Yesterday afternoon John and I ran by my Mom's house. John had a homework assignment to interview a grandparent about what things were like when the grandparent was a kid, so we were taking care of that. We visited with my mom for a little while, then got ready to leave.
My brother Jack was in the garage, sitting amidst the random assortment of roadside castoffs he's accumulated over the past three years or so.
(About three years ago Jack left town. I can't remember if he disappeared or if he announced his departure, but he was gone and supposed to be gone for a good long time. My Mom asked me to come over and clean all crap out to the street. It was very satisfying, even though it was 90% loose change, .22 ammunition and human teeth. Those teeth belonged to Jack. When a tooth gave him too much trouble he'd take a pair of vise grips and pull the tooth out. For fun, I think. He has dentures now. Also, he's not quite 50 yet. His collection of crap is much, much larger now than it was three years ago.)
"Hey, little brother," he said, "I need a ride to go get my phone. I left it at my buddy's house."
(Two notes here: One, Jack always calls me little brother. I don't like it, but if I told him that he'd double down on it for sure. He was called Little Jack for years, until his dad died, and for years after that. He probably thinks the "little" designation is nice. Two, Jack never asks for a ride. He tells you he needs one. He knows one of the prime rules of being a mooch: never present your begging as a choice. Make it a foregone conclusion for the person you're asking, and then its harder to say no.)
"And where's that?" I asked. You always ask where with Jack, or you could find yourself driving to Forrest City when you need to get your kid home for dinner. But the buddy lived about ten minutes from my house, so I said okay.
"You still datin' Gretchen?" he asked. I told him I was.
"Awww," he said, "I was gonna set you up on a blind date with my ol' gal's friend. She's about 27, 28...she'd whoop you in to shape!"
I declined, and noted that she probably wouldn't be able to stand me if I was in any better shape, anyway.
"Aw hell, you might whip her into shape, then!"
Then he tells me the buddy whose house we're going to is in the Klan.
"The Klan?" I say.
"The Klan," Jack confirms, he's got the hood and the robe and everything. He told me one time the cops were in his house [why the cops were in his house was not explained, but its hardly a surprise, right?] and they started taking pictures of his robes and he called the chief of police and said if anything came outta that he'd sue 'em 'cause this is America and he can have whatever clothes he wants in his own house."
We pulled up to the townhouse apartments where the buddy lives. Over his patio is a large rebel flag, which you can see from the service road when the wind blows just right and flutters it out.
Jack got out of the truck to get his phone.
"Daddy," John said, "do you think Uncle Jack is kind of crazy sometimes?"
"Yes," I told him, "but we love him anyway. We have to. He's family."
Jack came out of the apartment, phone in hand. He stopped just outside the gate, turned around, and proceeded to piss on his buddy's fence.
"Shit," he said when he got back in the truck, "my back teeth was floatin'."
Jack went to court recently, and my sister went with him. She told me it had worked out well and that the charges would be dismissed because another trial was going to run too long.
"So I heard your last trip to court went pretty good..." I prompted him.
"Not that good," he said, "you remember that double murder in West Memphis last year?" I remembered that it happened, but not the specifics or anything. "Well," he continued," that old boy wudn't supposed to take a plea bargain or anything, so they were gonna have a full jury trial and my charge was gonna get kicked out 'cause it's been too long. But my lawyer called me the next day and said old boy took a plea deal, five years for each murder, out of prison in twenty months. Anybody'd take that shit. So I had to go in and I got five years non-supervised probation. I get picked up for anything, DUI, public intox, I'm going to the pen for the rest of the five years."
He shook his head and sighed like a man considering a difficult job. "I don't know about that. I just don't know."
"I might be moving to Florida," he said right before we got back to my Mom's house. "A buddy of mine, his family owns a company in Fort Myers, they could put me and him both to work, make some money."
I think my brother would fit right in in Florida.
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