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The grass crumpled beneath his boots. His shadow left a broad dent in the shade
(his body was still a marvel- when had Jack Kelly become so strong? When did Jack Kelly grow into his wimpy shoulders and snivelling ankles? When did Jack Kelly ditch his dreams of a boy to become a man?)
that towered over a lean man who was casually basking in the weak October daylight. He frowned at the sudden loss of warmth, but his eyes danced with mirth as he gazed over his former selling partner, current best friend, and long-time confidant. “Why, Jack Kelly. I thought you stood me up.”
“I’d neva, Dave,” Jack bent down in the mellow grass next to David. “They caugh’ me onna big shipment just as I was ‘bout to leave for lunch. Tell Esther that the market’ll have a good deal on trout tomorrow.”
Their heads nearly touched at the temple, and if Jack had the nerve or the gall, he could move a miniscule inch and connect their homely skin. It would only take a second- and what is a second, honestly? A moment in time? In the everlasting universe? And Jack Kelly wasn’t a very smart man, but he knew that humans only took up a small part of the whole existence of the world and a single second of humanity could manage to be wasted on the shifting of a cold, lonely wrist to lay on the freckled arm of another-
David rolled onto his side, more interested in a patch of dandelions than the market predictions for the next day. “Besides,” scrunching his nose, as if that would clear his irreverent musings on the universe, “not all o’ us are fancy medical men with all the break time they could ask fa’. I’m the big man pullin’ the weight ‘round here.”
(And it was true, to some aspects. Jack brought home honest-to-goodness bakery bread on Fridays so they could practice Shabbat without travelling, as Mayer so liked to do. He gave Les nickels to spend at the fair and bought Sarah hair ribbons for no particular reason. There was the gas bill he had paid one particularly difficult December, and the endless hours of doing various handiwork around the house when David was studying and Mayer’s old aches came to haunt him. The Jacobs’ home was also Jack’s, not because he needed it, but because they needed him.)
(He needed it too, he supposed.)
A yellow dandelion hovered over his nose, gently twirling with the teasing hum of David leaning in so close. Jack’s teeth snapped at it.
“You can drink the milk of these, I read,” David mused.
Jack wrinkled his nose. “Dandelion salad‘s only good tha first five times. Plus, it’d turn Crutchie’s tongue yellow.”
Dropping the little flower altogether, David rolled flat on his back and turned to gently nudge Jack on his shoulder with his premature wrinkling forehead. “Jackie,” he whispered.
(“I love you,” he would go on, later in Jack’s dreams. “I’ve loved you since I met you, I love you like a wildfire, I love you so much I cannot bear it, I love you like every character in all of my books, I love you.”)
“I’ve met a girl.” There was a hint of mischief in David’s tone- and Jack didn’t recognize it. There was suddenly a gated city wrapped around David’s heart and Jack was frantically scrambling for the key; For the first time, he was locked out of David’s life. He was an onlooker upon territory he had memorized by touch, by heart, by memory.
“Yeah?” If David had been paying attention, the word would have pinged around his Tin Man heart- hollow, empty, overused. “The Walking Mouth finally has someone to use it on?”
He relished in the feel of David’s uncalloused palms shoving playfully at his tanned, muscled arm. “Don’t be crass,” the boy chided. “Her name is April.”
(Jack was born on a misty-eyed April morning, with the clouds swabbed over the sun and an ominous wind blowing throughout the emptied streets. His mother had called it a bad omen. His father couldn’t fathom why.)
The crook of Jack’s elbow was full of David’s lingering fingertips; A question he didn’t dare ask left a sour taste on his tongue. He smiled at David’s far away face, his gaze belonging to a girl,
(a girl, a rotten girl, a girl that wasn’t even Katherine because that would have hurt much less, understandable even. She was an unimportant girl and she would never be enough for Davey, his Davey)
(A girl.)
and his smile was full of thorns.
---
“I can’t believe-” the words were practically ripped from his throat. “We’s goin’ so fast!”
David couldn’t drive in the technical sense, but he was captaining a true automobile as the Earth did spin. Jack sat in the passenger seat to crow at any poor little commoners that walked along the beaten path, none of them good enough to ride in the electrical engine Mr. Ford had handcrafted himself.
It had been a graduation present from a fellow doctorate student (one with a wealthy father and ill-meaning connections), a spin in his brand-new electric carriage for his reliable old pal, David Jacobs. Jack’s eyes widened to the size of half-dollars as the man passed over the keys to David- David, who had once put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot and walked around crooked all day, too proud to admit he had made a mistake- and they tried to conceal their excitement as the engine turned over for the first time.
He was going to do it. Right here, right now, in this strange man’s car, with clunky work boots on his feet and David’s spectacles sliding down the bridge of his nose.
“I love you!” Jack roared over the engine.
“I’m going to ask April to marry me!” David practically sang into the wind.
Jack’s throat closed up, his skin was set on fire, and he suddenly wanted to see what happened when you jumped from a gadget that was moving so fast.
“Wait, what? Did you hear me?” David’s hair was beginning to grow long enough that it was wild in the gust of the automobile. “I’m going to ask her to marry me!”
(When he was seven, another newsboy- only a handful of months older than him- had asked him if his momma had ever taught him about love. No, Jack had replied, both sour about being outsmarted by a kid who picked his nose and not ever having a momma in the first place. “It’s this great big tree that grows on the inside of our tummies,” the boy went on. “And one day, someone ‘s gonna come along and pick all ‘f th’ fruit on our branches, one by one, until all you have are pretty green leaves. That’s love.”)
(That same boy would kiss him in a dirty alleyway seven years later, and Jack would crack a joke about all of his apples still being intact. The boy would stare back with blank, unrecognizable eyes.)
Jack couldn’t even be angry- he wasn’t strong enough to be furious anymore, not when his days were long and the nights were spent clutching at empty bedsheets. He couldn’t be angry at his good, unselfish Davey, the boy who rubbed at his mother’s aching feet when she spent too long at the factory lines and clumsily darned socks when his sister couldn’t feel her slender fingers. There was no resentment for the beautiful, dark-haired girl who had accidentally collided with David at the grocer’s market when they reached for the same can of something-or-other. She had been nothing but kind to the gentle giant who lurked in the shadows of David’s life, telling inappropriate jokes and interrupting their dates. April always made a place for him at their table.
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all year,” Jack called out, and watched his words dance away in the wind.
---
Katherine had struck him, hard, when he asked her to marry him.
He cradled his jaw with a shock that reverberated around his skull. “Kathy, what did I-”
“You are the most selfish, careless man I know, Jack Kelly.” Her skirts whirled around her ankles- the candy-pink cotton matching other bridesmaids’ dresses to contrast the delicate white lace of April’s wedding dress. David Jacobs was now a married man, and Jack Kelly a desperate one. “We all see how you look at him. There’s not a single person who hasn’t noticed. Get it through your thick, unfeeling skull.”
(“They say,” David’s vows were memorized. His voice never wavered. “That only someone in love would truly understand the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: a man walks through the Underworld to save his begotten bride, to only turn around and lose her at the very last second. I’ve spent years pouring over that story, wondering why Orpheus would be such a fool, such an irresponsible, lovesick fool, if he truly loved her. But now, standing before my own darling little bride, I understand. I’d turn around for one last look at you. I’d turn every. Single. Time. I’m your fool, April. And I’d choose our fate a million times over.”)
“He doesn’t love you,” Katherine’s voice was heavy with disgust. “And I’m beginning to understand why.”
---
The train ticket was heavy in his palm. “I just don’t see why you have to go,” David whispered. “Who is my son going to learn his bad habits from? Who’s going to teach him how to hawk a headline for extra change? How to poke fun at his papa?”
“He has Les.” Jack’s voice was a barely audible rumble, rusty with misuse. He didn’t talk much these days, Jack Kelly now preferred to linger in the background of conversations, the memory of a bright young man he used to be. Those days had come and gone without much complaint, even if Jack secretly yearned to be so terribly free that he believed in a future for a gangly, fresh-faced boy and a hardened boy with the silver-tongued lies.
(There were rumors, you know. About horrible men and horrible things, about broken ribs and jail time even the Mayor would disapprove of. Jack didn’t do much to dispel the irrational stories people told about him.)
(To prove a lie is false, you must present the truth.)
(Jack didn’t have a truthful bone left in his body.)
A carefully measured silence stretched between them. “Is this about…” David’s hand instinctively reached for Jack’s rough palm- a second of contact, the flash in the pan, their moment in the universe.
He withdrew from his gentle touch, and taking a bullet to his leg
(Jack was twenty-three and alarmingly brave. David was twenty-two and studying to become a doctor. They both cried as David’s unsure hand stitched an unclean wound back together- David, tears of worry; Jack, hopelessly lovesick and falling apart at the seams.)
had been less painful. “It’s about Santa Fe, Dave. Kiss Esther goodbye for me, won’t you?”
The platform to the train was busy, flowing with New Yorkers that had somewhere to be, a place to go, or a person to meet. Jack was the lone soul that took his time to feel the cobblestone under his worn-down boots, the ragged laces dragging against the streets that raised him as their own. His suitcase, a single-handled brown leather
(the only item inside was a bundle of letters, all addressed to David Jacobs)
thing, had never seen a polish rag or repairman’s case, and he felt as if he had the weight of the world to carry with him all the way to New Mexico, where the cattle roam free and Jack Kelly wouldn’t have a broken heart to board up behind slats of wood. The train whistle blew, sharp and piercing, and Jack couldn’t resist his own dreadful hubris; He turned.
And David Jacobs had already disappeared into the swarm of faceless people with their endless inventory of needs to be met, so Jack Kelly got on a train to Santa Fe.