The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke Page A

the better.
    â€œWhat do you know about him?” he asked.
    â€œHe gave names to the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
    â€œWhat are your thoughts on that?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t have any.”
    â€œHow about your parents? What do they think?”
    â€œMyfather said the ones who gave names should have taken their medicine. My father hates war. He was in the trenches in 1918. He says Russia’s objective is to bleed us white through its proxies.”
    Mr. Epstein nodded, his eyes hazing in the way of adults when they’re no longer listening. “You ever meet Clint Harrelson?”
    â€œGrady Harrelson’s father? I know who he is.”
    â€œHe’s the founder of a right-wing organization that would enjoy seeing people like me put in a soap dispenser. I’ve had a couple of personal run-ins with him. His organization called me a Communist in its newspaper.”
    â€œYou’re not a Communist, are you, Mr. Epstein?”
    â€œNot now.”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œI think his son was after Valerie to prove something to his father. I told the father in front of the Rice Hotel that if either he or his son brought harm to my family, I’d shoot him.”
    He drank from his teacup. It looked small in his hand.
    â€œYou said you’d shoot Clint Harrelson?”
    â€œThat was a mistake. I won’t do it again.”
    â€œI’m not sure I’m following you, sir.”
    â€œYou don’t threaten a man. If he comes at you, you put him out of business. An evil man is not scared by threats. He’s scared when you don’t speak.”
    He winked at me.
    T HAT NIGHT I WENT home and sat for a long time in my bedroom without turning on the light. The attic fan was droning above the hallway, drawing the air through the screened windows. I tuned the strings on my Gibson and played one song after another without thinking about the chords my fingers were shaping. I could not believe what had occurred earlier. In his house, within earshot of his daughter, Mr. Epstein had talked about the possibility of killing another man, the father of a student with whom I had gone to school. That the objectof his hatred was Clint Harrelson didn’t matter. Mr. Epstein had been talking about murder. To compound my discomfort, I was sleeping with his daughter.
    You have to understand that we felt differently about certain things years ago. I was a Catholic, and the idea of killing someone except in self-defense was not tenable. My other problem was Valerie. In the eyes of others, we were breaking a commandment. Except emotionally, that wasn’t how I felt. I loved Valerie, and it was through her that my entire life had changed. There was nothing impure about our love; it was bright and clean and innocent and natural, like the flame on a votive candle. I did not believe that God saw it differently. When I tried to work my way through my thoughts, I felt a pressure band along the side of my head, as though I were wearing a hat.
    I had never needed to talk with my father as badly as I needed to talk with him that night. He was reading in the living room, but I didn’t seek him out. I let Snuggs and Bugs and my tabby cat named Skippy and my toy bird dog named Major climb up on the bed with me, each pointing its muzzle into the cool air flowing through the screen.
    I tried to imagine a conversation with my father about Mr. Epstein’s threat and about my sleeping with Mr. Epstein’s daughter. How would my father react? Sometimes he went into rages over the use of a vulgar word.
    I could try to talk with my mother, except that prospect gave me an even deeper sense of angst and foreboding. It wasn’t her fault. Her father had farmed her out to the kindness of strangers and resentful relatives. The bad memories of her childhood seemed to crawl under her skin. She reminded me of a crystal glass teetering on the edge of the drainboard, about to shatter