Read Online Turn Signal by Howard Owen - Free Book Online Page A

peaceful in her own bed, her eyes open and her head turned to one side as if she were still admiring the forsythias blooming outside the window.
    Jack gets off the floor, brushes the dust off his pants and shirt, and looks up. There’s a silver-dollar hole in the porch screen, jagged along the edges. He tries to guess the probable trajectory and figures Brady didn’t hurt anything else except perhaps an oak tree across the road.
    â€œWell,” he says, “I don’t suppose we have time to fix that before Mike and Sandy get here.”
    â€œPlease don’t tell them how it got there,” Brady begs him like a little kid. “Mike thinks I’m a big enough fuckup as it is.”
    And your point would be? Jack is thinking.
    â€œI guess we could tell them a woodpecker did a kamikaze into it,” he says at last. “Better put that gun up. Seriously, did you really think somebody was breaking in? And isn’t it just a little bit of a violation of your probation to be playing Rambo out here?”
    â€œWell, you never know,” Brady says, and looks away, out across the raggedy front yard. Jack is almost certain that he does know, that his son has been smoking dope, something he promised he wouldn’t do. His pupils seem to almost fill his eyes.
    â€œJesus, Brady. You knew we were going to be here at noon.” Jack looks at his watch: 11:40. “Let’s see if we can’t get some windows open in here. Air this place out. They’ve got somebody coming to look at the place at 2. You’ve got to get your ass out of here by then, too.”
    Brady beats him back to the bedroom and starts hurriedly and sloppily cleaning up. Jack doesn’t really even want to see what’s in there.
    He did such a piss-poor job of raising Brady. Ellen performed most of the parenting, and his guilt is only lessened by the knowledge that at least he did more than the boy’s mother, whom Brady calls Saint Carly, spitting afterward if he’s outside at the time. He’s seen her exactly once—one time too many—since his second birthday.
    The sense of how little he’s done for Brady reaches out and pulls Jack back whenever he starts to, as Brady puts it, “play daddy.” If he didn’t finish high school, or find a job he could stay with, or a wife, if he got messed up on drugs, well, whose fault was that?
    Jack looks at his son and sees a lot more of Carly and the Hamners than he does of him and his family. Brady is a little under six feet, with the wide, thick body of Carly’s brothers and the infectious smile, promising so much more than it can usually deliver, part of the charm that has kept him out of jail, off the streets and alive. So far.
    He started shaving his head when he was 18, and it works for him, with his good skin that tans so naturally like his mother’s did. He’s got a great cleft chin and a little diamond earring in his right ear. He’s done bit parts in a couple of movies they filmed in Richmond and had roles in a few area theater productions. The women seem to be crazy for him, although Jack sometimes wonders about his taste in them.
    Why the hell can’t you straighten your ass out? Jack always wants to ask him, and sometimes does. Mostly, though, he’s afraid of the answer, and he stays silent and useless.
    Mike and Sandy get there just after noon. They’ve come together in Mike’s Cherokee. Probably wanted to huddle first and get their story straight before taking on little brother, Jack figures.
    Mike’s been at Philip Morris for almost 30 years, a supervisor for the last 12. He’s hoping to retire in another three. He has Jack’s reddish, thinning hair, but he outweighs his younger brother by 30 pounds, and he smokes a pack a day. He doesn’t really look 11 years older. He isn’t so much well-preserved as soft, not fully validated despite his 59 years. He’s been on his own since