miss. He'll catch the corner of the accelerator with his foot, and the lightest tap on the gas will push the truck back into the can. When it crashes onto its side, the boy will sit there in disbelief, amazed by the noise the damn thing makes, puzzled at the sight of his father, who will have closed his eyes against the sharp sound of impact, and who will keep them closed while the trash can lid rolls across the street, throwing sunlight from its surface while it whirls, in a clanging, oblong spin, to a stop.
Â
"Grab hold with both hands," Jesus says, "and punch it. I'll take the wheel." Raul nods, but his head, Jesus knows, isn't in the game. It's the same every time. He's worried about witnesses, imagining handcuffs and some HPD jail cell, eyeing a group of teenagers who are flirting and smoking just outside the Walmart doors. He's thinking, They've got us pegged. They're watching.
"Don't worry about them," Jesus says. "Just kids, vato."
Still, Raul isn't moving, so Jesus gives him a knuckle thump hard on the side of his head. "I said don't
worry
about it. I got us covered."
An hour before, Jesus had swapped the plates on Raul's LeMans with a pair he'd stolen a year ago from a late-model Nissan. He'd been on his way to the beach in Surfside when he noticed the car abandoned on the side of Highway 288, not far from the lockdown in Rosharon. It had been a solitary thrill, one full of senseless risk, a slap in the face of those HPD shit kickers who so often put him and his boys against cars or walls and kicked their feet apart and frisked them in their east-side streets. In a way, it felt like the first time he'd snatched the belt from his mother's hand when he was twelve, and told Raul to get outside, and looked the old woman square in the face and told her she wouldn't do thatânot to Raul, she wouldn'tânot anymore, because it could suck the life out of the boy and because there was something sick about it, swinging leather at your own flesh and blood, and because, from now on, if Raul got out of line, Jesus and no one but Jesus would handle it.
Yes, it seemed the same somehow, to pull up behind that car, to step down from his truck with his tool kit and feel the swirl in his stomach from his three-beer breakfast, to turn the screws and yank the plates while tanker trucks blew by on their way to the coast and while, less than half a mile away, prisoners worked the fields as armed guards on horseback spit tobacco into the broken soil.
They are safe, no plates to trace, but still, Raul doesn't look convinced. He wears worry up high on the ridge of his eyebrows, and Jesus thinks maybe he'll blow their chance, but at the last minute Raul turns the wheel to the left, veering toward the couple as they approach the store. Raul looks his brother hard in the eye, then turns and slings his arm casually out the window as they rumble nearer, and Jesus hears his brother mapping it out in his head.
Easy now. Come up on them slowly. Just like before. Reel her in. Grab the purse and go.
Â
What the hell is
this,
Tim thinks. The car, it's coming up on them, shining and blue and so close that in a second or two the driver, a Mexican with his eyes locked on Natalie, will be able to reach out and touch her if he wants, maybe cop a feel before speeding away. Perverts, Tim thinks. Perverts at the goddamn Walmart.
But something's not right. Tim knows it by the way Natalie's fingers clench in the back pocket of his Wranglers, by the way the guy in the passenger seat leans into view with a tight smile on his face, by the sudden, cool slicks of sweat in his armpits. Then the outstretched arm, the driver reaching for her, and there's not a thing in the world Tim can do. He's holding the baby. He's holding the baby and he can't let go and the engine revs so loud that when Natalie's hand wrenches back in his pocket Tim thinks at first it's the noise itself, the goddamn sound of the thing, that's spinning him around.
And
Â
"Grab hold with both hands," Jesus says, "and punch it. I'll take the wheel." Raul nods, but his head, Jesus knows, isn't in the game. It's the same every time. He's worried about witnesses, imagining handcuffs and some HPD jail cell, eyeing a group of teenagers who are flirting and smoking just outside the Walmart doors. He's thinking, They've got us pegged. They're watching.
"Don't worry about them," Jesus says. "Just kids, vato."
Still, Raul isn't moving, so Jesus gives him a knuckle thump hard on the side of his head. "I said don't
worry
about it. I got us covered."
An hour before, Jesus had swapped the plates on Raul's LeMans with a pair he'd stolen a year ago from a late-model Nissan. He'd been on his way to the beach in Surfside when he noticed the car abandoned on the side of Highway 288, not far from the lockdown in Rosharon. It had been a solitary thrill, one full of senseless risk, a slap in the face of those HPD shit kickers who so often put him and his boys against cars or walls and kicked their feet apart and frisked them in their east-side streets. In a way, it felt like the first time he'd snatched the belt from his mother's hand when he was twelve, and told Raul to get outside, and looked the old woman square in the face and told her she wouldn't do thatânot to Raul, she wouldn'tânot anymore, because it could suck the life out of the boy and because there was something sick about it, swinging leather at your own flesh and blood, and because, from now on, if Raul got out of line, Jesus and no one but Jesus would handle it.
Yes, it seemed the same somehow, to pull up behind that car, to step down from his truck with his tool kit and feel the swirl in his stomach from his three-beer breakfast, to turn the screws and yank the plates while tanker trucks blew by on their way to the coast and while, less than half a mile away, prisoners worked the fields as armed guards on horseback spit tobacco into the broken soil.
They are safe, no plates to trace, but still, Raul doesn't look convinced. He wears worry up high on the ridge of his eyebrows, and Jesus thinks maybe he'll blow their chance, but at the last minute Raul turns the wheel to the left, veering toward the couple as they approach the store. Raul looks his brother hard in the eye, then turns and slings his arm casually out the window as they rumble nearer, and Jesus hears his brother mapping it out in his head.
Easy now. Come up on them slowly. Just like before. Reel her in. Grab the purse and go.
Â
What the hell is
this,
Tim thinks. The car, it's coming up on them, shining and blue and so close that in a second or two the driver, a Mexican with his eyes locked on Natalie, will be able to reach out and touch her if he wants, maybe cop a feel before speeding away. Perverts, Tim thinks. Perverts at the goddamn Walmart.
But something's not right. Tim knows it by the way Natalie's fingers clench in the back pocket of his Wranglers, by the way the guy in the passenger seat leans into view with a tight smile on his face, by the sudden, cool slicks of sweat in his armpits. Then the outstretched arm, the driver reaching for her, and there's not a thing in the world Tim can do. He's holding the baby. He's holding the baby and he can't let go and the engine revs so loud that when Natalie's hand wrenches back in his pocket Tim thinks at first it's the noise itself, the goddamn sound of the thing, that's spinning him around.
And
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