Free Big Jack Is Dead by Harvey Smith Page A

father cut his head over and tilted it, bird-like. “You don't know?”
    Jack didn't understand why, but something about the intonation, the inflection, implied that he should feel ashamed for not knowing. “No, sir,” he said softly. He made his voice more like his younger brother's. Standing next to Jack by the front door, Brodie ignored the conversation. He began scratching and probing his butt with his little fingers, chasing some itch deep in his crack.
    “Come here.”
    Jack walked over and stood a few feet away.
    “Come here .”
    When he was a foot away, his father leaned down very close, still standing in the corner behind the recliner.
    “What the fuck was they saying?” asked Big Jack. “Are you deaf?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then what?!”
    “I don't remember.” Jack looked at the carpet. He tried to withdraw without moving, to cease to exist.
    “Goddamn it.” Big Jack turned his attention back to the window.
    When it seemed safe, Jack backed across the living room floor in silence, moving toward his room.
    “Shut the goddamn door, boy. AC's gettin' out.” Big Jack continued to watch the street through the blinds, mumbling. “I ain't payin' to keep the whole fucking block in cold air.”
    Jack went over and shouldered the door closed. He sensed that his father was fully distracted, his voice no longer carrying any menace. The boy drifted through the room and into the hallway beyond, sinking his toes into the thick carpet. Sucking the last of the snow cone juice from his fingers, he relished the hint of coconut and sugar.
    Jack sat on his bed with a pile of Hot Wheels cars situated out in front of him. All his games involved intricate stories; each car represented a driver with a distinct personality. He acted out the conversations between the drivers, pushing the cars across the crazy terrain created by the undulations of the blanket on his bed. In his hands, each car was capable of amazing, Speed Racer-style jumps. Each car crashed and exploded a hundred times a month, only to be reborn again from the flames.
    He heard his mother screaming at his father in another part of the house. For the fourth or fifth time, a pan crashed as she hurled it across the kitchen in impotent fury. She stood at the stove while Big Jack sat at the table, interrogating her. Occasionally Ramona threw a plastic bowl or spatula, but she was always absolutely careful to avoid hitting her husband.
    Jack played with his cars and tuned the noise out. Brodie was lying on the floor, manipulating a Speak-N-Spell, with its ironic name in yellow letters. The phone rang and their parents got quiet; the phone always cowed them. The entire house went silent except for the phone. Someone picked it up on the third ring. Jack heard his mother's voice, which didn't surprise him. Big Jack never answered the phone if he could help it.  
    “This is Ramona Hickman. Yeah, uh-huh…that's right.”
    Seconds later, Jack forgot about the call altogether. He shuffled backward on the bed, putting his back to the wall and continued with the cars, speaking for each driver with a special voice, mimicked from cartoons and TV shows. After a time, his mother called from the kitchen. “Boys…time to eat.”
    Jack and Brodie made a crazed run for the kitchen, which was part of their dinnertime ritual. They both jumped up at once and scrambled like a pack of wild pigs, knocking each other around as they raced out of the room, over various pieces of furniture and through the house. Jack beat his younger brother to the doorframe and shouldered him aside. They tore across the carpet of the living room and slid into the kitchen, gliding across the linoleum in their socks.
    Big Jack brought the game to an end. “Go wash your hands and quit being cute. I'm not in any goddamn mood for this shit.” His voice carried an edge. Both kids stopped dead and retreated to the bathroom to wash up, heads down.
    Back in the kitchen, Jack sat down against one wall with the