The Devil You Know: A Novel

Greenstone

1

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT, GOES THE old saying, and David had been waiting now nearly thirty minutes under the entryway roof of Edina Morningside, the rain coming down in cold, rapid bursts, and that some thing he’d been waiting for, his mother in her beat-up Ford, hadn’t come. His teammates had been shunted away long before, one after another, by parents in new Cadillacs, and brothers with hopped-up GTOs and ’Cudas, and sisters in new Toyotas and Volvos, and now it was only David under the roof, and it was with a certain freedom, and irony, that he stepped out into the rain, his books slung over his back in a canvas bag and the rain cool on his face.

He glanced down at his wristwatch, that old saw coming to him again, his mother was always saying it, All good things—and he did feel that, that something big was coming, life changing and, he assumed, wrongly, it had to do with what he’d nearly done today—and he checked for traffic and crossed at the light, happy to be outside and moving, to be able to collect his thoughts.

His mother had forgotten to pick him up again. Which was always a minor embarrassment anyway, her pulling up to the school in their old station wagon, and here he’d been given the opportunity to take a four-mile hike in the rain instead. Too stupid to get out of the rain. Well, he was in it, and it wasn’t so bad, he thought, and he quickened his step, and for a time he was, even walking along the rain-glossy street, deep in a reverie. Saw himself running, pulling ahead of Terry McGovern, he would do it, beat him, had almost done it at the meet today, he should have pulled ahead of McGovern before that last hill, sprinted by him, even if the ground had been uneven there, and anyway, he was two years younger than Terry, just fifteen, and Coach had said his time was incredible, and it had been.

Push it, Coach said. Don’t wait for anything. Push it now. You push it, you could take State next year, or at the worst, two years from now. You gotta push it, Davey, he’d said.

David shuddered in the cold. Still, thinking about it, he very nearly broke into a run, for the joy of it, but he was wearing his hard-soled boots, and that stopped him. He came to another light and, taking a long step from the curb, further distanced himself from school and what was really troubling him there.

And just then he decided to tell no one about that, or about what he’d done today in track.

Striding toward the highway fence he had to climb to cross the highway, he thought of his father, and what he’d said the last time they’d talked.

What do you have to go out for a pansy sport like that for? Running. That’s for losers who can’t take football. You can throw the ball. I taught you. You should be bucking for quarterback.

Even thinking of his father now put a frown on David’s face. Because what he always seemed to be implying but never said was: David was small. Which he wasn’t. He was just under five-eleven, and one fifty-five, which for his age wasn’t small at all, but his father made him feel small.

Small. When he could run ten miles across uneven ground faster than almost anyone in the state.

You’re fucking rawhide, kid, his coach had said. What is it that gets into you?

David never told Coach that when he ran he thought of all the slights his father had tossed at him, thought of the beatings that had gone on before his mother had forced his father out, all in well-to-do Edina. Things like that didn’t happen in Edina, and God knows, if they did, you didn’t talk about them.

And it occurred to him that Max made all of them feel small— even now when he’d been out of the house almost three years.

David was thinking that when he crossed the service road bordering Highway 62, went down the grassy slope in the rain toward the fence that ran along it. He traversed the slope, the grass slick under his feet, and the smell of exhaust ashy in the wet air, his thoughts going now from his father to another bully, Rick Buddy, who, since he’d thrown the ball that morning, seemed determined to break him, even though David would never give in, didn’t cower, or sidle away from him. He had no idea why he didn’t—though he hadn’t with his father, either. But it was going to come to something bad, this Buddy thing. Because now the other Hornets were teasing Buddy that David had gotten the best of him.

That’s really what was waiting for him. Buddy. What troubled him now.

David tossed his book bag over the cyclone fence, then climbed over it, careful to avoid the barbs on top.

The traffic on the highway was moving at a good seventy or so, and it was dark, and raining, and he knew he’d have to be careful.

It was a little after evening rush, and he stood on the shoulder, his stomach rumbling. A car sped past in a hissing rush and David bolted across the north 100 exit ramp, the pavement slick under his feet, a car that must have been doing ninety honking and barely missing him, and David felt himself kick, and he was flat out running across the westbound lanes, a second car coming on, the driver laying on his horn, a smeary, harsh, red sound, and then David was standing in the grassy median.

Cars passed behind him, and in front of him, most of them with their lights on.

He wasn’t so much worried about being hit as he was about Officer Diehl showing up. He caught his breath, then felt his bag on his back, which seemed lighter, and he got a sick feeling, didn’t even want to look to see if he’d lost something.

From the median he could make out the house alongside the highway, just up the rise from the entrance ramp and in back of the cyclone fence, the lights on, and the car in the drive, that old Ford.

She’d forgotten him big time, and he wondered what he’d say to her when he got in.

Then he bolted across the two eastbound lanes and entrance ramp, went up the hill and fast—Officer Diehl had stopped him right here a few weeks ago, and even though David had explained he’d have to walk an extra two miles if he went south, to the crossover, Diehl hadn’t been sympathetic.

I see you out here again, he’d said, I’ll take you into the station. No ifs, ands, or buts. Got it?

As he bolted up the hill to the fence, it occurred to David that he didn’t care.

2

DAVID CAME THROUGH THE DOOR INTO THE WARM HOUSE expecting to smell something to eat—he’d imagined roast beef, he supposed because his mother’s, Rachel’s, as he thought of her, birthday was coming up, and he’d been thinking about that, what to get her, and that she’d always liked to have roast beef for her birthday, but there was nothing, nothing but the patter of Janie’s feet. She came running barefoot up the long hallway and scooted behind the washer/dryer alcove, peered impishly out at him. This made David’s eyes glass up, and he had to turn his head aside, was too embarrassed to let her see.

David? his mother called from her room down the hall. David, is that you?

Janie stepped out into the hallway and gave David a stern look, mimicking their mother. Janie was just seven, and very pretty, but it was this . . . pixie something in her that David loved. He loved Janie.

They were in this together, had been for years.

She’s all mad because you promised you’d call if you were going to be late again.

David swung his bag onto the table by the door and shucked off his wet jacket.

David? Rachel called again.

No, it’s the boogeyman! he called back.

Janie saw the mud on his boots and knew he’d climbed the fence and run across the highway. She pointed, and David shook his head and put his finger to his lips. Now Rachel came up the hallway, her reading glasses on, pressing a strand of her hair back behind her ear. She’d been doing her office work at home again. Janie smiled at her.

I thought you said you were going to call?

David shrugged. He wasn’t about to tell her she’d forgotten to pick him up after practice, because that would be another cause for Rachel to go on one of her crying jags. Or to get depressed and lock herself in her room, or maybe even worse, she’d hug him, and apologize, and tell him what a rotten mother she’d been.

She’d done that once, and it had just about killed him. Anything but that. So he said, I’m sorry. I got caught up in that nerdo High Q thing after practice and just forgot.

Rachel gave him a stern, sideways glance. She knew David didn’t spend much time with the High Q group now that he had cross-country; she’d gotten him into the group, and he’d made friends there, ones he went to a movie with now and then, but only that.

Years earlier, this had made her nervous, how he never stuck with one group, until she’d realized it was just David’s way: He was, in large part, solitary. Liked most to read, science books usually, and make things, rockets, and flying model airplanes, kept odd pets, like salamanders, or newts, loved anything alive, or with fur, and to be outside.

And now, too, he was crazy about running—and Janie, always Janie. The two of them were always kidding around, Janie making David laugh.

You weren’t out with Vern or Cleve Ellis, were you?

David wasn’t going to go near that one. Vern and Cleve were brothers David used to hang out with; both had been sent up to Shattuck, a military academy, for messing around with drugs.

He was playing chess, Janie said.

Chess was the catchword for whatever he’d been doing when he came home late. Rachel never checked his story out. Chess. Or bowling. David smiled at that, his mother across from him giving him that dubious look again. David ruffled Janie’s hair.

Come on, Sport, do you have to give all my secrets away? he said.

Janie beamed from ear to ear, and David felt some darkness in him lift.

What’s for dinner? he said, even as he moved off toward his room at the back of the house.

What do you want? Rachel said, behind him.

David looked over his shoulder. They were back into their usual ritual, and he felt safe. She would ask, and he would offer to make dinner. It had been that way since his father had left, and that’s just what they did.

Later that night, he was hunched over his desk, working on differential equations. He had to be up early, for zero-hour German, which he hated, another of his father’s great ideas, one that reached down into his life and messed things up. The best research in ophthalmology is being done in Germany right now, his father had said. David did not know why, exactly, he couldn’t say no to his father, but he couldn’t, and so he’d signed up for it, and he hated it, but then he didn’t care much for high school, with the pep rallies, and nonsense about our team, and the school colors.

It all bored him. Like these differential equations, he thought. What was the point? Who cared what the volume of this bookmaker’s irregular object was? Jesus.

David lit another cigarette and was careful to blow the smoke out the window so his mother wouldn’t smell it. He was sure she did anyway, but she didn’t say anything, and maybe she was just resigned to it.

David was taking a deep tug on the cigarette when he saw something move in the doorway. He fixed his eyes on his calculus text, waiting—here would be another lecture from his mother, but no heart in it.

That’s what killed David now. And this sense of suffocation in the house.

David? Janie said.

She put her head through the door, her eyes porcelain blue and with that kid-something there that just grabbed him. He felt bigger around Janie, stronger, not in a boastful way, but almost as if he were his sister’s father, and not her brother.

What, Sport? he said.

Can I come in?

Of course you can.

She pattered on bare feet to his bed beside the desk and leapt in and pulled the covers over her head, then slowly lowered them to peek out at him, giggling.

Okay, what is it?

Janie laughed, then got a serious look. She’s crying. I can hear it through the wall again.

David let go a long sigh. He knew Rachel wasn’t crying, and that Janie had resorted to this lie in order to talk to him made him feel tired—Rachel did cry some nights, but it was David who’d told Janie about it.

Janie said now, You’re not supposed to smoke.

Don’t you go smoking, David teased.

I won’t, Janie said.

Well, don’t.

Then why do you?

David shrugged. He closed his calculus text and spun his chair around. He got up and sat on the end of the bed, his back to the cool wall.

Pull your feet in, Sport, he said.

She did that and he yanked one of the pillows from the head-board and wedged it behind his back.

So what is it, really? Mom’s sleeping by now, kiddo.

Janie considered this, averting her eyes. She smiled at him, and he saw she was holding something in and he rumpled up her hair.

Come on, Sport, you can tell me.

Tell you what?

Did you have another dream?

For a second Janie turned away, pulled the blanket over her head again. David pulled it down.

You did, didn’t you.

David didn’t ask her to recount it. She’d done that one time, and it had upset her—the dream had been so dark and violent, it had surprised even David—Max had been cutting David into pieces and putting him in a bag—so now, as he had in the past, he reached for a book on his shelf, and he read to her.

‘The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs . . .’

David read on, glancing over at Janie. As in the past, Janie didn’t make it much past the first page before she was fast asleep, and David reached to the foot of the bed and covered her with the quilt. Janie was a cold sleeper, sensitive to temperature; even when it was in the fifties outside, she always had to be bundled up against the weather.

David carefully went back to his desk. Janie liked to sleep with the light on, so it was no problem to open his calculus text and work now, and he lit another cigarette, and for a second, glancing at Janie’s elfin, smooth-skinned face, felt settled. He worked a problem with enjoyment, Janie sleeping to his left.

But then he remembered Rick Buddy. After practice tomorrow, he’d run into him.

Always, on Fridays, the cross-country team used the track behind the school, and recently, to the amusement of all, Rick Buddy waited there to get his jabs in. It made David feel leaden, and then he recalled what his father had said years ago. Some bully goes after you, you gotta just hit first and hit hard. You hit any bully hard enough and he’ll back off, and no one’ll be calling you a sissy. I don’t ever want to hear any whining from you about bullies, because bullies you take care of yourself. Got it?

Well, he had Buddy to himself, all right. Buddy, who’d promised to get him. And get him good.

I’m gonna cripple you, kid, he’d said that first afternoon when the football and cross-country teams had shared the field. I’m gonna cripple you, and right when it’ll hurt you the worst. Right in front of everybody.

All right, David decided. No matter that Rick Buddy weighed two-forty. He’d move, and move fast.

There at the desk, the light on, his heart raced imagining it, knocking Buddy down, but in his heart of hearts he wasn’t convinced. Yet here was his father speaking to him again.

It’s all willpower. You decide to do things, then you get the job done.

David had known, always, when his father said these things, that it was some drill sergeant of years past talking to him, somebody in the army. Not Max. Somebody who had formed his father, who’d had no father.

Shipshape, Soldier, Max had said when David was barely tall enough to reach Max’s knees.

David snapped out the light and sat in the near dark.

Was the thing he’d sensed coming all this time this thing? Not having to break through in track, but having to stand up to someone like stupid, dog-eyed Rick Buddy? And if he did, would he have put off all Rick Buddys, like his father had said he would?

Or was Rick Buddy just part of it?

Moonlight spilled through the window on Janie’s face.

But was life really all just climbing on top of each other, or knocking down Rick Buddys, as Max had told him it was? Because if that was true, when did you stop? And who could possess anything of real value then, if it only made you a target for those who’d try to take it away?

David smoked in the dark, all this melancholy in him.

His father had always criticized him for siding with the so-called underdogs, the losers. Cross-country, what a loser sport, son. Who cares? You don’t get the girls, you don’t get the respect.

But even in his chair, David felt that rush of motion, the trees falling back, and that beautiful moving into his stride, and passing John Pretorius, today, and then the others, and running side by side with Terry McGovern, he’d hit his stride, and he just knew, just knew he could have beaten him, goddammit! if he’d had another half mile. But he hadn’t bet on that length of hill, and he’d run stride for stride with McGovern, with more on tap, but McGovern, on the hill, had more lift, more strength, though only on the hill, and back on even ground he could have taken him if he’d just put back more pain, because that’s what it was, eating pain, pushing through pain, and staying focused, and pushing through that feeling that your lungs and heart would burst, if you could push through that burning, until you reached that clear, clean rush, and staying quiet, could use the ground under you, and like Coach said, take the fastest in front of you, and fucking run his goddamn back down, and when you can see the end, spend it all, every goddamn thing in you, and that’s where David saw he’d failed.

If he’d had time to look at the track before, if he’d have known that hill was there . . .

If he hadn’t missed the bus that morning, or had eaten breakfast, or if his mother, Rachel, hadn’t told him his father had called . . .

Fuck it, he said to himself. Stop making excuses.

If he stopped smoking . . .

He crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray, then bending over the bed, tucked the quilt around Janie’s face, and went off into the living room, where he covered himself with the afghan on the couch and slept.

3

THE FOLLOWING DAY WENT BY IN A WASH AS ALWAYS, BUT this one even more so, the halls a pasty gray, and his teachers irritated with him, even Mr. Oberstar, who really was terrific—taking his test now with the others and running it through the mechanized grader, and there being one snapping noise, just one, when his went through, and David angry with himself, thought, What had he missed? and Mr. Oberstar watching David, studying him, so that David had smiled a big All-American Boy smile.

He knew all that cellular stuff backward and forward, so maybe it was something he’d missed the days he was out of school, in court over this thing his father had dragged them into, some hearing over new visitation rights, the thought of which put him in a clammy sweat. He’d tried not to think about it all morning; Max hadn’t even shown up at the hearing, but it had turned out he’d been in surgery, doing a hip replacement. This time, his absence not just an excuse, the hospital calling, and the judge rescheduling the hearing, now not to take place until December.

Thinking about the hearing made his heart skip beats and his eyes feel dry, and the morning passed slowly.

And then there was lunch, and after it Miss Schwartz’s class, Track 1 English, and her precious crap with Shakespeare the Immortal Bard; and Mr. Seeman’s Chinese History, which was okay, but through it all ran this thread of anticipation, something more upsetting than the visitation hearing, David pinned to the wheel of time, or fate, or circumstance, willing himself not to even consider what was most on his mind . . .

Buddy. Buddy would be waiting for him after class.

And lacing his Adidas up after school, in the locker room, in his shorts, Dean Simonson, his cross-country friend, as David thought of him, clapped him on the back.

Way to go, Geist! he said. Man, that was really something yesterday!

There were more than a few kids who congratulated him, and David was surprised. In fact, he was almost grinning at it, would have, if it hadn’t been for Buddy.

Maybe Buddy’d just give it up, now that David had placed in the meet?

David went outside with Simonson, the day warm yellow, and the light soft, and the smell of burning leaves in the air, all of which he loved, and back of the track he pumped his legs, then stretched in the grass, his hamstrings burning.

He tried to focus on running some fast 440s, saw himself burst off the blocks, had his chin on his right knee, his leg extended, his left leg bent behind him when he heard the rattle of plastic behind him and felt two thick hands on his shoulders, pressing him down, so the burning in his legs was searing.

He couldn’t find his voice for fear that Buddy might really injure him.

Hey, cut it out, Buddy! Simonson shouted. You could mess up his back.

Yeah, cut it out, another teammate, Pretorius, said.

Buddy gave out a low guffaw and let go.

Get up, faggot, he said.

David jumped to his feet. Behind him, his teammates stood watching. Long hair, wild looking, thin in running gear.

Dean Simonson said, tossing his head, Come on, Davey, let’s take a fast one around the track.

Right there, David could have moved. Simonson had given him an out. But he didn’t. If he had, maybe Buddy wouldn’t have said what he did, "You’re just a runner ’cause you’re afraid, asshole. You think you’re hot shit because of what you did throwin’ that ball, you and your faggoty ass baseball bullshit. You are never gonna amount to shit, because you’re made of faggotty shit, and you are shit. But most of all, you’re scared shit, Geist."

David stood an arm’s length from Buddy, his hands twitching, his head a bright burn. He couldn’t think, caught out like that. All of David’s silence, his dogged persistence, his focus came out of a generalized fear, one that he hated in himself. He was terrified of something, and it came to him in dreams, in moments when he wasn’t prepared for it, this whooshing, swooping dark something, and only his being strong around Janie made it go away.

Making it go away for Janie was his only refuge.

Only, now it faced him in the person of Rick Buddy, who looked around to make sure the coaches weren’t out, then lunged at David, said, Boo!

David jumped back, but not much.

You’re such a pissant you’re even afraid of your own shadow, aren’t cha, Buddy said.

There in his shoulder pads and cleats, Buddy was smirking.

Afraid to so much as breathe, that’s you, asshole.

Then, before David had even a second to think of moving, to swing on Buddy, Buddy had him by the hair on the back of his head, and ran his face into the cyclone fence in front of the bleachers, so his nose hit the thick wire and he tasted blood. Buddy jerked his knee into David’s stomach, clapped him over his ears, and when David swung hard, struck Buddy dully in the mouth, Buddy caught David’s hand and bent his thumb back until David felt something there give with a dull, painful tearing.

Say ‘I give.’

David did not say it, and Buddy kicked him with his big knee again, knocking the air out of him, so that David sunk to his knees, here the smell of blood and newly mown grass and dirt.

But he wouldn’t say it, there was no way, but something in him told him to just give in, say I give, and he was arguing with himself about saying it, that he should say it, but then there was a sharp whistle, and there was that rattle and clatter of plastic that is football gear, and the whole team moved off onto the field, and Buddy with them, and when Simonson came over to see how he was, David shrugged his hand off his shoulder and headed inside, was crossing the field to the locker room, even as Coach was shouting, Now, where the hell is Geist? Did that goddamn goober Buddy run him off? If he did, so help me—

But no one said anything.

He made it up Xerxes, to the podiatrist’s. He’d had to have a cast put on his left foot when he’d broken two bones in it running the year before, and when he came in, Dr. Parker looked up over his receptionist’s elaborately done hair, an Afro with a green ribbon seeming to hold that balloon of dark hair down.

Dr. Parker, unlike their family physician, was black, and David thought here he could pass off his messed-up thumb as a sports injury.

I’m gonna— Hey, David, Dr. Parker said, and he bent over his receptionist and motioned David into the back, and David wondered, from the look Dr. Parker gave him, if his nose had begun to bleed again.

He went to the room at the back of the hall where Dr. Parker had worked on his foot, and minutes later Dr. Parker came in with an ice pack, and said nothing, just handed it to David, nodded a kind of you-know-what-to-do-with-it nod, and while David held the pack to his face, Dr. Parker fixed an aluminum splint on the thumb of his right hand.

When he’d finished with that, he said, I want there to be an understanding between you and me, David. I know what this is, and you know what this is. You have anybody to go to?

When David didn’t answer, Dr. Parker got him on his feet, then turned him toward the table and had him lie on his back on it.

You hold that against your nose, and I’m going to get more ice for your hand. You don’t do anything for either, so it’s not that kind of situation. All you’ve got is a sprain and contusions. I don’t have to so much as make a record that you were here. But if it’s going to come to this again, you’re going to call me. You’re going to promise me that, or I’ll call your mother right now, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Do you understand me?

David nodded.

He lay back with the ice on his nose, and there was Dr. Parker’s reassuring voice in the clinic outside, and then he was in with more ice and had David hold it over his hand, which he lay across David’s stomach.

After a time David watched the ceiling, and at first he imagined dramas in which he pummeled Rick Buddy to within an inch of his life, crunching blows to those dull eyes of his, a devastating kick to the testicles, ten knee jabs to the breadbasket for every one Buddy’d given him, and after some time had gone by, those thoughts faded, stupid kid thinking, he told himself, and the throbbing in his hand and face took over, hot, itchy throbbing, and he held the ice there, and the buzzing of the lights became louder, and there was the opening and closing of doors, and cars starting out in the lot and driving away, and finally it was just Dr. Parker who came in to look down at him, his eyes sad, and his movements deliberate and slow, as if something weighty were pressing on him.

4

HE GOT THE DOOR OPEN WITHOUT MAKING ANY NOISE, AND was halfway to his room when he heard Janie come bolting up from the basement den, her bare feet sharp on the runners. She nearly ran headlong into him, and when she saw his face, she skidded to a stop and put her hands over her mouth, turned one way and then the other, stomping her feet she was so upset. David caught her arm and spun her around, pinned her against him.

Shhhhhh.

She’s not home! Janie nearly shouted. And you’re late! Mrs. Toreman’s here because of you!

Okay, Sport. Okay. All right?!

He let go of her, and she wouldn’t look at him, as it upset her so badly.

Tell Mrs. Toreman she can go now, okay, Sport? David said, and with a push, sent her for her sitter.

He went down the hallway to the bathroom, and as he was studying his face in the mirror, bruised blue already, he heard Mrs. Toreman go out. For years, Mrs. Toreman had watched Janie in pinches like this.

When he stood in the hallway again, Janie stared.

It’s the overhead lights. They’re making it look worse than it is.

Is not! Janie shouted.

Well, it’s not like I’m gonna go blind or anything.

Janie looked up at him, in her face this incredulity, and he realized his left eye had nearly closed up.

You’re not?

I’m sure it looks worse than it is, Sport.

Janie wrinkled up her face, then peered at him over her elbow. David stooped and nodded her over. She sidled toward him. Although his nose was throbbing something awful, he raised his arms comically and made a growling noise, and Janie let go a girlish squealing and ran from him, giggling, and he chased her through the living room and caught her from behind, and thinking, oh, Jesus, does that smart, swung her around in circles, until she begged him to stop.

He set her down and she bent toward him.

Can I touch it?

Sure.

Janie leaned forward, this almost—David thought—clinical interest in his face, this intrigue, while she was concerned, too. She touched what must have been the darkest part of his swollen eye.

Does that hurt?

Sure does.

Why didn’t you say so?

She really wanted to know.

You wanted to touch it, kiddo. That was the deal. Didn’t say anything about whether it hurt or not.

It’s hot, Janie said. Looks like an eggplant.

David had to laugh at that. He stood and put his hands on his hips.

What about dinner? he asked.

Mom made that old hotdish again, it’s in the kitchen.

David glanced at his watch, then got his hand around Janie’s shoulders and propelled her toward the kitchen with a light push.

Janie set the table while David, at the stove, adjusted the burner under the pot of hotdish. There was a note on the lid. It read:

Heat this on the stove and make sure

Janie eats. I might not be back until

late, so don’t wait up.

Love,

Mom

Don’t wait up. David, his stomach clenching, dropped the note in the trash; he’d hoped this problem of his and Janie’s had gone away, but he could see now it hadn’t, and he knew he’d have to think how to fix it.

He did that while he was readying their plates, then brought their dinner to the table and sat.

She’s seeing that Mr. Filibuster again, isn’t she, Janie said, seeing the look on his face.

Don’t go repeating things that I say without—

I think he’s a dinkle-pooper.

David smiled at that. That’s a new one, he said.

I’ll bet they’re over at Bridgeman’s.

Bridgeman’s was Janie’s favorite restaurant. They were most likely not at Bridgeman’s, an ice cream and shrimp basket kind of place.

Sure, that’s it, David said, then added, And don’t tell Mom I said that about Jarvis, all right?

What, that he talks too much?

David reached out to ruffle Janie’s hair, but she dodged and he missed her altogether, and they ate in silence.

It wasn’t just that Jarvis, this guy his mother had been seeing, talked too much. No, it was that he was like Max in a way, his mother getting back into something with a blowhard, only this guy was even more so, a real-estate agent and developer who knew everything and everyone in the Twin Cities, or so it would seem, if you believed half of what he said.

By comparison, Max, his father, an orthopedic surgeon, was quiet.

Eating, David was almost sick thinking about Rachel getting hooked up with Jarvis. Here it would be, all over again, some version of the same thing—Jarvis and the calls to the office, the important business meetings that ran until early in the morning, the lies and the posturing.

Only he couldn’t imagine Jarvis at this table, or any other table, with them. He’d been out with Jarvis and Rachel a few times himself, once skeet shooting, Jarvis trying to pal up to him then, and dispensing endless pointers, which, David knew, were all aimed at proving to Rachel what a fatherly guy he was, and what an expert, all over again, Rachel always within earshot when he did it. It had so aggravated David that he’d cleaned Jarvis’s clock shooting handguns later, which, eating now, he had cause to consider.

Jarvis’s behavior that night was the best ammunition he had against him—if he could only think how to use it.

Shooting handguns, he’d thought he’d force Jarvis to show his true colors so Rachel could see what she was in for, what Janie and he’d be in for. But maybe, he thought now, glancing up at Janie, who grinned, bravely, so that he bent to his plate again, maybe he’d only driven them together instead.

In the car that night, after David had taken Jarvis down, Jarvis had ranted about his pistol, about how the barrel was off, had been messed up by the machinist who’d worked on it, fixed the trigger (Jarvis had boasted before shooting with David about the gun’s something-or-another grams of draw), but then, in the car, the gun having failed him, he’d given David a look that he’d gotten too many times from Max, when Max had come home drunk and beaten him when he was in bed, and trying to rise out of sleep.

Something twisted in Max, something gone wrong, and he, David, the target.

It upset David, and he thought now, bent over the hotdish, Janie across from him, that it was up to him to put the brakes on Jarvis, steer his mother from this guy—for Janie’s and his sake, and for Rachel’s—because, even that night, she hadn’t seen Jarvis, hadn’t gotten it.

She couldn’t have, or why would she be out—David shook his head at the thought—why would she be out late with the guy? Again?

But she was, no doubt, even after that ugly time at the range.

That night, when they’d gone target shooting, had plugged bowling pins at a range in Hopkins, Rachel had seemed amused by it all, Jarvis putting a lot of stock in his handgun, an enormous Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. He’d given David and Rachel .38 Specials. David hadn’t told Jarvis that his uncle, from the time he’d been little, had taken him to a sandpit nearby, and he’d had exactly this gun, the SW .38, and they’d plugged the frickin’, as his uncle had said, daylights out of tin cans, tossing them in the air and plugging them, and he’d loved his uncle Bobby, and they’d just had fun for the hell of it, whole afternoons of plugging cans, and then targets, and moving targets, and when they were disgruntled, bottles, which made a satisfying shattering sound.

So, at the underground range in Hopkins, David had suppressed a smile when Jarvis had taken the Python out of the purple-velvet-lined case, his big fucking dick of a gun—David read that loud and clear—and then got out the two smaller guns, the .38s.

That he was some gun collector, all handguns, David didn’t like, either.

I never held one of these before, David said.

Jarvis knew Max, David’s father, had been a pheasant and duck hunter, and that he’d brought David along, so when they’d been out earlier skeet shooting, there’d been no surprise that David knew how to handle a shotgun. But no one, not even Rachel, knew about Bobby’s and David’s afternoons at the sand-pits plugging away with those .38s.

"Have you ever shot one of these?" David asked Rachel, giving her a warning look.

There are things boys, of any age, don’t think about their mothers, and David wasn’t thinking them about Rachel that night, either. But he saw them all the same, how she’d worn the black turtleneck that showed off her figure, and she had some figure, had done up her face and had a kind of hot glitter in her eyes.

No, she said sharply. Your father wouldn’t have one in the house.

This shut David right up. Shocked him, really: And it made him do what he did later. He knew why Max hadn’t let Rachel have a gun, even when he’d moved out—having a gun in the house wasn’t safe for her, Rachel—and it made David feel all the more desperate about driving this prick Jarvis off, and so he only smiled for Rachel, broadly, here this grim little spectacle he had to orchestrate now for the sake of both of them.

Okay, David said, giving Jarvis a confused look. Where’s the . . . safety on this thing?

Jarvis gave him a big lecture right there, that chrome-plated Python hanging suggestively from his hand, explained the sport of pin competition, as he called it, shooting bowling pins stacked in rows.

They got loaded up, took their positions, and had at the first set. Even with the ear protectors on, the sound was loud, an irregular thumping, Whump! Whump-whump-whump! Jarvis knocked down all of his pins but had gone well over the allotted time. Rachel knocked down two and splintered the neck of two more. David only nicked one—or that’s what it looked like, Jarvis there grinning at him.

Give up? Jarvis said. Or are you ready for a real lesson? I mean, he said, you don’t got a clue with that little pea shooter.

I’ll get the hang of it, David said, and Rachel looked at him askance, knew he was lying, but about what she couldn’t tell.

They went through three rounds of pins like that, and David let himself knock down a few.

He had the feel of the gun now. His uncle’s .38s had had hair triggers, and he made a triangle of his arms now, the way his uncle had shown him, his uncle the war hero, the rifle corps marksman, who got all long-faced if anyone asked him about Omaha Beach, and even longer if his Purple Heart was mentioned.

Get your body steady, and let the gun do the walking, he’d said. Squeeze off the shots, even if you’re moving. Bobby’d toss up a can, the can spinning end over end, or rising in a high, looping arc, or underhand, and he’d yell, Lead it! Lead it! and David would knock them—each and every one—down. Even the high ones, which nearly disappeared overhead. Bobby’d been one terrific pitcher, until the war, and he’d come back himself, but something—kind of, David thought—broken in him. Something . . . gone away, which was part of what scared David.

Bobby dying, sort of, the way people seemed to, but going on anyway.

And his mother had almost been there, just like Bobby, two years ago, unable to divorce Max but unable to let him move back in again, all this time gone by now since they’d separated, and then she’d started dating, as she’d called it, to make their separation final, or so she’d told David, which had led them to Jarvis, and this range.

Jarvis now nearly gloating, there with the big Python. Red Sansabelt slacks, red-and-blue-plaid Munsingwear sports shirt, the little alligator over the pocket, thick wrists and fingers, a clunky gold watch there.

David had run him clay pigeon for clay pigeon out skeet shooting, and Jarvis meant to pay him back.

How about a gentlemen’s bet? he said.

Me? Rachel asked.

No, Billy the Kid there, Jarvis said. Mr. Hotshot, Bat Masterson. Our whiz kid there with the fuck-up friends. What do you say? Jarvis knew how he’d been kicked out of the school for smoking pot at a dance, with his friends Vern and Cleve, and how he’d been caught, later, driving his then-girlfriend’s car, an open bottle of whiskey with them. All that last spring, after he’d gotten his driver’s permit, and had gone . . . haywire, sort of. And Jarvis’d had to bring it up.

But now, here it was. They’d gotten to it, this open antagonism.

Rachel had already discussed with David that Jarvis was getting serious, and she’d asked David what he’d think of behaving around Jarvis.

Why? David had asked.

Jarvis thinks you need some—discipline was how he put it, she’d said.

He’d known right there he was in real trouble, so bad he’d felt a bubble of almost hysterical laughter rising up in him, discipline, you bet. And from Jarvis?

But here, now, at the range was his opportunity. He could make Rachel see what she was getting into without having to tell her.

Okay, David said.

Jarvis grinned. He had a slot for a mouth, teeth that were short, artificially white. "Or should we