“I know it’s not, like, a gourmet spread or whatever, but it’s food.” He separated the four sandwiches into two piles, pointing at each pile in turn. “These are turkey, Dijon, and swiss, and these are ham and sharp cheddar with mayo.”
He sat down and patted the blanket next to him, reached behind himself and shoved open the sliding glass window so the soft strains of a country song floated in, a woman’s voice singing about gunpowder and lead. I hesitated for a long moment, and then sat down next to him, taking one of the turkey sandwiches.
After we’d both eaten half our sandwich, he set his down on his lap and met my eyes. “Listen, Beck. It’s my thing to deal with, okay? Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“I just don’t understand. Why don’t you tell someone?”
His green eyes filled with hurt and anger. “Won’t do any good. Tried once, and it only caused problems, not just for me, but for everyone who found out. It’s not worth it. As soon as I graduate in two years, I’m gone, and I’m not coming back. I’m gonna play football at either MSU, U of M, or Nebraska, and then I’ll go pro. I won’t ever need shit from my old man.”
“I-I-I…ugh.” I took a deep breath and focused. “I don’t know what to say, Jason. It’s wrong.”
“Nothing to say. Nothing to say, nothing to do.” His voice grew intense. “You’re the only person except Kyle who knows, okay? You can’t say anything, Becca. Promise me. Promise me!”
My head was spinning, my heart aching for the boy I was growing to like very, very much. “Jason…someone should know. He can’t do that to you. He’s your father, for f**k’s sake. He should protect you, not hurt you! It’s a-a-aw-aw-awful.” I felt rage rising up like bile in my throat, images whirling in my head, images of Jason in a corner, cringing away from a shadowy giant with huge fists.
“Does your dad protect you?”
“He’s overprotecting and overzealous,” I said, not sure why I was defending my father when I spent so much time vilifying him in my own head. “He’s unreasoning and hard-headed and stubborn and pushes me to rebellion with his ridiculous rules. But he loves me, in his own way. He’d never hurt me. He just wants me to be the best that I can be. He’s overcompensating because of all the trouble Ben gets in.”
“And my dad has a world of anger and demons hidden away in his soul.” Jason’s voice was surprisingly soft, his words poetic. “He got injured playing his first pro game, and it ended his career. The only thing he ever wanted to do was play pro ball, and he couldn’t anymore. He had to go crawling back to his parents here in Michigan, and his dad was worse on him than Dad is on me. He ended up joining the police force and moved up pretty fast, but then the Gulf War happened and he saw his chance to be something. He joined the Army and did two tours in Iraq. He was a grunt with no college degree or training. He saw some heavy shit, Becca. Some really awful shit. He did some really awful shit, all on Uncle Sam’s orders. It…scarred him, on the inside. He has his reasons, too, is my point. Doesn’t make it okay.”
I was silent for a long time, listening to a different song on the radio and watching the salt-sprinkle of stars across the black-cloth sky. “How do you know so much about what your dad went through?”
Jason answered around a mouthful of chip. “He drinks a lot. When he’s had enough, sometimes he talks to me instead of laying into me. Tells me stories like I was one of his buddies from his unit.” He swallowed and stared up at the sky. “I hate those stories. Rather get hit.”
I shivered then, as a gust of wind blew and cut through my sweater. Jason planted his palms on the lip of the truck bed and hefted himself out to the ground, leaned into the truck, and snagged his sweatshirt. I watched him hesitate, then grab his camera bag. He jumped back into the bed, climbing on the rear tire, and tucked his sweatshirt around my shoulders. It was heavy, warm, and smelled exactly like Jason.
He lifted the camera bag and then glanced at me, a smirk on his face. “You wanted to see a photograph I took?” I nodded eagerly. “Then you gotta trade me. I’ll show you one of my photos if you show me something you wrote.”
I swallowed hard. “That’s—that’s…I’m not sure. I’ve never showed anyone my writing. No one. It’s my journal.”
Jason nodded, gesturing with the bag. “That’s how my photos are for me. They’re private. Only for me, because I enjoy it. No one even knows I do it, not even Kyle. It’s like a journal for me, too. I’m no good with words, so I use pictures instead.”
“Why would you keep something like that a secret?” I asked. “It’s not like it’s embarrassing. It’s cool. It’s artistic.”
His face darkened. “You don’t know my dad. I told you, he’s not a nice guy. For one thing, I’m only allowed to do schoolwork and football. Working out, homework, practice, that’s it. He’s drunk or passed out now, so he doesn’t care what I do or where I am as long as I don’t get arrested and make a big spectacle or some shit. He’s the captain of the police force, so I have to be careful. He won’t bail me out, won’t get me off the hook. He’ll kick the shit out of me if I ever so much as get stopped by one of his men. They’re scared of him, too, so they won’t dare go against him, either.”
“What’s that got to do with photography? It’s just pictures.”
He unwrapped the second ham sandwich and another can of Coke. “Well, that’s the second part. Anything that even remotely smacks of art is for fags. His word, not mine. On top of being a plain mean-ass drunk, he’s a bigot. Hates pretty much anyone who’s not him. If he even knew I had a camera, he’d put me in the f**kin’ hospital. Musical instrument? No way. Painting? Hell no. I love taking photos, though. I love capturing something in the lens and making something else totally different from it.”
He opened his bag and lifted the camera from it, turned it on, and touched a few buttons so the display showed his previously taken photos. He scrolled through them a ways, then turned it to me.
I took the camera gingerly, afraid of handling something that was so important to him, and so hideously expensive. The photograph he’d shown me was breathtaking. It was of a bumblebee, taken in the act of the bee landing on a daisy. It was from up close, so close you could see the wings blurring and the individual hairs on the fat yellow and black body. The sunlight was refracted off the insect’s bulbous, multi-faceted eyes, the daisy sharp and bright yellow, the sky a blue blur beyond. It was like something out of National Geographic, stunning in its clarity and focus and use of color. The bumblebee looked like an alien creature, made mammoth and impossible.