God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 2

I step on the gas pedal. The engine growls uppity, like a washing machine that's been filled with nuts and bolts.

Pat's right about me smelling like pancakes, so I point my car home, a drive north and then east towards the lake. You can't see it from my front porch, but you can feel it in the cool air, you can smell the water, you can hear it brawl with the beach when the waves get high and nasty, or complain when it freezes over and the ice wails and screeches like witches at each other's throats.

After the brick alleys and the glass canyons of the Loop, is good to be back home, no matter how short the stay. Mine is a neighborhood of well kept lawns. Of front porches. Of cars in the driveways and garages turned into extra rooms. Of people saying hello when they pass each other by. Of BBQ parties in the back patio. Of Star Spangled Banners at every door, and yellow ribbons tied to old trees, waiting for sons and grandkids fighting in Iraq or Fucked-up-stan. A middle class enclave of home owners, white collars, hard workers, God-fearing white people. Nothing fancy. Just the backbone of the nation. It ain't all perfect. Racial integration here has stopped to the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Scots. It's suburbia like you think suburbia was back when Ike was President, but with fast internet and sixty inches flat TV screens. Here people roots for the Bulls, Bears and Cubs even if the teams couldn't win if they were playing against each other. Here it's fine to drink a beer at dinner, but you drink three and that's frowned upon. This is a Republican fortress in the most Democrat of the US great cities. Here Bush Jr land-slided and Al Gore got only a bucketful of laughters. 

I've lived here all my life, and I wouldn't change it for an apartment overlooking the Magnificent Mile. People here appreciate me because I'm a policemen. They called me Sir, or Detective. They don't live in fear of me. They expect me to perform a service for the community, and they respect me in turn. I get invited to parties and to watch games. The local pastor drops by from time to time, and the Padre does as well, knowing full well I don't mind him getting more than just a taste from my whiskey collection. The priests don't mind my complete lack of religion. They enjoy a friend with whom they don't need to talk shop.

I park. The house is two-storied, white front porch and the walls just recently painted a warm maroon that reminds me of ox blood. Brandy's second hand Saturn is parked in the driveway. The lawn is impeccable. I cure it myself on the weekends. That's all the exercise I do.

I don't get out immediately. I relax in my chair. I listen to the last minute of Mr Saturday Dance. I try to exorcise the demons from my heart before I see Brandy. Pat is right: I have it in for Jay Mavis. Everybody knows me and him have an ugly story. I bet they know even across the state line. There are many reasons to dislike a son of a bitch like Mavis: he's scum, he's a peddler of low quality dope that turns your brain to mush, he almost surely killed two girls, even if I'm the only one saying so (clearly the Prosecution is not happy about my tunnel vision, because they discard every shred of evidence I bring them, when it concerns Jay), he rents rooms to young women who don't know any better and turn tricks in order to keep themselves fuelled up with the shit he sells. Again, the State Attorney Office won't hear about it because he gets their money by renting at ridiculously high prices, so theoretically he's not their protector, but just a steep landlord. The whole system makes me sick.

So, yeah, there are many reason to dislike Jay Mavis.

I have one reason to hate him. Brandy.

Brandy is busy cleaning the downstairs rooms. Only white trash trailer people could call a daughter Brandy, and I had hoped she'd go to City Hall and change her name into something more solidly traditional. What kind of future can a girl named Brandy have? But she's sticking to it, sort of a badge of honor. I walk in and she stops the hoover and she walks up to me. She's always barefooted in the house. She gets on her toes and kisses me gently on the cheek. She performs her version of a smile. You need to know her to know that's a smile. Brandy is beautiful. In a simple t-shirt and cutoffs, Brandy is a sneak peek of what Heaven must look like if God had the good sense of letting a Las Vegas entrepreneur run it. Brandy smells of lavender and roses and apple pie cooling on the windowsill.