Page 26 - Leather Blues

14 Jack Fritscher

the open chest of the leather jacket with the heat rain of a
man. It was a new smell. As new as the leather. And he took
his first taste.
It was his time. His first of a thousand cumings.
He fell back into the damp lining of the leather jacket,
and for the first time that endless day he let out a low moan,
one that neither the beating by Russell nor his father had
wrenched from him. His was the low animal moan of plea-
sure. The welcome flesh-spoken groan of a boy who had met
the man in himself.
No one ever saw the leather jacket after that. He had
hidden it. And for the next two years, until he outgrew it,
that leather lay winter and summer in his bed between his
sheets and his hardening body.
Denny hadn’t thought of those days in years, and this
morning with his mother walking from her stove with a
steaming pot of boiled coffee, he knew the time was coming
to leave the house. For good.
“It’s his coffee,” his mother repeated.
“Then let him drown in it,” Den said. He scraped the
wooden chair back across the linoleum. “I’m leaving,” he
said. He didn’t know whether he meant for work or for good.
“Your father works overtime tonight,” she said. “But sup-
per will be at the same time.” She tried to kiss her departing
son. He raised his butch-stubbled jaw out of her reach. She
touched his tight waist instead.
“Take the bus,” she asked. “The motorcycle is so
dangerous.”
He said nothing.
“I worry about you so,” she said.
He walked out the screendoor. He lit a cigarette on the
back porch.
“And the neighbors,” she called after him.
“Yeah,” he said. She couldn’t hear him. “The fucking
neighbors.” He walked across the dew-wet grass to the garage.

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