Chapter 9
AMOR had already snuck into Jack’s house the following morning.
I didn’t even have to walk over to downtown Possibly to know that the song of the day was The Animals’ version of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.
When I tumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, still in my boxers, though I’d thrown a t-shirt on, the song was playing.
Jack wasn’t in the kitchen, but he’d left the radio on by the sink.
I ventured over to check it out and found a note next to the radio from Jack, telling me he’d be “out back” working on a “his project.”
Jack’s big, odd block letters looked like he was screaming.
I’d have to explain to him that, like texts or emails, he should turn off the All Caps.
The radio DJ was announcing that the song was going to play—again—as I was digging the carton of milk out of the fridge.
And I was diving into my first bowl of cereal by the time the song had started.
I sat through two rounds of the song, which was just long enough to eat my breakfast, then I washed up my dishes, got a drink of water, and turned the radio off.
With the sudden absence of the music, Jack’s house was quiet as a church.
There was no ticking of a clock up on a mantle.
No sound of a T.V. playing. No cars driving by on a freeway outside.
People weren’t down the hall raiding a vending machine.
The ice machine in the vending area wasn’t kicking off and on.
No sounds of kids screaming, laughing, and splashing in a pool in the courtyard.
It was so unlike my existence for the last decade.
It felt…lonely.
I wondered what Jack thought of the quiet. He couldn’t talk, but he could hear.
Did he ever feel lonely there on the edge of downtown Possibly?
What did he do with no one to talk to each day? I mean, there was no one to talk to him so he could write back responses. There probably weren’t that many people in Possibly who could do sign language, either.
Did Jack just hang around his house and do his wood-working, ignoring the world unless he needed his mail, his cigarettes, or groceries?
Standing in his kitchen and contemplating how quiet Jack’s life must have been, the lack of noise was suddenly deafening.
But also, overwhelming. I found myself dashing through the house, out through the screened-in porch, and into the yard, mildly panicked.
Jack stood from his position leaning over his table project, a carving tool in hand, as I barreled down the stairs.
My eyes were probably wide with panic, my breath was coming in gasps, and I was still in my pajamas. Jack probably thought I’d gone crazy.
He eyed me for a moment, then set his tool down on the table and turned both palms up and held them parallel to his chest, slightly moving them back and forth.
What? I knew that one.
“Nothing,” I said, suddenly very aware of how freaked out so much quiet had made me. “Just, uh, coming to see what you were up to, Jack.”
A moment passed before Jack made the “OK” sign, but his facial expression said, more or less, you’re a bit odd.
Jack started to pick up his tool, but he stopped long enough to pat his thighs, then point at me. I looked down.
Oh, yeah. I was in my boxers.
“Who’s gonna see me, Jack?” I asked. “There’s, like, seventeen people in this town, and they’re all dodging Wyatt’s bullets.”
As if he somehow heard me, Wyatt’s gun went off in the distance.
I both wanted to laugh and scream.
Jack shrugged. Fair enough, he seemed to mean, because he picked up his carving tool and went back to doing whatever he had been doing to the tabletop.
From what I could see just a few paces away, he was carving grooves—almost like tunnels—along the wood of the tabletop.
Twists and turns, running from one end to the other.
Why someone would pay for a table that had been gouged all to shit was beyond me, but that was Jack’s job.
He made and restored furniture. Whatever he thought was best.
Instead of standing there like a stalker, staring at Jack as he carved the table up, I found myself wanting to stretch my legs and shake off the rest of the sleep that clung to my brain.
Jack’s backyard was pretty much the field that surrounded house and a grove of trees several yards from the backdoor.
Basically, property that probably belonged to the City of Possibly, state or federal parks, but proximity to his house made it Jack’s backyard.
I found myself walking through the yard, back and forth, one side to the next, still in my bare feet.
So early in the summer, the grass was still green and lush, early morning dew clinging to it.
It was like walking on freshly cleaned carpet that hadn’t dried all the way.
A mist still clung to the ground of the wooded area behind Jack’s house, but I was sure once the sun rose more within the hour, it would burn away.
When walking around the backyard of Jack’s property didn’t seem to shake my feelings of being overwhelmed by the quiet of the house, I headed to the front yard.
Maybe a change of scenery, even so subtly, would help?
I paced back and forth in the yard, not caring that anyone might wander by and see me in my boxers.
Back and forth, my bare feet slid across the dewy early morning grass as I tried to calm myself down.
Being on the road for so long had turned me into someone who found silence unbearable.
I hadn’t lived anywhere so quiet in a long time.
There was always people’s voices or the sound of movement and life all around me all day long.
Even at night, while drifting off to sleep in a motel bed, I could hear life going on around me.
At Jack’s, even in the middle of the morning, it sounded like I was living in a tomb.
You’ve only been here, like, a day and a half, Jordan. Calm down. I thought to myself.
How could less than forty-eight hours unnerve me like it had?
Sure, sudden changes in people’s routines and lifestyles could kind of make them go nutty for a bit—but usually it took more than a day and a half to sink in and really get to them.
In fact, I had felt myself going crazy in the span of minutes just standing in Jack’s quiet kitchen.
Maybe I should have left the radio on? I thought to myself.
Maybe that would be the solution—leaving a radio or T.V.
on at all times. At least until I had adjusted to life around Jack’s place.
If I talked to Jack and explained that I was used to noise all of the time, he’d probably let me keep the radio in my room—or wherever I was in the house.
And if I wasn’t in the house, I’d just have to make sure I was with Jack.
Listening to him chip away at a wood-working project would keep my mind off of the quiet.
Just as the thought of how to solve my problem entered my head, I looked up as I was crossing the yard once again, and movement near the graveyard down the road caught my eye.
I paused, my toes wriggling in the slippery grass, wondering what could have possibly been moving in the graveyard to catch my eye.
I stood at the edge of the yard, squinting as I peered down the road.
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue was drifting on the morning breeze from downtown Possibly.
For a few moments, all I could see was the handful of trees and the headstones shadowed by their sprawling branches.
However, just as I was going to turn around and go talk to Jack about all of the quiet, I saw movement again.
A gasp nearly shot from my mouth as a dark figure moved out from under the shadows cast by the trees.
A person swathed in a black cloak, complete with hood, stepped out from under the tree, moving through the mist that hung in the graveyard like that at the back of Jack’s property.
I watched as the dark figure approached a headstone, their face shadowed by the hood over their head, and stopped to stare down at the stone monument.
No breath or sound escaped my lips as I stood rigid, watching the cloaked figure just stand there, staring down at the headstone.
My heart was thundering in my chest as the person stood still as death right there in the mist. My mouth felt like a desert and my palms were suddenly sweaty.
Then, as quickly as they had appeared from the shadows cast by the trees, they slipped back into the shadows and disappeared.
My heart felt like a hammer against my breastbone as I turned around, nearly slipping in the grass, and raced to the backyard.
Jack was still chiseling his patterns in the table when I slid to a stop at the other end of the wooden project.
“There’s some weirdo in the graveyard, Jack!” I gasped as I slammed my hands down on the table.
The jostling my slap created made Jack look up at me, annoyance suddenly etched all over his face. He dropped his tool and signed “what” again.
I took a deep breath. “Somebody,” I said, “in a black hooded cloak is in the graveyard! Acting like a freaking weirdo!”
With a roll of his eyes and a shrug of his shoulders, Jack reached for his tool again, brushing me off—which really pissed me off.
“Damnit, Jack!” I slapped the table again, which made him scowl at me. “Why is some weirdo in the graveyard this time of morning in a cloak looking like the Grim Reaper?”
Jack dropped his tool on the table, a resounding “clunk” filling the air.
He began patting at his pockets, first his shirt pocket, then his hip pockets, before his hands moved around to the seat of his pants.
Finally, he found what he was searching out.
He motioned me over impatiently and began flipping through the notepad as I was rounding the table.
I waited patiently for Jack to write his thought.
People have the right to mourn whenever they want, Jordan. His odd block letters had said.
“Nah.” I waved him off. “This person was a grade-A weirdo. They, like, appeared out of the shadows, then disappeared again. It. Was. Freaky.”
Jack scowled and began to write again.
“Oh, forget them.” I stopped him. “What about that Wyatt guy and his gun? Or the weirdo, uh, Levi Lee outside of the coffee shop? He pretends he’s invisible.
And Sofia? At the post office? She needs a Danielle Steele novel stat.
Grandy? I think his parents are inbred. Some guy is digging up Liberty Lane while the cops just watch, some guy keeps screaming this girl’s name and jumping off the bridge, and the radio plays one damn song all day long. This town is majorly weird, Jack.”
Jack held a finger up gruffly, his mouth twisted up in frustration, then began to write again. Once more, I had to wait for Jack to give me a response to my multiple questions. Or non-questions. They were really just observances. Finally, Jack was shoving the notepad in my face again.
Just because people are different than you doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them.
Jack waited for me to have enough time to read the paper, then he shoved it at me again, his way of saying I needed to read it again. A few moments later, he threw the notepad down on the table and glared at me. He reached up and wrapped both hands around his throat loosely as he scowled.
I felt like shit immediately.
“Jack,” I said, “man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that people who are, uh, different than me, uh, are weird. You know I didn’t mean anything by that.”
Jack’s hands fell from his throat and he snatched up his tool. His eyes went back to the table as he started to violently chip away at the tabletop. The scowl didn’t leave his face, but Jack was taking his anger out on the table instead of me.
“Jack,” I said, “come on, man. You know I didn’t—”
Jack stood up from working just long enough to wave me off.
Get out of here!
That’s what his waving arm told me. I didn’t need expertise in sign language to understand his intention.
I wanted to stand there and try to explain myself further to Jack so he wouldn’t think that I thought that he was weird, but I knew that would only make things worse.
The way his mouth was curled up in a scowl, the hurt in his eyes, I knew that I needed to walk away.
So, I did.
“Sorry, man,” I muttered as I walked towards the front yard once more.
The only sound that reached my ears was the scraping of Jack’s tool on the table and the sound of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue in the distance.
Back at the front yard, I risked a glance towards the graveyard again.
The mist was dissipating and no hooded figure was in sight.
So, I climbed the front steps to the house and let myself back inside.
My feet carried me on auto-pilot up the two flights of stairs to my room.
I grabbed my phone off of the desk on my way to the bed and fell onto it.
My room was already getting warm.
And I didn’t have any messages from my mom.
I opened the text messaging app to tap out a message to her.
Come get me! Jack already hates me. Why did you leave me here in this crazy place?
But I stopped myself. Mom wouldn’t turn around to pick me up. She had left me in Possibly because I was cramping her style anyway. She had offloaded me on Jack—my stepfather I hadn’t seen in a decade—because…I didn’t know why. Life had been okay on the road. Maybe not great; but it was okay.
I started to tap out a message again. Just to ask if she was okay.
There was no signal.
At least that made me feel a little less crappy.
Maybe Mom hadn’t messaged or called because my phone hadn’t been picking up a tower in the armpit of Texas? It wasn’t that she had already forgotten she had a son.