Jesse's Law

Companion to The Boys of the Gallery

Chapter Two

"Hey, Mama?”

Mrs. DePradts was listening to her records when Jesse knocked on the door to her bedroom. The sound stopped abruptly and she unlocked the door, pulling it open a crack.

“What?” she asked dully, sneering at her son.

Ignoring her spiteful tone, Jesse leaned against the doorframe and said, “Eddie’s going out of town this Sunday. Janis was wondering if I could stay at the shop with her ‘til he gets back. That alright?”

“Do you even need to ask me, Jesse?”

Pleasantly surprised, Jesse laughed, “I just wanted to make sure it was alright with you.”

It was obvious by the face she made that he had misinterpreted her words. “You are not staying in a married woman’s house while her husband’s away!” she howled, throwing the door open and backing Jesse out into the hallway. “For being so damn smart, Jesse, you sure are dumb. Now you get up to your room and go to bed – you gotta get up for church tomorrow and Gena’s sick. She wants you to pick Teddy up in the morning, and he’s gonna stay with us tomorrow night. Now you go by Janis’s place tomorrow after church, and you tell her you’re sorry, but you thought it over and decided it wouldn’t be proper to stay the night with her.”

Jesse shrugged. “She’s just afraid to be alone there…What if I take Teddy with me? I’ll just bring him home when I come back, or Aunt Gena can pick him up herself, if she likes.”

Mrs. DePradts grimaced. With a long sigh, she said, “Alright. But you better be staying in separate rooms. And if I hear otherwise—”

“I know, Mama,” Jesse sighed, putting up his left hand, the other over his heart in a sarcastic ‘scout’s honor’.

---

In the morning, as promised, Jesse came to pick Teddy up at 8:00. Gena was curled up on their couch in front of the television, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Jesse understood why when she started coughing; she shook uncontrollably, a deafening hack ripping itself from her throat.

Concernedly, Jesse leaned down, his hand awkwardly on her back, brows creased. “Aunt Gena, are sure you’re alright?”

With a dismissive wave, she replied, “Just a cold, Jesse. I get ‘em every year, and this one’s no different. Thanks for taking Teddy to church. Now, your mama phoned and told me that ya’ll was staying with Janis?”

Jesse nodded.

“Well, listen, I don’t mind nearly as much as your mama does – she’s real hung up on what’s proper and what’s not. But I just don’t want you getting into any trouble. That negro she’s shacked up with ain’t a little man, Jesse, and you know how those people are. If he catches you—”

“We gotta go or we’re gonna be late,” Jesse interrupted. “And don’t you worry, now; ain’t nothing gonna happen with me and Janis. And if it does, I sure as hell ain’t gonna let Eddie know.”

Gena laughed raucously, slapping Jesse on the back. Sick or not, she was still uncommonly strong; Jesse, about half her size, winced and tried not to let his knees buckle under the blow.

In his nicest Sunday clothes, Teddy was waiting on the porch waiting when he got out.

“Hey, Steve,” he said, as determined as ever to call Jesse by his middle name as many times as possible in a single conversation.

Jesse ignored him and started the car, pulling away from the house before Teddy’s door was all the way shut.

“Uncle Jack says you’re going to college,” the boy blurted after a few seconds of silence (obviously, he was desperate to fill them).

“Yep,” Jesse replied, speeding down the narrow road to town, breathing a sigh of relief when it seemed as if Teddy had nothing more to say. Of course, this was an illusion; Teddy always had something to say, even if it wasn’t relevant or made very little sense.

Or if it was an annoying question.

“Why are you going to college?”

Evenly, without taking his eyes off the road, Jesse answered, “’Cause I hate this town.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it’s full of hicks.”

“What’s a hick?”

“You know Dalton and Corydon?”

Teddy nodded; they were his cousins, a pair of brothers that used to babysit him.

“They’re hicks.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re named after confederate civil war victories.”

“Oh…”

Teddy seemed to ponder this for most of the ride into town, a twenty minute journey, their house being halfway between town and the plantation, before finally giving up and watching the acid-green waters by the side of the road gradually fade into abandoned farmland, covered in a thick blanket of kudzu.

Jesse remembered when he was eight; the kudzu had started creeping into the indigo fields, and, by the second cutting, had killed half the crop. His father, uncles, and older cousins had spent the whole day cutting it down and surrounding the perimeter of the infested field with gravel, about three feet on either side, and then set fire to the kudzu. The blaze was huge, and he could remember his mother crying in the kitchen, sure that her house, her garden, everything that she had loved would be burnt to the ground. But finally, in the early hours of morning, the flames had died down to glowing embers.

When he first woke up, he had thought, however illogically, that it was snowing; the entire plantation was shrouded in a thin dusting of light grey ash. It took weeks to clean, but by spring, the house, the yard, and the fields were no longer an overgrown jungle, and the crops were as bountiful as ever.

But kudzu isn’t like other weeds; its seeds can stay in the soil for years before they germinate, and, in a show of divine irony, the kudzu reappeared the summer after Mr. DePratds’ death, devouring the trees again, and two of the fields. Jesse’s cousins weren’t forced to burn it again – sales had dropped so much that it didn’t matter anymore, as long as they had a small crop.

The landscape slowly tamed; the kudzu fields replaced by neat rows of sugarcane and cotton, along with the odd patch of feed-grains. Farther back from the road, wire fences kept in a few cows and horses. Then the first signs of town began to appear – a deserted gas station, it's prices about ten years out of date, and another, with a few cars parked in the lot, other families on their way to church. He thought he spotted his uncle Jack's car among them, his mother and his aunt Norma in the back seat, so he accelerated past, pretending not to see them.

When they pulled into the parking lot of the chapel, an ugly, new building on the town's main street, only a few other cars were there. Jesse popped an eight-track into the truck's player, reclining easily back in his seat and lighting a cigarette.

“Can I have one?” Teddy asked, eager as always to be like his cousin.

“Teddy, you are eight years old!” Jesse laughed. “Maybe when you’re sixteen.”

Teddy pouted, but didn't press the matter. Instead, he leaned back in a perfect imitation of Jesse's stance and said loftily, “I'm gonna go to college.”

With a soft smile and a roll of his eyes, he took a long draw off of his cigarette. “Like hell you are.”

When the service was over, Jesse pulled Teddy bodily out to the car before any of the relatives had the chance to ensnare them in a lengthy conversation about the weather or eternal damnation.

“What about Sunday School?” he protested.

Jesse shook his head. “We ain't got the time. I wanna see Eddie off. Besides, as long as you don't tell nobody, you ain't gotta go.”

He shot his older cousin an admiring look and turned up the volume on the radio.

---

“Jesse!”

Having spent most of his life traveling the country, Eddie had lost his native accent, but a tinge of it still flavored his rich voice as he laughed, throwing his arms around the younger man.

“How've you been, huh? Haven't seen you in weeks.”

“Just fine Eddie,” Jesse laughed, shooting Janis a smirk over her husband's shoulder. “You ain't been around lately.”

“Yeah, yeah...you know, business stuff – but mostly running around town for Janis. She always keeps me busy. You'd think she was having an affair.”

“Well,” said Jesse – without so much as a nervous laugh, to Janis's surprise, “I'll keep an eye on her for ya. Make sure she ain't got a man coming in here.”

Eddie laughed heartily, tilting his head toward Teddy. “Who's this?”

“Well, dammit, Teddy,” Jesse chuckled. “Now he knows you're Janis's new man. He won't let you stay now.”

Teddy made a face. “Uuuuugggghhh!”

“Nice to meet you, Teddy,” Eddie said with a laugh. Then, to Janis, “I have to go. I'll see you Thursday.”

They kissed, a little disinterestedly on Janis's end, and Eddie slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped through the door, giving one last little wave through the glass before walking away.

---

“Don’t ya’ll say grace here?” Teddy asked incredulously as the others began eating – it wasn’t much, just Janis’s homemade spaghetti, and Jesse only picked at it politely.

Janis laughed. “I’m a grown up,” she said. “My mom doesn’t make me say grace anymore.” Then, to Jesse, she said, “I’m going to make you clean your plate, though, Jess. You know I had a hamster once who ate more than you?”

“Yeah?” he challenged, sticking his fork into a meatball. “What was its name?”

“Fluffy,” she shot back. Then, leaning in close to Teddy, she said, “He thought I was making it up; he didn’t expect me to know its name.”

Teddy giggled as Jesse glared at Janis, shoving the meatball into his mouth and chewing loudly. “Happy?” he asked.

“You’re such a kid, Jess,” she teased.

---

“I don’t wanna go to bed!”

Jesse picked the boy up, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him into the spare bedroom at the back of the apartment. “Too bad.”

Janis leaned in the doorway, giggling as Jesse shoved his struggling cousin under the blankets, pinning him under them with his forearms.

“Go to sleep. It’s past your bedtime.”

“Fine.”

Teddy stopped struggling.

Jesse sighed with relief, standing up again.

“That was eas—”

Before Jesse could finish his sentence, Teddy was up out of bed again. This time Jesse and Janis each grabbed an arm and a leg and held him down.

“No!” he shrieked, holding back a delighted laugh. “I’m not tired!”

They wrestled against each other, and after a few minutes, the boy began to lose some fight. Gradually, he fought less and less, until, exhausted, he fell genuinely limp, giggling weakly, breathlessly, as Jess turned out the light.

“Night, Teddy,” he said, closing the door behind him.

When they reached the end of the hall, he stopped uncertainly outside the door to Janis’s bedroom.

“What?” she asked, turning around in the doorway and grabbing his hand.

“I should probably go sleep on the couch, Janis, my Mama—”

“Don’t you ever get tired of living how your mother wants you to?” Janis asked. “Come on, Jess, you’re an adult. Stop acting like you’re gonna get a spanking if you don’t listen to everything she says.”

He shook his head. “If she finds out, she’ll kill me. You don’t gotta live with her – I do.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “If you need me, I’ll be in bed.” She leaned in close to his ear before continuing, “And I’m gonna be naked.”

With that she slammed the door in his face.

“Wha…?” he murmured, dazed. Then rolled his eyes. “Oh, goddammit.”

And followed her into the room.