Shadows Burned In

by Chris Pourteau

  “Yes, so you did,” acknowledged the man, a prosecutor allowing a small point in favor of the defense because he knew it wouldn’t matter to the case. “But it’s in your file here that you agreed that the last time would be the last time. And here we are again, Mr. Jackson.” Now the district attorney had shown up. He had the evidence. The violation was clear. There was no way out for Mr. Jackson, no sir.

  “Yes, I realize that.” Jackson’s tone was infuriatingly passive all of a sudden. But his eyes weren’t. They were staring hard, flat as black stones, at David.

  Idiot! David thought. Why did you have to answer the phone?

  “And I realize I’m three months behind schedule with the payment.” The words panted out of him, the labored breath of a man running for his life. Through his creeping fear, David noted the change in his father’s voice. The old man had gone from tyrant to bootlicking slave in seconds. It made the boy feel queasy. But the old man’s eyes hadn’t changed. “But it’s November now, and I get paid tomorrow. I can guarantee you one thousand dollars in the mail by Friday afternoon.”

  “Mr. Jackson—”

  “What, isn’t that enough?” Some of the defensiveness crept back. “I mean”—with a toned-down voice—“what’s it gonna take so I can keep my truck?”

  There was a sigh on the other end. It sounded as if the salesman were battling his own conscience—please his manager or do this pitiful fool a favor. The hair stood up on the back of Jackson’s neck. If he could have, he would have reached through the phone and grabbed the no-nuts prick by the shirt and punched him in the fucking face.

  “Mr. Jackson, I’m really tempted to believe you, but your record isn’t conducive to that.”

  You calling me a liar, you fucking little—

  “Look,” said Jackson, “I can appreciate where you’re coming from. You’re right. I’ve fallen down on the job here.” David’s stomach got queasier. “But I can guarantee a check in the mail tomorrow afternoon. If it’s not, you guys come out and take the truck on Monday. No questions asked, huh?”

  Another sigh. “Mr. Jackson, I’m making a record of this conversation in my database. I will expect a check overnighted to our office here in Houston tomorrow. If there’s not a FedEx letter delivered to me by lunch on Monday, we’re going to do just that.”

  “Overnighted? But that costs . . . I mean the mail will get there in two days—”

  “Take it or leave it.” All pretense of cordiality was gone. The plea bargain was set. The judge-salesman was smiling over the phone.

  “All right, all right,” the old man grumbled. “It’ll be there.”

  “Good. I look forward to receiving it. Good-bye.”

  Jackson pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. “I’ve got something you can receive,” he said quietly, then brought the receiver ringing down onto the cradle. “You fucking little prick!” He screamed the last word and it echoed in the otherwise silent room for a moment. David wanted to hold on to the sound, keep it going, capture the moment to hold it in place for a thousand years. Because as soon as it was over, the next phase would begin.

  His father turned to him. “Stand up,” he said.

  “Daddy, I . . .”

  Jackson slumped his shoulders as if to say, Why string this out, boy? You know where we’re headed, so let’s just get there and get it over with.

  “I said,” he said, “stand up.”

  The boy stood up off the bed. He was within arm’s reach, and his father made good use of that fact. David was on the floor before he realized it. The left side of his face was numb. It started to burn, slowly, a little sun of pain spreading to his brain.

  “What did I tell you about answering the phone?”

  David was dazed, shocked by the blow, despite knowing it would come. His hand went to his face and felt the heat there. He was careful not to touch it. A bruise would settle in by morning.

  His father was moving on him. The boy inched away, and immediately he knew it was a mistake.

  “Don’t draw away from me, boy,” his father raged, the lava finally boiling out of him. All his impotent anger at the salesman, all his frustration at his financial situation, the crap job, all of it, coursing through his veins, balled in his fists. He grabbed the boy and held him in both hands, arms pinned to his sides. “I asked you a question!”

  “I-I…” David was starting to cry. Another mistake, idiot! his brain shouted at him.

  “Stop blubbering like a baby and answer my question!”

  “It wasn’t the company!” David cried. “I didn’t know who it was!”

  His father set him down on the ground, then slapped him again. David cried out this time. His face was burning and now his brain was working overtime to tell every inch of his body that his left cheek was in a bad way.

  “If you hadn’t answered it, like I told you, it wouldn’t have mattered!”

  The boy lay on the floor and looked up at him. All of a sudden it was very important to win this argument.

  Idiot!

  “You told me to check the caller ID first, not to not answer the phone!” Some part of him knew that wasn’t entirely true, but that detail wasn’t important. Making his stand was all that mattered.

  His father drew up. “You questionin me, boy?” He raised his hand again.

  Screw this.

  David dodged the blow and it sent his father off-balance. Jackson fell against the dresser, and David shot out through the bedroom door as fast as he could.

  “You come back here, boy!”

  Fuck you!

  He ran up the hallway and then heard his father in pursuit. David burst into the kitchen, the door bouncing off the cabinet, and ran around the center island where all the Tupperware was stored. His father was through the door, seconds behind him. The boy grabbed the handle to the back door and knew, once he got beyond the privacy fence’s gate, he at least could run for a lot longer than his beer-bellied old man could.

  “Boy!”

  The word barked close behind him. David turned the knob and was out and into the backyard, his father almost on top of him. He angled left, meaning to run a wide pattern, hoping the old man would stumble over something on the back porch and give David the time he needed to get the latch on the back gate open. No such luck. He felt fat fingers wrap around the back of his shirt collar. The old man pulled him up straight like a fly caught in the web of a very nasty spider.

  “Now boy, we’re gonna teach you a little discipline.” He shook the boy to punctuate his sentences. “You’re gonna remember the next time I tell you to do something. You’re gonna learn what it means to be responsible, follow instructions.”

  David was done. He was trapped. There was no escape. But he’d have his say.

  “You only told me to check the caller ID,” he said directly. Despite the footrace, the beating, the pain, his voice was very calm, hardly wavering at all.

  Jackson raised his right hand again. “Why, you little—”

  Out of the garage she came, barking savagely to herald her charge. Queenie leapt right for Jackson’s upraised hand, and the vice of her jaws clamped down around his tendon-stretched wrist. The old man shrieked a high-pitched howl and dropped David to the concrete. Jackson fell backward onto the porch, spilling over and destroying a lounge chair, carrying the dog with him. She still held his wrist, as if she didn’t know what to do now that she had him, but then he was beating on her, trying to drive her off him. David saw his father punching Queenie and shouted “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” but the dog released Jackson’s arm, getting inside his defenses and nipping at his face. The old man’s instincts kicked in then, and he slammed his arms over his face to protect it. Finally, he grabbed her under her legs and chest and heaved her off, sent her flying across the porch. She landed clumsily on all fours, working her legs like dynamos, preparing to charge him again. But David grabbed her collar and weighed her down as Jackson got his own feet under him again and shouted, “Goddammit! God f
ucking damn it!” at the pain in his pockmarked face. The old man stumbled toward the back door. David held her down, not for his father’s safety—the thought never entered his head—but because he didn’t want his father beating her again. Jackson stumbled into the house and slammed the door.

  The boy could hear his father shouting obscenities as he walked through the kitchen and deeper into the house. Queenie stood there panting, growling, daring him to return. David held her tightly. He buried his burning cheek in her cool fur and burst into tears.

  He didn’t see his father for the rest of the day or night. David washed his face in the spare bathroom, testing its tenderness with his fingertips, then retired to his bedroom and watched reruns on television until he fell asleep. His father had never looked in on him once. He’d eaten a sandwich for dinner.

  The next morning he was awakened at 7:30.

  “Time for school, boy,” the old man said. David thought there might be another chapter like yesterday. But nothing. No follow-up. The strangeness of it worried him. “Brush your teeth.”

  The boy rolled out of bed, his muscles aching from yesterday’s chase. His cheek was a low, dull throbbing now. He’d tell the kids at school he fell on the sidewalk. They’d believe that.

  He took a leak, brushed his teeth, and walked through the kitchen to the back door. He grabbed the bag of Ken-L Ration, walked outside and poured the food in Queenie’s bowl. Usually she came padding along at the sound of the food. But not this morning.

  He whistled for her. When that didn’t bring her, he walked into the garage, where her bed was. It was there. Queenie wasn’t. And her leash was gone.

  He walked back into the house. The truth slowly began to melt into his brain. His father was sitting at the table, reading the paper and drinking a beer.

  “Where is she?” the boy asked.

  His father looked up. “Who?”

  “You know who.” David wasn’t in the mood for games. His voice was defiant. Downright challenging. But his father didn’t seem to care. Not this time.

  “Oh. I went hunting this morning. She run off.”

  David blinked.

  “I was gonna go fishing,” said Jackson, as if from practice. “But then I decided to go hunting. Took the dog. She run off after somethin in the woods. I looked for her. Couldn’t find her.” He turned the page of the paper, flicked it straight.

  David’s heart emptied at that moment. It sank into his stomach where, deep down, he knew—he knew—what his father had done.

  Chapter 14

  “Hey man, final’s in thirty minutes,” his roommate said, shaking him. David Jackson rolled over and sat up, trying and failing to retrieve a line of drool. He sat there weaving back and forth in his bed, only partly awake. He’d been up till three A.M. studying for his macroeconomics final, then put himself to sleep by splitting a six-pack with his roommate. The same roommate that now seemed much more awake and ready for the final than David was.

  “How the fuck can you be so chipper this morning?” David asked. His mouth tasted like ass.

  Larry Brackett smiled. Standing with legs apart, he put his fists on his hips and looked off into infinity. “It’s in the genes, buddy! Supergenes!”

  David worked his tongue in his mouth like it had just been installed. “Fuck you.”

  “No thanks, though I did notice you tried to get me drunk last night.” He waved his right index finger. “Tough luck, roomie. I don’t play for that team.”

  David fake-laughed really hard for about three seconds, then immediately regretted it as his head pulsed. “That’s very funny. You should work North Gate as a comedian.”

  Larry smirked. “Living with you for a year now, I should be a comedian.”

  “Yeah-yeah. Ha-ha. What the fuck time is it?”

  “8:32,” Larry said. “Now you’ve got twenty-eight minutes to the final.”

  David’s eyes sprang wide open. “Oh, shit.” He launched himself off the bed and headed for the shower.

  “No time, buddy!” called Larry after him. “Wheels up in ten minutes!”

  “I’ll be ready,” shouted David back at him. “Promise!”

  Larry rolled his eyes. “I’m not missing this test so you can smell pretty,” he yelled back.

  “I’ll be ready, goddammit!”

  Larry sat down on the couch in the small living room of their apartment and looked around. There were lots of empty beer cans. Hey, at least they’re upright, Larry thought. Two pizza boxes, one of which still had two slices slowly growing old in it, sat askew on the coffee table. He grabbed one of the pieces and thought about cleaning up things for a few minutes while David took his shower, shrugged off the idea without too much effort, and picked up the TV remote. He fired up their brand new 3-D TV’s Web browser.

  Nothing better to do. Might as well look at some porn for a few minutes.

  He’d been surfing around looking for blondes and streaming the free video grabs (using that term for web porn always made Larry laugh) for about a minute and a half when the phone rang. Larry smirked at it for interrupting his body surfing and let it ring twice more. Finally he got up to answer it. He was tempted to let it go to voicemail but then decided it might be someone calling to let them know the nine o’clock exam—the one that was now less than twenty minutes away—had been canceled. He didn’t want to miss the news.

  “Joe’s Morgue, you kill ’em, we chill ’em.”

  There was silence on the other end, then, “Um, may I speak to David Jackson, please?”

  “He’s in the shower. Can I take a message?” Larry went into routine mode, turning his attention back to the busty blonde on the screen.

  “Well—this is kind of important.”

  “Hey, no problem. You have my undivided attention.” Now those are breasts, he was thinking as he said it.

  “Well—it’s about Mr. Jackson’s father. I really should speak with him directly.”

  Larry stopped clicking. David’s old man had been sick off and on for the last six months. David had joked to Larry that he couldn’t wait for the old fucker to die, and the sooner the better. But Larry heard something else in his roommate’s voice the few times the topic came up. What, he wasn’t sure. But he knew enough to know that, whatever this call was about, it wouldn’t be good news. He clicked off the TV.

  “I’m listening,” he said. “I’ll make sure he gets the information.”

  Driving home from Texas A&M University, David was furious with his father. If he had to die, why the hell did it have to be right in the middle of finals? But that was just like him. Always thinking of himself.

  The road thrummed under him, the sound of rubber gripping pavement. It was early May, and already the heat had forced the windows up and the A/C on. David was holding the wheel with both hands but released one to tune the radio to a new station. He was nearing Houston, about halfway home, and they always had better rock stations than he was used to. He found a retro station playing heavy metal and cranked it way up. He was tempted to roll down the window and let the wind blow through the car, but then decided it was just too warm for that.

  When he’d called her back, the woman on the phone had said the old man was really bad off. He wouldn’t leave the hospital again, she’d said. And if David wanted to see him before . . . Well, he’d better come on.

  “Yeah, well,” he said out loud as he drove. David could barely hear himself because of the radio pounding the rolled-up windows. “I wouldn’t say want.”

  Ozzy Osbourne was singing about a crazy train. He used to eat the heads off animals on stage, David recalled the lore. What a fucked-up bunch of people his fans must’ve been. The song was only thirty years old, but to him it might as well have been from the Civil War.

  Progressive, degenerative liver failure. And because of his drinking, he wasn’t a viable candidate for a transplant, though he was on the list. And even if a liver was available, the old man’s pension from his company wouldn’t cover it, not by a long s
hot. And there was no money saved.

  “I’ll be lucky to get anything out of the old man,” David told Ozzy. “The house isn’t worth the ground it’s sitting on. He let that go, just like he let himself go. Wouldn’t follow anyone’s advice and would curse you for giving it to him.”

  He bit his lower lip and focused on the broken stripe in the middle of the road as it lapped by. He vaguely realized there were cows in the barbed-wire pastures on either side of the highway. Bluebonnets were in full bloom along the roadside. But David focused on the road in front of him. “Driving’s a full-time job, son,” his father had said when he taught him. “Pay attention and try not to kill anyone.”

  “Well, you’re one to talk. You dumb sonofabitch. Drink yourself to death and then fuck up my finals to boot!”

  He didn’t remember starting to sweat, but he must’ve, because the road was getting blurry and he damned sure knew he wouldn’t shed any tears over the old man. Not his old man. How many times had David wished he would just die—just die—when he was growing up? How many times had he prayed for it? And now, that moment you’ve all been waiting for—and here he was, sweating like a baby.

  He wiped his eyes again, cranked up the radio and A/C a little more, and drove on.

  “Room 302?”

  The nurse at the floor desk glanced at him, decided he was worth helping, and pointed down and around the elevators. “Down the left corridor and it’s on your left, about ten rooms down.”

  “Thanks.”

  Though he hadn’t been in many, the smell of a hospital always made him uncomfortable. The sterility. The cleanliness. The likelihood to get you sicker than you were when you came in the door. He never understood that irony.

  David walked down the length of the corridor past the other rooms, some with open doors, some closed, and some he wished had been closed. In one room he saw out of the corner of his eye an old woman lying cockeyed in bed, as if she’d fallen there after a long drinking binge and was just glad not to have hit the floor. She stared glassy-eyed at a television that sounded excited to be on. A bouquet of get-well flowers sat dying in her window. He passed back by the elevators he had come up, watching the one-foot-square speckled floor tiles coming toward him.