Martin and John by Dale Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

zebra stripes of light and shadow on his body.
    I’M TRYING TO tell it the way he would: one minute he’s in a barn, a stranger picking at his face, the next he’s in a bed;the skin of his face tingles and a stiff bandage covers his eye. His shirt is gone. He smells, close by, soap, and farther away, food: toast, eggs, frying bacon. Then a big fussy woman dressed in a man’s work clothes enters the room with a platter. “Here now,” she says. “I’m Bea. Don’t try to talk yet. Just eat, and I’ll be back for the tray in a bit.” I think I know how he felt: I remember waking in the hospital, and the first thing I saw with my uncovered eye was an ugly shirt patterned with blue flowers. I tried to remove it, wondering vaguely where my T-shirt was, but my eye started to hurt and I became tired. When I awoke the second time, I remember, the hospital gown seemed familiar.
    THE KITCHEN TABLE and a coffee cup separated my father from me. Dressed for work in stained jeans and a T-shirt distended over his stomach, he held his coffee at arm’s length. “You just found him there?” he asked, addressing the cup. “Yeah. Squire was nosing around the ladder, so I checked it out.” He tapped his cup, and the coffee rippled with waves. “He say anything? His name, where he’s from, anything like that?” “Nothing.” The phone rang and my mother answered it. Then, pressing the receiver to her chest, she said, “It’s Mr. Johnson. He wants to know—” “Tell him I’m on my way,” my father said, and started for the door with his coffee. As my mother hung up, he told her, “We’ll discuss this more tonight. For now, just keep an eye on him. Andyou”—he pointed to me. “Finish your chores before you’re late for school, and don’t skip out on The Factory’s stall.” He stepped outside and the screen door banged shut. My mother was at the sink by that time; she stopped washing dishes for a moment and rested her weight on her elbows. Pausing on the top step, my father looked into his cup. “Squire was sniffing around there, huh?” “Yeah.” He sipped from his cup. “Damn good dog,” he said, and then he walked to his truck, climbed in, and drove away.
    When my father entered the house that evening, the screen door announced his arrival just as it had his departure, and his voice was like a second slam. “Bea!” he hollered. Drying her hands on her pants, my mother bustled in from the bathroom. I slipped in behind her. I’d eaten earlier and had no reason to be in the kitchen, but the door’s sound reeled me in like a fish. “Quiet,” my mother said. “You’ll wake Martin.” My father grabbed a beer from the fridge and snapped it open. “Martin,” he said, his voice only slightly quieter. “John tell you his name?” “No, Martin did.” My mother set a plate at my father’s place and hastily arranged the silverware around it. “You get his last name?” my father said, sitting down and picking up his fork. “Just let me stir this up a little and it’ll be ready to go,” my mother said from the stove. She worked a spoon into the stew we’d eaten for dinner, then pulled four biscuits from the oven. “They got a little hard,” she said. “Sorry.” She ladled three huge dollops on my father’s plate and crowded the biscuits around. “He didn’t tell me hislast name.” My father harrumphed. “No one at the pool hall knew anything about a runaway or a lost kid,” he said, already eating. He stuffed his mouth, chewing only once or twice before swallowing. “You want something besides that?” my mother asked, wiping her dry hands on a towel. My father swigged his beer. “This is doing me just fine.” My mother pulled a glass from the cabinet, set it on the table, and emptied the can into it. It clinked as she tossed it with the other aluminum under the sink. “John honey,” she said, still bent over, facing the cabinet. “This box is almost full here. Are you going to empty it