Big Jack Is Dead Read Online Free PDF

pickle with disgust. “If they don't need but you and Ricky to get the job done, why can't it be just John-David and Ricky?”
    “Ramona, please,” he said.
    But she was furious now, trembling. “That's how I see it. It ain't fair. I bet John-David ain't gonna be hacking up green shit tonight over the Christmas dinner…”
    “Oh, goddammit!” Big Jack said, turning again to look out the window. “I can't never mention this kind of shit to you. You just ain't got no idea how the plant operates. And I ain't John-David.” He smoked in tense silence then suddenly exploded across the table toward Jack, hitting him in the mouth with his open right hand. “Goddammit, don't slurp!”
    Cereal sloshed across the room and hit the curtains. Jack was stunned for a second. His mouth opened wide and pink milk drained out. Then he began to wail.
    Ramona flinched hard when Big Jack struck the boy. She rushed over to her son and held his face in her hands. She cradled his head, muffling his cries. “My god...what the fuck you gotta do that for?”
    Big Jack bellowed, “I told him I was gonna knock him through that wall if he didn't stop that slurpin'!” He looked across the small table at his wife and son where they rocked back and forth over the boy's chair. “You don't stop cryin', I'm gonna give you something to cry about.” He put one hand on his leather belt and the other touched the enormous, silver-plated buckle. The gesture brought to his mind the motions of a gunfighter, which pleased him. He relaxed, watching them huddled before him.
    Shushed repeatedly by his mother, Jack stopped wailing and choked out cries only when the sobbing escaped his control. Finally, he was quiet. His eyes were red and wet with tears.
    Big Jack stood up sharply and looked at the clock mounted in the stove. “Lord God... Now look what you done, boy. You most likely made me late for work.” He looked down at his son. “You want Daddy to get fired? Huh? So you and your momma have to live out in the alley with the niggers?”
    Jack sniffed and answered with his head bowed. “No, sir.”
    Big Jack crossed the kitchen. At the counter, he took everything Ramona had packed up and threw it into his lunch box, pouring the rest of the coffee into his thermos and closing the whole thing up. Grabbing his truck keys, he stepped into his boots before turning to his wife. “I'll try to be home early so we can have a good Christmas with Daddy and Momma.”
    Ramona looked up at him without speaking. Scowling, she held Jack, cooing to him from time to time. Back in the second bedroom, Brodie began to cry from behind the bars of his crib.
    Big Jack stood still as he took it all in. His eyes bulged fiercely and he seemed confused. Whirling, he headed out the back door, flinging it closed behind him.
    From outside, the truck door slammed and the roar of the revving engine flooded the kitchen. The tires made a sound like fabric ripping as Big Jack raced down the alley behind the house, slinging gravel and crushed oyster shells in his wake.

Chapter 4
     
    1999
     
    Back from the conference, I walked along the sidewalk in Sunnyvale, sticking to pools of shade from overhead awnings. Moving here from Texas, I never got used to layering clothes. In California, I was always sweating or shivering. I stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk at a four-way intersection. The road was paved with cobblestones for fifty feet along each street.
    A gleaming convertible nosed through the intersection as I waited. The car looked like it was sheened in baby oil. Only somewhere below the polished surface was there any color, midnight blue flecked with silver. A woman sat behind the wheel, talking into a dangling earpiece. Her face was weathered and tanned, her body lean and athletic…a mid-forties face and a mid-twenties body. Off the top of my head, I knew that the car cost four times the money my father paid for the house we lived in when I was born, which made her more