By the time he’s turning onto Route 13, his hands have stopped shaking. He turns the music up loud. The stereo, even though it’s a cheap piece of crap—the only good thing about it is he can play music off his phone—is the nicest thing about the truck. Pulled it out of a totaled Subaru in the junkyard, ten bucks, though he’s still using the truck’s factory speakers. He mostly listens to alternative country, old Springsteen, Johnny Cash. His last girlfriend turned him on to upbeat indie folk music, and he listens to that when he’s in a good mood and wants something easy. Since they’ve started dating, Deanne has had him listening to pop music, and when Jewel’s in the truck, she makes him put on 103.7, WQNY, country top forty.
On the drive to Kirby’s, he’s got Eric Church’s Chief on shuffle. He likes Eric Church because Eric Church, particularly with his old stuff, has the right kind of beautiful rawness. The speakers in his truck rattle when he cranks it, but he wouldn’t upgrade things even if he could afford something better; the music is real to him this way. When he pulls into the parking lot, Church is singing about Springsteen and being seventeen, and Jessup, for the first time, understands that even though he can’t wait to get out of Cortaca, there will always be a piece of him left behind. He wonders how he can be nostalgic for a place he hasn’t departed.
Kirby’s is busy, though Jessup isn’t sure he’s ever been in the restaurant when it’s been slow. He ends up backing into a spot that opens up when a white Toyota hatchback pulls out. Thinks about bringing in the game ball but decides to leave it in the truck. It’s his. Not something he’s ready to share yet. But on his way in, he stops in the lobby and hits the ATM, takes out sixty dollars. He looks at the slip—seventy-six dollars and a few cents left in his account—and then crumples it in his hand and shoves it in his pocket. He puts twenty into his wallet, putting him at about forty-five bucks there, keeps the other forty in his hand. His sister, mother, and stepfather are waiting for him in a booth near the back. David John sees him first and pops to his feet. He’s grinning at Jessup like they share a secret, and David John grabs him and hugs him hard. Jessup remembers his stepfather as solid, and he still is—David John might as well be carved out of oak, clearly spent his time in jail keeping fit—but Jessup is startled to realize that he almost looms over his stepfather. He’s easily got fifty pounds on David John. If the two of them fought, Jessup would kick his ass.
“Mom wouldn’t let me order until you got here,” Jewel says. She’s bouncing on the seat, her hands pinned under her thighs like she’s afraid her arms will flap her away if they aren’t trapped. “Uncle Earl gave us some money, so we can order whatever we want. Mom said I can get a milkshake. Or should I get a malt?”
Jessup knows he should be grateful to David John’s brother. He’s seen his mom buying gas one or two gallons at a time, handfuls of quarters and nickels and dimes, returning cans and bottles so she can buy five bucks’ worth of gas so she can get to the next house she cleans, the wife apologizing because she forgot to leave a check the week before—oh, you know how it is with the kids, and everything can be so crazy when school is on holiday—but not really understanding that Jessup’s family needed that hundred dollars, that to go without that money meant they had to go, well, without. Taking Jewel to the thrift store every week until they come across a pair of snow boots that fit, his sister never once complaining about how her friends get everything new from Target or online from L.L.Bean. Sure, every time Earl gives his mom a few hundred dollars it’s a kind of salvation, but it feels . . . What? Capricious. It feels capricious, he thinks. That’s the word he’s looking for. The money unpredictable. What they really need is somebody to get his mom a new car, somebody to pay the utility bills, some regularity, a chance to plan ahead for once. And he can’t help but feel like there’s a catch with the money Earl offers. He’s never seen the hook at the end of the line, but he knows it’s there.