Free Call Me Home by Megan Kruse Page B

scared,” Jackson said.
    â€œDon’t worry. They’re just probably needing more help on this side.”
    â€œYou asked if I was scared.”
    â€œNah,” Honey said.
    The East side looked like a whole different game. The foundation had been set for a big house – a house that made the A-frames look like camp cabins, and apparently the whole crew was devoted to it. Jackson tried to imagine who might live in a house like that. A Senator? A business executive? Who, with that kind of money, would come out to this dark little corner of the bottleneck? There were a hundred things he didn’t understand. The first being Honey’s sad little smile as he let Jackson out of the cab.
    Don Newlon was sitting on the edge of the foundation. Jackson had noticed him the other night. Don’s skin was an olive color;he had that dark hair and he’d just shaved his beard from the other night, so there was a shadow of stubble around his jaw; he was so beautiful that Jackson couldn’t look at him full on; he just looked at Don’s edges. Beautiful Don with his long legs out in front of him like a kid, eating a sandwich. Watching him with the sandwich pissed Jackson off, all of a sudden; how can you eat when you’re about to fire someone? All the old adages of his father’s – the way that the shift leaders would sell out their wives before they’d lose a profit. “Throw your beads at someone else’s daughter.” His father shouting at the Channel 5 news when everyone was protesting the union. That was one thing about his father – he was a union man. The union gave him health insurance and got him off in time for cheap domestics at the bar, and no matter how many times the pressure came for a union bust his father wouldn’t budge.
    â€œHey,” Jackson said. Don held out the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich and Jackson shook it. He had shaken more hands in the last few days than ever before in his life. Don’s hands were strong with long fingers. His palms were warm and dry, not too soft. It was a good handshake.
    â€œHey, Jack. Can I call you Jack?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHow’s the work going?”
    â€œIt’s all right.”
    â€œDo you know your way around yet?” Don asked. He was looking at Jackson with his blue eyes and the dark hair was falling into them and Jackson looked away.
    Shotgun shacks around the mudflats, the dingy houses that used to be lakefront property. The shady dark arms of the ironworks. The row of failing businesses: Maxine’s Shear Perfection; Gold Mine Pawn; the liquor store. The clear teardrop of the new lake.
    â€œOh, sure,” Jackson said. What was this? “The whole damn bunker.”
    â€œJust like M*A*S*H* !” Don said.
    â€œThose were tents.”
    Don looked a little wounded. “Right,” he said.
    Jackson felt an immediate sense of remorse. He wanted to take it back so that Don would smile at him again. “I loved that show,” Jackson said. I loved that show? He hadn’t even watched that show, only when he and Lydia tried dressing the television antennae in tin foil and it had picked up the Trinity Broadcast Network and that – M*A*S*H* , and neither were the forbidden treasures he’d been hoping for. Jackson had thought of M*A*S*H* as an old person’s show, he remembered now. Don must be twelve or fifteen years older than him – it hadn’t occurred to him until now to wonder how old Don was, but he guessed he was in his early thirties. Older than himself, and younger than Eric. Don had faint lines at the corners of his eyes from the sun or laughter. Jackson looked at them and looked away again.
    â€œMe, too,” Don said, happily.
    â€œYep,” Jackson said. “Me, too.”
    â€œHa!”
    Jackson fished for a cigarette. His hands were shaking as he lit it. He didn’t understand what was going on. It didn’t