The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

couple of puffs and removed a piece of tobacco from his lip. “We found a gas can in his garage. The can has soap detergent in it. I’d say your friend has shit on his nose.”
    W HEN I GOT HOME , I threw up in the toilet. Then I recovered the stiletto from under my mattress and flicked it open. I saw on one side of the blade, barely visible, a trace of rubber, the kind that might be left from slicing off a valve stem. My father came into the room without knocking. “Want to explain that?”
    â€œThis frog sticker?”
    â€œI’d call it a weapon a criminal would have. Where did you get it?”
    â€œIn a pawn store.”
    His eyes rested on the shelf above my desk where I kept my arrowhead collection and antique fishing lures and minié balls and a rusted revolver that had no cylinder and a cigar box full of Indian-head pennies. He didn’t speak for a long time. “Put it on the shelf. It doesn’t leave the room.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œAs a rule,when members of our church’s clergy talk about sin, what are they referring to?”
    â€œSex.”
    â€œThat’s correct. They don’t mention much about war, nor about violence in general. But that’s the real enemy, that and greed. Don’t let anybody tell you different. A man who carries a knife like that one is a man who’s afraid.”
    When my father spoke this way, he was a different man, more regal and just and clearheaded than any man I ever met. He allowed no guns in our home and hunted ducks only one day a year, with the president of his company, in a blind over by Anahuac. After a prowler broke into our garage a couple of times, my father placed a brick in a hatbox and wrapped the hatbox in satin paper and tied a ribbon on it, then he set the box on the front seat of the automobile. He also put a note in it that read:
    Dear Burglar,
    While you were stealing this brick, a twelve-gauge shotgun was aimed at your back. If you return, you will not be received in a gracious manner. I do not wish to offend you, but you seem very inept. I suggest you join a church or practice your profession somewhere else. Give serious thought to this.
    Best regards,
    Your victim,
    James Eustace Broussard
    Our burglar friend never returned.
    I closed the stiletto and placed it on the shelf and sat down on my bed. My Gibson was lying facedown on the spread. I picked it up and propped the curve in the sound box across my knee and formed an E chord on the neck. “I feel a mite sick, Daddy,” I said.
    â€œYour stomach acting up again?”
    â€œIt’s not acting up. It’s always like that. Like I have a boil on the lining.”
    A shadow slid across his face. “Did that police detective touch you?”
    â€œHe tore thechair out from under me and threw me on the floor. That’s not the problem, though.”
    â€œIf that’s not the problem, what is?”
    â€œHe said a Mexican woman, a prostitute, was killed two blocks from the burned car. He thinks she was mixed up in the burning of the car. He says the cops found the gasoline can that did the job. It was in Saber’s garage.”
    There was a long silence. I couldn’t look at him. “Daddy?” I said. But he didn’t answer. “Daddy, say something.”
    â€œWhat have you got us into, son?”
    S ABER WASN’T AT school the next day. I didn’t know if his father had beat him up or if he had just cut school. Mr. Bledsoe was from rural Alabama. He wasn’t a bad man, but he was uneducated and insecure and frightened and each day had to scrub off the grime from his job at a rendering plant with Ajax and a bar of Lava soap and a stiff brush. Whenever I saw a bruise on Saber, I didn’t ask about it. I didn’t think Mr. Bledsoe meant to hurt his son. When he was drunk, he made me think of a sightless pig trapped inside a circle of javelins.
    At three o’clock I hitched a ride to