Read Online Son of a Gun by Justin St. Germain - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Justin St. Germain
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After that, Tom wanted to be closer to his sister, so he moved to Tombstone, a town with ten bars and no grocery store, smack in the middle of the biggest drug-trafficking corridor in America. It was the worst place in the world for an addict.
He spent the ensuing years in and out of our house, in and out of jail. My mother used Uncle Tom as a fuckup bogeyman through my years of teenage rebellion, when I was getting high every morning before school and drinking shoplifted tequila in parking lots at lunch. She’d come into my room at night and sit on the edge of my bed and say she knew what I was doing and wished I would stop, because she couldn’t bear to see me turn out like Uncle Tom. I’d sometimes see my uncle at parties out in the desert, a figure on the far side of a fire, but we didn’t acknowledge or talk to each other; I guess we were ashamed. He acquired the nickname Cool Breeze among Tombstone’s slacker circles. Josh and I thought it was hilarious, but hearing it made Mom detonate.
The last time I’d seen Tom was after Ray moved in, a few months before I left home. I found my uncle sprawled across our yard-sale couch one day, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, his Mohawk grown out into a black shock of tangled hair, still asleep at noon. I knew when I saw him that he’d be stayingawhile—he always did—and I bitched and moaned a little about how long he spent in the bathroom, but otherwise I was OK with it. My first memory of my uncle is him telling me a dirty nursery rhyme, and since that moment I’d always liked him. But I made sure not to leave any cash lying around.
Ray didn’t like Tom staying with us, and he didn’t try to hide it. He rarely spoke to my uncle, and when Tom wasn’t in the room, he’d start complaining. Tom didn’t give a shit what Ray thought. He’d seen enough of my mother’s men come and go, and he’d outlasted all of them, so he wasn’t about to start kissing some cop’s ass. Their grudge seemed too strong to be new; I wondered whether Ray had ever arrested Tom, although neither of them mentioned meeting before.
My uncle volunteered to help around the house, to earn his keep, as he put it. Which was how I wound up spending an entire weekend that summer with Tom, building a barbed-wire fence around our property. One of us would hold the fence post, trying to keep it straight, while the other beat it into the ground with a driver. It was a shitty job. The dirt of southeastern Arizona is hard and dry and full of cement-like rock deposits called caliche. Whoever held the posts had the driver tolling like a church bell right in his ear, and whoever swung the driver had to lift twenty pounds of steel a dozen times a post. It was a long fence that crossed uneven ground; it took a lot of posts. After a few hours we were both half deaf and hungry and sick of earning our keep.
At lunchtime, Tom and I sat on rocks and ate sandwiches. I told him about my new girlfriend, with whom I’d been anticipating having reckless unprotected sex in my pickup truck that weekend until Mom had told me I had to build the fence. Tom listened to me gripe, but didn’t say where he would rather be. We finished our lunch but didn’t want to go back to work, so he started telling stories about his time in the army. I knewhe’d been in the military but had never heard him talk about it. I was thinking of enlisting myself—my high school counselor had said it was that or community college—so I listened as he told me about a night he’d spent sitting in a guard shack somewhere in Germany. Snow was falling all around him and he couldn’t see a thing, so he smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey from a flask until he fell asleep. He had a dream about enemies advancing through the snow. When he snapped awake, he thought he saw a person out there in the field.
Tom posed as if he were holding an invisible gun to his shoulder. “I’m fucking pointing my rifle and yelling at this dude, telling him I’m
He spent the ensuing years in and out of our house, in and out of jail. My mother used Uncle Tom as a fuckup bogeyman through my years of teenage rebellion, when I was getting high every morning before school and drinking shoplifted tequila in parking lots at lunch. She’d come into my room at night and sit on the edge of my bed and say she knew what I was doing and wished I would stop, because she couldn’t bear to see me turn out like Uncle Tom. I’d sometimes see my uncle at parties out in the desert, a figure on the far side of a fire, but we didn’t acknowledge or talk to each other; I guess we were ashamed. He acquired the nickname Cool Breeze among Tombstone’s slacker circles. Josh and I thought it was hilarious, but hearing it made Mom detonate.
The last time I’d seen Tom was after Ray moved in, a few months before I left home. I found my uncle sprawled across our yard-sale couch one day, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, his Mohawk grown out into a black shock of tangled hair, still asleep at noon. I knew when I saw him that he’d be stayingawhile—he always did—and I bitched and moaned a little about how long he spent in the bathroom, but otherwise I was OK with it. My first memory of my uncle is him telling me a dirty nursery rhyme, and since that moment I’d always liked him. But I made sure not to leave any cash lying around.
Ray didn’t like Tom staying with us, and he didn’t try to hide it. He rarely spoke to my uncle, and when Tom wasn’t in the room, he’d start complaining. Tom didn’t give a shit what Ray thought. He’d seen enough of my mother’s men come and go, and he’d outlasted all of them, so he wasn’t about to start kissing some cop’s ass. Their grudge seemed too strong to be new; I wondered whether Ray had ever arrested Tom, although neither of them mentioned meeting before.
My uncle volunteered to help around the house, to earn his keep, as he put it. Which was how I wound up spending an entire weekend that summer with Tom, building a barbed-wire fence around our property. One of us would hold the fence post, trying to keep it straight, while the other beat it into the ground with a driver. It was a shitty job. The dirt of southeastern Arizona is hard and dry and full of cement-like rock deposits called caliche. Whoever held the posts had the driver tolling like a church bell right in his ear, and whoever swung the driver had to lift twenty pounds of steel a dozen times a post. It was a long fence that crossed uneven ground; it took a lot of posts. After a few hours we were both half deaf and hungry and sick of earning our keep.
At lunchtime, Tom and I sat on rocks and ate sandwiches. I told him about my new girlfriend, with whom I’d been anticipating having reckless unprotected sex in my pickup truck that weekend until Mom had told me I had to build the fence. Tom listened to me gripe, but didn’t say where he would rather be. We finished our lunch but didn’t want to go back to work, so he started telling stories about his time in the army. I knewhe’d been in the military but had never heard him talk about it. I was thinking of enlisting myself—my high school counselor had said it was that or community college—so I listened as he told me about a night he’d spent sitting in a guard shack somewhere in Germany. Snow was falling all around him and he couldn’t see a thing, so he smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey from a flask until he fell asleep. He had a dream about enemies advancing through the snow. When he snapped awake, he thought he saw a person out there in the field.
Tom posed as if he were holding an invisible gun to his shoulder. “I’m fucking pointing my rifle and yelling at this dude, telling him I’m
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