by Harvey Smith
I brushed the hair from her face. Her eyes and the tilt of her head told me that she approved. Leaning forward, we kissed softly in the light coming through the panes of filmy glass. Her mouth tasted like several good things at once…wine, lipstick and burnt flesh. We kissed harder and I closed my eyes while she probed the inside of my mouth blindly with her warm, wet tongue.
Chapter 3
1974
The alarm went off at 5AM on Christmas Eve. Big Jack lay comatose, unfazed by the buzzing. Ramona opened her eyes and blinked each one independently like some kind of white trash lizard. Sitting up slowly, she let the covers fall away from her nightgown and began shaking her husband in accordance with their morning ritual.
“Get up, Jack. You gotta go to work.” Her mouth was dry and sticky. She paused, slipping into a daze and drifting toward sleep even though she was sitting up. Her eyes snapped open in alarm and she shook her head to regain clarity. She spoke again, louder. “Jack…get up, honey. It's five.”
Big Jack groaned as Ramona continued to shake him. He cleared his throat and threw aside the covers, revealing his naked form. His arms and face had been sunburned a deep ruddy color, but the rest of his body was as pale as PVC pipe. He lay on his back with his belly flattened out like a vanilla pudding, rippling with his waking movements. Patches of very dark hair were scattered across his body. He sported a five-inch erection as hard as the tires on his truck and as pink as an eraser. Reaching down, he scratched his pubic mound.
It was still dark outside. The room was completely black because the windows were covered with aluminum foil. This allowed Big Jack to sleep through the day whenever he was pulling graveyard shifts at the plant. The window-mounted air conditioner kicked on, creating a lulling hum.
He reached over and took Ramona's wrist, pulling her toward him across his naked body. His eyes were still closed.
“Come on, Jack,” she said. “Go get in the shower. We ain't got no time for this.”
“It's Christmas Eve,” he said. He mumbled the words so badly that it took her a second to make them out. He maintained his grip on her wrist, tugging her closer. The rest of his body was slack and relaxed, but his grip was unbreakable.
Ramona resisted for one final minute then let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, all right, all right.” She pulled her panties down and climbed on top of him with an angry commotion. The old bed was battered to the point of dilapidation and rolled under them like a raft.
Big Jack still hadn't opened his eyes. Once she was astride his body, he probed upward with his erect penis, blindly, making adjustments with tiny thrusting motions. She reached down and inserted it roughly, then began to ride him. It took four or five minutes for Big Jack to climax and he nearly fell asleep a couple of times. Moaning once, he barely increased the intensity of his bucking. Head tilted backward, his mouth hung open. As soon as his orgasm subsided, he relaxed completely and drifted back into sleep.
Ramona rolled away from him wordlessly, stepping down onto the carpet and making her way to the bathroom. When she returned, she stood by the bed and shook Big Jack firmly. Her eyes burned in the darkness.
“Get up,” she said. She raised her voice. “You're late for work.”
His eyes jerked open and he sat up, fully awake. “Well, goddamn, woman…you want me to get fucking fired?” He looked up at her and shook his head violently to clear it. “What the fuck would you do then, huh?”
“I tried to wake you up at five, Jack. You're the one who wanted to do it.”
Ignoring her, Big Jack slid across the bed and made his way to the shower. “Make some coffee,” he said as he passed.
After showering, Big Jack dressed for work in less than five minutes. He wore the same jeans all week. They smelled like greased metal and were covered in industrial stains and burn marks. A thick welding shirt covered the t-shirt underneath. He owned half a dozen of the welding shirts. Each time one of them was too tattered to wear, Ramona went out and bought an identical replacement.
He sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking as he gazed out the window. There were enormous goggles on top of his head and his work boots sat on the tiled floor next to him. His socks were peppered with holes. The window opened onto a small gap between the houses, so Big Jack mostly stared at his neighbor's aluminum siding. “I wish Daddy hadn't sold that place,” he muttered.
Ramona stood at the counter making his lunch. She wore a housecoat over her nightie. Her slippers had once been fuzzy, but now had the texture of ratty cardboard because Ramona had stood in the driveway a few weeks earlier helping Big Jack start the truck during a rainstorm. She slathered a sandwich with the type of mayonnaise he loved, irritated by the burning sensation between her legs. The mayo was mixed with dill relish and chopped up bits of peppers. Big Jack called it dirty mayonnaise, which always confused his son.
The boy was sitting at the table eating cereal. Jack didn't have to be at school for hours. His parents' rutting had awakened him. He alternated between spooning cereal into his mouth and leaning forward to rest his head on the table, nearly asleep as he chewed. His father's smells drifted across the table, a combination of gritty Lava soap, cigarette smoke and strange odors from work.
“Don't fucking slurp, boy,” Big Jack said absently. His eyes never left the gray dawn outside.
Jack sat upright. “Yes, sir.” He continued to chew, but made an effort to do so more quietly.
“Goddamn…” Big Jack said the words casually, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Ricky and I gotta weld galvanized today. You know what that means.” He looked over at Ramona.
“Yeah,” she said. “It means you gonna be hacking up your lungs tonight as we open up Christmas presents at your daddy and momma's house.”
Big Jack nodded. His eyes rolled slightly upward as he considered the evening's gathering. He loved Christmas for reasons he could not explain and looked forward to all the associated events. With his tongue, he located and ejected a stray piece of tobacco that was stuck to his lower lip.
His mind turned back to work. “John-David got out of it,” he said with a wide grin. “That son of a bitch is slicker than shit. He don't never have to weld galvanized. Any time we got to, he gets out of it somehow.”
“Y'all oughta take turns,” Ramona said. “It'd be more fair.”
Big Jack looked confused. “Nah, it ain't like that. The foreman wants us all out there…it's just that John-David gets out of it, see?”
“No, I don't see,” she said. She dropped a bumpy pickle into a plastic baggy and used a twist-tie to close it. She handled the pickle with disgust. “If they don't need but you and Ricky to get the job done, why can't it be just John-David and Ricky?”
“Ramona, please,” he said.
But she was furious now, trembling. “That's how I see it. It ain't fair. I bet John-David ain't gonna be hacking up green shit tonight over the Christmas dinner…”
“Oh, goddammit!” Big Jack said, turning again to look out the window. “I can't never mention this kind of shit to you. You just ain't got no idea how the plant operates. And I ain't John-David.” He smoked in tense silence then suddenly exploded across the table toward Jack, hitting him in the mouth with his open right hand. “Goddammit, don't slurp!”
Cereal sloshed across the room and hit the curtains. Jack was stunned for a second. His mouth opened wide and pink milk drained out. Then he began to wail.
Ramona flinched hard when Big Jack struck the boy. She rushed over to her son and held his face in her hands. She cradled his head, muffling his cries. “My god...what the fuck you gotta do that for?”
Big Jack bellowed, “I told him I was gonna knock him through that wall if he didn't stop that slurpin'!” He looked across the small table at his wife and son where they rocked back and forth over the boy's chair. “You don't stop cryin', I'm gonna give you something to cry about.” He put one hand on his leather belt and the other touched the enormous, silver-plated buckle. The gesture brought to his mind
the motions of a gunfighter, which pleased him. He relaxed, watching them huddled before him.
Shushed repeatedly by his mother, Jack stopped wailing and choked out cries only when the sobbing escaped his control. Finally, he was quiet. His eyes were red and wet with tears.
Big Jack stood up sharply and looked at the clock mounted in the stove. “Lord God... Now look what you done, boy. You most likely made me late for work.” He looked down at his son. “You want Daddy to get fired? Huh? So you and your momma have to live out in the alley with the niggers?”
Jack sniffed and answered with his head bowed. “No, sir.”
Big Jack crossed the kitchen. At the counter, he took everything Ramona had packed up and threw it into his lunch box, pouring the rest of the coffee into his thermos and closing the whole thing up. Grabbing his truck keys, he stepped into his boots before turning to his wife. “I'll try to be home early so we can have a good Christmas with Daddy and Momma.”
Ramona looked up at him without speaking. Scowling, she held Jack, cooing to him from time to time. Back in the second bedroom, Brodie began to cry from behind the bars of his crib.
Big Jack stood still as he took it all in. His eyes bulged fiercely and he seemed confused. Whirling, he headed out the back door, flinging it closed behind him.
From outside, the truck door slammed and the roar of the revving engine flooded the kitchen. The tires made a sound like fabric ripping as Big Jack raced down the alley behind the house, slinging gravel and crushed oyster shells in his wake.
Chapter 4
1999
Back from the conference, I walked along the sidewalk in Sunnyvale, sticking to pools of shade from overhead awnings. Moving here from Texas, I never got used to layering clothes. In California, I was always sweating or shivering. I stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk at a four-way intersection. The road was paved with cobblestones for fifty feet along each street.
A gleaming convertible nosed through the intersection as I waited. The car looked like it was sheened in baby oil. Only somewhere below the polished surface was there any color, midnight blue flecked with silver. A woman sat behind the wheel, talking into a dangling earpiece. Her face was weathered and tanned, her body lean and athletic…a mid-forties face and a mid-twenties body. Off the top of my head, I knew that the car cost four times the money my father paid for the house we lived in when I was born, which made her more attractive. I envisioned fucking her from behind, kneeling in the passenger seat of the convertible.
A man and a woman walked along ahead of me, pushing an expensive-looking stroller. I marveled at them as I went past, even more impressed with the stroller. The thing looked like an off-road recon vehicle, with huge knobby tires and a web of straps that resembled climbing gear. Their baby rode along smoothly on the pram's complicated shock absorbers and suspension system. I wondered what his life would be like…organic foods from farmers' markets, trips to small islands, private schools, and a social environment filled with architects and CEO's.
The man must have been fifty, but was in better shape than I was in my early thirties. A phrase arose from somewhere…twelve percent body fat. There was a silhouetted figure on the woman's shirt in a yoga pose. Briefly, I saw the two of them fucking like actors on a porn set…smooth and tan, executing perfectly for exactly half an hour before coming in unison. My mind was awash with sex. Maybe there were too many beautiful people in Sunnyvale. Maybe the place itself was so manicured and health-conscious that it inspired lust and corruption.
I passed a restaurant and a boutique then turned into the courtyard of a small business park. Identical office windows hemmed me in on three sides, running up several stories. Workers clustered in the plaza or on narrow balconies above. A copse of trees stood near the center of the courtyard. All year long, their leaves were vivid purple, which never ceased to amuse me. No one else at the office seemed to think that purple trees were odd. I made my way over to one corner of the courtyard and entered my access code.
Our slogan was etched in glass: CONNECTING PEOPLE. As the doors slid open, the words split apart. Cool air closed in around me as I passed through the foyer and the magnetic lock thucked at my back. All the lights flickered on in the hallway ahead.
My office was small, dark except for the light coming through the courtyard window. The overhead fluorescent lights killed me, so I left the sensor off. Slumping into my chair, I let it twirl around once before flipping the lamp on. It blinked a few times and cast a cone of light up the wall. The monitor on my desk came to life as soon as I bumped the mouse. I responded to email messages for an hour, sending people documents, providing minor direction changes and in a couple of cases crafting small bits of text for the people on my team to use in various ways. My inbox was empty when I stood up.
I stretched, eyeing the clock in the corner of the desktop. My first meeting was about to start. My assistant Mandy appeared in the doorway just as I was about to leave the desk.
“Welcome back,” she said.
“Hey.” I looked up and smiled at her. She had curly hair, strawberry blonde and natural. It was tied up on her head with clips and a cloth wrap. Freckles ran across the pale skin of her face and breasts.
“I saw your message earlier and wanted to remind you about the proposal meeting.”
“I'm ready to go,” I said.
Walking down the hall, we passed an enormous window that looked out onto a street corner. Mandy said, “I just ground some coffee. It should be ready by now.”
In the kitchen, I dumped cream and sugar into my mug. A young Hispanic woman cleaned the counter at our backs. Mandy took the mug and filled it with coffee. She handed it to me and passed me a spoon. I watched her move as I stirred.
“How was the conference?” she asked.
“Good, I guess. Pretty calm. I stayed with some friends.”
She smiled and led the way out of the kitchen. “I've traveled with you. I know how you unwind.”
“No, not this time. I just stayed longer because I needed a break. Nothing crazy.”
“I bet.”
We slept together despite her engagement, usually when traveling for work or after drinks at a company event, and she flirted with me whenever we were alone at the office. Being my assistant made it more exciting than it would have been otherwise. Her ass rocked from side to side as I followed her down the hallway.
Entering the room, I said hello to everyone. We were there to see two competing proposals for the front end of our new team-building software.
My phone vibrated against my thigh, so I set my coffee mug down and stood again. “Let me get this before we start.”
In the hall outside, I dug out my phone, meandering into a small alcove made of glass bricks. According to the image, it was my stepmother, Mincy. I was glad I stepped outside before reaching for the phone. I never took calls from home in a room full of people. That was one of my rules...conceal my fucked up family at all times.
When I was a kid, Mincy had met my parents through her door-to-door cosmetics business. She and my father had gotten together after he threw my mother out one summer. Mincy was smiling in the phone portrait. While staying with her over Thanksgiving, I'd held the phone up to her face, snapping the photo while she bustled around in the kitchen. She looked inexplicably happy, but equally confused. It was a signature expression…one that made her look like a middle-aged retarded woman at a daycare facility.
As I lifted the phone to my cheek, I could hear her sobbing. She was talking to someone in the background. “…well what did they say?” Her voice was distant, as if she were holding the phone to her shoulder. I pictured her standing in the kitchen, draped in the curly phone cord and talking to someone in the next room.
Anxiety came over me, spreading like liquid. It fell down from my face and into my chest. “Hello? Mom?”
“Oh, God…Jack. I don't know how to say it.”
Fuck. “What is it?” I wanted out of this conversation already. It was diffic
ult not to lash out at her.
She took a breath and sobbed before speaking, then the words rolled out in one short sentence. “Your father killed himself, Jack.”
There was an empty delay and my head reeled as I tried to take it in. My chest felt pressurized and I steadied myself. She said something else—kept talking—but the words were just noise and made no sense. I opened my mouth to speak, but realized I was struggling just to breathe. It felt like someone was jamming a rolled up magazine down my throat, but I wanted to laugh at the same time. I can't explain it.
“I'm so sorry,” Mincy said.
She and my father had been divorced for more than a decade, but somehow this had fallen to her.
“You know I always worried about this,” she said. “You remember, I told you years ago I was worried about this.”
Yeah, when was that? How old was I when you confided that fear? Middle school? I wanted to say something cruel, something to hurt her. I actually had the words on my tongue. This is just what you've always wanted, isn't it? I let the impulse slip away. “When did it happen?” I stumbled when I spoke and she couldn't understand me. “Come on, mom. When did it happen? When did he do it?”
She started sobbing again. “Apparently last night.”
I bit the inside of my lip and rolled it around between my teeth. “He shot himself?” I knew the answer already, but she had trouble even uttering the word.
“Yes.”
“At his place?”
“Yes. I didn't even know he'd moved. He was living in a house next to the river, in the old part of downtown.”
Under my hand, the glass wall was cool and the air took on the quality of a hospital nurses' station. The alcove was quiet with the sedate terror of a place that routinely and bureaucratically managed death. I'm afraid it's terminal…
