Free Turn Signal by Howard Owen Page A

“Woodpecker, my ass.”
    He clears his throat.
    â€œJack, I know he’s your son, but he’s 25 years old, and I’ve just about gotten tired of making allowances for him. Allowances are for kids.”
    Jack stands up. Sandy puts her hand on his arm, but he jerks it away as Mike scrambles backward, still seated in the folding chair. Jack wonders if he thinks he’s going to hit him. He remembers the fight they had, after the wreck. Mike was 11 years older, 29 to his 18, but even so, it wasn’t much of a contest.
    Probably, he thinks, an older brother never forgives or forgets that you once beat him up in front of witnesses, no matter how many years go by.
    â€œMake allowances for him?” Jack says. “All I’ve ever heard you do is badmouth him. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say one good thing about Brady, true or false.”
    Part of Jack’s anger stems from the knowledge that Mike’s fears are well-founded. He and Sandy both have followed Brady’s pinball carom through the past 10 years closely enough not to trust him in a house they own.
    He wonders, though, how much of it is them seeing the young Jack Stone in Brady. Like father, like son. The fuck-up gene. Even if his was more or less a one-time thing while Brady seems to be going for the lifetime achievement award.
    But, dammit, Jack argues weakly, he’s family.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Mike says after a long silence. “We need that money. We could invest $30,000 right now, the way the stock market’s going, and it’d be $60,000 by the time he decided or didn’t decide to buy, and that’s assuming the place was still in good condition.”
    He stands, keeping a few feet between them.
    â€œI’ll let you have my share of the rent money,” Jack says, although he’s sure Gina will not approve. She wouldn’t approve of renting the place to Brady at all, just like Mike and Sandy, which is why he hasn’t told her about his plan.
    â€œYou could use the money, too, Jack,” his sister says. “I mean, it’s been a little lean lately all around for the Stones.” She laughs nervously.
    â€œDon’t worry about me.”
    â€œHe’s had three good years out here, rent-free,” Mike says. “He can stay until somebody buys it and is ready to move in. But that’s going to have to be it.”
    Mike looks down.
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œMe, too,” Jack says, in a tone that tells them his sorrow goes beyond the fact that his son will soon have to find another place to live, maybe with them, although the only thing Gina would like less than letting Brady rent from them is letting Brady live with them.
    Brady resurfaced a month before they moved to the new house. He looked like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet, hungry-looking and red-eyed, but he was a welcome sight. Ellen hugged him and fed him, and Jack and Gina moved with their 10-year-old daughter, their terrier and some relief to Woodpecker Way.
    It’s almost 2 o’clock when they leave.
    Jack turns at the bottom of the steps and looks up at his brother and sister.
    â€œHe needs a break,” he says.
    Mike looks off into the distance, over his head.
    â€œA lot of people need breaks. I’m 59 years old. I’d like not to have to tell dumb-asses a third my age to remember to flush the toilet and not throw trash on the floor at work, and then have them tell me to go screw myself. I’d like to not leave Philip Morris feet-first.
    â€œThere’s a lot more breaks needed than there are breaks to give.”
    Jack stops at the 7-Eleven on the way home to get gas, a half-gallon of milk and a Sunday Washington Post. While he’s filling up, he looks across the road, and there’s Milo’s old Toyota at the Speakeasy Diner. Right beside it is Susan Edmonds’ Lexus.
    He’s glad that at last something on this disappointing,