Here's part one of a new story--Delilah. After the positive responses from my last story, Beneath The Surface, come visit Jake's world ... for a while...
The sky was such an inviting blue he almost believed he could reach up
and put his hand in it. As he watched the clouds float by they seemed to tempt him to come away with them. Their gentle curves reminded him of Delilah
who was never far from his thoughts. He could all but feel her smooth roundness.
He wondered now whether he would get a chance to touch her tonight or even just
look at her.
“Jake! Dinner!”
The heavy voice of his step-dad calling from the house through the
screen of the open back door vanquished all thought of Delilah. Like a loud thunderclap
it brought him back to the field he was lying in behind the house.
Jake figured it was pretty close to dinner but he didn’t feel ready
to come in and leave the quiet of his thoughts and imagination. He wasn’t hungry.
But dinner wasn’t about to wait for him. Nor was Ray.
The letter had come. They didn’t like Rabbits. It wasn’t quite what the magazine was looking for. Jake
thought Rabbits was good—really good.
But now it didn’t matter. It was almost funny. When things didn’t go as he
thought they should his thoughts turned to Delilah. It seemed things didn’t go as
planned most of the time anymore. But when he touched Delilah, she had a way of
making what was wrong not feel so bad. Just gazing at her would make him feel
better.
“Get your skinny ass in here now!” Ray yelled. “Your mother has a
nice dinner all prepared.”
Jake knew that dinner would be mac and cheese and a cheeseburger
because that’s what ma always made, on the rare occasion, when she made dinner.
Jake looked back up at the sky as the clouds morphed into the heart-shaped
nose of a dragon. Its piercing eyes seemed to look inside him. A tongue stretched
out toward the ground like a walkway—a walkway to the sky; a stairway to heaven.
Then the eyes changed. Like Frosty’s dark eyes of coal they transformed into the
Grinch’s narrowing stare, eyebrows squeezed V-shaped, the green irises pushed
to the top of their sockets as the Grinch’s wide lips spread in a not-so-generous
grin.
“Jake, get your butt in here!”
Jake didn’t move; he squinted and watched as the dragon’s head became
the main mast and sail of a tall ship. His non-response to Ray’s command would set
the tone for dinner like the sail would set the ship’s course into the coming
tempest.
Delilah would have to wait until later.
“What were you doing back there?” his ma asked as he came to his
place at the kitchen table between his ma and Ray, perpendicular to the
invisible line that joined them.
“Nothin.”
Jake sat down, picked up his fork and stabbed a couple of cheesy noodles
from beside the cheeseburger on his plate. His ma knew how to make mac and
cheese like nobody’s business.
Looking at the noodles on the end of his fork made him think of his
dragon-in-the-sky’s inevitable slayer. Jake was no dragon slayer, more awed by the
dragon’s presence. The dragon slayer was near enough though sitting at the dinner table
right beside him.
“So, what was going on today?” Ray asked.
“Not much.”
“Did you go to work?”
“For a few hours. Mr. Whiteside sent us home early.”
“Early?”
“He didn’t have any more work after we finished mowing the lawn in
the morning. Told us to go home and enjoy our afternoon.”
“Wow,” Ray said, “that never happens to me. You ever think about gettin'
another job?”
“No, why?”
“To help yer mother pay for tuition for one.”
“Tuition?”
“College?”
Jake hesitated. He had no intention of going to college. He’d said
it a million times. But every time he said it, detonated another argument. Why
would he go to college and waste his and his ma’s money when all he wanted to
do was in his head and hands.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. It was an acknowledgement, not a signoff.
He looked down at his plate. The noodles were in disarray yet every
noodle looked the same. The melted cheese stuck them together. Ketchup made the
noodles look like guts splayed out on his plate. But it really wasn’t what Jake
thought guts looked like. Still not hungry, he picked up his burger and took a
bite. He didn’t feel like dressing it.
“Don’t you want anything on your burger?” his ma asked scrunching up
her face in feigned pain.
“Nah, I’m not feelin’ it.”
“What are you doing tonight?” his ma asked.
“I dunno.”
“What time do you start tomorrow?” Ray asked.
“Eight.”
“Supposed to rain tomorrow,” his ma added.
It hadn’t rained in days.
“You know yer mother is gonna to have a hard time payin’ yer tuition
for college,” Ray went on. “You know that don’t you?”
“She doesn’t have to,” Jake said. The topic was coming up like vomit.
He had no interest in even talking about it.
“What do you mean by that?” Ray asked holding a fork full of mac noodles
in front of his mouth. “You gonna suddenly strike it rich?”
“No, I’m taking a year off.”
“We’ve been through this Jake,” his ma said. “You take a year off and
you’ll never go back.”
“Go back! I don’t wanna go!” he shouted suddenly enraged. It was like
they thrived in making him angry. He set his fork down beside his plate and
stood up.
“Good night.”
***
Thus ends Part One. Parts two and three will follow in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet read The Actor or The Drive In you can get them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo or pretty much wherever you find books.
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