Highway Games
By Clay Waters

The last day I saw any of them was the day Aunt Sara sent me home early. Dad let me in the house with a crazy look and got red and angry when I told him about Aunt Sara telling me she couldn't sit me anymore and to go back home. He screamed into the phone at Sara and then he folded his arms and made me leave the room. He hung up and started talking low and nice and a little shaky on the phone to someone and then came out and said to me, you'll just have to come along, then.

Jason was sitting in front of the TV but it wasn't on and his lips were swollen up too big for him to talk. His skin was kind of elephant gray, like meat in the fridge too long. He smelled like the fridge too, a dried-out wilted smell.

So I'm in the back seat of the Ford and Jason is in the trunk. Dad said Jason's in the trunk because he's sick and he doesn't want me sick too. Jason's my big brother and he's nice to me.

Usually on the trips the trunk is where the paper bags go. Then we go meet the men and on the way back Jason counts the money in the white envelope that the men gave him.

After he counts it he crawls in the backseat and we play the highway game, counting license plates. Once I saw a Hawaii on my side of the car. I didn't know what it was but Jason knew it was Hawaii because of the rainbow. He gave it to me anyway.

Sometimes Jason took his shirt off and I'd have to scratch his back and flakes of skin would stick to my fingernails. I had to watch out and not scratch where he played with the pins because it hurt him too bad. I asked him what the holes were and Daddy said in a low angry voice that's where all of Brace's stuff ends up going. I don't understand that.

I had no games to play so I made one up I called Dodge. There was a bug on the windshield and I moved my head back and forth to make it Dodge between the yellow lines on the highway. I did that until I got dizzy and it wasn't much fun without Jason there.

Daddy was knocking his head against the steering wheel while he was driving but it wasn't funny so I didn't laugh. I didn't want to play games anyway. I wanted to go home.

The car wound up some hills until we got to a big house perched on the edge of a hill, like it might fall over. A black woman with a funny black bow on her head showed us behind the gate where grownups stood eating and drinking next to a blue rectangle-shaped pool. Dad went inside and left me alone with the adults. They looked at me carefully like they were afraid of tripping over me. Then they started messing my hair up with their hands.

"And who's this little boy? What's your name, young man?"

"It must be David. Brace's little boy. Must be."

"I thought he was older than that."

"Brace says he's retarded. Speak nice and slow."

They were stupid. "I'm not retarded!" I yelled. Some of the women thought that was funny and one spooned cake into my mouth. Icing clung to the spoon and it went down my chin and spilled off. I spat some up and they laughed. "You like living up here on the hill? I guess it must be fun." A man in a cap shook my hand. "How's it going little man. Your pop's a fine man. Tell'm Leroy said so, you hear?" I coughed up some more to be funny.

The glass door clattered open and a man came out, sweaty and dressed up in a tie knotted in a tough nut of a knot. "Laugh at his puke all you want. He ain't kin to me. He's kin to the troublemaker. Lisa, why don't you clean up his mess up off my patio, you like him so much."

Everyone backed away and left the woman in the green dress alone. She got on her knees and started scraping up my vomit with a paper plate and napkin. I laughed at that but no one else did. When she got up she had a hole in her stockings at the knee.

I saw a cake with cherries on it and pointed. "Can I have some cake, please?" But no one heard. I tugged on the woman's green dress so she could see me and she slapped my hand away. "Go away, you little bastard," she hissed, softly, like Dad does when someone's knocking at the door.

The man put his big toe with a yellowed petrified toenail in the water. "A little nippy." He looked at me like he recognized me suddenly and said, "Don't worry son, he don't know a thing."

Louder he said, "Now, y'all enjoy the food and stuff. Just so you know where it comes from. That's all I ask. By the way, dessert's in the freezer. Just desserts." Mr. Brace threw his head back and laughed like he was trying to swallow his own head. "David! Roll it out."

Brace threw the glass door wide. Brace and a big blond boy and two bigger men wheeled out a huge silver deep freeze onto the concrete. They were having trouble. "Dorgan, why don't you and Richard get the sides so it doesn't spill. Sit it down right there. That'll be fine."

Everyone was quiet as Brace strolled up to the big white deep freezer and pulled up on the thick silver handle, a cold smoky chill escaping out. I imagined it stacked with boxes and boxes of strawberry ice-cream. "Come on, Russell. Be a man." Russell was Daddy's name.

Daddy came up and put his hand on the handle, not like he wanted to but like he had to. He pulled it and Jason's head popped up out of the freezer. They dragged Jason out. Jason was tied up so he looked like a turkey tied up in string. "Jason's in the freezer!" I laughed but then I felt sick. Jason's arms and legs were shivering but his face was slack.

"A woman retched green stuff on the patio. "Carson, get your silly wife out of here." A man took a woman roughly by the arm while she wiped green dribble off her chin. I went over and the throwup had run into the pebbly gravel and looked like a green jellybean jello desert.

I came up to see Jason. Now he wasn't shivering or doing much of anything. His eyes were white like raw shiny eggs after Easter, with the colored center parts peeled off. A woman's hand shoved me away and then they stuffed his head back down into the freezer and lugged it out. Daddy was leaving too, with the big man.

When I cried for him he turned back and his face was gray and slack, like Jason's. I ran and Brace stuck his hand out into my chest. "Stay back, son. Your dad and brother are going away." Over his shoulder he hollered, "see that Jason and Russell get to the gravel pit safe and sound."

No one ate and the food sat there. I nibbled a cookie and no one stopped me. I spit it out. I didn't feel like eating. Brace put his fingers in a bowl and squeezed some skinny red candy fish. The big blond boy sat with his elbows on his knees on the chair next to Brace, looking over from me to him, like he was waiting for Brace to throw some candy fish in his mouth. Brace reached over and with his big hand turned the boy's head toward the pool. "You just stay the hell away from the kid David. Go on back inside." Brace sounded sad, not angry. David left.

The sun went down and Jason was gone a long time. Others started leaving. A thin blond lady was talking to Brace and looking over at me. I went in the corner and whispered secrets to a red berry bush, as if Jason was on the other side. I told him what a stupid party this was. Then I went and started kicking at the back of Brace's chair, where the folds of his flesh stuck out.

"Where's Jason!" I screamed, but he kept talking to the thin blond lady and a man with his arm around the blond lady. She had a long nose and she smelled like fake flowers. She came up and wiped my face and said "Stop crying and we'll get you a nice soft ice cream cone on the way home."

They were trying to trade Jason for ice cream because they still thought I was retarded and wouldn't know.

We got into a strange car and went down the road in the dark. "Stop here Gordon. I bet he'll stop crying. Please. Pleeze. Be nice."

The man's hand on the wheel softened. They stopped at McDonald's and the nice woman got me a soft ice cream cone. "Please don't spill it, Ned."

"Get it all over my car and I'll tear your hide up."

"Gordon, be nice. He won't spill it. He's a good boy. Not like your double-crossing liar brother," she said in a baby voice. "What do you think of Joseph? That's a good name."

I didn't say anything, just sucked the top of the swirly cone. "You've got ice cream on your nose, silly." She wiped it off. "Always wanted a cute little boy."

"Are you my aunt?"

"No. We're your long-lost cousins, though. We live in the woods. We come into town on weekends, when Daddy makes his haul. Did you ever make a haul with your brother and Daddy?"

"When Aunt Sara's sick I do. Where's Jason and my daddy?"

"Don't worry about them, Joseph."

"I'm Ned."

"Ok, then," the woman sighed tiredly. "Be Ned."

I thought of my animals at home waiting for me on the bed where I'd put them in the morning before going to Aunt Sara's. "I left my school books at home."

She looked at the man. He looked like he wanted to spit tobacco. "I don't think you'll need your books," she turned back and told me.

"What kind of kid bawls about school books? What have we gotten into here?" The man had a voice that was always rising up. She quickly took the man's hand, to clamp it back down calm. "Gordon, be nice."

To me she whispered "I graduated with a teaching degree, honey. I've already got plans to make the kitchen table a nice little study area. You won't be left behind."

The stupid people thought I wanted my books but I was thinking about my room, gray and quiet with Pooh Dog and Rex sitting on the bed waiting for me, all alone.

In the oncoming headlights the man's face was a jutting shadow, purse-lipped. The woman reached back and put her arm on my face and brushed at it with her knuckle and it wasn't alright but a little better.

I squinted out in the dark, above the red taillights, into the sky, blank and purple as a jewel. I laid back and looked at the sky out the window like always, but tonight the sky seemed like just empty space between the stars.

We passed a house where farmers lived. Rows of corn stood silent around the house, the tops touched with blue light. Then I could see the house clear and the low TV light in the windows. I thought about me and Jason back in our house, bathed in the TV's warm blue light.

At bedtime we'd turn it off and wait quietly until all that was left was the ghostly white blue glow. Jason said the TV waves kept going through space, even after the house and light and everything else were gone. There was a star near the top of the sky hanging all alone and I thought, that's where Jason is now. But I knew that was just pretend.

We were far away now, under tall trees, beyond waves, with no light but the angry red light from off the back of the car. It lit up the signposts as they passed. Over and over they shrank into the dark, lit up red like signs in hell.