Big Jack Is Dead (8 page)

Jack's mother carried his little brother Brodie on her hip like a sack of potatoes, shifting him to the opposite side so she could move her cigarette to the other hand. She waited as Jack finished at the snow cone van. When he turned back toward her, she said, “Come on,” and walked away.

He bit into the ice and trailed along in her cigarette smoke, following her closely. The van pulled away and Jack listened to the music fade behind them. It was Friday, just after school, and Jack was happy to be with his mother.

Halfway across the street, someone yelled, “Hey! Ramona!”

Jack's mother turned around, shifting Brodie again. Twenty-two, she was slim and pale, wearing a flowered blouse and a pair of shorts. She was barefoot.

Mr. Bornado was coming across his front yard. He was over forty, but glowed with unnatural health. His hair was cut very short, making his neck look bullish. His skin was so deeply burned from working out in the sun that it was the color of an old football. He wore only a pair of frayed cut-offs, hanging under his beer gut like tribal rags. A fleshy splash of scar ran up his chest and over his shoulder like melted wax. All the kids on the block said it was from machine-gun fire, dating back to Korea. Mr. Bornado smiled at Jack's mother, revealing a wide gap between his front teeth. She stood in place in the street, waiting for him to close the distance. Though he was stocky, his body rippled with muscle just beneath a layer of fat.

“Hey, how are you doin'?”

“Fine,” she said.

“You got your boys out gettin' snow cones.”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him and took a drag.

They all stood in the middle of the street under the sun, surrounded by a naked sky. As a station wagon approached, Mr. Bornado pulled Ramona over to his side of the street, drawing her along gently by her elbow. She allowed herself to be led as if the gesture was an act of chivalry. They continued to make small talk on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Bornado's house. At times they spoke softly in their gossip voices, which caused Jack to perk up his ears without appearing to pay attention.

Ramona put Brodie down on the cement after a while. “Take your little brother back to the house,” she said.  

Jack was still working on the last of the snow cone. His mouth was stained blue. Taking Brodie by the hand, he waited for a truck to pass then led him across the street. Negotiating a path around a pile of dog shit, the boys looked back across the street at their mother. She and Mr. Bornado were laughing. Jack stepped up onto the brick stair and forced his way into the house, struggling with the weight of the front door. Brodie followed.

A blanket of chilled air engulfed them. The air conditioner ran nearly twenty-four hours a day during the summer, keeping the house uncomfortably cool. Jack turned to close the front door, but his father's voice came from somewhere in the darkness of the living room.

“Hey, boy.”

Startled, Jack turned to face the room. He blinked a few times.

“What's your momma and Mr. Bornado talking about?”

Jack's eyes began to adjust. “I don't know.” He could see his father in the corner of the room, behind a tan recliner that was patched liberally with duct tape. The tape was so worn that it curled at the edges. Big Jack forced an opening in the Venetian blinds and watched through the small gap. He was wearing a t-shirt and a decaying pair of underwear. There were white socks on his tiny feet and Jack could see the entire heel of his father's right foot through a huge hole in one of the socks. Veins climbed up his father's Achilles tendon like vines and the heel was covered in calluses.

His father cut his head over and tilted it, bird-like. “You don't know?”

Jack didn't understand why, but something about the intonation, the inflection, implied that he should feel ashamed for not knowing. “No, sir,” he said softly. He made his voice more like his younger brother's. Standing next to Jack by the front door, Brodie ignored the conversation. He began scratching and probing his butt with his little fingers, chasing some itch deep in his crack.

“Come here.”

Jack walked over and stood a few feet away.

“Come
here
.”

When he was a foot away, his father leaned down very close, still standing in the corner behind the recliner.

“What the fuck was they saying?” asked Big Jack. “Are you deaf?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what?!”

“I don't remember.” Jack looked at the carpet. He tried to withdraw without moving, to cease to exist.

“Goddamn it.” Big Jack turned his attention back to the window.

When it seemed safe, Jack backed across the living room floor in silence, moving toward his room.

“Shut the goddamn door, boy. AC's gettin' out.” Big Jack continued to watch the street through the blinds, mumbling. “I ain't payin' to keep the whole fucking block in cold air.”

Jack went over and shouldered the door closed. He sensed that his father was fully distracted, his voice no longer carrying any menace. The boy drifted through the room and into the hallway beyond, sinking his toes into the thick carpet. Sucking the last of the snow cone juice from his fingers, he relished the hint of coconut and sugar.

Jack sat on his bed with a pile of Hot Wheels cars situated out in front of him. All his games involved intricate stories; each car represented a driver with a distinct personality. He acted out the conversations between the drivers, pushing the cars across the crazy terrain created by the undulations of the blanket on his bed. In his hands, each car was capable of amazing, Speed Racer-style jumps. Each car crashed and exploded a hundred times a month, only to be reborn again from the flames.

He heard his mother screaming at his father in another part of the house. For the fourth or fifth time, a pan crashed as she hurled it across the kitchen in impotent fury. She stood at the stove while Big Jack sat at the table, interrogating her. Occasionally Ramona threw a plastic bowl or spatula, but she was always absolutely careful to avoid hitting her husband.

Jack played with his cars and tuned the noise out. Brodie was lying on the floor, manipulating a Speak-N-Spell, with its ironic name in yellow letters. The phone rang and their parents got quiet; the phone always cowed them. The entire house went silent except for the phone. Someone picked it up on the third ring. Jack heard his mother's voice, which didn't surprise him. Big Jack never answered the phone if he could help it.  

“This is Ramona Hickman. Yeah, uh-huh…that's right.”

Seconds later, Jack forgot about the call altogether. He shuffled backward on the bed, putting his back to the wall and continued with the cars, speaking for each driver with a special voice, mimicked from cartoons and TV shows. After a time, his mother called from the kitchen. “Boys…time to eat.”

Jack and Brodie made a crazed run for the kitchen, which was part of their dinnertime ritual. They both jumped up at once and scrambled like a pack of wild pigs, knocking each other around as they raced out of the room, over various pieces of furniture and through the house. Jack beat his younger brother to the doorframe and shouldered him aside. They tore across the carpet of the living room and slid into the kitchen, gliding across the linoleum in their socks.

Big Jack brought the game to an end. “Go wash your hands and quit being cute. I'm not in any goddamn mood for this shit.” His voice carried an edge. Both kids stopped dead and retreated to the bathroom to wash up, heads down.

Back in the kitchen, Jack sat down against one wall with the window to his left. His father sat at the head of the small table, facing the window, and Brodie sat in front of the window, opposite his father. Jack's mother placed all the food on the table and sat down across from him at her husband's right hand, with her back to the kitchen. Big Jack bowed his head once everyone was seated. The entire family sat in silence. No one ever actually prayed, but when Big Jack thought enough time had passed, he opened his eyes and reached for the nearest platter of food. This was the signal that told everyone else it was okay to move again.

Jack was always ravenous and the food smelled good. Eight fried pork chops were piled on a plate at the center of the table. Beneath them, a stack of folded paper towels soaked up grease. Loaded with butter and salt, an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes sat next to the meat. Closest to Jack, there was a Tupperware bowl filled with dark gravy. A straw basket containing a mound of hot biscuits was shrouded by a dishtowel. Lastly, a small bowl of Del Monte canned spinach sat near one end of the table near Brodie. The kids both dipped out a small helping of spinach at their mother's insistence and heaped their plates with the other foods.

Just as Jack was about to take his first bite, his father interrupted. Chewing, he said the words slowly. “Well, boy…your teacher just called and talked to your momma for a while. She says you've been up there at the school acting like a little son of a bitch.”

Jack felt his guts go cold. He lifted his fork, but let it fall. He gazed down at his food.

“Not now,” Ramona said softly.

“Why not? He don't give a fuck…look at him.” When Jack closed his eyes, his father shouted at him, “Look at me!”

Jack looked up sharply, unsure of how to act. To make eye contact with his father usually invited further hostility, but he could not ignore the command.

“I don't know why you can't go down there, sit in your fucking chair and keep your goddamn mouth shut instead of cutting up and acting fucking cute all the time.”

Jack looked down at his food again. “Yes, sir,” he said. Brodie ate quietly, studying him with glassy blue eyes.

“After dinner,” Big Jack said, “I want you to go into my closet and get down a belt.”

A long thin whimper escaped from Jack's mouth. “Noooo.” The boy said it so quietly that the words could barely be heard.

“Don't fucking whine!” His father fixed him with a hard glare, scrutinizing Jack with one eye cocked open wider than the other. “Do not fucking cry at my table. Eat your goddamn dinner.” Big Jack was done talking and dug into another pork chop, cutting off a quarter of it with his fork then stuffing the meat into his mouth.

Jack ate slowly, picking at his food. His skin was cold and his stomach was sick. He felt like curling into a ball, but continued to eat, forcing the food down.

Without warning, his mother hissed at him, “Eat some spinach.” He flinched as he looked up at her.

Big Jack didn't mess around. He sliced up the remainder of his pork chops into double-sized bites and poured some ketchup out onto his plate. He went through six biscuits, a cup of gravy, three pork chops and three helpings of mashed potatoes. Several times, he covered the entire meal with blizzards of salt, re-applying more gravy and salt once he'd eaten away the top layer. He used his fork like a weapon, spearing a couple of triangular wedges of pork chop at once, dunking the meat into the thick pool of ketchup then angling the entire mass into his wide-open mouth, rotating it until it fit.

When his food was gone, Jack stood up. Everyone else watched him in silence. His father and mother smoked. His stomach cramped as he walked to their bedroom. In the closet, he took down a belt with the word JACK etched into the leather. Crying softly, he draped the belt over the foot of the bed and bent over the ratty, queen-sized mattress. He buried his face in the cigarette-burned blanket. Fumbling with his hands underneath him, he worked his pants and underwear down to his knees and waited.

Big Jack came into the room after a short time. He took up the belt and started whipping his son. Jack screamed down into the covers, begging his father to stop. Big Jack held the buckle in one hand and lashed the belt at its full length across his son's buttocks and thighs. Twisting his neck, Jack looked back, begging. His father was reflected in the headboard mirror, face contorted with rage.

After an endless time, Ramona came flying into the room, howling like a wild thing, face wet with tears. “That's enough! Goddammit, that's enough!”

Big Jack stopped the whipping. He glared at her and when he spoke, he was breathless from the exertion. “Go to your goddamn room, boy.”

Jack fled. Lying on his bed, he screamed into his pillow. Brodie joined him. Standing next to the bed, he tried to take his older brother's hand. Jack yanked it away and rolled over to face the wall. His backside and thighs radiated warmth. The smell of old urine rose up from his sheets.

The door to Big Jack and Ramona's bedroom clicked shut and a moment later their bed springs began to squeak and crunch with machine-like rhythm.

Chapter 8
 

1999

Around one in the afternoon, I drove along a stretch of highway running through Quailbury, where my stepmother Mincy lived. I stopped at a traffic light every quarter mile or so. Each intersection was surrounded by fast food restaurants, gas stations and parking lots giving way to recessed shopping centers. And wires…no matter which way I turned my head, I was looking up through a skein of cables.

Waiting for the light to change, I watched a kid hang plastic letters on the back-lit sign standing next to a chicken place. A dozen blackbirds oversaw the operation from a telephone wire on the east side of the highway. There was a drive-through liquor store next door. The sign at the fast food restaurant read, ALL YOU CAN EAT CHICK'N-CHUNKS.

Local legend said that the chain was owned by a wealthy Gulf Coast family. The old man was a little crazy and still made surprise visits to all the restaurants, sneaking in disguised as a customer. He had fired dozens of people for minor infractions over the years. I imagined pimply teens, wide-eyed and recoiling from the old man across the counter as he transformed from doddering customer to screaming executive founder. The old man once dropped his act and gave some assistant manager a new car for exemplary customer service.

Using a rubber suction cup at the end of a long pole, the kid slapped the ground with the cup, grabbing another letter and lifting it into the air. Twelve feet up, the plastic letter popped free from the rubber cup and raced down at him like a roof shingle in a tornado, a playing card hurled by some malevolent god. The kid dodged, hanging onto the aluminum pole like a lance, a stick-figure knight. A giant rooster eyed him from the top of the sign. “Hang in there,” I said under my breath.