make a call, please hang up and dial again . So what happened, five months prior to Jackson’s and my leaving our hometown, was a shock—though it portended the life he and I would live years later.
I had taken up with Dillon, the much older speed freak James was so fond of, mistaking his hummingbird mind for brilliance rather than years of drug use. I hadn’t offered Jackson any real explanation or apology, just made small shifts in my attitude and ceased picking up his phone calls.
The rumors about Dillon were that he stole, he back-stabbed, he had once lit a tree in front of his house on fire and cackled while it burned until the cops came—but he took an interest in me, he wanted to talk about the books I was reading, began leaving strange packages on my doorstep, calling the high school pretending to be my father and getting me out early so I could come down to the bar where he worked and surreptitiously drink for free. He was my first sexual experience besides Jackson, and it was compelling. In his strange apartment, he stayed between my legs until I could barely move; he shook and sweat and called me names I’d never been called; he held me so tight afterward I had to breathe a different way; he told me I had a mind beyond my years and that he loved me.
The affair lasted all of a month. It wasn’t long before the exotic appeal wore off and I recognized him for what he was, which was downright scary, but it was during this time that James, sitting on the front porch on his night off, watched his brother exit their house fully asleep carrying a baseball bat that had been in the back of their closet for nearly four years.
The way James tells it, he had remained gentle the three blocks downtown, had tried to coax Jackson (whose fingers held the bat loosely as if it were merely an extension of his limp left arm) into turning around. But it was no dice, and so the younger brother followed the older brother dutifully, as he had so many times before. Given the considerable distance that had grown between them during the period of his drug use—and more recently since I’d spurned Jacksonand he’d grown even more solipsistic—James was glad to be alone with his brother, to do this small, quiet thing. The bat remained inert until, with a switch that seemed to affect Jackson’s every muscle, it didn’t.
All told, six windows were smashed and three cracked. When the cops arrived, Jackson was gone—how this happened, James can’t explain or even remember. He had finally wrestled the polished wood out of his brother’s hands, had stopped to catch his breath and shifted to find himself amid brilliant reds and blues encircling him where he stood with glass in his hair and blood on his hands from when he’d tried to intercept his sleeping brother’s blows to the Shoe Repair window after restraint had proved impossible. Jackson must have wandered off as easily as he’d stepped out of bed and into the night, and no one, had they been awake to witness him walk by unhurried, would have suspected him of menace. They would have seen, instead, a young man with all the hopes in the world, bearing a gracious half-moon smile, up for a midnight stroll in the hometown he knew and loved.
James, on the other hand, was already a favorite of the cops by his association with Dillon, was bloody and holding a bat, had the telltale dilated pupils and high pulse, did not answer questions easily. He was searched, remnants of drugs were found in his pocket, blood was tested.
Given the town’s quickly changing identity, or rather the fact that finally tourists had begun taking in its quaint values in hordes, there’d been a great deal of pressure from the city council to make an example of cases such as these,to assert that these sorts of incidents were not permissible, were not to be repeated. Both drugs and vandalism were on the rise, and as luck would have it, James’s (Jackson’s) crime included both. He had managed to crack in
I had taken up with Dillon, the much older speed freak James was so fond of, mistaking his hummingbird mind for brilliance rather than years of drug use. I hadn’t offered Jackson any real explanation or apology, just made small shifts in my attitude and ceased picking up his phone calls.
The rumors about Dillon were that he stole, he back-stabbed, he had once lit a tree in front of his house on fire and cackled while it burned until the cops came—but he took an interest in me, he wanted to talk about the books I was reading, began leaving strange packages on my doorstep, calling the high school pretending to be my father and getting me out early so I could come down to the bar where he worked and surreptitiously drink for free. He was my first sexual experience besides Jackson, and it was compelling. In his strange apartment, he stayed between my legs until I could barely move; he shook and sweat and called me names I’d never been called; he held me so tight afterward I had to breathe a different way; he told me I had a mind beyond my years and that he loved me.
The affair lasted all of a month. It wasn’t long before the exotic appeal wore off and I recognized him for what he was, which was downright scary, but it was during this time that James, sitting on the front porch on his night off, watched his brother exit their house fully asleep carrying a baseball bat that had been in the back of their closet for nearly four years.
The way James tells it, he had remained gentle the three blocks downtown, had tried to coax Jackson (whose fingers held the bat loosely as if it were merely an extension of his limp left arm) into turning around. But it was no dice, and so the younger brother followed the older brother dutifully, as he had so many times before. Given the considerable distance that had grown between them during the period of his drug use—and more recently since I’d spurned Jacksonand he’d grown even more solipsistic—James was glad to be alone with his brother, to do this small, quiet thing. The bat remained inert until, with a switch that seemed to affect Jackson’s every muscle, it didn’t.
All told, six windows were smashed and three cracked. When the cops arrived, Jackson was gone—how this happened, James can’t explain or even remember. He had finally wrestled the polished wood out of his brother’s hands, had stopped to catch his breath and shifted to find himself amid brilliant reds and blues encircling him where he stood with glass in his hair and blood on his hands from when he’d tried to intercept his sleeping brother’s blows to the Shoe Repair window after restraint had proved impossible. Jackson must have wandered off as easily as he’d stepped out of bed and into the night, and no one, had they been awake to witness him walk by unhurried, would have suspected him of menace. They would have seen, instead, a young man with all the hopes in the world, bearing a gracious half-moon smile, up for a midnight stroll in the hometown he knew and loved.
James, on the other hand, was already a favorite of the cops by his association with Dillon, was bloody and holding a bat, had the telltale dilated pupils and high pulse, did not answer questions easily. He was searched, remnants of drugs were found in his pocket, blood was tested.
Given the town’s quickly changing identity, or rather the fact that finally tourists had begun taking in its quaint values in hordes, there’d been a great deal of pressure from the city council to make an example of cases such as these,to assert that these sorts of incidents were not permissible, were not to be repeated. Both drugs and vandalism were on the rise, and as luck would have it, James’s (Jackson’s) crime included both. He had managed to crack in
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