Dirty Faces- Book 1

Chapter 9: Gone, Just Like That

Chapter 9: Gone, Just Like That

A little girl lay on the riverbank, a frightened little boy crouched over her. Her jet black hair was matted on the side of her head with bright red blood that ran over the slippery river rocks and continued on out to tint the muddy water. Her eyes were shut and she looked to be sleeping peacefully. It was quiet there on the river bank except for the sound of the water rushing over the rocks here and there. He shook her.

"Wake up," he said. But she didn't stir. He shook her again. "Julie, wake up," more panic in his voice than before. But she slept on. He shook her harder, more violently. "Wake up! Please wake up!" he cried, eliciting no response from her lifeless little form. He kept on, though, shaking her and beseeching her to awaken.

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!"

"Wake up! Jack, wake up!" came Kody's voice in a whispered hiss when he finally shook him awake. "You're gonna wake the whole house up."

Jack swallowed hard and looked around his little bedroom, then down at his cousin in his pallet on the floor. This was not the riverbank and he was not a little boy. "Thanks, man. Sorry about that."

"Yeah, no problem." Kody laid back down and turned his back toward him.

The familiar tossing and turning and thrashing and moaning and little whimpers that would ultimately progress to loud, frightened cries had alerted him that Jack was having one of those dreams. It had been a long time since he and Jack had last slept in the same room and he'd hoped those dreams had stopped by now but they obviously had not. Jack had been having them since he was six years old, when he'd found his twin sister who'd hit her head on a rock and drowned in knee- deep water.

Everybody- everybody- knew Jack wasn't right, but probably only Kody knew just how much so, knew that the confident, happy-go-lucky demeanor was a facade to a young man teetering on the brink of madness most days. There were places for people like Jack, he knew, but he didn't think he belonged there, nor did he want him to go, so he kept mum. Jack liked to think that he did a pretty good job of looking out for his smaller, weaker cousin, but Kody knew who was looking out for who.

He covered his head and tried hard to drift back off to sleep, all the while hoping that Ralph wouldn't stay longer than he had said he would. He wanted to sleep in his own bed. He hated the dreams not just for Jack's sake, but for his as well. They made him think about things he didn't want to think about. Sometimes, he didn't want to think at all.

*****

Ralph kept his word and left back out on Thursday. The rest of the week had gone on pretty uneventfully and here it was, Sunday again. Kody looked up from his locked gaze on his fishing line and over his shoulder at his sister on that ratty old rope swing, catching a glimpse of her scraped up shins below her yellow Sunday dress. "You get in a fight with a mountain lion?" he asked.

She looked down at her skinny, beat-up legs and shrugged. "Something like that."

He turned back to his line, satisfied with her nebulous explanation. As long as it wasn't a person she got in a fight with, it's fine by me, he thought.

She hopped down off the swing and walked over to the creek side, seating herself beside him. She picked up a stick and started drawing in the mud, acting very nonchalant; he could tell she wanted something but she didn't say anything for a long time. Maybe she didn't want anything after all, maybe she was just tired of the swing. But then, just when he was sure she was content doodling in the mud, without ever looking up from her work of art, she asked, "What was Daddy like?"