If Jack's in Love by Stephen Wetta

Gaylord came to rescue the silly fool.
    â€œDid you get it at Mr. Gladstein’s?”
    â€œKeep it in your pocket, no one will know.”
    â€œLeave me alone, Jack. What you’re doing isn’t right.”
    â€œWhat am I doing wrong?”
    â€œYou’re a Witcher, I’m a Joyner.”
    I couldn’t believe she would put it so baldly. Of course, it was exactly what I believed. In the depths of my being I subscribed to the same class distinctions she did. It’s just I got no advantage by believing in them.
    With nothing else to lose, I shoved in to get a kiss. And she slapped me.
    She put her hand to her mouth.
    She started crying and ran off.
    I went on home.
    An hour later the electric company shut off our power.
    That night I slept in torrid darkness. The big window fan in our dining room was unable to blow. There were no lights in the house, and the candles only made it hotter. Outside my window I heard the voices of Pop and Snead, unnaturally loud. They were drinking beer, smoking cigarettes.
    I kept waking up hot and thirsty, half expecting a glow at the window, and the sound of flames flapping in the night as they consumed a cross raised by Mr. Pudding.

10
    ON MONDAY, Pop went downtown to pay the bill so our lights would be turned back on. (He was supposed to have paid it the day he visited his bookie.) Even then he had to get the money from Mom, having gambled his own away.
    It’s a curious thing about Pop, when he had a job he was a dependable worker, regular as a clock, never took a sick day. It’s only when he lost work that he suffered his moral collapses. Once that happened he couldn’t motivate himself to do anything. It was as though he regarded his time off as a deserved vacation.
    My mother had spent most of her adult years raising kids. Until the previous year she had babysat a few brats from her old Lakeside neighborhood, but now that I was old enough to look after myself there was no reason my parents shouldn’t both work full-time. The real challenge facing our family was Pop’s rehabilitation.
    All day Sunday she paced about the hot house moaning and wringing her hands. “What are we going to do? All the food in the icebox has spoiled.”
    I was behind her, wringing my hands in accompaniment. Pop said I was a worrywart just like her.
    I decided to go to the wooded area off Clark Lane, where my brother had taken me the day we met Anya. The brackishness of the creek and the brambles along the way tended to discourage recreational visitation, which made it unlikely my solitude would be violated by beer or tobacco delinquents. I wanted to be by myself so I could think about why Myra had slapped me.
    When I left the yard Pop was lying in a chaise lounge beside the house, deprived of the electricity that might have allowed a little Chuck Berry to go with his beer. Mom was still inside, pacing through the rooms.
    As I was cutting off the road to go into the trees, Dickie Pudding rode up on his bicycle. My heart sank.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œDown there.”
    I pointed into the woods.
    He kicked his stand down and followed me through the foliage.
    We were thirty feet in when I smelled marijuana and stopped in my tracks. “Let’s go back,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s that smell?”
    â€œLet’s go back.”
    â€œWait, there’s someone by the creek.”
    â€œDickie!”
    I gestured frantically. I used hand signals to indicate the perils of approaching strangers in the woods. But Dickie was determined. He took a half-squatting position behind some fern leaves. “Come here,” he whispered, “it’s some guy with a girl! Jesus, they don’t have their clothes on!”
    I took off for the street. Dickie came behind me, giggling and calling. “Witcher, come on, you have to see!”
    I stood by his bicycle. He joined me.
    â€œIt’s your brother. He’s got a girl with him and