Littlejohn by Howard Owen Read Free Book Online Page B

two weeks, and he’d done that about a million times, I went to my room, got a sheet of notebook paper out, wrote JUSTIN on it in big red letters and taped it to my forehead. When I came back in the dining room, which is also where the TV is and where visitors sit in cold weather, he looked at me, kind of surprised, with his mouth open a little more than it normally is. Then he said, “Son, if youever live to be as old as me, you’ll be happy if you can just remember your own name.”
    He’s probably right. I mean, like I can’t believe his father fought in the Civil War. Trey’s great-great-great-grandfather fought in it, and I had to borrow Mom’s copy of this “history” that my great-grandmother wrote before Trey would believe it.
    Actually, my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather both fought in the Civil War. My great-great-grandfather was called Captain McCain, but the history said he wasn’t a real captain in anybody’s army until the Civil War, when they let him lead the home guard, which I guess was like the geezers and kids and crips. He was supposed to have led these jokers up to the federal arsenal in Port Campbell and demanded that the Union troops surrender, even though he had just a few old guys with hunting guns with him. According to the history, the lieutenant asked him, “Is that all the men you have brought to take my arsenal?” And my great-great-grandfather was supposed to have said, “The woods is full of them. The Geddie boys is everywhere.” And they surrendered! Of course, my mom said the guys in the arsenal were probably Southerners anyhow and couldn’t wait to surrender and join the other side.
    My great-grandfather, who was called Red John, had lost his leg in the real fighting. He came home and was in the home guard, too. They had this battle, right down in Old Geddie, where the black people live now, when Captain McCain and Red John and a bunch of other dumb shits tried to attack some Union army troops that were doing a little raping and pillaging on their way north. The history said a bunch of the home guard got killed, and the rest escaped overinto the Blue Sandhills, where they apparently hid until the Yankees finished burning down everything they could find, including the captain’s house. Smart move, guys.
    Anyway, Granddaddy gets in touch with the Carlsons, and then I come clean with him, except about the dope, because I don’t think Granddaddy can handle that, and he might search my things. But I tell him I flunked English, which is not a flash to him, since the Carlsons already told him, and my girlfriend will never be allowed to speak to me again, and my mom is going to marry a guy who’ll send me to military school for the rest of my life, and she doesn’t care anything about me, anyhow.
    He takes it all except the last part. He gets a little red in the face and starts reading me the riot act about how “ugly” I’m acting toward my mother, and about how hard it’s been for her, getting divorced and all, and about how most children—I guess he’s so old he still thinks of me as a child—would be happy to have a mother so smart and pretty.
    I get mad, too, and go to my room to start packing things, actually just throwing them into the backpack. I’m doing such a piss-poor job of it that half the stuff won’t fit. I storm out the front door like I know where I’m going, a couple of shirts and some underwear still back on the bed. The screen door makes that singing sound it always makes when somebody slams it hard. Granddaddy calls after me, but I’ve got to get out of there. I can get a job somewhere, sleep at the Y, whatever.
    I’m already on the paved road, headed back into East Geddie, when he pulls up alongside me in the pickup.
    “Come on and get in the truck, son,” he says. I keep walking. He keeps moving the truck up in jerks and starts,trying to talk to me. We must go down the road a couple of hundred yards like this. Two cars go by, and