Turn Signal by Howard Owen

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.
    â€œHere, 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.
    â€œWow,” 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.
    â€œAnything 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.
    â€œOh,” she says. “I almost forgot. Brady left a message on the voice-mail. He said he needed to, like, talk to you?”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œDunno. 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