Call Me Home by Megan Kruse Page B

weren’t thinking of sex? All of the things that had marked him in Tulalip, in Portland, evaporated. It seemed like no one saw. Then there was Don, he thought. Don saw or he didn’t. Jackson looked around for him but he couldn’t see him. Josh, the crew leader on the north side, was holding up a pen, one of those naked lady pens, and laughing loudly. Jackson laughed loudly, too, slapped his own skinny leg – A broad! And her top falls off! Was it really this simple? Men and their simple wants. Josh turned the pen and the woman’s top slid down again.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Jackson saw Don climb the steps to the open house, knocking his boots against the doorframe. Don was wearing a red sweater that pulled against his stomach, his round shoulders hunched forward. He was carrying a case of beer and smoking a cigarette.
    Don didn’t look at him. He gave a wide, encompassing smile to the room, and Jackson concentrated on an open fifth of Early Times. He took a long drink, and then another. One of the guys slapped him on the back. “Good man!” he said, knocking his own bottle against Jackson’s.
    â€œThere was this one crew that I worked on,” Jay was saying, “and I worked with this guy, his name was Cliff, and he had this freakish strength. I mean you don’t mess with him, he’ll kill you, he’s got a full-blown psychopathic streak. And he’s working withthis kid, seventeen years old, who’s trying to prove himself.” The other men, Bill and Don, and someone Jackson hadn’t met, nodded. “And the kid starts lipping off from a sixteen-foot scaffold, and Cliff grabs him by the throat, dangles him over the edge, says ‘I’ll fucking kill you.’ And the kid says something smart and Cliff grabs him and throws him off and he broke his fucking ankle.” Jay looked around, waiting. “You don’t lip off at Cliff.”
    â€œSo when the kid’s ankle heals he comes back to work. It’s hot again, a hundred degrees, and we’re doing a roof on the barn, and it’s hotter than hell up there. I mean, you can fry an egg. The kid finds a barn swallow nest and knocks it down. They’re baby swallows and he just smashes them, and then he puts their bloody, crappy bodies in Cliff’s water jug. He wants to show Cliff, you see. It’s really fucking hot, three in the afternoon, and Cliff picks up the water jug and it reeks, and he opens it up and its full of dead birds.” Jay opened his mouth wide and laughed.
    Jackson glanced up quickly and Don was looking at him, smiling a little. He felt immediately grateful. It was the worst party he’d been to since he’d gone to one of the cross-country parties three years ago, where everyone had eaten pasta and talked about shin splints. In fact, this might be worse, Jackson thought, but at the same time he was enjoying it, watching the men, deciding who was good and who was bad, who was liked and who wasn’t. Then men stood around the card table, putting their dirty hands into the chip bowls. A small group had gathered at the window and was looking out at the lake, talking about the eventual town, the new Silver. The rest slumped around, leaning against the raw wood walls. He kept thinking about the kid with his broken ankle. And those poor smashed birds. He drank the terrible whiskey as quickly as he could and hung around another young guy named Greg, listening to him talk about a band he was starting. There was some question about whether or not Jackson could play bass, which he couldn’t. Finally, someone brought up the Longhorn.
    The trip to the Longhorn was made in several pickups. Jackson found himself in the back of Bill McPhee’s Toyota with two ofthe contractors, both drunk. He was drunk, too. He lit a cigarette and realized too late that the windows were closed; he kept smoking it. His father had done that, smoked with all the windows rolled