JACK

 

He had never been afraid of the dark. He felt he could pull it about him like a comforting blanket and hide in its depths. It was daylight that made him wary. That's when she would come home, staggering up the stairs to their second floor apartment, the smell of cheap booze and cold sex enveloping her like a noxious cloud. Even now the sound of her key scrabbling for purchase in the lock made him long for the sun to turn black. The slamming of the front door sent gooseflesh up his spine and he huddled in his bed with his eyes squeezed shut. But still he saw the light beyond them, heralding the start of another day in hell.

He heard her curse as she barked her shin on something and reeled off into a wall. Then the uneven step of her spiked heels on frayed carpeting as she made her way down the hall to the bathroom. She landed on the toilet with a grunt and pissed forever, humming some half-remembered song off key. The sound of a zipper coming down, then the shoes being kicked off. Not bothering to flush, she clicked off the light. A moment of silence and then his door opening. He feigned sleep. She stood there a moment before speaking one word, "Bastard." Then the sound of the door as it snicked shut. He let out a shaky breath that he had unconsciously held. It wasn't so bad today.

He'd been afraid that she would continue what she'd started the day before. She had begun as soon as he'd come home from school, wavering between screaming that he was the cause of all her woes, and sobbing in self-pity, her mascara blackened eyes streaming hot tears. Even then there was something so childlike in her face, a naiveté that the years of rough living hadn't been able to totally erase. Jack felt as though their roles had somehow become reversed. When she had finally left to go to "work", Jack had flung himself on his bed in an uncommon fit of melancholy. He knew he should love her. All boys were supposed to love their mothers.

The most he could admit to, though, was a deep sorrow at what fate had made of her. There was another emotion lurking much deeper in his psyche, one that he couldn't admit to at all. Loathing.

It hadn't always been like this, he knew. Once there existed a happy family, a father who's booming laughter filled the hours with joy, a smiling mother who sang sweet songs with calm eyes, and baby Jack, the most loved child in the land. His dad had called him Jacky, as he swung him up to the dizzying heights of his shoulders. "Jacky my boy," his dad would say, "stick with me and the world's your oyster!"

But then dad had died, crushed when a semi truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered into the wrong lane. Thinking of that loss only led to despair, and despair had never been one of Jack's weaknesses. Throwing back the coverlet, Jack stood and walked to the window. Dressed in just his underwear, the fine blonde hair on his arms and legs stood at attention. Through the smoke smudged glass he saw the traitor sun had crept up above the horizon, its strengthening light showing his back yard in stark detail. Dirty snow was melting into dirty slush on the alleyway behind his apartment. An aged 6-ft. wooden fence leaned on the edge of collapse across the way, separating the gravel of the alley from a peeling baby blue one story directly behind the apartments. On the left a huge lilac bush had gone to riot, its naked branches twisted into frantic tangles in the Michigan mid March chill. To the right sat the rusted hulk of a Plymouth Fury. Bare rims rested on concrete blocks. Jack sighed and lowered the blinds.

After taking a quick shower Jack pulled on a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt and stepped into the kitchen to see what there was to eat. The snores of his mother's alcohol induced sleep filtered from her room at the end of the hallway. He found a couple eggs to fry and made toast, then slapped the eggs on the toast and grabbed his book bag. He emerged from the apartment, jumped on his bike and headed off to school.

As he took a right at the mouth of the alley he barely registered the white, rust pitted van sitting at the curb to his left. As he sped off the van's engine started up and it eased forward and into the alley he had just left.

At school Jack stopped to lock his bike to a bike rack and walked to his locker, just another face in the crowd. He did well in most subjects, particularly math and science, though not well enough to stand out among his classmates. He knew he could probably pull all A's if he wanted to but Jack liked keeping a low profile. Bad enough that he had to be in the free lunch program. He had a few friends that he managed to keep at arm's length but he spent most of his time alone.

"Hey Jack-O!" Jack turned to see Robert (Red) Fieldman standing next to him, his pale, freckled face wearing its usual sardonic grin. "Man, you shoulda seen that flick last night! Talk about gruesome! They musta used about a thousand gallons of fake blood!" Red was hyperactive, told lousy jokes and was into horror movies. His carroty hair had sealed his name in stone and added insult to injury by refusing to lay flat no matter how much mousse he used. He had braces on his too-big teeth and an awesome size 8 pair of feet.

"Sorry, Red. I guess I should've called; something came up." He tried to sound nonchalant, but it was obvious by the pitying look flitting across Red's guileless face that his friend knew better.

"Yeah, I figured as much." Red looked at Jack speculatively for a moment, as if he were about to add something more. Warned off by the pained defiance in Jack's own face, he shrugged and said, "Life sucks.” And his eyes glinted as he added, "But not as hard as you!" Jack grinned and slugged him in the arm - crisis averted.

The next three hours went by in a blur of academic normality. The dry smell of chalk dust, the sound of books being opened and pages being leafed through or machine gunned into place and always the steady droning background of teachers lecturing. Kids spoke in whispers or laughed in loud guffaws, stole furtive glances at members of the opposite sex or catcalled each other in boisterous voices. Plans were made to go to parties, to a movie, to the mall; anywhere but near the clutching arms of their parents.

Junior high school is a world unto itself, and each inhabitant is confident that he or she is an integral part of that realm. The clown laughs his way into echelons he would otherwise have no access to. The jock swaggers along halls filled with adoring fans. The outcast hunches over in a desperate vie for invisibility. Jack Stanford is there too. Call him the observer. He draws no attention to himself because he has come to realize, at the age of 13, that attention can hurt. I can't honestly say that any of them are wrong in their beliefs.

Lunchtime found Jack headed across the school's football field toward the railroad tracks that stretched out to the north and south. The ground was a half-frozen arena of mud. As he neared the tracks he veered to walk on the drier area alongside them, daydreaming of the time when he could just keep walking and never turn back. He knew that he was too young, at 13, but he was preparing himself for a time when his age wouldn't be an obstacle. He'd been doing odd jobs for the past 3 years - mowing lawns, shoveling snow, anything to make money. He had saved up $600 so far and planned to really hump at it during the next 3 years. Once he had enough for a car and a month's rent payment he would get the hell out of this God-forsaken town and start living his life.

Jack turned away from the tracks when he came even with an old oak tree standing in an overgrown field. Swinging up into the tree's low fork, he pulled a pack of Winstons out of the pocket of his jacket. He laid back against the rough bark, lit up and once more planned how it would be. He'd head south, to stand on a sandy beach and soak up the sun's rays until the parts of him that had been infected by his mother's disgust were burned clean away.

He'd gotten some books about Florida in the school library and had examined them until he could close his eyes and envision the stately palm trees and bursting bougainvillea. And the women! Every one of them seemed to be 20 years old and built like a wet dream waiting to happen. Jack flicked his ashes and dreamt of being sixteen and free. He could see himself as a lifeguard down on one of those white sand beaches, keeping the area safe for nubile sea nymphs. They would stroll by his tower in thong bathing suits and smile at him suggestively. But of course he would have to put them off while on duty.

And there was the reason now! A bronzed blonde beauty caught with cramps in deep water! Jack grabbed his floatation device and rushed down to the water. He swam out to the fair maiden just as she was going under for the last time, grabbed her around her slender waist and swam for shore. Once they reached the shallows he swept her limp form into his arms and strode out of the water to a crowd of onlookers. Laying her upon the wet sand he quickly realized that she was not breathing. He leaned down, placed his mouth over hers and gave the breath of life. And then, miracle! Her body shook as she gasped for air. The crowed cheered and called him a hero. The girl's long lashes quivered and fluttered open to reveal eyes as deeply blue as the ocean she had been rescued from.

Suddenly the crowd was gone. The only sounds were the surf and lonely cries of seagulls. She moistened her lips with a small, pink tongue and said in a light southern accent, "You've saved my life. Around here we insist on repaying such kindness." And she eased her head towards his in excruciatingly slow motion, her full lips puckered and slightly open. Now Jack heard another sound - that of his heart trying to burst out of his chest and filling his ears with it's own tidal rush. He leaned in to meet her kiss and as their lips brushed together... Jack felt a rude hand pull his leg roughly! His eyes snapped open to find himself slipping on the damp bark of the tree; being yanked by strong arms to land with a jarring thump on the cold ground.

For a moment Jack could only lay stunned and breathless, looking at his assailant. The guy was about 16, and looked like an extra from some horror b flick. From Jacks sprawled position he appeared about as tall as a redwood, and just as solid. Shaggy brown hair hung down his sloped forehead and obscured his eyes. His head was a rectangular block of cement, pitted with acne scars. His nose was hooked and strangely bent, as if broken and set improperly. His mouth was a thick lipped affair that held oversized teeth. And those teeth were being shown to their best advantage, because the guy was laughing fit to be tied. He was holding his arms around his not insubstantial girth and shaking like a mountain during an earthquake. Jack felt heat racing up his neck and into his face as anger overcame shock. Common sense was thrown out the window. He scrambled to his feet and shouted at the guffawing giant. “What the hell is the matter with you?” And before his brain could catch up with his arm he pulled back and caught the monster with a right swing to the jaw. That punch had every bit of Jack’s 90 pounds behind it - and I truly believe that had it struck straight on he may have broken the bruiser’s jaw. Unfortunately, the blow was diverted when Jack’s feet slipped on the frozen earth, and so only glanced off his opponent. Jack found himself once more laying at his antagonist’s feet, this time face down.

Furious and embarrassed Jack flipped onto his back to face his opponent once more. I said before that despair was not one of his weaknesses; neither was acquiescence. As he rolled over and prepared to attack, though, he saw that the huge creature had put both hands over his scarred face and appeared to be sobbing! The sight made him stop and stare in amazement.

“Stupid boy!” the guy wailed. And then he further astonished Jack by hitting himself in the forehead with one meaty fist. “Stupid to scare someone and laugh!” Smack went the fist again, making Jack wince with imagined pain. “Ain’t got the brains of a fart in a windstorm, oh you stupid boy!” Smack.

“Hey, you don’t have to... Hey, come on now, stop that.” Jack was feeling a bit flabbergasted by this time. He was unsure if he should laugh at the oddity of the situation, or high-tail it out of there before this obvious lunatic decided he would rather smack Jack than himself.

He finally decided to just put out his hand. “Help me up, will ya?” It seemed to be the right decision. The fist stopped on its way to further damaging the guy’s limited resources and instead slowly unclenched and reached out for Jack’s hand.

To be continued…