Light Shines Through | Chapter 6 - Jake
The Shattered World Series | Book 1
Jake | November 2041 — Dutton, Georgia, New Confederate States of America
His attic room is already starting to collect heat from the morning sun, and it is barely past sunrise. Jake can tell that by the afternoon, it will be sweltering, and for the millionth time, he dreams about air conditioning. Some of the government buildings in town have air conditioning, and the movie theater usually does, at least during summer. He knows that it used to be ubiquitous — many people had air conditioning once, cooling their entire homes. The Murphy house is so old that it was built before such things, and Jake’s father never got around to upgrading. Now it’s such a luxury that having cool air flowing through the entire house seems like a pipe dream.
Jake’s room in the attic is weirdly shaped. It’s low and cramped in spaces, with steep walls that join at odd angles; in the summer, it swelters beyond imagining, and in the winter, it’s freezing — but it’s his. When Jake was four, Winfield and Wexley had been born, and Jake’s father had turned the attached garage into the huge shared space the twins still called their own. Two years later, upon Annabelle’s arrival, his father and Melinda turned his room in the house into her nursery, moving him up into the attic, telling him what a big boy he was, and how lucky he was to have such a cool space.
And it is a great space. His art and fix-it projects are spread everywhere, piled up around the odd corners of the room. He has a decent bed; he doesn’t have to share. And thanks to the final bout of his father’s industriousness years ago, he even has a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and a stand-up shower. It runs off of a tiny hot water tank separate from the rest of the house, so his showers have to be fast before they go frigid, but it’s his.
He looks at the shower longingly, but there’s no sense in wasting hot water now when he’s just going into the fields. He heads over to his desk and pulls the hard drive out of the locked drawer he keeps it in, only half-sitting in the chair so he’s not tempted to stay long.
Jake goes through his normal boot-up routine, which he created after one too many data loss disasters. He checks the power levels on his array of backup batteries, makes sure everything is plugged in solidly, and starts up the old computer. Dempsey had helped him rebuild it two years ago and assured Jake that at one time it had been a top-of-the-line gaming computer. But it’s a power hog, and even though Jake pays rent to his father and Melinda, and is the motive force keeping the farm running, he always feels a gnawing, low-level guilt as he’s using this machine.
He plugs in the hard drive, clicks through several options, and continues his spelunking through the music files. Last week, as he had first begun to explore the drive, he was astonished — he had hit the music jackpot! Whoever owned this drive loved music as much as Jake did, and had a collection more wide-ranging than anything he had ever seen, neatly organized and labeled into categories. More categories of music than he’d ever heard of — Country, of course, and Rock, and Pop. Heavy Metal. Classical. Jazz. Several types of Jazz. Electronica! Dance! Trance. New Age. Space Music! Reggae, Dubstep, Deep House. Acoustic. The list goes on and on.
Jake randomly clicks into categories as he’s reaching for his good headphones. He clicks on Space Music, which he hasn’t even opened yet, and finds a track at random. Some group or person called Vangelis. His eyes cross for a moment, trying to think about how to pronounce that.
The music starts, and it’s a weird, clacking, winding sound, and then loud, clear, crisp notes that sound like waterdrops made of liquid glass falling through space. The music has a deep melancholy to it, a loneliness that instantly brings tears to Jake’s eyes, and as he listens, it builds, changes, and becomes triumphant. Jake’s heart swells, and tears pour from his eyes unnoticed. This is music about people rising above and exploring the mysteries of the universe together. He’s never been surer of anything in his life.
The track ends, and before the next one can begin, he rips the headphones off, gasping for breath a little bit, feeling both embarrassed and like he has discovered a mountain called joy within his own heart. He laughs at himself, becomes aware that he’s shifted into the chair completely, and that his self-imposed deadline has passed. He has a long list of things to do today, which means he’s going to be pressed for time before the party starts tonight. Reluctantly, he shuts everything down, taking special care with his new treasure box of music.
Feeling paranoid and silly for being paranoid, he disconnects the hard drive, finds the protective zippered case it fits perfectly in, and puts it into the locking drawer at the bottom of his desk. He finds a new place in the attic to hide the key for the drawer, and drags himself down the ladder out of the attic and out into the field.
It’s only ten in the morning, but the day has jumped over warm and gone straight to blazing hot. It’s strange how long the summer lasts now. He can remember a time when early November would have guaranteed cool weather, but not anymore. This morning, he was chilled while doing his chores, and now he’s drenched just riding his bike through town on his way to Dempsey’s.
He’d like to skip town, if he could, but this is the direct route, and he’s got too much to do today, preparing for Annabelle’s party. Plus, riding on the paved roads is a nice change of pace; he likes the buzz of the asphalt under his tires, and he hums bits of songs that spring into his mind. It’s a kind of meditation, the rhythm of the bike, allowing music to swim up inside him while zoning out in the growing heat.
Just as he’s passing through the heart of downtown, he hears a teenage male voice shout out, “Faggot!” Jake whips his head around to see who’s yelling at him, and then instantly hates that he could give himself away so easily. A group of adolescent boys is standing on a corner, and they’re pointing at a woman and laughing.
Jake slows to get a better look and realizes that it’s not a woman they’re pointing at. DJ Mayfield is two years younger than Jake, brilliant, and strange enough that he had long ago passed “quirky” and “eccentric” and moved into “outcast” territory. Jake had shared some classes with him when they were in school. The younger boy was so bright that he had been skipped into Jake’s grade — until his strange habits and outspoken nature had required that his mother school him at home.
Jake can’t hear what’s being said, but he knows what bullying looks like. Words are exchanged, and then one of the larger boys lunges at DJ, punching him and knocking him to the sidewalk. Two of the smaller boys move in and kick the figure on the ground, and without thinking, Jake rides his bike into the scrum, knocking the crowd apart.
“Leave him alone!” Jake yells, his voice deeper and more authoritative sounding than he expected it to be. He jumps off his bike and leans over the figure on the ground. DJ seems to be wearing some kind of lavender women’s bathrobe that he has arranged to look like a dress. Two oranges have rolled onto the ground, and it takes Jake a moment to realize that DJ had stuffed them into the chest of the robe to mimic breasts. In the back of his mind, Jake is aghast, wondering if the kid has a death wish coming out in public like this.
Jake leans down and gently grabs the younger boy’s upper arm, hauling him to his feet. The boy turns to him, and Jake flinches when he sees the makeup on his face. DJ puckers his lips and leans in to Jake as if he is going to kiss him.
Without thinking, Jake straight-arms the younger man, pushing him backwards so hard that he nearly stumbles and falls again. Jake catches his arm and holds him upright, an apology ready on his lips, but a war raging inside of him.
“Whoever you are, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” The boy says, his eyes sweeping past Jake in a kind of daze.
“DJ, stop it!” Jake growls, “You know who I am. It’s Jake, from school.”
The cloudy blue eyes bounce past Jake’s face again, skipping drunkenly like he can’t focus for too long, and then he begins singing at the top of his lungs.
“You can always depend on the kindness of strangers to pluck up your spirits and shield you from dangers!” DJ has a strong singing voice, and the song has a manic, upbeat tone to it that doesn’t fit the moment at all.
“Derrick James, you stop that this instant!”
Flying past Jake in a whirl of fabric and color, a disheveled, stout woman shoves him aside and grabs DJ by the upper arm. The boy winces and screams in genuine pain.
Mrs. Mayfield rounds on Jake and slaps him with her free hand.
“You leave him alone, you heathen miscreant!”
“But I was trying...”
The portly woman gathers the tatty tropical print muumuu she is wearing in one hand, still keeping a death-grip on her son’s arm with the other. The boy has begun singing again.
“Now here’s a tip from Blanche you won’t forget!”
“Goddamnit, DJ, shut the fuck up!” she shrieks, “You’re going to get us killed, you ungrateful piece of shit!” She lets go of her too-long dress to smack him hard over the head. Jake realizes that some of the smeared makeup covers bruises. The boy begins sobbing and laughing at the same time.
“A stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met! You! Haven’t! Met!”
Jake watches in stunned silence as the short woman forcibly drags her tall, gangly son into the alley. Just as he’s about to disappear around the corner, DJ’s stormy blue eyes lock onto Jake’s, and he blows him a kiss and yells something that sounds like “Streetcar!”
Slowly, Jake turns to see the other boys standing there, consumed with laughter.
“Ah, too bad, Jakey Wakey! Your widdle boyfriend can’t fuck your Jew-boy butthole today! So sad!”
He knows what people say about him behind his back. Thinking about it fills him with a white-hot ball of rage that is eclipsed only by the desperate shame that he feels. How do they know? How could they possibly know? I do everything to fucking hide it, he thinks.
Fighting these younger boys has no dignity to it, and Jake knows better than to embroil himself more deeply in something that can spin out of control. Face burning, he climbs back on his bike and doesn’t look back at the continued yells, and pumps his feet faster, trying to get to Dempsey’s now as quickly as possible.
Two hours later, Jake is nearly home again, soaked in sweat from head to toe. The day has become vengefully hot, and he is taking the long way to avoid going through town again.
The old man had been occupied with other customers, rough-looking types that Jake didn’t recognize, and had barely had two words for Jake, making him feel even more awkward after the encounter in town.
Only the cat had seemed glad to see him, licking Jake’s fingers while Dempsey went into his cold storage unit to get the promised venison sausages. Jake marveled that the kitten was three times the size he’d been just a week ago. Living with the old junk trader was working out well for the cat.
Dempsey had come back with five pounds of sausages — half the promised amount. When Jake had objected, Dempsey waved him off angrily, saying it was the best he could do and that they’d settle up at some future time. Then, with the strangers watching closely, the trader had practically shoved Jake out the door, leaving him fuming in the hot sun.
He had ridden home in a fury, so hot and angry that he hadn’t been able to think about music or anything that could calm him down, replaying the incident with DJ over and over again, trying to make sense of it.
Pulling up to the house, he quickly stows his bike in the shed and then heads into the mudroom.
The house has seen better days, but it’s solid, has an intact roof, and has running water and electricity, at least when the power is up. He knows there are plenty of people who live in worse conditions, many of them here in this very town.
His father may be a drunk now, thinks Jake, but at least he fought in the Independence War and earned the right to own property. Jake isn’t clear on all the details, but he knows that one of the things that Rebel veterans like his father got after independence was debt relief and a permanent title to their land.
He stops to wash his face in the mudroom sink and then heads through the door to the kitchen. His stepmother gives a little shriek, as if she could have possibly missed the sounds of him coming into the house.
“Oh!” she gasps, and then, “Oh, it’s you. Jake, you startled me. Don’t go sneaking into the house like that; it’s creepy. Where have you been all morning anyway?”
He looks at his stepmother like she’s crazy or making a joke. The ways in which she can express disappointment with him are never-ending.
“I was doing my chores. And then I was running an errand. For Annabelle. To get meat for the party.” He swings his backpack up onto the counter and pulls out the packages of sausage.
“Oh, sausage, wonderful!” she exclaims, and then shifts to a disappointed tone, “Oh, but only that much? That’ll never be enough for everyone.”
Jake shrugs, consoled by the fact that this is a better response than if he’d returned empty-handed. “It was as much as I could get.”
He can see thoughts fly across her face, and then a look of disdain settles in, as if she’d just smelled something rotten. “Where did you get these anyway?” she asks.
Jake shrugs again. “Traded for ‘em.”
“Traded what?” she asks sharply, and then, without pausing, “From who?” Then Jake sees the connection fall into place in her expression, and she shoves the sausage across the counter.
“No. Not from him. I’ve told you I don’t like him. We can’t eat this.”
After the morning he’s just had, Jake feels his hackles go up. He asks sharply, “Oh, you don’t like him? Why? You’ve never told me why you don’t like him, Melinda.”
He knows this will get a rise out of her, and sure enough, she hollers back at him, “Don’t call me that!” He sees her shoulder twitch, as if she had to consciously will herself not to slap him.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you!” she says with a contained fury. “But you ought to know by now, Jake, that there are good men in the world, and there are bad men, and that Dempsey is a bad one.”
Jake is surprised that she answered his question, and now he’s genuinely curious. “Him? He’s not a bad man. Do you even know him? How could you say that without knowing him?”
Melinda dismisses him, waving her hand as if she could truly make him vanish. “I know everyone in this town. I know all about him. I know...who he associates with. He’s not pure. Not like...” She stops herself, and Jake knows she was about to say “not like us” and then realized she was talking to her impure quarter-Jewish stepson.
Jake flashes for a moment to the image of her, years ago, when she’d been his beloved preschool teacher, and the simple, powerful love he’d had for her then. When his mother had disappeared, she’d been his rock and his anchor. When his father had told him that she was going to be his new mother, he’d felt a little explosion of joy in his chest. Nothing could replace his mommy, of course, but knowing that Miss Melinda wanted to try had felt like a genuine solace to that hurt.
And here she was, fifteen years later, never really his mother at all after her own three children were born, and looking at him like he’s dirty and unworthy of her. He feels something shift in his chest. Something small, but important, like a keystone has moved.
His face drops into a mask of disdain, mirroring hers.
“The sausage is all we have, Melinda. If you don’t want it, I’ll put it in the freezer, and I’ll eat it for the next couple of weeks. It’s too good to waste.”
He moves to take the package off the counter, but she shifts and reaches out to reclaim it, glancing at him and then averting her eyes.
Jake snorts, and she shoots daggers at him with a look.
“Well, then. I gotta head outside and tend to everything, since nobody else around here seems to.”
He stomps out the door and lets the screen slam behind him, but as it does, he swears he can hear her final imprecation muttered after him.
“Faggot.”
The long, hot day passes in a whirlwind of action. Jake is tending to the crops and the livestock in an endless string of tackling whatever the next most important thing on his list is. He’s been through this process thousands of times; he knows it by heart.
It’s not fair to say that the rest of the family doesn’t help at all, but it is fair to say that none of the crucial work or hard labor happens without Jake doing it. Without him, the large vegetable garden wouldn’t thrive, the cows and goats and chickens wouldn’t be attended to, and the hay and tobacco wouldn’t bring in extra cash for the family. Throughout the day, the back of his mind is filled with the mental arithmetic of inputs and outputs; money needed for fertilizer or equipment repairs, redbacks coming in from the leaf tobacco and sweet hay; vegetables and meat enough to eat and store and salt and pickle, keeping them just on this side of having enough.
The pigs had been a loss. Five years ago, another cross-species pandemic, some flu or new covid, had swept through the country, and in addition to killing a couple of folks in town, it had required the destruction of all eight of the pigs. The government had even insisted on burning the carcasses, so that people wouldn’t then eat the possibly infected animals. Jake remembers that night with a surreal vividness; a bonfire that smelled like the best barbecue ever in the making, with no chance of a payoff. For a week, the town had smelled like a delicious pork festival was underway. Hardly anyone in town had had the funds to acquire the expensive new disease-resistant pigs from Brazil, and so pork had gone from being an easy and somewhat affordable staple to an exotic rarity.
Considering his shitty morning, miraculously everything flows smoothly in the fields. Every cow and chicken is friendly and compliant. Jake makes good enough time that he realizes he might even be able to grab a quick nap before the party after he showers. Now that he stops to think about it, he can feel the weariness in his bones from the long morning and all of the work of the day.
Staying busy usually keeps him out of his head, at least enough that he can avoid looking at the yawning emptiness that lives inside him, right at the center of his being. Even this sideways glance at it calls forth his mental image of a lone wolf, howling into a black and moonless sky. A talisman, emblematic of his soul-level ache. Sometimes he toys with the idea of a tattoo of the dark wolf that lives within him, rather than finishing off the Dixie flag on his chest, half completed.
A quick hot shower to scrub the grime off, and then Jake is lying on his bed in the trapped heat of the attic, waiting to see if the open windows and evaporation from the shower can keep him cool enough to grab even just a couple of minutes of sleep before the party starts downstairs.
He wants to boot up the computer again and continue to search for new music, but he knows if he does that, he’ll get so wrapped up that he’ll never sleep. In fact, he’s sure that hours would pass in the blink of an eye, and then he’d get in trouble for missing Annabelle’s birthday party, too.
A commotion rises up on the hot air from the house down below, and it’s clear that the twins are home. Win and Wex dominate the house with their obstreperous presence. Even when they’re sleeping, the house hums with a faint tension, as if knowing that at any minute the silence could be shattered by some random outburst from the converted garage they share. Any sympathy he might have once had for Melinda trying to keep the two boys under control has long since faded to a kind of empty satisfaction that at least his own life isn’t the only thing diminished by the constant noise and chaos that is the hallmark of his half-brothers.
Although they are four years younger, in the last year they’ve begun to put on their growth, and are both nearly as tall as Jake, and will soon surpass him. Winfield is the taller and older of the two, born in the waning moments of August sixth, where Wexley, born twenty minutes later in the first minutes of August 7th, is younger, and a fraction shorter. Several months ag,o they had celebrated turning fifteen by getting rip-roaring drunk and shooting off fireworks all night, although it hadn’t been the first time for either of those things to happen.
Win and Wex are that rare thing — fraternal twins who still look so much alike they are sometimes mistaken for identical. Small differences abound. Win is taller by just under an inch; Wex is just slightly broader across the shoulders. Win has a slightly squarer jaw; Wex’s hair is a shade lighter blond. On and on, minute variations that somehow seem more to reinforce that these two brothers are a package set than anything else could.
Certainly, between the two of them and Annabelle, Jake is the odd one out — him, lean and wiry, brown hair, grey eyes, contrasting to the blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks of everyone else in the family.
Hell, if you clip Jake out of the family picture and airbrush the omnipresent drink out of his father’s hand, the Murphys would look like the very model of a perfect red-blooded Confederate Rebel family. The thought puts a small, sad smile on Jake’s face. One of these things is not like the other one, he hums to himself, one of these things just doesn’t belong.
It’s time to drag himself downstairs and face the rest of the family, and whatever idiot tween girls Annabelle has invited over for her party. He drags himself out of the comfort of his bed, still covered in a fine sheen of sweat from the heat and humidity that has still not cleared from his space. He rummages around for a nicer tee-shirt and pair of jeans that also happen to be clean, pulls them on, puts on his only pair of shoes that aren’t boots, and reaches the folding attic ladder to head downstairs just as Melinda begins hollering at him and banging on the hatch with the handle of the broom she keeps in the hallway nearby for this express purpose.
“Jake! Jake! I need your help down here! We’ve got fifteen people coming over in an hour, and you need to get your ass up!”
He lowers the stairs slowly, keeping a firm hand on the rope, since flinging the stairs open makes a hell of a noise and scares the shit out of whoever is standing below. He clambers down loudly, knowing that immediately appearing fully dressed makes the point to her that he was already on the way more succinctly than words can.
She shoots him a reproachful look that contains at least a little bit of contrition and apology in it. He knows she’d never admit it to him, but there are moments that he can tell that she recognizes how much he does for the family, and how, secretly, in the depths of her narrow little soul, she’s grateful.
She bustles into the kitchen, moving trays and containers of food around on the countertop to give herself something to do, and speaks to him sideways, as if looking at him full-on would cause her to somehow evaporate.
“Your father still isn’t home, and I reminded him three times today that we’re having people over for Annabelle’s party tonight. I can’t imagine what he’s gotten up to, but I need help putting the extra leaf in the dining room table and setting up some chairs for people to sit on. And I’ve got this banner I want to hang up before Annabelle comes out of her room to see it, and I just can’t do this myself...”
The words are spilling out of her, and Jake knows from long experience that this is Melinda’s way of simultaneously asking for help and distracting herself from the fact that the thing his father has almost certainly gotten up to is getting shitfaced drunk and forgetting his name. Jake shrugs and points to the stepstool she’s already pulled out of the closet.
She nods, a clipped bob of her head, and he grabs the tape, and one end of the yellowed birthday banner that has seen better days, and picks up the stepstool in the other. After a moment of fumbling with the tape, they hang the banner and move on to putting the heavy extra leaf in the dining room table. Jake continues setting up chairs, while Melinda starts moving the food from the kitchen to the table.
The truth is that they’ve worked together like this so many times that they are quite good at it. Within a short time, they have everything arranged and ready to go.
As if possessing some hidden talent to make a perfect entrance, Annabelle bursts out of her room just as they’re putting the finishing touches on the setup.
Without meaning to, Jake gasps a little, looking at his little sister. The meaning of the phrase thirteen going on thirty suddenly hits him full force. Standing before them in a pale-yellow dress, blue eyes blazing, and her hair gleaming like spun gold, Annabelle fully embodies the princess look she is trying to achieve. She’s even wearing a delicate rhinestone tiara.
Melinda sighs, “Oh, Annabelle!” and rushes to the girl, fiddling with the placement of ribbons and the curl of golden ringlets. Jake isn’t listening to Melinda as she prattles on about how Annabelle looks better than Miss Georgia, and how in just a few years she’ll be a shoo-in for Miss Rebel. All he can see is that the little girl who was his sister has somehow been replaced wholesale by this woman before him. He’s thrilled for her, truly. But he also wonders if she isn’t pushing too fast to grow up.
Annabelle turns to him and shyly asks, “What do you think, Jake?”
He’s speechless for a moment, and then he says simply, “You look absolutely beautiful, ‘Belle.” He means it.
She blushes, and casts her eyes downward in a way that is both innocent and charming, and subtly flirtatious at the same time. Jake wonders where in the world she could have learned such a thing.
“Really?”
“Really.”
He’s about to say something else when she slaps him on the upper arm, and grimaces and says through gritted teeth, “Don’t call me that in front of anyone tonight! And didn’t you have a nicer shirt you could put on?”
He looks at her, taken aback, and then the doorbell rings, and she’s hissing at him, channeling her mother, “Oh, too late now! Go get it! And don’t forget to take their coats! And be sure to offer everyone a drink!”
He stands frozen for just a moment, stunned at his sudden demotion from brother to servant, as Annabelle and Melinda find the perfect spot to stand and wait to receive their guests. They wave him on to get the door, and he sighs, bowing to them both in what he hopes is a sarcastic fashion, knowing that his long day is about to get longer.
The party has been going on for nearly two hours, and the house is full of the squeals and laughter of adolescent girls. Annabelle is flushed with happiness, which brightens her cheeks even through the heavy-handed application of makeup. She has a glow that Jake recognizes from the younger, happier, more confident child she once was.
Being a part of the pageant circuit has widened Annabelle’s circle of friends, but it hasn’t improved her self-esteem or her attitude. Quite the opposite, the child who once adored Jake has become moody, judgmental, and withdrawn. A lot like me, actually, Jake thinks with an internal laugh. But as much as it annoyed him at the time, he misses the simplicity of having a little sister who tagged along endlessly and was always asking him to play a game with her.
Here, now, is a beautiful young woman at the very beginning of her womanhood, who, with every pageant and every win, is becoming more superficial and self-involved, and yet also more fragile and high-strung. At a party that focuses entirely on her, though, she is in her element.
Jake has spent much of the first part of the party helping Melinda with the food and drinks. Win and Wex made a late appearance when the food was ready, shoved their way to the front of the line, loading up their plates, and then beat a hasty retreat to their room, from which loud music is now blaring, competing with the party music Annabelle insists on playing in the background.
None of it is music that Jake has any interest in, and a part of him aches to go upstairs and explore the hard drive full of unknown and wonderful music that is new to him, and quite possibly illegal from the perspective of the Confederate purity censors. He doesn’t think of himself as a law-breaker, but the idea of all that forbidden music sends a shiver of excitement down his spine.
Melinda nearly drops a stack of plates she’s clearing when a random loud bang comes from the twins’ room, and then furtively looks around to see if anyone has seen her near-miss. She’s holding it together well, but Jake notices the constant twitch of her eyes towards the door, waiting for his father, Mitch, to finally make an appearance. He can tell that every conversation she’s having is done with half her attention focused on whoever is in front of her, and the other half constructing progressively more elaborate worst-case scenarios for whatever alcohol-induced catastrophe Mitch has gotten into now.
The noise level in the house, often loud simply with the twins making a racket from their shared room, has reached phenomenal heights with the sugar-addled screeching of a dozen teenage girls, and Jake is beginning to seriously contemplate escaping up into the solitude of his attic space. Opening the hatch to the ladder would be conspicuous, but once he was upstairs, he could turn on the string of old LED Christmas lights he’d hung across the rafters, slip on his best headphones, and spend the rest of the night lost in strange and amazing music.
At that moment, the front door slams open, and the entrance hall is filled with men’s voices raised in anger and frustration. The party falls immediately silent, and almost as one, Jake and Melinda and the rest of the guests move forward to see what the commotion is about. As Jake rounds the corner, a familiar sight presents itself.
Jake’s father is draped across the shoulders of two other men, one of whom doesn’t seem all that much more sober than Mitch. The other, a tall, auburn-haired man with piercing blue eyes, nodded at Melinda.
“Ma’am. Sorry to disturb y’all, here. Seemed like the S’arnt Major needed some help gettin’ home.”
He said this as if it wasn’t much of a problem, but Jake knows otherwise. His father has been getting incoherently drunk for years now, something that is happening with greater frequency as the man himself wastes away into a shadow of his former robustness.
Melinda seems surprised by this turn of events, which Jake knows she couldn’t possibly be. He wonders if it is an abundance of hope or delusion that drives her worldview.
Captain Devereaux is Jake’s commanding officer in the Guard and the person who holds Jake’s future in his hands. Jake wants nothing more than to become a Rebel Ranger in the Confederate Army and escape this dreary homelife. He has applied to the program, headquartered just up the road at Camp Braxton Bragg, for the last two years.
He’s been deferred twice, on the grounds that his family's need is more urgent than his national service. He’d braced himself to be rejected outright, relegated to permanent grunt status in the standing army, but the deferrals at least meant that he was free to apply again, a rarity.
The funny thing is, two years of waiting has turned him from a die-hard Dixie Rebel with dreams of glory defeating Texan and Yankee foes into...something else. Not a traitor exactly, but into someone who is finding inconsistencies and injustices in Confederate life that he can’t push aside and ignore. Doubts about the whole culture he is stuck in, that are reinforced by the news snippets he picks up on the emergency radio, those nights he sneaks out onto the roof to look at the stars and see what foreign music he could pick up bouncing off the ionosphere.
Jake and Devereaux make eye contact, and Jake nods a greeting, struck by the strange look on the officer’s face. Jake can’t be sure that Devereaux is the reason he’s been deferred from Ranger training, but for some months now, he’s been wondering if the ginger-haired man isn’t at least part of the problem.
Jake pushes through the crowd, up to the trio of men, pulls the weight of his father off of Deveraux and onto his own shoulders, and gives the man a gruff and guttural “Thanks.”
Deveraux nods at Melinda, who is fussing with her husband’s cap and coat, mutters “welcome”, and then shoots Jake a small glare with a half-downturned lip, as if to remove any misconception that he’s helping out of any consideration for Jake himself.
Jake is surprised at how much lighter his father is than the last time he had to do this, even though it was just a few weeks ago. Either his constant training is paying off, or his father is losing weight, or both. He half-drags, half-carries the man through the party crowd and into Mitch and Melinda’s bedroom.
Melinda is right behind him, shutting the door, and they fall into a pattern so old and so common that neither one needs to speak or think about it. Jake lies Mitch diagonally on the bed, and they get to work stripping him out of his filthy clothes. Jake winces at the reek of harsh booze and body odor rolling off of his father in waves. Mitch is barely conscious, mumbling incoherently as they shift him around.
As Melinda peels off his jeans, it becomes clear that Mitch has pissed himself. She groans and then mutters reassuringly to her husband, telling him it’s not his fault.
Jake rolls his eyes and mutters, “Jesus Christ”, just as Melinda looks up at him. Her face hardens, and she stands up and slaps him, although there isn’t any heat or power in it.
“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain! Stop being a judgmental asshole and go fetch me some hot towels so I can clean him up. He’s carrying the weight of the world, thanks to you.”
Jake bites his tongue and just shakes his head in bewilderment. Thanks to him? How is that even possible? He keeps this place fed, practically single-handedly.
He leaves the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. On his way to the bathroom to get hot towels, he becomes aware that there is a strange vibe in the rest of the house.
The party music is still on, but most of the girls are sitting in a haphazard circle in the chairs on the other side of the room. Jake frowns at them, and not a one of them says a word or meets his eyes.
Jake steps around the corner, into the foyer.
The other drunken man, Sam Pickens, is passed out on a pile of coats and purses on the bench against the wall.
On the other wall, Annabelle is pressed into a small nook next to the broken grandfather clock, looking up into the face of Captain Devereaux like a scared mouse, about to be devoured by a hawk.
Devereaux is leaning over the girl, arm up against the wall like he is relaxing. His face is inches from hers, whispering into her ear.
Jake’s mind goes several places at once. He steps closer, fists clenched, and hears the man say, “I swear, Miss Annabelle, you are pretty as a peach. I could take a nice juicy bite outta you, what do you think about that?”
Deveraux’s other hand is stroking Annabelle’s cheek, and just as he’s about to drop it to her breast, Annabelle whimpers, and Jake’s hand catches his arm.
“Hey, Cap’n? You want to leave her alone, man?”
He tries to say this with as much respect as he can muster.
Deveraux turns to face Jake slowly, his eyes glazed, not recognizing Jake for a moment.
“What the fuck? No, I do not want to leave her alone. Mind your own business, Private.”
He turns back to Annabelle, puffing up to take more space, hemming the girl in more completely. Annabelle’s eyes catch Jake’s for a moment, and he can see nothing but terror there.
Jake grabs Deveraux’s arm again and spins the man around, pulling him a bit away from the wall so that there’s a gap wide enough for Annabelle to escape through.
“Cap, please, man. That’s my sister. You’re scaring her.”
Fury crosses Devereaux’s face, and he roughly shoves Jake’s hand off his arm.
“I said to leave me the fuck alone, Private Jewfag! I don’t give a fuck who she is.”
Jake controls his fury at the insult, willing himself to remain calm. Striking his superior officer would destroy any chance of Ranger school.
Jake leans in.
“Captain, Annabelle is thirteen years old. She turned thirteen today. This is her birthday party. Leave her alone.”
Deveraux’s face is a mask of rage. He steps towards Jake.
“She don’t look thirteen and seems like she likes me, you fuckin’ pussy.”
Jake twitches, and Deveraux laughs, a mean, drunken laugh. Annabelle bolts from the corner and runs into her room, ignoring her friends, and slams the door shut.
Deveraux sees Jake twitch, and a malevolent grin spreads across his face. He steps closer to Jake.
“You gonna hit me? You wanna take a swing at me, Murphy? Come at me, bro!” he yells.
Just then, another door slams, and Melinda comes barreling around the corner.
“Jake, where are the goddamn towels, and...what the? What the hell is going on in here?” she demands, seeing the two men within inches of slugging each other.
Captain Devereaux breaks eye contact with Jake just long enough to look at Melinda. After a moment, he seems to gather his wits back about him and steps back a bit from Jake, smoothing his clothes.
“Nothing goin’ on here, ma’am. I was just sayin’ to Jake here that I hope the S’arnt Major is ok. Sure would be a damn shame if anything happened to him and messed things up even more for y’all.”
Jake didn’t understand exactly what he’d just heard from Deveraux, but his tone and the look on his face made it clear that there was some kind of threat buried in there.
Melinda must have heard it too, because her face turned quickly masklike, frozen in a smile. When she spoke, her voice was sweeter and colder than tea.
“Captain Deveraux, I’m so grateful to you for bringing the Sergeant Major home safely. And I hope my stepson hasn’t caused you any trouble. Why don’t you come around sometime for supper next week, some evening when we’re all feeling a bit more like ourselves?”
Deveraux straightened up, smiled at Melinda, and touched his cap, miming a gentleman.
“Well, that sounds right nice, thank you, ma’am. I’ll take you up on that one of these days soon. And please tell Miss Annabelle happy birthday, and that I look forward to seeing her again.”
Melinda smiled an icy smile, and Deveraux turned and struggled to get Pickens awake and to his feet. Once he’d managed to get the man upright and out the door, he turned and saluted again, a feral smile on his lips.
Jake and Melinda looked at each other.
“He was...” Jake began.
Melinda cut him off with a hand chop and a finger pointed in his face.
“I don’t want to hear it! Goddamn you to hell, Jacob D. Murphy! I don’t know how you manage to fuck up every goddamn thing you touch, but here we are, again!”
With that, she spun on her heel and marched away, leaving him alone and speechless in the hallway.
What the fuck was going on? How was any of this his fault?
He walked slowly forward and was met with the bewildered look of eleven teenage girls. He opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it, and resisting his urge to try to help or explain, he turned the corner and pulled the rope to his attic ladder.
His room was hot and dark, but he was alone. Up here, no one could see a grown man cry silent tears of frustration and anger and confusion.
«Chapter 5 - Jackie | Chapter 6 - Jake | Chapter 7 - João»
This chapter, with the music. ❤️