The Crazy Horse Electric Game (13 page)

Willie watches her walk out the door, his fingertips still touching his “center” lightly. He pokes himself hard there so he'll remember where it is. He doesn't really understand this at all, but he watched her play ball against guys with a hell of a lot more physical weaponry than she had, and hold her own. He picks up his cane, twirling it in his right hand, and moves out of the office, center first.

Music blares from the tape in Lacey's stereo system as Willie shuffles across the hardwood floor in the dining room. He's moving to the beat “from his center” the way Lisa's been showing him for the past three weeks, and it's beginning to feel more comfortable. “Just incorporate what you've got into your act,” she said after their first session, and Willie is learning that when the music's too fast, you can cut the beat in half and be cool.

During the second session, Lisa showed him miles and miles of films and tapes over at the Alameda County Coliseum; sequences of famous athletes moving slow. One tape was nothing but a series of Jim Brown, the legendary running back for the Cleveland Browns back in the fifties and sixties, getting up from one after another vicious collision with some giant, faceless
defensive lineman or linebacker. “See,” Lisa said, “you can never tell if he's hurt or not. He always gets up and moves back to the huddle like he's taking his last step. It's part of his act. Could be he's lost all the feeling from his neck down and could be he's just taking his time.” Then she showed him similar sequences of O. J. Simpson and Marcus Allen. “It's all slow, but look how graceful. You can move like that, too, Willie, if you'll quit trying to make your slow side catch up all the time. Do it the other way around. Try it to music.”

So Willie is trying it to music. He knows if Lacey catches him playing this “honky rock-and-roll shit” on his sound system, he'll crap his drawers, but Willie sees so little of Lacey these days he's not really worried about it. Lacey is usually in bed in the morning when Willie leaves for school, and it's extremely seldom he sees him afterward because Lacey's either on his bus route or on the street. And most of the time when he is home, the time is taken up with these vicious telephone calls from his ex-wife, after which Lacey finds at least a dozen different ways to call her a bitch, storming around the kitchen kicking walls and slamming his fist against cupboard doors. It seems more than mere anger to Willie; more like agony. He doesn't know what it's all about—Lacey's been
real
clear it's none of his business—
but he's told himself a million times he does
not
want to be there the day the two of them come face to face. Several days ago, Willie talked to André a little about it, while they were painting the student lounge, and André said if it got too bad, Willie could move into the empty classroom in the basement of the school; André had plenty of furniture at home, and the added security of having someone inside the school twenty-four hours a day wouldn't be all that bad an idea. Willie considered it, but decided against it for now because, even though they spent so little time together, he felt that Lacey was attached to him somehow; that it would be a small betrayal to leave.

Bob Seger starts into the even beat of “Fire Lake” on the sound system and Willie tries a slow heel-toe, heel-toe across the hardwood floor, looking down at himself and laughing self-consciously when he realizes if he keeps it up another few seconds his right side will run away from his left side and he'll be doing splits on the floor. Heel-toe will have to wait. It's after ten and he decides he better get with his homework, moving to the stereo to stop the record just as Lacey storms through the door. He's talking loud, though not angrily, and Willie knows he's drunk. The swinging door from the kitchen flies open and Lacey yells,
“Chief! How you doin', my man?”

Willie starts to answer, then sees Lacey's not alone. He's followed by a young girl; a girl Willie knows from school. She's tall and willowy, really beautiful to Willie, with light brown skin and green eyes. Willie has always seen her as quiet; either arrogant or really shy; and soft. But tonight she looks different, her painted lips and heavy rouge masking the softness and her plunging neckline immediately sinking Willie's heart. She works for Lacey.

“This Angel,” Lacey says. “She go to you school. Get her some
outstanding
grades. Get some outstanding grades for
me
, too.”

Willie tries to hide his disappointment. “…Hi,” he says. “I'm Willie.”

“I know,” she says. “I see you sometimes.”

“You…know Lacey, huh?” Willie says, and Angel's eyes go to the floor.

She nods, but before she can speak, Lacey says, “We have a
workin
' arrangement. An
outstanding
workin' arrangement.” He looks to the sound system. “You playin' that honky shit on my
machine?
Them voices is in-
fer
-ior; mess up my speakers. Be gettin' them white boys
off
there.”

Willie starts toward the system again, but the record
is finished, the arm moving to its rest. He shrugs. “Over,” he says. Then, “Well, listen…Got…to go. Get…some sleep.” His speech is getting better; lots better, thanks to Lisa. She's getting him to work on that the same way he does his body; see things first—or hear them in the case of his speech—then go about them at a speed that works. He's not as embarrassed to talk now. “You guys…have a good…time.”

 

Somewhere late in the night Willie hears a scream in the house and in a flash sits up in his makeshift bed. Chills run up his back as he waits, sure he heard it, but tempted by the possibility it was a dream. He hears it again, followed by Lacey's voice: mean. Willie throws back the blankets, moves quickly across the living room toward the stairs, scraping his shin on the coffee table lost in the dark. He hears the scream again and a loud bump, as if someone has been thrown down. He flips on the light and grabs his cane, starting up the stairs, calling Lacey's name.

At the bedroom door he stops, hoping that it's over; that he can just go down to bed; but there's more scuffling and Angel screams again. The sound of Lacey's open hand on her soft flesh sickens Willie and he hits the door with his cane. “Hey, Lacey. What's…going on…in there?”

No answer. Just more yelling.

“Lacey! Come on…you guys! What's…going on?”

“Git away!” Lacey yells from inside. “This none you damn binnis!”

“Come on!” Willie yells back. “Someone's…gonna get hurt!”

“Be you, you don' get back from that door!”

Another scream and the sound of scurrying. The door opens and Willie sees Angel's face briefly as Lacey pulls her back into the room and punches her in the jaw with his closed fist.

“Stop it!” Willie screams at him, but Lacey is cocking his arm for another shot. He pulls Angel's head up by the hair with his other hand and aims a fist for her nose. Without thinking, Willie swings the cane, intercepting Lacey's swing at the wrist, and now Lacey screams, dropping to his knees and clutching his arm. Willie comes back with the cane as hard as he can and the brass baseball catches Lacey in the back of the neck, whipping his head back hard, then driving his face into the floor.

Angel is stunned. She's uncovered from the waist up, kneeling by the bed, staring at Willie. “Oh, God,” she says. “Why did you do that? When Lacey wakes
up, he'll kill you.”

Willie is trembling. He acted out of instinct, and now fear washes over him. Lacey
will
kill him if he wakes up. He stands over Lacey, swearing that if he moves, he'll club him again. He can't think; looks back to Angel. “Cover…yourself up,” he says, and she reaches up to pull the bedsheet over herself. “Go downstairs…and…call Emergency. We'll…get him…to a doctor. That'll…give him…time to cool off.”

Angel is still stunned; her nose is bleeding and the side of her face is starting to swell, but she moves around the bed, pulls on her blouse and picks up the phone.

Lacey hasn't regained consciousness when the ambulance arrives, and they put him in on a stretcher. Angel stays out of sight because she fears the police will show once the paramedics see the nature of the injuries, and she wants no part of that. Willie tells them Lacey got real drunk and pitched down the stairs, and though they seem skeptical, they hurry him off. Willie says he'll follow in Lacey's car, but he has no intention of doing so. He's going to pack his stuff. The medics assure him Lacey will stay the night in the hospital even if he regains consciousness. That gives Willie until tomorrow to pack and be gone. He absently gets the name and number of the hospital.

“Might as well…stay,” he says to Angel as soon as the ambulance has carted Lacey off. “He won't be coming back here tonight.”

Angel shakes her head. “You're in trouble, Willie. We're both in trouble. When Lacey gets back, he'll kill us both. You shouldn't have done that.”

Willie doesn't get it. She should be grateful; Lacey was beating hell out of her. He can only stare.

“Christ,” she says, “I've been beat before. I get over it. But he's gonna be killing mad.”

Willie nods. There's a lot he'll never understand. He's known about Lacey's mean streak all along, but he's steered clear of it; never seen it so frighteningly close. He doesn't know how to handle it.

“If…he stays…in the hospital,” Willie says, “I'll go…talk to him; make sure…he knows…it wasn't your fault.”

Angel just laughs. “You don't get it, do you? Lacey's a
pimp
. He doesn't care whose fault it was. He just gets even. A pimp has to be mean or he won't make a living.”

Fear creeps in. Willie knows Angel is right. But he's tired of being scared and he's tired of doing what he thinks is right only to have it turn out wrong. “Well, he…won't be back tonight, so you…might…as well get…some sleep.”

Willie lies under the blankets on the couch, trying to get some sleep himself, but his mind races. Angel is upstairs, supposedly asleep, and he hates it that he can't feel like a hero. Even if she does work for Lacey, he's still very much drawn to her; emotionally—sexually—drawn. He
should
be able to feel like a hero with her, but the rules are different here; all she can think of is how nasty Lacey's going to be. Tomorrow he'll move into the basement room at the school. To hell with Lacey. His mind glides over conversations with Angel: future conversations, convincing her to quit working for him. Maybe André can help.

Early in the morning Willie packs his stuff into his duffel bag, makes up his bed, throwing his sheets into the hamper in the laundry room. He leaves the duffel bag next to the door, stuffs his books into his backpack and walks through the overcast morning to the bus stop. Earlier he knocked on the bedroom door to check on Angel, but she had gone. He plans to ride up to school and cover his
A.M.
janitorial work, then ask André to let him skip morning classes to go check on Lacey. Dealing with him in the hospital will be a lot easier than facing him at home.

André just shakes his head when Willie tells him the story. “You can set up the room downstairs after
school. I'll get a bed in there tonight, and we can move the furniture this weekend. I figured sooner or later your living situation would blow. Actually, it lasted longer than I expected.”

Willie asks if André had known about Angel.

“Yeah,” André says. “She's the reason I even know Lacey. Enrolled her two years ago. Said she was his daughter.” He shakes his head. “I've seen enough shit go down since then to know that young lady is
not
Lacey Casteel's daughter.”

“Why didn't you…stop her?”

“Ain't my job.” André mimics one of Lacey's favorite sayings. Then, “Those aren't the choices I get to make for kids here. I can only offer an education and what advice is asked for. After you've been around awhile, you'll figure out that getting out of prostitution isn't just a question of deciding to stop one day. There's a
lot
more to it than that.”

 

Willie parks André's '69 VW bug in the hospital parking lot, lifts his cane from the backseat and walks easily around toward the front entrance, moving slowly, from the center. The change in his movement has been just short of miraculous for him, and the good feeling it gives him is reminder enough to keep him focused. It's
seldom now that his body gets away from him.

As he nears the information desk, his heart pumps almost out of control and he fights for some kind of inner calm, acquiring Lacey's room number from the nurse, then moving down the hall toward the elevator, silently rehearsing what he'll say. His mental words are drowned out by the drumbeat of his heart. In front of room 306 he takes a deep breath and steps through the open door.

Lacey lies sleeping, his right arm in a cast to the elbow, his neck in a brace. Willie can't believe
he
did that. He stands over Lacey for a moment, then places a hand on his muscular upper arm. Lacey's eyes pop open. He focuses on Willie's face, struggling to place him, then squints his eyes and gives a grimace.

“How…you doing?” Willie asks, for lack of a better start.

“Be okay. Can't say the same for you, though. Not when I get outta here.”

“C'mon, man. I…thought you…were going to…kill her.”

“She my whore.”

“I…know that. But I thought…you…were going to kill her.”

“She my whore,” Lacey says again.

Willie doesn't pursue it. “Look,” he says. “I'm…
sorry I had to…hit you. If…you get even…you get even. I'll…be gone…when you get out of here. I'm going…to stay at the school. I…really appreciate all…you've done. I don't know how…I would have made it if you hadn't…taken me in. But I can't be around…what happened last night. I just can't. If…there's a way…I can make it up, let me know.”

Lacey doesn't respond. Willie's surprised he doesn't make more threats, but he just stares. Willie thinks it must be whatever drugs they have him on. “By the way,” he says, “your ex-wife, or…whoever she is, called. She…sounded pretty pissed. Says…she'll call later.” He pauses a moment before saying, “She called you a killer.”