10.

Big Man met me outside the arcade on the nursery floor—yes, it’s a real arcade. We’ve got a movie theater, a bowling alley and a skate “park” on one floor in the other building, too, among other things. Work hard, play harder, right? Said the man who has almost no play time anymore…

Anyway, he’d changed into some of his $500 jeans for the carnival and a black t-shirt that was probably just as expensive, even though it was just a plain black t-shirt that I would’ve bought at Old Navy or something. All about the labels, that man.

“Don’t be lookin’ all mad at me!” he said. “I’m just the messenger.”

“So run it by me again?”

“LeeAnn heard over the radio that there was some kinda—“

“Fire, yeah. And it was Taylor’s place?”

“We’re not totally sure yet, but it sounds like. Cops wanted you to know that crazy ass kid might be headed over here.”

“Oh, he’s not that big a fool.”

“You sure?

“If he doesn’t know better now, he will if  ‘e comes over here.”

“Word,” Big Man said, all proud. He’s the man when it comes to security. And he loves the reputation it’s earned him.

But I had something else on my mind. Some-one else.

“She okay? Taylor?”

“I didn’t get all that yet. It doesn’t sound like anyone was injured, though.”

“I wanna go over to her place. Just…to check, you know?”

“Lil Daddy, you got to quit—“

“It’s with you or without you. What’ll it be?”

He heaved a big sigh and said, “C’mon, Trouble. Let’s go.”

And then he called for backup—I love it when we take our little army with us. It’s just four big guys who ride in two armor reinforced Jeeps, one in front of us, one in back. My favorite is Bubba. He’s this big, bald Aryan Nation looking monster about as wide as he is tall, and he is hella tall. And he’s got these angry eagle eyes—you know, the straight, stern bird of prey brow that looks so fierce, right?  Plus, all kinds of sick tats, too--all over his body including his face. He doesn’t do piercings because he says people grab hold of that kind of stuff in “battle.” But if I saw that sucker comin’ at me, there wouldn’t be any battle. Imagine looking up and seeing all that running your way—you’d get gone fast, right? Yeah. That’s exactly why we hired him.

While Big Man was calling the cavalry, I called the girls, too, of course. Aisha showed up first, on the run, looking all scared.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” she asked me.

“I need you to sit with Maddie and the kids. We’ll be back in a bit, but—“

“What the hell’s goin’ on now?” Mike interrupted, also on the run. Cat wasn’t far behind, but she’s got a little more body to haul, so she usually lags a little bit. Boy, it’s fun to watch, though—I’ve described her. Imagine all that bouncing around. There you go…

I said, “It sounds like the kid that tore up the classroom got after my teacher at home or something.”

All three women got very still. I knew what they were thinking and what Cat would say. Of all of them, she’s the one who acts the most like a mother, still. She’s the oldest, and has the best chance of getting me to respect her opinions as an “elder.” I’m pretty old fashioned in that respect. She takes advantage of it every chance she gets, of course.

So she put her hands on those hips and said, “I realize I’m wasting my breath, but at this point, don’t you think it would be wiser to let the police handle her problems? Just…humor me. Pretend you care what I think.”

Don’t freak out--she wasn’t mad. She was teasing the hell out of me. So nobody was upset when I said, “It might be wise, but it’s not going down like that today.”

She “sighed” and said, “Well, a girl has to try.”

And Mike threw an arm around her shoulders and said, “It was a nice try, too, old girl.”

“Oh, I’m old now?”

 “Hey! I’m just—“

Cat raised a “talk to the hand” palm and said, “Oh, don’t trip. When you come sneakin’ I tonight I’ll remind you I’m too old for that kind of thing.”

“Y’all hush! This child’s finna go after somebody,” Aisha said.

I was enjoying their little “stand-up comedy” routine, but Aisha was really worried about me--she’s always worried about me. Partly because I’m just older and harder to control now, not that she could ever control me all that much. But it’s totally different from when we were little and almost joined at the hip. All the stuff I’m into now, half the time she doesn’t even understand what I’m saying, let alone what I’m doing. And I think it hurts her sometimes that I’m moving on so fast. I love her—hell, I’d die for her. But I’ve had to accept that she might not be able to keep up sometimes. She’s not dumb—don’t get it twisted. It’s those “ESL” issues I mentioned, mostly. I have to interpret things into a language and a context she can roll with. Other times, I just have to roll on ahead and explain later. This was one of those times.

So, I gave her a little one-handed hug and said, “I’ve got the troops! You know how they do.”

And then Maddie came out and Aisha went, “Lawd have mercy—you jus’ lef’ them babies in there? Girl…”

Which was the cue for all three of them to roll their eyes and go rushing to the rescue.

“They’re in that play pen thing,” Maddie assured me. “I just heard all this commotion…”

Big Man’s two-way said, “Big Dog, it’s definitely the teacher. Minor fire damage. No injuries. You copy?”

“Teacher?” Maddie said.

“Yeah, there was this big mess at school today,” I said. “I had to tackle this kid who got all out of control. And I guess he sent his psycho brother after us.”

“Is he coming here?” Maddie asked, all nervous now.

Kelli ran in next. Looking like she was freaking out a little bit.

“Everybody just ran!” she said.

“They’re fine,” I said. “Look, I really hate to—“

“Don’t even say it. It’s okay. Tell the truth, I’m sort of having guilt pangs.”

“About the fried Coke?”

She laughed and said, “There’s a special place in Hell for people who invent stuff like that.”

“You goin’ over there or we gonna stand here and talk about some nasty fried soda?” Big Man said.

“Just let Maddie hang with the kids a little while longer, okay?” I told Kelli. “I’m going to try to wrap this up right quick. I wanted some time with ‘em, too.”

Kelli went right to work. But Maddie stayed put.

“Is that kid gonna come over here?” Maddie asked again.

“What are you scared of?” I said. “You’ve got the mad Russian waiting for you downstairs. Go on back! She’s gotta take them home pretty soon.”

Despite what I’d said, she just hung there a moment. And I realized it was me she was worried about. All my 99 problems are “bitches,” basically—sorry Jay Z.

So I said, “I’ve got the Odd Squad with me, okay? And that big old mean lookin’ guy there, too.”

“You best get on the road if you’re goin’,” Big Man said.

“I’ll holla later,” I told Maddie.

But she was still there when I got in the elevator. And even when the elevator “mouth” closed.

“I wouldn’t even recognize that woman on the street,” Big Man said. “And I know her from ‘way back.”

I said, “I feel like…” and then, I just went, “I dunno.”

He looked over at me, but we let it lie. He probably thought she was death walking, too, and didn’t want to say it out loud any more than I did.

It wasn’t hard to find Taylor’s house. There was an army of emergency vehicles lined up down the entire block with their lights flashing and radios squawking. And there were people running around and between the vehicles to join a big crowd of neighbors already shoving and straining against the crime scene tape.

Some stern faced policemen were running from door to door. And there was a big swarm of firemen checking out the damage in the front yard and on the front porch. There was a lot of damage to examine. There was debris and burnt branches and pieces of siding and wood and whatnot blown all over the place by the force of the fire hoses. But it looked like someone had torched the trees and bushes and whatever had been on the front porch--one swift kick and the front door probably would’ve fallen apart like it was made of Lego blocks.

It took some fancy footwork to get to a place where we could actually see Taylor. She was with a cop and this little wiry woman dressed in one of those flowered muu muu things only old ladies wear. The wiry woman was old and wrinkled and had that loose chicken skin under her arms that flapped whenever she raised her finger at the cop. And she had her hair wound up on those pink sponge curlers. She looked pretty wound up herself, actually.

Taylor looked shell shocked and sort of shivery standing there hugging herself. I could tell it hadn’t been very long since it went down by the pained expression on her face. But serious as it all was, I got a little kick out of how attentive the cop was being, probably because she’d come out in these little running shorts and a little bitty, spaghetti strapped tank top that let you see she was totally braless and that her breasts stood up high and firm even without one. She’d thrown on a big sweater to cover up—in Tucson, that’s all you need even in December. But it was open in front and hiked up on her nice little bubble in back. And boy, he wasn’t taking his eyes off her for a minute, that guy—when she reached back to gather up her hair and wind a lock of it around to make a ponytail he was probably the happiest man on the planet for a few seconds.

Big Man broke my concentration by leaning over to say, “We’re gonna go find out what the hell’s goin’ on. You good here?”

He’s better at doing the “mind over matter” thing than me. So I tried to get back on the case and look all serious when I said, “I’m gonna go check on her.”

“Yeah, well be listenin’ for us,” he said—he knows me too well. Women are my main distraction. I admit it.

I returned my attention to Taylor, who really looked like she was about to fall over by then. And that little woman was waggling her finger in her face and the cop’s face, both—she had this sort of high pitched yappy dog voice that made me want to smack her even though I had no idea what she was yapping about.

So I decided to take the direct approach and and headed straight for Taylor. And when she saw me, she looked soooo relieved. Maybe she thought I’d wrestle that old lady to the ground or something.

But she turned on me as soon as I got there, that little Chihuahua woman.

She put that finger in my face and barked, “This is a crime scene!”

The cop seemed as relieved to see me as Taylor’d been. Just because that finger was in my face now, I think. He sort of squinted at me like he was trying to figure out who I might be and asked, “You related?”

I wondered if he’d make me leave if I told the truth. But then I decided not to lie because he’d probably be interested in what I had to say about all the mishugaas at school that day.

So I said, “I’m one of her students. I the fight at school.”

It was a good choice. His brows went up.

He said, “You know who did this?” and got his little pad and pen out, in case.

“This is the boy I asked about. The one who held Daniel down after he hit me,” Taylor offered. And then she hugged herself suddenly, remembering the tank top and that I was a student. And I gotta say my 18-year-old boy hormones were at red alert levels. Yeah, I know. Mr. Inappropriate, that’s me.

“She thought he might be after you, too. Cody,” the cop said.

“You know him by name but you can’t catch him?!” the wiry woman yelled.

“We know the whole family, lady,” the cop said, ‘way more patiently than I would have.

“And they’re out running around loose torching houses?!”

Big Man and my little posse came rushing up just in time to stop the cop from going off on her.

 “Say he ran down the alley toward the convenience store,” Big Man said. “And there was some kinda commotion over that, way, too.”

“Who are you people?” the wiry lady asked.

We ignored her. I asked the cop, “What the hell did ‘e actually do? Do you know?”

“Well, I think ‘e just was tryin’a pull that old poop in the bag prank, you know?” the cop said. “You know. You light the bag on fire on the doorstep and hide out waiting for somebody to come stomp on it.”

“And that caused all this?”

“She caused all this!” the wiry woman barked.

The cop gave her a look like she was too crazy for him to even deal with. But he asked, “Okay, how do you figure?”

 “I told her it would happen!” she yapped. “All those dried up vines and bushes--they were an accident waiting to happen! The fire marshal got on me about it—I called and called and called. And then I came by and she tried to act like she wasn’t home. What kinda person locks herself up in the house’n’ never--”

 “I’m leavin’ Chuy and Frank here,” Big Man interrupted. “We’ll check out that store.”

He wanted to get this thing locked down—and to get away from the yapping. But the cop frowned and said, “Hey, let us do our job, okay?”

Of course, he was no match for Big, who gave him his most charming smile and said, “Oh, we’ll keep you informed, Officer—not to worry,” and then took off running with the other two.

The cop almost did one of those cartoon takes—you know, that thing where they shake their heads real fast and then stand there gaping.  And him looking like a nut case was the last straw for Chihuahua woman.

She yelled, “Maybe I should get them to handle this for me!”

“Lady, what the h—“

She brandished that finger like a sword in front of his nose.

“You’re not listening to a word I’ve said!”

And then she turned her finger sword on Taylor next.

“I told you time and time again, I am too old to keep up all these properties personally! It’s in the lease, your responsibilities! And so’s the penalty for—“

I don’t know why, but she stopped there, turned to the cop again and yelled, “She ignored that hoodlum tonight like she ignores everybody rings that bell! That’s how the fire got out of control!”

“Yeah, but if she’d opened th—“

“It’s like she’s afraid of people or something! You call, she doesn’t answer, you come by, she doesn’t answer. I had to send her three letters—registered! And she didn’t respond to that, either. I’ve gone way past due diligence—ask any lawyer! And I will be calling mine today, you mark my--”

“Jesus H. Christ, don’t have a coronary, lady,” I said. To make her yell at me next and take the heat off Taylor and the cop for a minute.

But it backfired. She looked at Taylor and yelled, “You let your students talk to people like that?!”

I just looked past her and said, “You okay?” to Taylor. And then I walked past the little yappy dog woman and Taylor looked up at me in that little lost girl way again.

“Can we…talk?” she asked me. Almost like she was afraid of me.

So I said, “Absolutely!” and then asked the cop, “Is it okay if we catch up for a minute here?”

He was writing something in his little pad, but he looked up, smiled—at Taylor—and said, “I’ve got all I need from you for now. But don’t take off just yet.”

“Where’s she goin’?!” the wiry lady yelled.

And I went, “Listen, lady,” but Taylor got hold of my arm sort of like she’d grabbed my hand back at school when I went off on Big Mama. Except after she’d pulled me aside it was like she didn’t remember what for.

“And you’re not okay,” I said.

“I just…God, I can’t think right now,” she said, pushing on her temples like her head was about to explode.

I looked around and found this little rock wall that went around what was left of the front yard. So I took her over and sat her down on it. But she still looked pretty freaked out. So I started with something simple.

“Who is that woman?” I asked her.

“She owns…the whole block almost. Three or four houses they bought cheap and fixed up. Her husband died a couple of years ago and she seems…well, she’s very high strung.”

“Oh, you think?!”

That made her smile. A little. Her eyes were still spooked, though.

And she said, “Well, she’s old and I don’t think she had much to do with the properties before. So I don’t blame her for being upset. They’re her sole income apparently. And the house is in such bad shape now…”

She heaved a big sigh, eyes on the house. Faraway, sad eyes. She could do that better than a puppy, that woman. And make you feel just as bad as a puppy does.

“You’re in bad shape, too,” I told her. “You’re worryin’ me.”

She turned those eyes on me and sort of started to fidget with her fingers. I felt like I was her Dad and I’d had caught her with her hand in the cookie jar or something.

“I’m…I had…I had something to calm me down,” she said. And her eyes were sort of asking me if I understood what she was saying or not.

I did. Or I thought I did. I laughed a little, and said, “So…you’re kinda high, right?”

“I have a card,” she told me. All forthright and sincere about it.

“That kinda high? Wow. Really?”

She smiled very faintly and then looked at the house.

“And a glass of wine. Or two,” she said. There was a little twinkle in those eyes when they turned back to me this time.

“Hey! I’m down, no worries,” I said.

“Well, I was…it was to help me sleep. As…Delores mentioned, I don’t do Christmas.”

“At all?”

“If I can help it,” she said. “But I was afraid the police would notice.”

“I don’t smell it on you.”

“Edibles.”

“Smart.”

“Well, I don’t smoke.”

“Me, neither.”

She frowned. So I said, “No, seriously. I don’t do anything. Never have. Not even beer or wine or anything. Maybe a little at parties, but…”

She looked puzzled for a second. But then she smiled, and said, “Well, I always knew you were a rather unusual young man.”

“Nice way of putting it. Look, do you have family or friends in town who might put you up?”

She smiled more and said, “You are worried about me,” with dreamier eyes than ever.

“Your house almost burnt down!”

“It didn’t really. Of course, she’ll evict me now. But not this minute.”

“Yeah, but you don’t even have a front door—the window’s gone, too! That dumb ass could walk right in on you.”

She squinted like she needed to think this through. Or rather, like she was having trouble thinking at all--she was really baked. Not that I thought teachers didn’t do that stuff. I smoked with a teacher back when I first went to high school. This really cool auto shop guy who toked up out back there where nobody ever goes. One perk of being being way out in East Hell over at DeGrazia, right?

“What about Delores?” I suggested.

“She’s out of town. Herbert’s family. They’re so adorable, those two.”

“Family?”

“Yes, he has—“

“Not him, you! Do you have family here, I mean.”

Her eyes twinkled again. She was killin’ me with cute, I swear.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said, almost with this British accent that killed me even more.

“No, I’m…I don’t have any family. Anymore. Strange, but…we’ve…gone extinct. So to speak.”

“No family at all?”

She gave me the drowsy smile again. I think she was peaking, you know? All the substances starting to combine and kick in.

“You mustn’t worry. Really—it’s sweet of you, though. And I am…very grateful that you—why did you come?”

“LeeAnn called. I guess everybody thought he might be headed to my place. And quit tryin’a evade the question. I won’t go ‘til I know you’re safe.”

“Well, then I will…look for a motel or…something. I’ll get some things and…go.”

“With what? Your bike’s dead. You got other wheels I don’t know about?”

I could see it hit her then. No wheels. Of any kind, I gathered.

“God. I forgot. My car’s dead, too,” she said.

So instead of dealing with the logistics of the situation, she asked, “Do you think Cody might come after you, too?”

 “He might.”

And I nodded toward Chuy and Frank. They’re like two tanks, those guys. Big as hell Indian guys who’ve been in prison a few times. And look like it. Their tats aren’t like Bubba’s. You can’t even tell what they’re supposed to be, some of ‘em. But you can’t expect much from tats made with, like, a safety pin and some prison ink--it’s burnt baby oil and cotton mixed with shampoo, by the way. I mean, aside from how primitive the set up is, it’s probably impossible to sit still while someone’s digging something like that into your flesh. But that tells you how tough those suckers are, though.

And I said, “There’s a whole lot more like ‘em over my way,” to reinforce that idea.

But she just gave me this sort of blank look--totally didn’t get it. Then again, she probably couldn’t even really see them. Or maybe she was seeing double or something. I laughed before I could catch myself. But she laughed again, too.

But then there was this frantic car horn beeping as the Jeep Big Man and the guys had gone off in came flying around the corner. Big and the guys got out. So did this really panic stricken black man—he looked kinda well dressed and fatherly but he was really freaked out by the look of his eyes. The guys brought him right over to the cops—I took Taylor over, too.

And when we got there, the black guy was saying, “…came running up to me as I was getting back in the car, you know? I was at the pumps when he runs across and ‘e grabs the door and says, ‘What’s up, my nigga?’ and some other foolishness—“

“We’re talkin’ about this Cody kid?” one cop asked, all frowned up probably because our guys had beat them at finding a witness.

And the black guy says, “Young kid. Well, early 20s, maybe younger, sort of wild in the eyes. If I you caught ‘im I could definitely identify him.”

“So he drives off with you in the car?” another cop asked.

“Hits me with the butt of some kind of gun, yes! So I fall sideways and as I’m trying to get up he hits me again. So I try to get over to the passenger side as quick as I can thinking I can get out that way. But he pulled off so fast—and he’s laughing and giving me that ‘My nigga’ thing. ‘My nigga this’ and “My nigga that’ and ‘Awful fancy car you got here, nigga,’ he says.”

“We found Mr. Watkins on the curb about a mile away,” Big Man explained. “I guess Cody turned wrong or something and when the car swerved and slowed down a little, he jumped out.”

“I thought ‘e was gonna kill me and him, both! Boy must have run into every single car on one block,” the black man said. “He’d hit one and drag it into another one, and hit one and drag it down a little ways. Anything in the way got all scraped up or dragged right along with us.”

“And where’d he go?” a cop asked. Man, they were pissed that they’d been one-upped.

“Alls I got was out! I don’t know where the hell he went and I do not care!” Watkins said. He was as exasperated with the cops as the cops were with him.

“Tell ‘em what else he told you,” Big Man said.

“Said he crashed his truck,” Watkins continued. “But then he said it wasn’t his truck really, or something like that. Said he’d found a lot of very obliging citizens out there tonight. So I suppose there’s least one more poor soul out there wondering what hit ‘im. If he’s not dead in a ditch somewhere—that boy’s got the devil in ‘im!”

Two cops started asking Big Man where he found Mr. Watkins but my guys took over that chore and let Big Man hang with me.

And Big Man took one look at Taylor, smiled at me and said, “I see now why we’re so deeply concerned.”

“What are you tryin’a say?” I asked.

“I’m not tryin’ to say nothin’! I said it!” he told me. And then he smiled at Taylor all suave and said, “They call me Big Man,” with this little wink.

She said, “And…with reason,” which made us all laugh.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Big Man said.

“Taylor. Miss Taylor,” I told him.

But she looked up at me and said, “Oh, let’s make it Wyatt, shall we? I think we’re past the Miss Taylor stage, don’t you?”

“Wyatt?” Big Man said, sort of the way I had. “Damn, girl. That’s tight as hell.”

“I told you,” I told her.

She poked me in the chest with one of her little fingers and said, “You did, didn’t you?”

“Well, Miss Wyatt, you can’t go back in that house tonight,” Big Man told her.

She gave him the “I’ll find a motel,” line again. Only I swear, I don’t think she even knew what a hotel was anymore.

Big Man gave me one of his little “looks” and said, “How are you gonna make this poor woman go look for a motel when you own two big ass buildings here in town?”

“I never got a chance to explain that, fuck you very much,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not very nice,” she said. And she cracked herself up that time—I liked that she wasn’t all self-conscious or self-righteous about it. Maybe she was just too tired to care anymore.

I know I’d pretty much quit thinking of her as just a teacher, by that time. She was a person—a woman. A woman I would’ve liked, if I’d met her somewhere else. Yeah, she was in a heap o’ trouble at the moment, but that’s what made me like her even more. I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. And this damsel was a hot mess.

Unfortunately, that little Chihuahua woman wiped the smiles off all our faces a second later. She stomped over and stood right in front of me, for some reason, all frowned up and ready to go toe to toe again.

“She’d better get some things out of there before they board everything up,” she said. “And she’ll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning!”

I reached into my pocket and got out a card from my wallet to flip at her, in the hopes of shutting her up—they’re pretty snazzy cards, by the way. Black with gold letters and on this really thick, satiny looking paper.

“Have your lawyer talk to my office,” I told her.

It worked. Only I didn’t really notice because Taylor reached put her arms around me, real low, like, around my belly and her head on my chest.

And dude. She didn’t mean anything by it, right? But my whole world turned upside down in two seconds.

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