The Deadsong Read Free Page A

" His voice grew into a nasally whine that made him sound like a begging child.
    A begging child, he was indeed.
     
    6
    “What’s it gonna be then, huh?” Martha Kemper paced up and down the linoleum with her eyes stuck out at her son. He reclined back in his chair looping a gold necklace around his index finger. He pointed it at his mother and twirled the chain like a hula-hoop.
    “Dammit, boy! Put that thing down and listen to what I’m a tellin you!” Her syllables tripped over one another, and then she tripped herself on the hem of her robe. Jared swallowed the laughter before it could escape. The gaudy getup she wore reminded him of wallpaper you might find in a sleazy motel out west, one where filthy all-night truckers paid by the hour to catch a few winks and push into a hooker’s meat curtains for a while.
    “I dunno, Ma, I’m not cut out for the service. We’ve talked about this already. I just don’t see myself doing it, that’s all. Coach McGraw says scouts will be looking at me this season, and I gotta be sharp, ya know? I could get a scholarship. A full ride, maybe. Why can’t you be happy about that?”
    Martha craned her head down. She looked as though the waxy skin would melt off her face at any moment. “Jared Galen Kemper, you disgrace your father’s name.”
    “Whoa, whoa, Ma––”
    “Your daddy served in the gulf, your granddaddy in Vietnam, your great-granddaddy in dubya dubya two––he got a Purple Heart. And the Congressional Medal of Honor after he was long gone. Mortar shell blew his bottom half clean off, but he never had a raw word to say about it. He sacrificed his life out of loyalty and patriotic love for this great nation, boy. He did it so his children and grandchildren would live proud and live free. So, show some RESPECT !”
    Jared stole a quick glance at the clock beside the fridge. He should have left for school twenty minutes ago.
    His mother got closer. Her stringy locks hung in her eyes, her breath rancid and sour. For the first time he noticed the tiny craters in his mother’s un-spackled face. Saliva webbed and snapped at the corners of her mouth. “Someday you’ll have children of your own, and they won’t have no respect for a coward or traitor. If you think throwing a ball around in padded tights will get you anywhere in this world, then by all means, Son, take that road, but––,” She held up a thin finger and shook it at him, “remember this: if you take the coward’s path, there ain’t gonna be a thing in this world that’ll wash that yella off your belly. I only pray the good Lord will show you mercy.”
    I hope he shows more mercy on you, Momma .
     
    7
    It started to sprits along Highway 7, but the sun was out in full bloom––a dose of liquid sunshine, his Momma would have said––with only with a single bruise-colored blotch of cotton candy clouds hugging the sky. The drive to Turd-en High , as he and his friends loved to call it, took under fifteen minutes without the usual school traffic.
    After parking next to the chain-link fence separating the student parking lot from the football field, Jared went inside and spent the next forty minutes in Pearson’s office. By the time he squeezed into Miss Webb’s literature class, he was sopped with sweat and had quietly buried a soul-singeing terror behind the mascot on his blue and gold t-shirt.
    Miss Webb shook a stub of white chalk at her class, obsessing about T.S. Eliot and his contributions to literary criticism. Standing just shy of five feet tall, she was a taut divorcee who spent most of her extracurricular hours logged into internet poker sites that promised little return if any, but that was just fine. She’d sit in her recliner cradling her laptop computer and watch her two Siamese kittens spat curiously at the dangling power cord.
    She approached Jared after noticing he was still standing by the front door of the classroom.
    “I’m glad you could join us, Mr. Kemper,” she