Turn Signal by Howard Owen Page B

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.
    â€œSeven 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.
    â€œDad,” 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.
    â€œYou could go to prison. The judge could give you an active sentence.”
    â€œIf 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.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t make them pay you back?”
    â€œThose 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.
    â€œSo, 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.
    â€œIt 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.
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œAnd you don’t, of course, have seven thousand dollars.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWell, 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