Page 39 - WTP VOl. X #3

red, a spidery purple vein appeared on his temple, some of his moustache bristles seemed to stick out from the pressure, and the wisp atop his head began to wave in distress. Then he gasped an endless lung- ful of air, inhaling till it looked like he would burst, and Jason laughed. With the same cross-eyed, blow- cheeked expression he commenced a jaunty and precise tune, high above the staff, dancing around an untraceable melody before unexpectedly swing- ing up out of it to land in the midst of a new tune—
station displayed.
“Did you enjoy your time with Cousin Andy?” Jason’s mother turned to the back seat, smiling brightly, with tired eyes.
“Yeah,” said Jason, with faint energy. “He taught me how to play poker, and gave me a book, and played great trumpet...”
“Was that him playing? I thought it sounded...” “He was only second chair in his band, though.”
“Well, that’s okay. If you’re ever as good as Cousin Andy, that’s good. Even if you’re not first chair.”
“He showed me a picture of himself when he was younger.”
She didn’t let her smile waver.
“What sort of picture?”
“From high school. He was holding a tennis racket.”
He looked aimlessly out the window and she knew that he had told her something. She was afraid—lest the stub she touched ran deep, sharp against an artery—but her fingers itched and her joints felt queasy, and she had to pull.
“Jason,” she said, “he didn’t... show you anything else, did he?”
Jason felt a faint stirring, the rustling of leaves and a strange bird on the horizon—
“Like what?” he said.
“Like anything—you’d want to tell me about.”
The strange bird was gone. In the silence, he saw his mother’s fear. He felt hot, and his pulse filled his
ears: then a dragon of disgust swept up through him, and he nearly dived behind her seat. She thought he. Cousin Andy and him. His knobbly hands—he was disgusted, and he thought of milk cartons and felt sick at those movies he had seen in school, about ‘touch’ and ‘show’ and ‘little boy’ and ‘older men’, and haunted, hollow eyes, strange smiles, breath, hair, skin, fleshy faces, moustaches, mouths, bowling-ball bellies, wiry ankle hairs, knobbly knuckles, searching fingers, and,
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“W
sitting still, to set a table for two in her head, but the dish- es had kept sliding around.”
this one sliding... sinking down... down, all the way down to the lowest note Jason had ever heard. Andy held that note out and out, and Jason laughed again. He offered Jason the trumpet, but Jason shook his head. So instead, Andy drew a deck of cards from his breast pocket and taught Jason how to play five card draw.
IX.
It was dark and quiet on the car ride to church. Only the engine straining and easing, a ticking turn signal, and the squeak of wipers deployed to smear the particulate mist into arcs on the windshield. Jason drowsed in the headlights and shadows; a small panel of windowlight on his mother’s temple length- ened, moved into some recess; was gone. His father turned on the radio, then turned it low before the
hen she was a kid
she had tried, once,
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