Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley by Ann Pancake Page A

softly inquire, “What’s wrong?”
    â€œNothing!” Nathan jammed another chunk of meat into his mouth.
    Uncle Bobby took him at his word.
    â€œMan. It’d sure be nice to have a nice homegrown tomato with this dinner.”
    Nathan’s jaws worked like an animal’s. Janie could hear the cartilage, the hinge. She lifted a forkful of lettuce, Thousand Island, and bacon bits to her lip, then set the fork back down.
    â€œMan, it’d be nice to have a nice fresh tomato. I just love homegrown tomatoes. Those store-bought tomatoes, they taste like plastic water. Huh, Janie? Huh?”
    â€œYeah,” she said. Nathan smashed his baked potato with the back of his fork.
    â€œThis dinner would be perfect with a tomato. A nice, fresh, red tomato.” Uncle Bobby demolished his food as he talked without choking on a word, his astounding skill at talking with his mouth full without anyone hearing the food, years of practice under her grandmother’s vigilant ear and eye. “I know where there’s a homegrown tomato, you know that, Nathan? You know that?”
    Nathan tore off half a piece of garlic bread and thrust it into his mouth. Janie could see clear back to his molars before he started chewing. Don’t talk to him, Uncle Bobby , she whispered in her head, leave him be .
    â€œThere’s a nice ripe tomato on one of your dad’s plants out back by the alley. I saw it when I was putting out the trash.”
    Uncle Bobby , and this time she just about said it out loud.
    â€œI’d sure like to have a tomato now, that would be nice.” Uncle Bobby looked at each of them in turn. “You know, if neither one ofyou all are gonna get it for me, I believe I’ll just go out there and pick that tomato myself.”
    In a single motion, Nathan rammed his chair away from the table and hurled his knife, the blade glancing off an antique bureau and dropping, mute, on the Oriental rug. “You can’t have that fucking tomato!”
    Uncle Bobby looked down and away. Nathan bolted onto his feet, wheeled, and slammed an open hand against the arch between the kitchen and dining room.
    â€œGoddammit!” he shouted. “Just get the fuck out of here!”
    Janie stood up. Uncle Bobby stayed down.
    â€œNot you! Him!”
    Uncle Bobby gazed shut-mouthed and blank-faced off to the side. A dog who didn’t do it. Upon Nathan’s command, Janie had started to sit back down, but she stopped halfway, her hands on the chair arms, her knees slightly bent, paralyzed by emotion. Frustration with Uncle Bobby for never knowing when to stop, and embarrassment for him, too, and shame. But more impassioned than those, the instinct to defend Uncle Bobby against Nathan and the line he had crossed. Nathan was not family, only family was allowed to raise their voices at Uncle Bobby, and when they did, they never screamed, they did not cuss, there were rules for reacting to Uncle Bobby annoyance. But in that moment, overriding even her outrage at the injustice committed against Uncle Bobby, Janie felt most primally the urgency to calm Nathan down.
    By now, of course, he’d blown himself up big, and this time he bellowed instead of screamed: “I said, get the fuck out of here!”
    Uncle Bobby scooted away from the table. As he walked out, his napkin dropped from his lap to the floor.
    Nathan flung himself into a living room chair, his heels on the seat, his knees pulled up to his face. Janie eased herself back down into herown chair. She looked at the torn food on her and Nathan’s plates. At Uncle Bobby’s almost empty one. After a few minutes, she started to clear the table.
    Nathan entered the kitchen behind her, placed his soft hand on her arm right above her elbow, and pulled her, not roughly, outside. The clouds strained towards storm, dusk greenish with it, and he led her, him still barefoot, to his Scout on the street.
    They’d just turned off