Authors: Harvey Smith
His house was at the end of the block. It was the second home he could remember. Built in the 1940's, an older relative once said, it was small with a handful of rooms. The exterior was white with mossy window frames that sloughed off paint chips like molting insects. Sitting on pier and beam-style blocks, the house concealed a dank underbelly that was thick with roaches and fat-bodied spiders, legs like black fishing line. His parents talked about moving, but for now this was home.
He slowed, spotting a familiar car parked on the street a few houses down. It was a rusted VW bug that belonged to Daryl, one of his mother's friends. When Jack's father wasn't home, his mother acted differently, especially around Daryl. She had special rules for those times, rules that Jack had to keep.
Putting his head down, he trudged through the clumps of clover in the front yard, following a path that allowed him to hit a couple of outgrowths. The toes of his sneakers turned green. A fire ant mound caught his attention, but he couldn't muster the enthusiasm to kick it to pieces. Using his body as a wedge, he forced himself between the screen and the front door. The spring on the screen door groaned as it stretched out against his back and shoulder. The front door was locked. Leaning into it with his weight, he rested there between the hard wood and the wire mesh, knocking as loudly as he could, which wasn't very loud. Using the flat of his hand, he slapped the door, trying to get his mother's attention.
When Ramona opened the door, Jack nearly tumbled over the threshold. She wore a blouse covered in cream-colored splotches, a pair of cutoffs and nothing else. Her red hair was cut closer than usual and was badly disheveled. She stepped aside, adjusting the shorts on her hips.
“Ohhh…come in, baby.” With an air of dreaminess, she reached out, stroking his head with unsteady hands. Once he was inside, she locked the door.
Jack blinked in the dimness. “Mom, look.”
“Yeah, baby…those are real good.” She took the drawings and dropped them on the coffee table. “Sit down on the couch, okay?”
He did as she asked, wide blue eyes locked onto her as she turned on the television. Twenty years old, she was slender and pale. Her breasts were larger than her petite frame would otherwise suggest and hung low within the baby doll blouse.
“You wanna watch cartoons?”
Jack nodded as she found the right channel.
“Here you go. I'll give you a hug then I'm gonna be in the other room, alright?”
“Okay.” He watched her approach. Ramona slid onto the couch next to him and he leaned into her clumsily, holding onto her shoulder with one pale hand. She hadn't showered today and he could smell her skin and her hair, a combination of cigarette smoke, day-old deodorant and sweat. The smell of his mother and the warmth of her flesh made him feel safe. Holding on, he buried his head in her blouse, pressing his face against her floppy breasts through the thin material. He closed his eyes and smiled.
Ramona took his shoulders and gently pushed him back. Looking down at him, she smiled back, distantly, before getting serious. “You 'member what we talked about?”
Daryl's voice came through the walls. “Hey, Ramona,” he bellowed.
She looked over her shoulder toward the bedroom then locked eyes with Jack again. “Remember?”
He nodded.
“Okay, you stay in here and watch cartoons.” She rose from the couch, pulling away from him.
He watched her recede, crossing the room quickly. The bedroom door closed and Jack turned his attention to the television. From the other side of the wall, Daryl said something but it was muffled. Music started to play.
Jack sat watching Speed Racer. It was shortly after one in the afternoon and he remembered his hunger. The television was up loud and the sounds of cars accelerating and exploding echoed off the walls. During a commercial break, he slid off the couch and made his way to the kitchen.
Rummaging around in the pantry, he found a loaf of bread, untwisting the tie with his small fingers. Standing in a kitchen chair, he slathered two slices of bread with a layer of margarine before dropping them into the toaster. He'd been told before to butter the bread only after toasting it, but with no one around this was a small rule that he generally broke. If he buttered it first, the bread tasted better, coming out of the toaster in a dozen shades of gold and lighting his tongue up with the pleasures of grease, salt and burned things.
Big
Jack, his father, had walked in on him once while he was toasting the already-buttered bread. Jack was sitting on the counter after a slow climb up from the tiled floor, aromatic smoke filling his senses. Watching the toaster greedily, he was barely aware that his father had entered the room.
Big Jack was short, probably five foot seven, with skinny arms and legs. A basketball-sized belly was molded to his lower abdomen and a pair of B-cup tits sagged from his chest. Intermittent patches of wiry hair covered his pale, freckled skin. Watching his son up on the counter, it had taken Big Jack a few seconds to realize what was going on. He looked dully at the toaster before his eyes flared with anger. “Boy!”
Jack jumped, his heels banging against the cabinet door.
“What're you doing? You want me to knock you through that wall?” Big Jack took a step closer. His eyes were red-rimmed from cigarette smoke and bulged in outrage. Standing in front of the counter, he stared straight into his son's eyes.
“No, sir,” Jack said. He looked into his lap.
Big Jack held him with his gaze as the toast smoke rose next to them. When the toaster catapulted both pieces of bread up to the top of the twin slots, Big Jack took them immediately, holding them in the palm of his calloused hand with no regard for the heat. As a welder, his skin was impervious to the glowing tip of a cigarette. Hot toast didn't even register.
“Don't put this shit in there already buttered. You're gonna burn the fucking house down.” Big Jack boomed down at his son, “Is that what you want? To kill us all?”
“No, sir,” Jack said weakly.
“Now get down off the goddamn counter.” Finished with the lesson, Big Jack left the kitchen and went out back.
Jack's stomach was in knots, but he relaxed as soon as his father walked away. He waited until the kitchen was quiet then pushed himself forward off the counter. Dropping to the floor, he misjudged the fall and scraped the small of his back on the way down. He twisted and moaned, crouching and rubbing his back. Letting out a sigh, he collected himself and started out of the kitchen.
As he passed the door to the back porch, Jack saw his father outside gobbling up the toast, finishing off each slice in only a few bites. Mouth stuffed with toast, Big Jack swiveled his head like a hostile, backyard blue jay. Unable to speak, he communicated with his face, furrowing his brow severely, scaring the boy into motion.
That had been months ago. Now Jack stood on a chair, mouth watering as he made toast in the middle of the afternoon. He watched wispy smoke rise up from the toaster and at that moment his father's battered black truck roared up into the driveway, home from work.
Panic ran through him as he remembered his mother. Hopping down from the chair, Jack raced through the living room. He reached the bedroom door and hammered against it with his hand. The music on the other side was louder now, reverberating through the house. Jack pushed against the door with both hands, palms splayed against the thin wood as he kicked with the rubber toe of his sneaker.
The door swung open, revealing his mother and Daryl in the bed a few feet away. Jack's mother was on her back and Daryl was on top of her. They were both under the covers, but Ramona's knees stuck out, framing his body. Daryl grunted and snorted out explosive breaths as his hips rose and fell, his face contorted with effort. As the doorknob hit the wall, Daryl and Ramona jolted, snapping their faces toward Jack. Daryl continued to thrust into the woman beneath him, causing the bed to shake and creak.
“Daddy's here,” Jack whined, holding the doorframe.
Daryl's eyes popped wide with recognition. He flew up out of bed, sending the tattered quilt flying. His penis swung wildly, swiveling from his mass of pubic hair. In the same instant, Jack saw the pallid flesh of his mother's thighs, the ruddiness between her legs and the damp patch of hair beneath her bellybutton. Her breasts undulated like jellyfish hanging from her chest, soft and white.
In seconds, Daryl struggled into his jeans and scooped up the remainder of his clothing. Still naked, Ramona helped him out the sliding glass door leading into the back yard. Jack watched Daryl as he fled, hopping and hobbling around the wreckage of a collapsed shed. He disappeared behind an unkempt growth of aloe vera plants just as Jack's father slammed the truck door out front.
As soon as the sliding glass door was closed, Ramona slipped into her blouse and cutoffs with the agility of an escape artist. Still standing in the doorway, Jack's eyes were fixed on the puff of her hair as it vanished into her cutoffs.
Working the zipper with spidery fingers, Ramona hissed at him, “Go sit in the living room. Tell your daddy we was playin'.”
He darted into the other room just as Big Jack tried the front door, cursing and fumbling with his keys. When the door opened, Big Jack struggled inside carrying his plastic lunch box in one hand, holding his keys and a cigarette in the other. The screen door snapped shut at his back. His first words were directed at Jack, standing in front of the coffee table. “Did you lock that fucking door?”
Jack shook his head. “No, sir.”
Big Jack stood without moving in the doorway. He roared out his next question. “Ramona, why in the hell have you got this door locked?” His eyes were still pinned to Jack's.
Ramona stomped into the room, holding a cigarette in one hand and yelling back. “You want me to get raped by some Mexican or something while you ain't here?”
Big Jack smoldered at her across the room. He deliberated and reached a verdict. “No.” At the coffee table, he dropped his lunch box and truck keys on top of Jack's drawings. He dumped a handful of change onto the table, one of the rituals he performed upon coming home. The coins rained down in a scattered pile that Jack knew never to touch.
Big Jack straightened up. “What the fuck is that smell?”
Jack stood paralyzed. Ramona tucked some of her tangled hair behind one ear, confused, but wary.
Big Jack took six steps in his tiny, nearly shredded work boots and was lost from sight around the kitchen doorway. “Boy, goddammit! What did I tell you about this toast?”
The words echoed through the house and Jack shrank into himself, cold terror rising in his chest.
After eating an early dinner and watching an hour of television, Big Jack stubbed out his cigarette, stood up and headed for the bedroom. A plate and an ashtray sat side by side next to his recliner. The plate was splattered with drying spaghetti sauce and the ashtray was so full that it formed a miniature mountain made of ash and butts.
As he passed Ramona, Big Jack said, “Come on. Let's take a little nap.”
Jack sat on the living room floor running his Matchbox cars along the grooves in the oval rug. Quietly, he made small
vrooming
noises with his mouth, mimicking the shifting of gears. He stopped and cocked his head, listening to his parents in the bedroom, arguing. Jack froze, clutching his favorite car as the bed springs began to squeak.
After a short while, Big Jack came out of the bedroom in his softball uniform. He wore a team t-shirt bearing the Salvation Army logo, some stretchy pants and cleated athletic shoes. In the one-inch cleats, he walked as if he was a figure of towering proportions. They made a marching sound as he crossed the tile floor. The oval rug muffled the noise as he drew closer, dropping his gear and a pristine cap onto the couch.
“Goin' to play some ball, boy.” Excited, he grinned down at his son with a competitive, almost maniacal grin. After tying his shoelaces, he took up the new cap, pulling it over his head snugly and looking down at his son. “Well, how do I look?”
Jack faced up, knees folded under him. “You look good. You look like a baseball player.”
“Softball, remember? Baseball is for pussies who gotta get paid to play.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said.
Big Jack studied his son for a second. “And little kids in Peewee League. Like you in a couple of years.” Smiling uncomfortably, he reached out and pawed Jack's hair. “You're gonna whoop some ass someday like your daddy, right?”
“Right,” Jack said, nodding and reaching out to touch the smooth aluminum bat leaning against the couch.
“I'll bet you're gonna make a good outfielder. Fast, with good eyes.”
“Yeah,” Jack said.
“Maybe we can play some catch this summer. You might be big enough now.”
Jack picked up the crumbling leather glove his father had used since high school and held it out.
Big Jack took the glove, tucking it under one arm. “Alright. Is my cap on right?” Grinning, he knelt down a bit as Jack came close and tugged on the bill, straightening the cap.
“It looks A-okay.”
“Alright, Daddy's gonna go win a game.” Tapping the bat on the rug underfoot, he nodded to Jack. “You be good, boy. I'll see you later, before you go to bed.”
Jack watched him as he snatched up his truck keys and walked out the door.
When the truck engine died away, Ramona came shuffling out of the bedroom, dragging now. Wearing nothing but a housecoat, she made her way through the living room, taking care to step over Jack's toys on the way.
He stood up a minute later and padded across the oval rug, carrying his favorite car in one hand. With just the two of them there, the house was quiet. In the kitchen, he hung onto the stove with his free hand.
Ramona stood at the sink, holding a cigarette and a plastic bag, smiling at him. “Hey, baby.” Lifting the sandwich baggy, she exhaled into it. Jack could see her lips pucker through the plastic as the little bag puffed out. Lifting the cigarette to one side of the baggy, she burned a hole into it, inhaling the fumes deeply while it melted.