“Come on, Angel.”
We were at the huge gravel yard where my uncle parked all his big machinery. I’d gotten the backhoe key from the green metal shack where they were kept on individual hooks screwed into a quarter sheet of plywood. I jingled the key fob in front of Angel’s face with one hand, while holding a cold beer in the other. “You know you want to,” I said.
“No, I don’t,” he told me shortly.
“It’ll be fun.”
“I’m not going.”
“Then why’d you even come?” I’d never been mad at Angel before, and as far as I could recall, he’d never looked at me the way he was then. It wasn’t really anger, but more like the way my mother would after a parent teacher conference—disappointment—which was worse.
“Why did you bring that?” Angel pointed at my beer like it was something vile.
“I thought it
