Shine - Lauren Myracle [85]
I laughed, and it pleased him. I could tell by his lopsided smile, which pleased me. We grinned goofily at each other.
Later, our conversation shifted to more serious things. I told him about my theory about Beef dealing meth to Patrick’s boyfriend. That got Jason going. He talked about addiction and how it ruined everything. He said his father gave him his first drink when he was four years old. It was whiskey, and Jason’s daddy thought it would be funny to give it to his little boy.
“I remember how warm I felt after it went down,” Jason said. “I can call back that feeling exactly, all these years later.”
He told me about his slow realization that when one person in a family was sick, the whole family was sick. In Jason’s case, the sick person was his father, who was nice enough when he was sober, but mean as a snake when he was drunk.
He’d hit Jason and then act all self-righteous, as if the hitting had been Jason’s fault. He’d throw his hand out at Jason’s little sister, Christy, and say, “How you feel knowing she had to see that, boy?”
Other times, if Jason didn’t jump fast enough or high enough or whatever, Jason’s daddy would shake his head and say, “Going after you don’t seem to make no difference, so what am I to do? Do you want me to hit Christy? Is that what it’s gonna take to bring you in line? ’Cause sure seems like that’s the only thing that’ll stop you.”
Christy, his sister, was eleven, the same age as Robert. Jason’s plan was to get his degree, get a job, and find a place to live somewhere far away from Hangtree. “Me and Mama and Christy, we’ll all go and live there,” he said. “And my daddy can just sit in his own shit.”
Hearing Jason talk about Christy reminded me of Beef and Gwennie. Roy used to hit Beef an awful lot. He stopped when Beef got big enough to punch him back, but Beef would always have scars to remind him of his daddy’s love.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone what was going on?” I asked Jason. “Like a teacher, or someone at church?”
His jaw twitched, and I felt like I’d let him down. After all, I was no stranger to sad-sack sob stories. Heck, I had one of my own, and did I tell anyone? When your life was messed up, you didn’t want anyone to know.
“Never mind,” I said. “Sorry.”
He was quiet for a bit, and then he said, “Sometimes he’d break stuff around the house. One time, he punched the microwave, and glass shattered everywhere. You’d think they’d make the doors out of safety glass, wouldn’t you?”
“Or that people wouldn’t go punching them,” I said.
“Or that. Right.” He shook his head. “Another time, he punched a hole in the wall. Christy’d be crying and Mama’d be crying, and you know what I’d do?”
“What?”
“I’d wait till my dad stormed out, and then I’d get out the Spackle and fix the wall. I’d sand it down. Repaint it if it needed it.” He made a disgusted sound. “Nothing I could do about the microwave.”
“We don’t even have a microwave,” I told him.
He glanced at me. “Neither do we.”
He told me how his mama slept with her wallet under her pillow and the keys to her car in her underwear, so his dad couldn’t take what little she had. He told me she’d beg his dad to get help, and he’d deny up and down that he had a problem.
I wanted to say, again, how sorry I was. Instead, I reached out and rubbed the top of his shoulder. I felt him relax into it, and my hand crept up to his neck and worked away at the knots I felt there.
“That feels good,” he said, like he’d been holding a great big sack of groceries and I’d taken it from him. Like my fingers rubbing out his sore spots gave him that much relief.
“Might as well tell you, he’s not just a drunk,” he said with a sideways glance.
“I kinda figured,” I said.
“Remember how I said my sister-in-law’s a tweaker? And my cousin? Well, so is my dad.”
“Why?” I said. “I just don’t get why would anyone use a drug like that, knowing it would ruin your life? Why would you even try a drug like that?”
“Because it wipes you clean and fills you up again,” Jason said. “Whatever you don’t have in here