Dirty Faces - Book 2

Chapter 18: Words Unsaid

 Chapter 18: Words Unsaid   

        “I know you want something,” said Kody, without looking away from the newspaper he’d already read several times that week. “So why don’t you just go ahead and say what it is?”

            Across the kitchen table, Jack laid down the sports section he hadn't been reading at all. He got up and walked to the doorway to be sure everyone else was far enough away that they couldn’t hear his request. “Well?” Kody asked, now looking at him expectantly.

            Jack pulled up a chair and leaned in close to his cousin. “I need a ride,” he said quietly. “Across the mountain.”

            Kody turned his attention back to the newspaper. “Who can I expect to be taking to the movie with you?”

            “Nobody. Just me.”

            Kody kept to the newspaper but said, “Well if I’m driving you there, I may as well see the movie, too. Going alone sounds kinda sad, don’t ya think?”

            “I don’t need a ride to the movie.”

            “Then where?”

            “Can’t tell ya.”

            “Then no.”

            Jack pursed his lips. “I’ll tell you when we get close. Can’t you just trust me?”

            It was a stupid question and the way Kody looked at him when he said it reminded him of such. Kody folded the paper and laid it on the table. “You can’t tell me because you know if you do, I won’t take you.”

            “You always were the smart one.”

            Kody shook his head. “No. I don’t like the sound of this. Find some other way to get where you need to go.”

            “Come on, man. I never ask you to do me any favors.”

            “I do you plenty of favors.”

            “But I’ve never asked.”

            It was true. If not for Kody, he would have never made it past the little school house in town. And if not for his tight lip, nobody would have had any interest in knowing Jack because it would have been all too apparent that Aunt Virgie’s madness had been hereditary. And he probably would have suffered many more black eyes at the fist of a scorned love had Kody ever spilled any of his knowledge. Moreover, there would not have been any scorned loves at all if not for Kody’s help with chores when he needed it; Jack would have been stuck on that damn farm with no time to be gallivanting about town with the schoolgirl of his choice. But it was also true that he had never, not even once, asked Kody to do any of those things.

            Kody seemed to be turning it over in his head. He let out a deep sigh  then asked, “How long will it take?”

            “I don’t know.”

*****

  Jack really hadn’t said much of anything since they’d left the house, so if Kody had ever thought that he wasn’t up to something (which, of course, he hadn’t), he surely knew better now. That mouth ran faster than this truck with the pedal to the metal. Once in a while, out the corner of his eye, Kody would catch him fidgeting with the starched collar on his church shirt, but that was the most action he could detect.