The cop left, locking the door behind him.
Jackson still had his hackles up, but I could tell he was relieved to see me.
“How you doing?” I asked. “They treating you okay?”
“Not exactly. Look how hard they cuffed me.” He held up his wrists. They were bruised.
That wouldn’t get him anywhere, but I sympathized. Sitting down across from him, I asked, “You tell them anything?”
“I told them to go fuck themselves,” he said. “Told them I wished I killed Karl, but I didn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Son, you got the right to remain silent, and that’s a right you ought to exercise. No more smart remarks, okay?”
“What are you,” he said. “My lawyer?”
“Well, they’ll tell you about getting a public defender tomorrow, in your Summary Court appearance. But I guess I am for now, if you want.”
He crossed his arms, cocked his head at me, and said, “I guess you got some experience. Maybe you’ll do.” His pose made me remember how I’d been at his age: a know-nothing kid trying manhood on for size, and picking the most awkward kind. Manhood of the defiant jackass variety, demanding respect that hadn’t been earned yet.
I decided to give it to him, to put him at ease. I smiled and said, “Well, I hope I satisfy. Let’s pretend I don’t know anything. Start from the beginning. What happened the night Karl died?”
“Aw, who the hell cares?” He shook his head, looking at the ceiling like he was mad at it, like this was all just a waste of time. He reminded me so much of Noah right then that I had to fight the urge to shake him by the shoulders and then give him a hug.
I said, “You got the chance to set the record straight.”
“Yeah?” he said. “He was a drunk, and he fell off a boat. He lived and he died. So what?”
“I’m not asking because I care about Karl,” I said. “I’m asking because nobody’s heard your story yet, and I want to make sure they do.”
“They ain’t gonna care.”
“Making them care is my job. All you got to do is tell me what happened.”
He sighed and looked at the door we both knew was locked.
Then he said, “The stupid thing is, that day started out good.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“I got a raise,” he said. “At the hardware store. Ten cents an hour. It ain’t much, but I never got a raise before. And it came with a gift card and some cookies that Cyrus’s wife baked for me.”
Cyrus was his boss. “That was mighty nice of her,” I said. “What kind?”
“Butter pecan.”
“Damn. I bet they were good.”
He nodded. “I ate a couple at work. Brought the rest home for my mom. I left them on the table and took a shower.” He stopped, shaking his head. “You ever had that happen, where one minute everything’s fine, but next thing you know, it’s all gone to shit?”
I nodded. “That what happened?”
“Soon as I turned off the water,” he said, “I heard them yelling. I know what he sounds like when he’s drunk. Or sounded like. I barely dried off, just got dressed and went in. The cookies were all over the floor, and he was in her face, and—” A flash of pain crossed his face. “And he was touching her. He was all over her, and she was about crawling across the counter to get away.”
The mental image disturbed me too, but not nearly as much as it did him. His eyes were wide and blank, like he couldn’t stop seeing it.
“So what happened next?”
“I pulled him off her. And he took a swing at me, but he was drunk. It didn’t even land.”
“Was he saying anything?”
“Aw, just hollering that she owed him fifty bucks. Something about how he bought her a tank of gas. He ran around the counter and got ahold of her again. I pulled him off and shoved him outside. You know she don’t have fifty bucks to spare. She’s still paying off the hospital for the time he broke my arm, when I was sixteen.”
I shook my head. “That’s a damn shame. I’m sorry you had to deal with him.”
“I’m sorry she did. She shouldn’t have to work double shifts all the time just because he’s a drunk. If he wants to spend money on drink, he should’ve sold that Mustang he was going around in. I saw him driving around with some woman.”
To get him back on track, I asked, “So, what exactly happened after you got Karl out the door?”
“Well, he didn’t leave. I didn’t want him driving drunk and killing nobody, so I went after him to say I could drive him wherever he was going. He was just setting on the porch swing yelling at me to bring him a beer. Said he didn’t need a ride, he’d walked from the marina and now he was thirsty.”
I felt like punching Karl myself, so I wasn’t surprised Jackson did. I asked, “You give him a drink?”
“Told him the hose was round the side of the house,” he said. “And he could drag his thirsty ass over and get it.” While I was laughing, he added, “That’s what made him turn on me.”
“That how you got the black eye?”
“No.” He was shaking his head, eyes blank again, like he was reliving it. “He, uh, he told me I should ask my mom about something. About the night they was at the Broke Spoke together.”
That was the local strip club.
“He said my mom got so drunk she crawled up on stage and showed her tits to half the men in town. And he said it wasn’t the first time most of them had seen them,
