JACK (3 page)

“Fuck you!”

“Don’t you dare talk to your sister or me that way!”

“Leave me alone, both of you. Just go away!”

Jonathan’s tone turned cold. “This is your last chance, young lady. If I have to break down this door, so help me I don’t care how old you are, I will take a belt to your hide!”

I yanked open the door.

Jonathan’s froze, fist raised in mid knock. He and my sister wore confused expressions like they couldn’t quite figure out who I was.

Emma’s gaze went from my head to the sink, then my head again. I could tell she didn’t want to believe what I’d done. A high pitched sound preceded Emma’s words. “What did you do? Oh my God! Jacqueline! What did you do?”

I pushed past both of them. “I told you no dress. Now leave me alone.”

“Jonathan, do something!”

As if he could. Phillip stared at me, dumbfounded and then disgusted.

Emma wailed. “We should call a doctor, right now, a doctor, right this minute.”

Phillip waved a hand at me. “For what? She’s cut her hair. A doctor can’t fix a haircut.”

“She isn’t right! Can’t you see that? We need to call a doctor!”

I curled my hands into fists. “I’m not seeing a doctor.”

Emma grabbed my arm and her nails bit into my skin. “You’re sick. It isn’t your fault. We’ll send you somewhere there are doctors who can help you. Somewhere they will take care of you.”

I knew what kind of doctor she was referring to. Emma wanted to send me to someone who would pick apart my brain and tell me all the things about me that needed to be fixed.

But I wasn’t broken.

I tried to twist out of her grasp. “Let go of me!”

“It’s okay. I’ll call someone tonight,” she said.

“Leave me alone, you bitch!”

“All right, that’s enough!” Jonathan’s big hand landed on the back of my neck and he pushed me into the floor. He pointed one of his thick fingers in my face. “I will not have you talking to your sister like that. You will respect her in our home.”

“This is Momma’s house!”

“And your mother is dead!” He all but spit the words at me.

How dare he say it like that? How dare he say it at all? It was like getting slapped all over again.

Phillip made a grab for me and I kicked him in the knee. He staggered into the rail, cursing. I scrambled to my feet. Emma tried to get in my way and I shoved her aside and ran down the stairs. The echo of the screen door smacking shut followed me across the field.

I didn’t slow down until I reached the edge of the pasture. Up ahead at a fork in the road there was a few old log buildings and among them a small convenience store. Claycreek Grocery had a phone they let folks use for local calls.

I went in. Todd Jones sat at the counter reading the Weekly Saver. Sagging shelves, dark walls, cracked linoleum floor, the inside wasn’t much to look at. But the gas was cheap and the bread was always fresh. The bells jingled on the door when it closed behind me and he smiled.

“Jack!” Todd’s gaze lingered on my head. His mouth twisted up. “You cut your hair.”

“Can I use your phone?”

He sat there a minute, unable to peel his gaze off of me.

“Todd?”

“Sure, sure hon, you go right ahead.” He set the phone on the counter. The cord was a wad of curly-Qs at its side. I cradled the receiver next to my heart and dialed Elliot. I worried he might not pick up and then he did.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.” My voice cracked.

“Jack? What’s wrong?”

Until that moment I wasn’t sure why I’d called, but I knew now and I felt sad because of it.

My breath shuddered, rattling the speaker. When I glanced up Todd’s cheeks were pink. He said something about checking the freezer and went to the back.

Elliot said my name again.

“I’m here.”

“Did something happen?”

“She wants to send me away.”

“Away?”

“To a hospital.”

“A what?”

“She says I’m sick and I need help. She’s gonna send me somewhere they can make me better.”

“She’s just talking. She’s just trying to scare you. You know how she is.”

“I love you, El.”

“I love you too, Jack.”

“But not
that
way, and I’ve always loved you that way and I wish I’d been a boy so you’d kiss me. And maybe I would be the one holding your hand. It’s not that I don’t like Mikey but he’ll never love you as much as I do.”

Elliot sniffled. “Just come back to our place.”

“I gotta go now.” My sigh sounded tired.

“Go where?”

“Fishing.”

He was quiet for a moment. “What do you mean you’re going to go fishing?”

“Bye, El, I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

*** *** ***

My destination was the old train tracks five miles down the road.

A train hadn’t come through Union in over fifty years, but the track still divided the town. After they’d stripped all the minerals out of the ground the train had been turned into a passenger car for tourists. There was nothing in Union to see so it went bankrupt a few years later.

The history of the train station was something my English teacher could go on about for hours. She’d rode on the train once when she was a child and you’d thought she’d gone to the moon. What did I know? I’d never ridden a train. Maybe it was like going to the moon.

Gravel popped on the road behind me. Slaps of red and blue flashed against the skeleton of the bridge. The rumble of an engine followed me up the path then fell silent.

A car door slammed. “Jacqueline?”

I walked faster.

“Jacqueline, your sister is riding around looking for you.”

I glanced back.

Billy stared at my head. His mouth hung open a little. “You cut your hair.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Nothing, I just thought…”

“What? That it was pretty? I don’t care about pretty, Billy.” I started walking again.

“Wait now. Just wait a minute. Emma said you ran off.”

“Obviously.”

“She’s worried about you.”

“Yeah, well tell her there is nothing to worry about.” I climbed up the barrier with its warning signs and big red Xs. You weren’t supposed to fish here, but everyone did. A worn spot in the concrete where hands had rubbed against the surface made a dip and white scars marked the side from feet searching for purchase.

“Whoa there, sweetheart. That thing is there for a reason. Come down from there before you hurt yourself.”

Gravel bit into my heels when I dropped to the other side.

“Jacqueline?”

I ignored the path going down to the river’s edge and walked up the hill. The ground around the tracks was steep. I dug my toes into the dirt and made my way to the top.

“Honey, please come down from there.” Billy scrabbled over the barrier. Gravel crunched under the soles of his shoes as he jogged toward me.

I narrowed a look at him. “Why don’t you just get back in your car and leave? Tell them you couldn’t find me or something.” I climbed out onto the steel structure. Streaks of rust stained my hands.

Three days of rain had transformed the river from a thing of beauty into a horrifying vision. Even several yards back I could see the flashes of white where the rocks cut eddies in the water. The area under the bridge was calmer. Wrinkles slithered along the surface, and were the only evidence of an undertow. Swollen edges dug out ruts in the bank.

Five years ago three local kids tried to tube the river from Blood Mountain to Woodsman’s Gap. They made it halfway before the water swallowed them up. Their bodies washed up a few days after they went missing, bloated and white, like shells bleached out by the sun.

After that I promised momma I’d never fish here after a storm.

“Jacqueline, please.”

“Quit calling me that!”

“Okay fine. What do you want me to call you, honey, just tell me.”

“Jack! My name is Jack, not sweetheart, not honey!”

He nodded and his bangs slid loose in messy waves. “Jack, you shouldn’t be up there. You could fall.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t want to get hurt now, do you?”

“Billy, if I fall I wouldn’t get hurt. I’d be dead.”

I could see the realization in his expression.

He held up a hand. “Now let’s think about this Hon—Jack.” His fancy shoes slid on the wet grass as he tried to make his way up the hill. “C’mon, nothing can be that bad. Please, please come down.” He got to the top and picked his way through the rotten rungs trying not to catch his ankle in a hole. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Emma wants to send me to a hospital. She says I’m sick. I don’t want to wear a dress and she wants to send me somewhere because she thinks I’m supposed to.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that. You probably misunderstood.” He almost fell. Billy always was a klutz. They used to laugh at him in gym class. I never laughed.

“I didn’t misunderstand what she said. I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.” He lost his footing and rocks rolled down the hill.

“You should get down before you break a leg.” I turned away.

The wooden tracks thinned as I got to the edge of the cliff where the twisted beams hung out over the churning water. I made my way until I could stare down at the beast. Like death’s hand, the churning blackness beckoned me with promises of peace.

The preacher man said a lot about freedom in death. God’s arms and heaven. Did any of that really exist? And if it did would I get there, or be sent to hell for who I was?

Billy’s radio crackled on his shoulder, followed by Penny Rider’s voice. “308, this is dispatch. Have you located our 1045?”

“Yeah. I mean, 10-4. I’m out here on Union bridge. I’ve got a 10-56”

“Jacqueline?” I could hear the disbelief in Penny’s tone.

“10-4. I need you to send Henry out.” Billy stumbled again. “Jacqueline—I mean Jack, Jack, please. Just come down and we can talk about this.” He got close enough to see over the edge and closed his eyes for a second, looking sick.

I kept going and stepped out on the narrow beams. I held out my hands and imagined myself a tightrope walker. The trees were crowds of people watching me in awe and the rush of the river below was applause.

Billy’s pleas were lost to the hush of the water. I opened my eyes, staring down between my feet where the river danced and rolled beneath the beams.

Billy cussed and I glanced back to see him clinging to the framework. There were tears in his eyes and his cheeks were wet. His confident voice came out small and scared sounding, like he did the time I found him crying under the bleachers when Markus Franks had given him a black eye for looking at his girl friend.

“Don’t cry.” It was the same thing I’d said back then.

“Jack, please. I’ll talk to Emma.”

“You know she won’t change her mind. She wants me to be a girl and I can’t do that. I’m not meant to.”

“I’m sure if I just talk to her…”

“No. Momma always said Emma was stubborn as a fence post. She only hears what she wants to hear and she only does what she wants to do. She doesn’t care about me. Don’t you understand? She can’t. She doesn’t even see me.” A gust of wind whistled through the frame work and pushed against me. I hung on with one hand. I leaned out my arm outstretched and let my fingers dance against the cold burst of air. My clothes flapped and I swayed.

Billy swallowed. A pained look came over his face. Both of his arms wrapped around the beam. He put out his foot touching the steel tracks and then yanked back. “Please, for the love of God, come back here. This isn’t funny anymore.”

I didn’t bother to point out how no one was laughing.

Another car pulled up and a door slammed. Sheriff Berry hopped the barrier and marched up the gravel road.

“Billy, get down from there. You know I can’t afford to put you on medical leave.” Billy did as he was told.

Berry grunted as he climbed the hill and walked up the tracks. “Jack!” Sherriff Berry knew better than to call me Jacqueline.

“Yes sir.”

“Get your ass down from there right now.”

I had always liked Henry and thought if my daddy had stuck around he would have been like him. Henry was fair. Even when his officers gave Elliot and Mikey a hard time, Berry never stood by and let it happen.

“Jack, down, now!”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”

“You’re upset. I know this last year has been hard on you, but there’s no reason to do this.”

“That’s not the reason I’m here.”

“Then talk to me. Tell me why you’re here.”

“Emma.”

“What about her?”

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just stressed. Your momma just passed away, everything’s in turmoil.”

“She doesn’t care that Momma is gone, Mr. Berry. She’s just here to take whatever she can.”

“That’s not true.”

“You know what she said to me the day she arrived? She wanted to know where the will was. She didn’t ask me how I was doing. If I was okay. She just wanted to know about the will.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that.”

“She did.”

He stopped at the edge of the bridge. He wasn’t scared like Billy but he was definitely wary of falling.

“Jack, come down.”

“No.”

“Please. You know your momma wouldn’t want you to do this. Think about her. Think about what this would do to her.”

“I am thinking about my momma, sir.” I thought about her all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

A strong gust shot between us and yanked his hat off his head. It tumbled through the air to the river below. It disappeared when the water reached up and snatched it.

I didn’t hear Jonathan’s car but I saw Emma when she got to the barrier. “Jacqueline! What in God’s name are you doing?”

Henry waved one of his big hands at Billy. “Shut her up and get her the hell out of here!”

Billy looked relieved. He went back to the road, climbed over the barrier and tried to usher Emma back to her car. Her face turned red and her boney fingers clawed at the air like she could snatch me from where she stood.

Emma screeched my name. “Get your ass down from there! Do you hear me? How dare you act this way? You’re nothing but an embarrassment to our family! I’m going to have you locked up! Do you hear me? Locked up so no one has to deal with this nonsense ever again!”