No, Jessup doesn’t remember what it was like before David John came along, and he doesn’t think much of it, either. It was what it was, and then David John and his mom got together, and then it was something different. And the different was good. David John didn’t drink and didn’t allow it in the house. He believed in hard work and discipline and Jesus Christ and family, and he taught both Jessup and Ricky what it meant to be a man. They helped him with cutting and stacking wood, with fixing up the house, went with him on plumbing jobs during school breaks and dug up sewage lines. Learned to work a shovel, a chainsaw, a splitting maul, learned to say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” and to make their beds and clear the dishes. David John was always patient, always willing to take the time to teach them how to do something properly. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right.” Taught Jessup how to get his pads on, got up early with both boys to run and train for football but told them they weren’t stepping on the field if their grades weren’t up.
“Can’t be lazy,” he’d say. “The world ain’t what it used to be. You need a college degree to get anywhere now, and they’ve got all kinds of quotas that you boys don’t fit into. You can’t just check a box and get into college. So study up unless you want to be working knee deep in crap your whole life like me.” Said it with a grin, but even though Ricky was set on following in his stepfather’s footsteps, Jessup liked school, and David John encouraged both of them. “You’re smart, but the world’s tilted against white boys like you nowadays. We live out here in the country in a trailer, and when they look at you, they’re thinking white trash. Teachers don’t expect much, so you’ve got to show them.”
After dinner, television off and sit at the kitchen table. David John and Ricky and Jessup working over math and English and anything else they’d brought home from school. Ricky needed the help and Jessup didn’t, but either way, David John was there at the table with the two boys. What he didn’t know, he learned, just so he could give Ricky a hand. No college, but that didn’t mean he was dumb. Mom cleaning up and taking care of baby Jewel. Nothing stronger than iced tea for her.
They went to church on the regular, too. That was something else that was new. David John’s brother a preacher. Ten minutes farther out of town, toward Brooktown. Two hundred wooded acres. A compound. “No trespassing” signs ringing the acreage. The church in an old barn that’d been fixed up.
Blessed Church of the White America.