Цитаты из книги The Pale-Faced Lie

When Query Man knocked loudly on our door, Dad waited a while before answering. Mona was nowhere in sight, knowing to stay away during a Crow revenge session.

“Mr. Crow,” he said, “your boys attacked me and my house with eggs and water balloons tonight. And this afternoon, we received deliveries of all kinds of things we didn’t order. Flowers. Pizza. Fill dirt. A washer and dryer. Lumber. Your boys are responsible for that too.”

From the hallway, Sam, Sally, and I watched Dad’s eyes go wide and his jaw drop as if he couldn’t believe his ears. I had to put my hand over Sam’s mouth to keep him quiet.

“I can’t imagine my boys doing anything like that. Let me query them.”

Dad flashed the world’s fakest smile and gently closed the door. He loved getting to use the word “query” on Query Man. We took turns peering through the peephole to watch the guy squirm on the porch. A few minutes later, Dad winked at us and opened the door.

“My sons said they walked by your house and may have thrown an egg or two, but boys will be boys, as we know.” Dad puffed out his chest. “But they certainly didn’t do anything else, so get your fat ass off my porch and don’t come back.”

The lead psychologist adjusted his wire-rim glasses and cleared his throat. “Mr. Crow, please understand that we’re concerned about your son. We’re here to help him. We don’t believe in corporal punishment. David is showing signs of alienating behavior and needs counseling. We would advise you to choose a therapist and attend a series of sessions together. He also needs substantial tutoring and perhaps should repeat a grade.”

I stared at my lap. My life was over. Dad would finally be angry enough to kill me, like the other assholes he’d told me about, the ones he assumed society was better off without.

I glanced up at him, expecting the worst, and did a double take. His face had gone from pinched fury to amusement. Mostly from relief, I burst out laughing. He started laughing too.

“Alienating behavior,” Dad mocked. “Who wouldn’t be alienated by the likes of you? David wanted to make you look stupid, and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. No one else could have assembled this team of idiots. This goddamn meeting is over.”

Silas Marner was a conscientious objector living in England during World War II. Hiding from the military, and life itself, he spent long hours in the public library. It was a safe refuge where he could read stacks of anti-war literature and fantasize about the lovely, full-breasted librarian. Her name was Sarah Saddly, and he wanted to bang her like a loose corral gate in a stampede. Unbeknownst to Silas, German soldiers had killed Sarah’s husband on the Western Front. She’d been left with two children and poor prospects for remarriage since most of the men were at war and like her husband would never come home. When returning an overdue book, Silas finally mustered the courage to ask Sarah on a date. Sarah turned out to be eager for male companionship to fill the hole in her heart and bosom, and to provide a father for her sad, Saddly children. She leapt at the chance for new love. Silas filled Sarah with endless rounds from his throbbing pistol. Due to his love for her, he joined the war effort and became a hero on Sword Beach at D-Day. After the war, they married, he adopted her children, and she knocked out thirteen more kids, making Mrs. Sarah Marner the happiest and best-serviced woman in all of England. Silas was elected mayor of London and helped rebuild the war-torn city. He was a hero and friend to all, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

To escape the loneliness and confusion, I turned to running and reading again—as I had in Gallup and Fort Defiance. After school, I ran through the lush neighborhoods along Rock Creek Park just outside our subdivision, often not returning home until dark. Within a couple of weeks, a paper route became available to deliver the Washington Post and the Washington Evening Star.

Every day, I read the entire Post, fascinated with national politics, which was local politics in Washington. I wanted to know all about it. As was my habit, I asked my customers about their days, and they gave me extra change in appreciation for my service. I wanted to be a part of their lives, but fitting in with them didn’t seem possible.

Dad poked me hard in the arm. “You can’t imagine what goes through a man’s mind on the bus ride to prison.” His eyes bugged out, and the vein on his forehead started thumping.

This wasn’t good. How stupid of me—I should have kept my mouth shut. I’d gotten him angry, and we might have twelve hours ahead of us today and more tomorrow. As usual, I didn’t know what he had planned, but for sure, he’d take his anger out on me.

“That might be the toughest part of all,” Dad said, his voice harsh, “the swelling up of the stark reality that this is it. You’re going to wake up in the Big House for untold mornings to come. There’s no escape. By that point, you’ve pushed the fury, or whatever dominated your brain when you committed the crime, so far back so many times that you would swear you didn’t do anything wrong. You even use more passive ways of talking, like turning ‘when I committed the crime’ into ‘when the crime was committed.’ It doesn’t matter—even if what you did was justified.”

“I understand,” he said. “You’ll do whatever it takes to be your own man. I admire that. When I was in the Q and walked into the yard for the first time, a vicious lifer con decided to test me. He wanted to make me his punk. Ugly son of a bitch. He asked me if I was married and where I was from. I was naive—I told him my wife and I were from Texas. In his nastiest voice, he said he’d screwed every woman in Texas and their twats were stretched wider than an ax handle because they were all whores.”

He made a fist and punched the palm of his left hand. “I crunched the guy’s jaw so hard it knocked him down. Then I crawled on top of him and pounded his head into the concrete like a jackhammer. His teeth went flying, and I smashed his nose into a bloody mass.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked quietly.

“Three more seconds, I would have, but two of his buddies pulled me off. One told me to get up slowly and begin moving. Another handed me a handkerchief. Several small groups formed. The cons pushed me from group to group as we steadily walked away until it was impossible to identify me.”

The water had gotten cold, and I pulled the plug with my toe to let the water drain. “Did the guy ever come after you?”

“No. Never. In the code of the cons, I’d been challenged and won. You can’t let anyone push you around in the Big House or they’ll own you. But one of the con’s friends told me that if I ever did something stupid like that again, he’d push me into the center where the armed guards up in the tower would have a clear shot. But I didn’t care. I did what I had to do. I passed the test. I could get smokes from anybody, and no one confronted me again.”

Dad understood violence and pain, and he was never wrong about what would work. But I still had to contend with the hogan and trailer kids throwing rocks and six-ounce Coke bottles at me. When I told Dad, he handed me a .22-caliber pistol with hollow point shells. “This will stop the bastards. A few rounds will quiet them just like the ammonia squirt guns did with the dogs.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. “Shooting with a gun that can kill isn’t the answer.”

“Suit yourself, but don’t complain to me if you won’t do anything to protect yourself. Their weapons are just as dangerous as a .22.”

His solutions were drastic, as I had known since our first car ride together. I found my own way out of the problem. When I collected for the paper, I told the customers living where the kids were hitting me that I’d quit bringing them papers if they didn’t get them to stop. Within days, the assaults had ended.

I thought he was done, but then he started up again. “There are things I need to teach you, things that you need to know to survive in a harsh world full of assholes. That means you need to keep secrets. You’re pretty good at that most of the time, but not always. You think the things I ask you to do are bad, but they aren’t. You have to get a lot tougher and smarter about helping us not get caught. You understand me, boy?

“Yes, Dad.”

“Someday, I’ll write down all the stories about the Q—the cons, the screws, the punks, the stoolies, the lifers, the warden, and the chief psychiatrist. You wouldn’t believe the stories I heard in the yard—tons of unsolved murders committed by the cons. They’d laugh about how easy it was. Hell, mine are unsolved too. You’ll be able to read about them in my book—Murder Eight. After I die, you can publish it and make a lot of money. But for now, you need to learn how to steal without getting caught, how to keep secrets, how to be a good watcher, and how to help me when I really need it.”

Had George finally found him? “Sorry, Dad, I won’t let you down again.”

“You better not.” He studied the rearview mirror again. “You need to understand what San Quentin does to a man. First of all, it doesn’t make them sorry about a damn thing, except that they got caught. They just get smarter next time. But mostly, the Q makes them mean. The guy after me was stupid and told the cops and judge he wasn’t sorry. Idiot. You have to say you’re sorry even though you don’t mean it. He blames me for getting him into trouble and the years he spent in prison—and for having a violent felony on his record. He’s probably too stupid to lie about that and get away with it. Now the son of a bitch wants revenge.”

I yelled at Sam for telling his teacher and class about what went on over the weekend. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Now nine years old, he always told the truth even when the consequences were painful. That would never change. It was the weirdest combination possible—Sam was devious but honest. He would do whatever I told him yet wouldn’t hesitate to tell anyone if asked about it.

Though we were as close as brothers could be, I had stopped confiding in him years earlier about things that could get us in trouble. He didn’t believe in secrets. But I had lots of them, not just ones I needed to keep from Dad, but things I didn’t want anyone to know—not even Lonnie—mostly how I hated being a Crow.

“Navajo alcoholism is a terrible tragedy.” Dad panned the parking lot and shook his head. “Selling alcohol on a reservation is a federal crime. Isn’t it ironic that this guy got killed driving back to the reservation after drinking until he couldn’t see straight? This little bar is only a half mile from the reservation and the Arizona border—and it’s the largest liquor outlet in the entire state. The Mexicans running this joint have a license to steal. And the Navajo tribe helps them. They laugh all the way to the bank.”

Two men teetered out of the bar together, leaning on each other to stay on their feet. “The driver probably never knew what hit him,” Dad said. “Maybe he’s better off than the ones who freeze to death in the parking lot or get run over.”

Driving along Route 66, we passed the usual parade of young and old Navajos walking by the side of the road. Just outside Gallup, Dad slowed down and thumped me hard on the shoulder. “See that old man over there?”

“Yeah.” The poor guy was stooped over, and his clothes hung on him like rags. He shuffled along by himself carrying a crumpled grocery bag.

“If we killed that old man, where would we bury him? Where’s the nearest—”

“Whoa!” I bolted up in my seat. “Why would we kill him? Why are you asking me that?”

“We’re not going to kill him. That’s not the point, goddamn it. Listen up. I’m teaching you something here. Do you see a place where we could dump the body so no one would find it? Where’s the nearest police station? How many routes are there away from here? How many vehicles passed us in the last ten minutes in either direction? What color were they? How many people were in them? What were the license plates? State and number. What do you remember?”

Another one of his games. Okay, I’d play along. “Three cars and a truck have passed us. Two cars were blue and the third was green. The pickup was red, and three Navajos were in the back. But, Dad, it’s not so much about how close we are to a police station. What really matters is how close we are to a car, or even a pedestrian, who might tip off the police.”

He whipped his head around and stared at me, a smiling spreading across his face. “You’re right, David. You’re finally paying attention.” He sped up and passed the old man. “If you don’t know all these things, you can get caught. Murder is the easiest crime to get away with because you have no witnesses. Robbery, kidnapping, any of the other crimes—there are witnesses or people you need to depend on. The perfect murder will never be solved.”

He muttered to himself and then said, “Most of the cons in San Quentin had committed several murders they didn’t get caught for. They got picked up for botching a robbery, passing bad checks, stealing a car in broad daylight. You have to be smart about the world if you’re going to survive in it.”

I didn’t respond. I was done playing his game.

“You’ve got to be observant and wary,” he said. “Rules are for losers. If you don’t believe it, look at the rules the Indians live by on this reservation while being forced to take rations from the white bastards who conquered them.”

I couldn’t imagine that other dads took their ten-year-old sons to steal tools from their employer or explained how murder was the easiest crime to get away with or insisted that rules were for losers. I closed my eyes to stop him from talking to me, pretending to go to sleep.

ON OUR WAY BACK, WE stopped at a gas station, and both of us went inside to use the bathroom. Two men were arguing, and their voices got loud.

“You bumped me, you little Mexican bastard,” the big guy said.

The short guy shook his head. “It was an accident.”

“Let’s take it outside, and I’ll kick your ass.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to bump you. Forget it, will you?”

The big guy got in the short guy’s face. “You have a big mouth. I need to teach you a lesson.” He raised his fists. The short guy stepped back, put his hands in the air, and hurried out the door.

When we got in the sedan, Dad asked me, “Which guy do you think was right?”

“The short guy. The big guy just wanted to start a fight.”

“You’re right. The guy who left should have killed him.”

“Killed him? But he was smaller and not as strong. Besides, it was a stupid argument.”

“That’s why a man should always carry a gun. That bigger bastard would be no match for Smith and Wesson. When some asshole gets too loud, the smaller man needs to find a way to shut him up. I’ve never met a man I couldn’t beat, but sometimes there’s more than one.”

“Who are Smith and Wesson?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Only the makers of the most powerful handguns in the world. They are the great equalizers.”

“Would you have shot him?”

“Hell yes. I love ridding the world of assholes. I’ve been doing it ever since I was in the navy.”

“But don’t you worry about getting caught or even getting shot?”

“No one will ever get the drop on me. I’ve beaten a few bastards to death. When I was in New Orleans at the end of basic training, I got into a fight with some loudmouthed son of a bitch who said he was a better boxer than I was. After the bar closed and everyone was gone, we settled it in the alley.”

He scanned the horizon. “How long since we’ve seen someone?”

“Huh? I don’t know. I think a truck might have passed us before we turned down this road.”

“What color was it? How many people were in it? Did they look like police, BIA workers, or Navajos that might live nearby?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember.”

“When I ask you these things, boy, you better have answers—it might mean the difference between swiping enough to make a good profit and going to jail. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?”

I knew not to challenge Dad. He’d just call me stupid and stay mad at me a long time. Being in the car with him when he was angry was like getting beat up in a phone booth—there was no escape.

Evelyn would tell us stories about the Long Walk, known as the “fearing time,” after the Navajos lost the war against Kit Carson.

“When Grandma little girl, she live near here. Soldiers round up Navajo people, force them walk many miles. Can’t walk fast enough as soldiers on horses. They fall. Soldiers shoot them. Food full of maggots and worms. Many starve. Apaches kill many too. Navajo people prisoners for four years. Walk home to sacred place. Everything in God’s plan.”

How could she forgive what had happened to her people? And how could she be so kindhearted? I didn’t understand. She filled the house with noisy laughter. She told us to have hozhoni (harmony) and show ajooba (kindness) because those things will return to you. She even offered to walk us to school.