Turn Signal

by Howard Owen

They started at 9, and by 11:30, they were almost done. Jack would have preferred to just keep going; he felt like odd man out around Mike and his friends, all much older guys. And they still had to unload everything at the other end.

  But Mike wanted to take a break. He’d bought plenty of beer, and the other three had already drunk one apiece. With the end in sight, they plopped down on the doorstep and a couple of cinder blocks and dove into the Miller Hi-Lifes with a vengeance.

  Mike had already offered Jack one, and now he offered again, insisted really. Jack said he’d just have a Coke, which Angie got for him.

  “Hey,” one of Mike’s buddies said, “you can drink now, big man. You’re 18. You’re legal.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Bubba,” Mike said, crushing one empty and tossing it away, then reaching in the iced-down wash-tub for another. “Knock yourself out. You won’t be gettin’ cold Millers once you hit Great Lakes. I can assure you of that.”

  Jack just looked off into the distance. He hadn’t really told anyone else that he had taken his last drink of alcohol. He just assumed they knew.

  Then he felt something tickle his right ring finger, and when he swatted at it, it was as if someone had used that finger for an ashtray. The yellow jacket fell to the ground, and he stomped it with one of his heavy boots while he shook his burning hand and cursed.

  The other three thought this was beyond hilarious. Jack quickly yanked off the friendship ring, the one Bobby Witt’s cousin from Dinwiddie had given him and which he somehow had not removed in all this time, before the swelling got worse. He flung it far into the dying cornfield beyond the stunted yard.

  Mike reached in for a cold beer.

  “Here, Little Man,” he said, “hold this next to it. And then drink it.”

  He was walking away when he added, “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you. It ain’t apricot brandy.”

  There was a short silence, and then he heard one of the friends go, “Ooooh.”

  Jack had the beer in his hand. Before he could think, he had thrown it at his brother. Jack, who had been an fairly effective pitcher for the high school baseball team his sophomore and junior years, caught him squarely in the back of the head. As Mike staggered forward, Jack was on him from behind. He pinned him there for a good half-minute before the two friends succeeded in pulling him off.

  Jack and Mike did not speak again until after the four-year Navy hitch was almost over. When Jack would come home on leave, Mike would make sure he wasn’t there.

  They did make their peace, but only eventually and partially.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For the first time in a month, it rains. The far western fringes of a hurricane have brushed against central Virginia, and Jack spends the entire morning and early afternoon dashing in and out of the van, covering his packages better than himself. On the radio, they’re calling for three inches, the whole fading month’s worth in one miserable day.

  By 2 o’clock, he’s been soaked for hours. He’s not even fit for the casual and familiar company of the Speakeasy Diner, and he’s been putting off lunch at home until he’s sure the mail has come.

  He makes a run for the front door, taking off as much of his waterlogged clothing as he can in the foyer, then throwing his raincoat around his bare legs.

  “Wow,” Shannon says, coming out from her room, trailed by Wesley, who growls, then recognizes him and leaps up to lick his dripping hand. “Tough day to be out. They closed school at noon. Because of flooding, they said.”

  Shannon looks at his pants on the floor and shakes her head at the general ungainliness of adults.

  Five minutes later, he comes out of the bedroom in jeans and an old, navy-blue T-shirt.

  He realizes he forgot to check the mailbox in his hurry to get inside, but he sees that Shannon has beaten him to it. He leafs through the pile on the dining room table, with the rain tattooing the skylights.

  “Anything else?” He realizes how pathetic it sounds. Gina and his daughter are very much aware of what he’s waiting for. They seem embarrassed for him every time they have to say no.

  Shannon shakes her head. “Sorry.”

  He shrugs and goes to make himself a sandwich.

  He’s feared for some time that he would reach this day: the day that he finally has to call Gerald Prince, the boy he once felt sorry for.

  At first, he told himself he wouldn’t do it, that he would be solid and inscrutable as the Sphinx, never speaking unless spoken to, never a pest. He’d be above all that.

  But now, wet and discouraged, tired and hungry, he knows the time has come.

  But just then, Shannon looks up from across the table.

  “Oh,” she says. “I almost forgot. Brady left a message on the voice-mail. He said he needed to, like, talk to you?”

  “About what?”

  “Dunno. He called about 11, I think it said.”

  Brady’s working here and there, now and then. He’s supposed to be in a production of Greater Tuna they’re putting on at some theater in Richmond that Gina says seats only about 80 people. Jack thinks it’s such a waste, driving in to Richmond to practice night after night for something that, if it’s like the last play he was in, will be gone in a week. At least the review in the newspaper had a couple of nice things to say about him, and Jack supposes Brady could use a little praise.

  He’s seen his son only twice since the day Brady almost shot him.

  The days of rent-free living at the farm are drawing to a close. Just in the last two weeks, the heirs have gotten an offer on Kenneth and Ellen Stone’s old place, only $5,000 below what they asked, from a Korean couple who want to run a dental appliances shop out of one of the bedrooms. Mike thought they should hold out, try to get full price, but Sandy and even Jack, tired of the whole drawn-out process, insist that they take it. It was the first real offer they’ve had, and they’re already eight days into fall. They were beginning to think their real estate agent, a recently divorced woman with gray roots and an inability to imitate enthusiasm as well as Jack thought a Realtor should, had given up.

  “Damn,” Mike said, “I just hate the idea of a couple of Orientals living in our home. The place’ll smell like that weird stuff they cook. They’re probably Buddhists or something. Probably be burying cabbage or sacrificing cats.”

  “They’re Presbyterian,” Jack said. He’d learned that much from the agent, who threw it out as if that tidbit might make everything more acceptable. “And none of us have lived there in years.

  “If you hate to sell it, why don’t you just let Brady stay there, like I asked you? Or move back yourself.”

  This shuts Mike up. He does want the money. He just wanted a little more.

  Jack goes into the den and calls the same number the Stones had when he was in high school.

  The phone rings four times, and then he hears Brady’s voice telling him, to the accompaniment of rap music so loud he has to hold the phone away from his ear, that “Brady’s out,/nom’ sayin’? He’s missin’; he ain’t home/But he’d be glad to hear your message/Wait two seconds for the tone.”

  For two months after Ellen died, her voice was still on the recording, uncomfortably reciting the number and asking whoever was calling to please leave a message. Jack knows he should be glad not to have her ghost greeting him.

  After the beep, he is halfway into an exasperated first sentence when he hears a click, and Brady answers with a terse, “It’s me.”

  “I guess famous actors have to screen their calls.”

  Brady’s voice warms a little, apologizing, but there’s something below the surface. Fear? Drugs?

  “Can I come over? I need to talk about something.”

  Jack hesitates only for a beat. It is true that Gina does not like Brady. Actually, she’d just as soon never have him in her house again after the time last year when she realized the next morning he had been smoking dope in their guest bedroom.

  Gina was as upset about Shannon recognizing the smell of marijuana as s
he was about Brady using it in their house, Jack figures.

  Now, though, Gina is feeling a little guilty about not even making an offer as Brady finds himself staring at his last month of guaranteed shelter. She won’t complain too much if he stays for supper.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Come on over, if you can get here in this rain.” He says it knowing that Brady has a tendency, when he gets somewhere, to stay much longer than a normal person would. With Brady, a body at rest tends to stay that way.

  “Brady …” Jack begins, before they hang up.

  “Yeah, right. I’ll leave the dope behind.”

  Brady makes something of a mess getting in and out of his wet outer garments. Jack is reminded of Brady at 6 or 7, always being told to hang up his things when he came in from outside, always forgetting. They usually forgave him his little acts of carelessness. This was partly because he was such a little charmer, always smiling, always seeming as if he wanted to do right but somehow couldn’t, and partly because of guilt.

  Shannon gets a towel and wipes up most of the water on the foyer’s tile floor. She and Brady get along pretty well, all things considered, and the dog adores him, sees in him a kindred spirit. He follows him around the room, jumping and barking for joy.

  The two men retreat to the den, where Brady, sipping a beer, lays out the whole sad story for him.

  He’s managed to get himself on the shit list of a large African-American man from Richmond by the name of Heater Curry, who is promising to do bad and painful things to him if he doesn’t pay.

  He owes Heater Curry almost $7,000.

  “Seven thousand dollars?” Jack says, too loud. He lowers his voice. “How in God’s name, Son, did you manage to run up a seven-thousand-dollar bill smoking marijuana?”

  It’s the first time he’s called Brady “son” in some time. He has always shied away from that endearment, actually, not feeling he’s earned the right to use it.

  Brady looks at him sadly and a little fondly.

  “Dad,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s cocaine. You know I couldn’t screw up bad enough, fast enough smoking weed.”

  Jack is taken aback. He tries not to know everything about Brady, doesn’t even want to know everything. But still, he thought he’d bottomed out when he was arrested and got the break of his life: no jail time. Jack has always believed there was a chance, some small chance, that Brady Stone would right himself someday, that all these youthful indiscretions would somehow be outgrown like acne and bad manners. Hell, Milo had said one time shortly after the arrest, he could still grow up to be president. Now, though, Jack feels hope sliding downhill, away from him.

  “You could go to prison. The judge could give you an active sentence.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Brady tells him, actually smiling as if there were anything on the planet Earth worthy of mirth on this godless day, “I owe him from before, from before I got arrested. I’m not doing that stuff anymore. Never did that much of it, never was quite stupid enough to do crack. But I’d get it for people, trying to be a big shot, I guess. And I sold some for Heater, and some people didn’t pay me back.”

  “And you didn’t make them pay you back?”

  “Those people are gone. Gone out to California. Actors.”

  Jack has raised himself from his easy chair and is standing behind it now, gripping the back of it.

  “So, I don’t suppose it would have done much good even if I could have talked Mike into letting you stay on the farm. Sounds like your savings are spoken for.”

  Brady shakes his head.

  “It isn’t a matter of savings. I got them off my back last month with a thousand bucks, but these guys aren’t into the installment plan.”

  As it turns out, Heater Curry and two of his associates paid a visit to Brady just two days ago. They have explained the terms of their loan to him in a fairly unambiguous manner. Brady lifts his shirt, almost shyly, and shows Jack the burn mark along his ribs on the right side.

  “The other two held me down,” he says. “He told me I owed him seven thousand dollars, plus an extra ten for the cigar he had to waste teaching me a lesson.”

  Jack is shaken. He has never been able to protect his son.

  “And you don’t, of course, have seven thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t have seven hundred dollars.”

  Jack walks around in small circles. The wind shifts and blows a hard, insistent rain sideways against the window to his rear, startling him.

  “Well, let me see what I can do,” he says, wondering what, indeed, that would be.

  He’s in charge of making the mortgage payment. Gina pays for everything else out of the $600 a week she earns as office manager for Dr. Kerns. Jack’s bank account, somewhat flush after he sold the rig, is shrinking. The Cisco stock, which soared so long that even Mack seemed to think it would just keep outdoing itself forever, is sliding backward. Jack, who had never invested much until the last two years, kept telling himself this could happen, but still he wasn’t really prepared. What he has come to think of as Shannon’s college money seems to shrink every time he dares look at the tiny, unforgiving NASDAQ numbers. Cisco fell five points last week. And now Brady needs $7,000.

  “Can you get them to wait until we sell the house? I could maybe do something then.”

  He’s stalling. He can’t imagine telling Gina he’s loaned-slash-given Brady $7,000, even after the house is sold. Not after all she’s put up with to this point. He’s certain that everything will work out. Despite Gerald Prince’s silence, Jack knows as well as he knows anything that Lovelady is going to be a success, that he is going to be a success and make everything right, now that he is finally doing what he was meant to do. But he just needs time.

  Brady shakes his head. And Jack, remembering the burn mark, knows Heater Curry, whoever he is, must be paid now.

  “Give me the weekend. I’ll talk to Mack McLamb on Monday morning.”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know.” Brady is holding his shiny head in his hands, looking down at the floor. “They said tomorrow.”

  “Well,” Jack says, “tell them you can pay them in full, cash if they want it, on Monday.” He doesn’t even know why he says this. He can’t take a year’s tuition at a state college out of a shrinking account without having an extended, and quite possibly fruitless, session with Gina, to whom he is as much in debt as Brady is to Heater Curry, albeit in a different currency.

  But how can he not?

  “Let them know,” he says. “Tell them Monday.”

  “I’m supposed to meet them at noon tomorrow, with the money, at Heater’s place in Richmond. No excuses, he said.” Brady reaches up and touches the mark on his rib cage.

  “Well, you can stay over here tonight.” Even that will be a stretch with Gina. “Stay here the whole weekend, and we’ll get the money Monday morning.”

  “I don’t know.” Brady is as nervous as Jack has ever seen him, even more nervous than he was the day he shot at his father. “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “Two days,” Jack says. “They’ll wait.” And he’s almost convinced himself that they will.

  Brady agrees, finally. He has no choice. Jack sends him back to the farm to pack a few things for the weekend and assures him Gina won’t mind, really.

  Shannon is watching highlights of the waning Olympics when they come out. She asks if she can ride back to the farmhouse with Brady. He tells Brady not to dawdle, fixing him with his steeliest no-dope stare, and his son assures him he won’t.

  The rain has stopped, and it looks as if there might be sunshine again before the day is out.

  Gina won’t be home from work for another hour. Jack convinces himself that this is the moment he is destined to finally, shamelessly call Gerald Prince, even if it is 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon.

  He sits by the phone for a moment, clearing his throat a couple of times, and then he plunges in.

  A man answers on the third ring. His voice
is so prissily precise as to make Gerald sound like a jet fighter pilot by comparison.

  “Mayfair Publishing. Gerald Prince Books.”

  Jack asks for Gerald Prince.

  “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  Jack has to repeat his name.

  After a wait of no more than 30 seconds, Gerald answers.

  “Jack. Jesus, when David said Jack Stone, I had to wrack my brain for a couple of seconds. Wasn’t expecting a call from Speakeasy.”

  “The reason I was calling,” Jack begins, “is that I was wondering if you’d had a chance to take a look at the manuscript …”

  “Just a minute, Jack. I’ve got to take this call.”

  Before he can accede, he’s put on hold. Just as he’s beginning to think he’s been cut off, Gerald comes back on the line.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he says, and tells Jack that he just had an urgent call from someone who Gerald obviously believes is very important but whose name does not register with Jack, who fakes it anyway and acts impressed.

  “I was asking about my manuscript …”

  “Oh, yes. Well, Jack, it looks very promising. I haven’t really had a chance to read it all yet, but I’m going to take it home this weekend and get started on it. It might be a couple of weeks, but I’ll definitely get back to you soon.”

  “Thank you,” Jack says, crushed. He tries to steer the conversation to a point where they are old buddies, reviving a rapport they never really had. “It was really good seeing you at the reunion.”

  “Yes. Me, too.… Oh, shit. Excuse me, Jack, but I’ve actually got to take this call.” He drops another name Jack should know.

  He isn’t even sure Gerald Prince hears his goodbye.

  Gina pulls into the driveway just as Brady and Shannon arrive, so Jack has no chance to break it to her gently. He only has time to follow her into their bedroom and explain, without revealing any of the particulars, that Brady is going through a rough patch right now and needs to stay with them for the weekend.

  “It won’t happen again,” he promises her.

  She says she doubts that. Where Brady is concerned, she notes, it’s more a matter of a washboard highway with the very occasional smooth patch.