Chapter 127
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1951
Elliott didn’t wait for Jimmy to get off of the school bus as he made his way down the sidewalk toward home, the other kids calling goodbye to him once they crossed into their yards. He knew his little brother was back there, and he’d just as soon have him far behind so that the little peon didn’t cramp his style. Having a first grader on your heels was no way to show everyone you were the coolest guy in school.
It didn’t really matter where Jimmy walked, though. Everyone knew Elliott was the most popular guy in sixth grade, maybe in the whole school. Where they used to make fun of him, now he was the one they all looked to for just about everything, especially to determine how to wear their clothes and their hair. He’d taken to slicking his back recently, the way he’d seen some of the high school kids do it, and the next day, half the boys in his class were wearing their hair the same way. He’d patched his jeans up with an older pair that didn’t fit anymore, and the rest of the boys had followed suit, even though most of them had had to make holes first before they could patch them. If there was a trend at school, Elliott was setting it. The kids loved him, the teachers thought he was the smartest, politest, most respectful young man in all of Oklahoma City, and no one at all suspected that his home life was a train wreck, and he was slowly dying inside.
Once the rest of the kids were safe in their homes where mothers doted over them and fathers would be home soon to practice playing catch or invite them out to the garage to tinker with the car, Elliott’s countenance changed and he slowed his pace so that Jimmy could catch up, no longer a threat to his coolness.
“How was your day, Jimbo?” he asked as the rail thin boy loped up beside him. While Elliott wasn’t quite as stout as he used to be before he hit another growth spurt that year, he was still a big boy. His mother said it was because he was eating her out from under the roof, and she didn’t know how she was going to continue to feed them if he didn’t slow down, but since she hadn’t had a job in the entire time he’d been alive, he knew there was no risk of that. As long as the lady from the food pantry continued to feel sorry for him, and the girls from school kept bringing the food like lemmings, not even wondering how he managed to forget his lunchbox every single day of the week, he was confident there was no chance of him losing any of his girth soon. Jimmy, on the other hand, had always been a bit sickly and never cared much to eat—which Elliott was okay with since it meant more for him.
“My day was okay,” Jimmy replied. “I had to sit out at recess for a few minutes, though.”
“Sit out?” Elliott repeated. “How come?”
“Cause I forgot my homework.”
“How’d you forget your homework?” Elliott shook his head. “We did it together. I asked you if you had it this morning.”
“I know. I forgot.”
Elliott tried not to sigh too loudly. His kid brother needed to learn some responsibility. “Well, I can’t fix that,” he said shoving him in the arm slightly, enough to make him cross his steps. “I can’t fix everything.” The last part was more to himself, a reminder that he wasn’t this kid’s parent, even though he felt like it most days.
They turned the corner, and Elliott stopped in his tracks. He saw his house up ahead—and there was a car parked in front of it. A nice one. From here, it looked like a Buick. It was long and shiny, in an apple red, and possibly new.
“Whose car is that?” Jimmy asked, stopping next to him.
“I have no idea,” Elliott managed. “But I want one.”
“Yeah, right,” Jimmy laughed. “You ain’t never gonna have a car that nice. Not in your whole damn life.”
“Don’t swear!” Elliott urged, popping him sharply in the chest, not enough to hurt, but enough to get his attention.
“Ouch!” Jimmy hollered anyway. “You ain’t my daddy. You swear all the time.”
Elliott didn’t bother to remind him that neither one of them had seen his daddy since he’d limped his way out of the house the same night Elliott had learned to make a bottle. “Come on.”
He picked up the pace, Jimmy struggling to keep up with him, and took the porch steps in one stride. If someone was here in a fancy car, something important was going on. He pulled open the screen door and pushed the front door open. Voices were coming from the kitchen, and he halted to figure out how many there were.
Jimmy pushed him aside to make it into the living room, and Elliott backhanded him. He heard his mother and another woman’s voice. Neither of them sounded particularly happy. As he shut the front door quietly, in hopes not to interrupt the conversation, he heard the deeper tones of a man.
Not picking up on his plan, Jimmy barged through the living room, into the kitchen. “Mom! Whose car is that?”
Elliott shook his head, thinking he should’ve warned the kid to be quiet. He stopped in the doorway, and Elliott heard the screech of chair legs on linoleum at the same time as his mother said, “Not now, Jimmy!” in her exhausted tone, the one she generally used to address them if she wasn’t angry enough to yell yet.
“Well, now, if it isn’t little Jimmy,” came the sound of a nice woman’s voice. “How was your day at school?”
The jovial tone of her voice had Elliott approaching the kitchen as well. He couldn’t remember ever having walked into this house and having an adult show any sort of interest in his day—or anything about him at all, for that matter.
“Good,” Jimmy said, walking toward the dining area. “I had a spelling test. I only got two wrong.”
“That’s remarkable,” the woman said.
Elliott stepped into the kitchen and surveyed the situation. The lady had dark hair, pulled up on top of her head in a bun. She wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt with a red neckerchief. She looked a little bit older than his mother, but there was something else about her face that truly caught his attention as a stark contrast to his mother: she was smiling.
