Read Online Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel by Kim Heacox - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “He’s not a bad person,” Little Mac said. “He can be kind. He taught me to play the guitar and to sing harmony.”
    “Then why not run back to him, if you like him so much? Start a band, go on tour, have a baby.”
    Little Mac froze. Was it pain or anger Keb saw in her eyes? He sometimes wished she wouldn’t be so stoic. She was Milo Chen’s great-granddaughter all right, a little thing and a big thing all in one.
    Gracie wiped her hands on an apron, and James said he’d take a couple more waffles, “Not overdone like those last ones.”
    “You’ve had enough,” Gracie told him.
    “Just make ’em, Mom.”
    “You’ve had enough.”
    “I don’t fucking believe this.”
    Old Keb was on his feet in seconds, shame filling his heart. The boy looked at him with shock; Old Keb took his stare and turned it back on him. “Apologize,” he said.
    “What? What’s the big deal?” James blushed.
    Keb thought:
Better a red face than a black heart
. “Apologize to your mother.”
    “Jesus, Gramps. All I said was that I wanted a couple more waffles. What’s the big deal?”
    “Apologize.”
    James got to his feet and shoved his way past everybody and hobbled stiff-legged to the door. He turned flint-eyed to face them, tormented by anger and fear and the death of too many dreams.
    “Oh, James,” Gracie said, beginning to cry.
    He burst outside and slammed the door so hard it snapped a hinge.

first you need to learn the language
    A WEEK LATER, Keb found James holed up in Brad Freer’s windowless basement playing shoot-’em-up video games. The boys sat at computer monitors, each with a mouse in one hand and a beer in the other, eating Doritos, eyes rimmed red. Hip-hop pounded out the big speakers. The place reeked of marijuana. Beer cans everywhere. Computers plugged into the wall, and these guys plugged into the computers. Keb tried to focus. Brad looked as though he hadn’t been outside since the Ice Age. An Iraq War veteran, he was the worst commercial fisherman in Jinkaat, the guy who ate tuna from a can while his rust bucket troller,
Call Me Fishmael
, sat in the harbor leaking diesel. Near as Keb could tell, the sky was a dead thing to Brad. His jaw seemed to unhinge when Keb walked in with Little Mac and Kid Hugh. “What are you doing here?” Brad said.
    For days nobody had known James’s whereabouts. Gracie worried herself sick. The night before he showed up at Shelikof’s Pizza, where people said he and Tommy Gant got into a shouting match and nearly went at it before Stuart Ewing intervened.
    To give James a break and get him out of harm’s way, Robert the Coca-Cola man and his jabbermouth wife, Lorraine, had offered to take him on their cross-country drive to Atlanta. He could sit in the back with the poodle on Prozac and Infinity the cat, and play games with their son, Christopher. They planned to leave next week, and drink Coke all the way. Stay in four-star hotels. Maybe hit a roadside motel and have a big adventure, since Lorraine’s idea of wilderness camping was to go one night without cable TV. Their first stop would be Las Vegas, where they planned to attend the World Pet Expo. Dogs and cats on parade. Very exciting.
    Old Keb had another idea. He asked Brad to turn off the music. Brad ignored him, so Kid Hugh unplugged it. Still engrossed in his computer combat, James worked the mouse hard. “I need your help,” Keb said to him.
    James ignored him.
    Kid Hugh pushed Brad aside and unplugged the computer. Just like that, the make-believe world vanished. Only then did James look up, his face hangdog.
    “I need your help,” Keb said again.
    James took a long draw of beer. “What kind of help?”
    “You need to beat on something.”
    “What?”
    “You need to beat on something, work with your hands. But first we have some heavy lifting to do. I need you to put that beer away and come help me.”
    “Did Mom put you up to this?”
    “She told me you apologized to her. That’s