Page 9 of Possibly Texas

When Jack held a spoon out to me, I accepted it gratefully, and immediately dug into the bowl of chili before me. I didn’t care that it was the southside of Hell outdoors—I was starving and in an air-conditioned house. The chili would be great. As I shoveled the first spoonful into my mouth, Jack rose from the table again and got two more bowls out of the cabinet, along with serving utensils. When he came back to the table, I was scarfing down chili, so he took it upon himself to load a serving of the cucumber salad into a bowl and pass it to me.

Then he was up and filling a glass of water at the sink before setting it before me. When he finally sat down to enjoy his meal, I was tipping the glass back, swallowing the cool drink as quickly as I could. My stomach was begging me to fill it with everything. I could barely breathe since I was shoving food into my mouth and pouring water down my throat as quickly as I could. I hadn’t realized how thirsty and hungry I was. For several minutes, I shoveled food into my face—both the chili and the salad—and drained my glass of water.

Jack gestured at my empty bowls and glass when I was done and I was sitting there across from him, practically panting.

“Um, yeah.” I was embarrassed. “Can I have more?”

Jack nodded and gestured that I should help myself.

So, I got up from the table and went over to the stove to refill my chili bowl, and then I filled my glass at the tap. When I sat down across from him again, I didn’t dig into my food like a starving animal. I ate like a sensible human being.

Jack watched me throughout my quest to stuff myself, but once I slowed down, he let his spoon rest in his bowl and reached for his pen. I had just finished filling up my other bowl with more of the cucumber salad when he turned the notepad for me to look at it.

How is Margie?

“Fine,” I said. “I guess. She’s still being an actress. We were in Dallas this morning. That’s where we stayed last night. I guess she thought she had a lead on a job there, but as soon as we arrived yesterday, she made a call and found out it fell through.”

Jack began writing in his strange block letters again.

“When she said she had called you,” I continued without waiting for him to finish, “I figured she did that last night or something. Or in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, I guess? When she woke me up at butt-early-thirty this morning, she said she was going to drop me off to stay with you, and then she had to get to Vegas because she was going to be in a show. One of the casinos or something?”

Jack finally finished writing and turned the notepad to me.

She have a new boyfriend?

That question bothered me. I was staring at the block letters my stepfather had written on a notepad—a man my mother was still legally married to—and he was asking if she had a boyfriend. Of course, he knew my mother as well as I did. He didn’t even look hurt at having asked the question. It was just a question.

“She’s had a few,” I answered, picking at my salad and avoiding his eyes.

I saw Jack nod out of the corner of my eye. He set the notepad to the side and grabbed his spoon from his bowl. We ate the rest of our meal in silence. Not that silence was rare around Jack—but I didn’t try to fill it.

Jack didn’t touch the notepad again until we had finished lunch, cleaned up the plates and table, and put everything away. Once that was done, he went to the table and wrote down another question. This time he was slower, as if hesitant to write whatever he was going to write. Finally, he picked the notepad up off of the table and held it up to me.

Your last name still Burke?

Burke. That’s Jack’s last name. The same last name mine was changed to when I was a toddler and my mother had married Jack.

“I’m still Jordan Burke,” I answered.

Jack’s eyes lifted and he looked at me for a moment before nodding and setting the notepad back onto the kitchen table. He walked past me into the living room and sat down in the recliner heavily. Then he grabbed the remote off of the end table and flipped on the T.V. He looked over and gestured at the sofa, indicating that I should join him. I really wanted to just excuse myself to my room, but what else did I have going on? I shuffled over to the sofa and plopped down, pulling one leg up underneath me. Jack found a marathon of some old sitcom playing on a network channel and we watched in silence. The minutes turned into hours and we both found ourselves curled up on in our respective seats, not exactly uncomfortable with the silence, but not quite sure what to do with it, either. Jack didn’t fetch his notepad, and I didn’t really say much other than a random comment here and there about the show.

When night fell and bedtime crept closer, the sitcom marathon ended on the channel he had selected, so he flipped off the T.V. and reached into the air, stretching for the ceiling. Jack indicated that he was ready for bed and pointed at the stairs, letting me know he was planning to go up and turn in, so I just gave him a nod. Sleep sounded good. There was nothing else to do—and neither of us had ever indicated that we had been hungry for dinner when it rolled around, so bed was our best option. It’s not like we could have stayed up painting each other’s toenails and having a heart-to-heart.

Well, we could’ve, but Jack didn’t seem the type to be interested.

Jack went about making sure everything was in order and the lights were shut off as I made my way to the stairs. Before I got to the second-floor landing, he was ascending the stairs as well. As I was making my way up the second flight, Jack had made his way to the second floor, so I gave him a wave over the banister—which he returned—and rushed up the last few steps to my room. I didn’t bother turning on the light in my room. I shut the door and immediately stripped down, not caring that I hadn’t washed the sweat off of my body yet.

Over at the desk, I stood there in my boxers, and checked the glowing blue screen of my phone. No missed calls. No missed texts. I had intended to text Mom to let her know that I had arrived safely. But she hadn’t bothered to check on me. Pettiness got the best of me, and I decided that she could just worry about me until the next morning.

If she’s even worried.

When I crawled onto the bed, I knelt at the window and swung the drapes open, thinking that sleeping under the stars and moon would be nice. When the drapes were open, I finally realized that my bedroom faced Possibly, and I could see the whole town from my window. Although, at night, everything in town was closed. Not even a streetlight shone in the distance, just black tree-shaped blobs and boxy outlines of buildings met my eyes. If I squinted hard enough, I could make out the moon shining on the creek surface in the distance.

I had started to pull back the musty blanket so I could crawl into bed, but something caught my eye off in the distance. On the northeast side of town, along the river, my eyes landed on a large boxy black shape in the distance.

Is that the barn I saw earlier?

I watched through the window as what could only be described as laser beams emanated from the roof of the large building. My eyes grew wide with wonder, unsure of what was going on inside of the barn that would produce the colorful lights. Was it a dance club at night?