about maybe being a doctor someday.”

            “Baylor,” he says in a lower tone, resuming, satisfied that I was still in my place/  “In Houston.”

            I lie back, crinkling against the papered cushion.  He taps my knee, softly.  I don’t react.

            “Well, now,” he says finally, “there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage.”

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