Dirty Faces - Book 2

Chapter 7: Dark and Quiet

Chapter 7: Dark and Quiet

Jack laid his daddy's old, felt hat down on the couch beside him. It didn't look especially good, but he liked it and had taken to wearing it quite a lot lately. The fire in the cookstove crackled, but it would be some time before it got warm in the little house. The chill, he supposed, was a fair enough trade-off for the quiet.

Every time his mama looked at him these past couple days, she would shake her head and say, “But I just don't understand, Jack. You know better than to stand where the mule can kick you.” Then she would look at his daddy and they would talk about how bad his eye looked and how they couldn't believe he'd let it happen. He would have thought up a better lie if he'd known his folks actually believed he had some sense. It would surely come out soon enough that Sally Tate had blacked that eye for him when she caught him kissing her sister behind the store. But for now, he would preserve his dignity for as long as he could possibly manage.

Here in Aunt Susan's empty house, though, it was quiet. Or as quiet as Jack knew, at least. The chattering in his head was always more noticeable when he was alone. Even if they weren't directly addressing him, it still sounded like a radio in another room, too low for him to make out but too loud to shut out. And never, ever able to shut off.

He eyed the radio. If he turned it up loud enough, he wouldn't notice them. But then it wouldn't be quiet, either, and what he wanted was peace and quiet. Before he'd gotten that black eye, the noise at home had been what it always was, except for during the summer: his mama and daddy nagging him about how he needed to do better in school and take it more seriously. It didn't make a lick of sense to him, though. He wasn't going to college like Kody, nor did he want to. Why would he subject himself to more hours sitting in a desk, listening to some teacher talk about what they thought he needed to know? All he needed to know was farming, and he already knew everything he needed to know about that.

It wasn't particularly appealing, either, farming. It had occupied too much of his time for as long as he could remember, but he supposed it was a better fate than life down in the mines. But there was still a third option. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the brochure he'd been careful not to let his mama find, ever since the day he picked it up in the front office at school.

He would be eighteen in the spring but he still had another year before he would be finished with high school, and that was only if he could bring his miserable grades up to passing before this school year was out. That was a whole year that could be spent doing something worth while in far more interesting places. He could learn to do something besides walk behind a plow or breathe coal dust, and maybe even do something to earn himself some awards and medals.

Jack thought hard as he looked at the young man in uniform- the soldier- on the front of the brochure. He looked confident, proud, respectable, like a man with an important purpose. Jack wanted to be like that fella looked.

The chatter inside his head began to build the more he considered this new possibility. They always seemed to think he valued their opinions. He sighed and rubbed his temples; he wasn't going to get any more thinking done this evening. Returning the brochure back to his coat pocket, he leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, he heard Ralph's truck and Lilly out front, and the little house was warm.

*****

“We're here,” Kody announced.

Adam had been awake for some time. Sleeping had become an impossibility with his head thudding against the window every time the truck hit a bump on those horrible mountain roads. The town didn't have many lights, but he imagined he hadn't missed much, and out here where his cousins lived was pitch black. From the headlights, he could make out the front door opening and a tall, behatted character emerging from it. The figure walked toward the truck, and even in the dark, the first thing Adam noticed was his impressive black eye and wondered just what kind of company his family kept.