Jewel decides she wants to ride in the van with Jessup. She’s bouncing up and down in her seat, holding the football in both her hands. “Why did Dad take your truck? Where did he take your truck? What’s wrong with it?”
“Engine trouble,” he says, and that satisfies her, because now she’s talking about a video she saw that featured two dogs playing tug-of-war with a plastic bottle of soda.
“And then it exploded, and they both yelped and ran away. It was pretty funny. I’ll show it to you later.”
She gets quiet for a second. Crosses her arms, hugging the football, and looks out the window at the cut of the highway up the hill.
“You okay?” Jessup reaches out and pats her leg.
“Why does he have to work today? He just got home.”
“You know,” Jessup says. Because she does. She’s a good kid. Knows they’re broke, knows that having David John home and working again means things will change. A cell phone for Christmas. A better car for their mom. Mom not constantly worrying about the bills. Space to breathe.
“One of the girls at school a couple of weeks ago said we was on welfare.”
“Were,” Jessup says. “Use proper grammar.” It’s an instinctual correction, and it gives him a few seconds to think. He’s not a parent. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. “What did you say?”
“Duh. I said we weren’t.” She shrugs. “She’s a bitch.”
“Jewel!”
“Well, she is,” Jewel mutters. “I told Emily last week at church. She said . . .”
Emily is one of Jewel’s friends from the Blessed Church of the White America. She’s slept over a couple of times. Goes to school in Brooktown. In Jessup’s opinion, she’s a little shit. Talks back to their mom. He hasn’t met Emily’s parents, but the way his mom avoids the subject of Emily and has insisted that Jewel have Emily to their house instead of Jewel going there makes Jessup skeptical.
“What? Why did you trail off like that? What did Emily say?”
“She said that only niggers go on welfare.”
He squints at her. She’s watching. Testing. Waiting for his reaction.
“Don’t say that word.” Tries to keep his voice from sounding sharp. “We don’t use that word, okay?”
“Why did the cops come?” She’s calm. Possessed. Sometimes she’s a little kid, sometimes she might be forty.
“Nothing,” he says.
“If it was nothing, I wouldn’t have had to go to my room.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something, but it’s not me. A kid got drunk at a party last night and drove his car into a tree.”
“You shouldn’t drink and drive.”
“Oh really, little missy?” He takes his hand off the wheel to poke her in the side. “Is that a fact?”
She squirms and laughs. “Well, you shouldn’t. Did he die?”
He’s surprised, but he shouldn’t be. “Yeah.”
“What did the cops want with you, then?”
He takes the exit, waits for the light to turn green, and then turns left and then left again, into the mall parking lot, driving around the back to where the movie theater is. There’s a small snowbank at the edge of the lot where the plows made a pile, but the pavement is clean, the afternoon sunlight doing its job.
“I don’t know. Nothing,” he says. “We were at the same party and he wanted to fight me, but I didn’t fight him, didn’t do anything, but it was loud, so my name came up. That’s all. Cops are just doing what they do. Busybodies. Nothing to worry about.”
“Why can’t I say that word? Mom says it.”
Jessup is surprised again. “She does? No, she doesn’t. You know how David John is with our language.”
“I heard her say it to Uncle Earl.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Over the summer. They were talking about Ricky.”
He pulls the van into a space in front of the theater. The parking lot is sparsely attended, most of the cars there for the budget gym that’s across from the movie theater. It’s too early in November for Christmas shopping.
“Just don’t use that word, okay?”
“Why?”
“You’re better than that. That’s why.”