Night with Jack Part 1

As Jack walked me home he steered his bike, walking beside it and me. He was buzzed, but alert as well. I had no idea how he managed that.

I tried to figure out how to suss out if he wanted to play me or if he wanted a girl friend.

I didn't have any experience with players. I'd only had one boyfriend and I'd known him a long time before we ever got together. I needed to know more about him. So far the scale was totally unbalanced.

We'd made our way through most of the wooded portion of the fields, but once we reached the cane I sighed with relief. We walked though one of the dirt trails between the field squares and I reached out a splayed had to drag through the stalks, relishing the safety I felt. Though I was safe with Jackson, I was even safer among the cane. I soaked up the sultry air, savoring the insect chatter, the sweet smell of dew, the animals at play all around us. Everything was so alive, teeming with life. I sighed, my lids going half-masted.

"Drole fille," Jackson chuckled. In proper French, drole meant funny. In Cajun? Weird.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's a foggy night and we're walking by these rustling canes. A p'tee fille like you strolling along without a care in the world? Shouldn't you be hanging on to my arm?

I suddenly wanted him to see these fields as I did, having grown up here. This was my home. It was the place I felt safest.

"Not hardly. Remember, I grew up here, running amongst the cane fields as a child." I put my hand over his on the handlebar of his bike standing it up and clumbsily propping the stand up with my foot, then pulled him along to the canes to place his hands on the stalks while he watched me with amused and indulgent eyes. I didn't care, so long as he listened.

"They stand tall like soldiers, protective, they surround us ten thousand strong." I could almost hear Gran's voice echoing in my ears. Jack had canted his head the amusement fading, now just listening.

"You can smell the dew in the air, hear the raccoons or mice running around. The cane and the woods feed them, shelter them. The insects chitter at night, the birds are chirping. It's not earie, though the fog does hide secrets sometimes. The sounds are all just sounds home of to me."

His left hand and my right gripped the stalks of cane beside each other. His right hand rose and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, stroking my cheek, earlobe and neck in turn. I shivered. "A gift." He whispered.

"What is?"

"Seeing things the way you do, growing up on a place like this. Must've been a dream."

Except for when Gran was sent away, and when I was exiled last summer.

"Mostly."

He raised a brow in question, but when I didn't elaborate, his hand on the cane grabbed mine, bringing me back to his bike and we resumed our walk, but he'd taken another swig from his flask first.

We walked in silence for a while, each having our own thoughts before I finally got up the nerve to ask,

"You know, Jack, you know so much about me, would you mind telling me some things about you?"

"What to you want to know?" He took a swig from his flask, as though fortifying himself for the conversation.

His taped hand holding the flask reminded me of the violent rumors I'd heard and refused to pass judgment on because I didn't like to make judgments on rumors, especially when I didn't have any facts, just hearsay. There's always a story and I hadn't heard his.

"How did you hurt your hand?" I asked tentatively. I wasn't sure I would like the answer, but I had to start somewhere.

He put the kickstand down on his bike, turning to me and pinched my chin with is left hand gently. With his right he made an exaggeratedly slow motion punch toward my mouth. "The teeth," he said lowly, slurring a little, sounding just a bit cruel, "they cut like a saw blade. Takes a long time to heal."

I gulped. He turned away, kicking the stand back up on his bike and walking again. After a moment I started walking to. When I'd caught back up he asked, "Be careful what you ask me Evie. You might not like what you find out." His voice was angry, bitter.

"Why do you say that? Are you as bad as the rumors say?"

"A thousand times worse, Peekon." Another swig from the flask.

"Is the Cage-the-Rage rumor true? Did you really go to prison?" I suddenly needed to know the answer to this, because if he had then we had a lot more in common then even he knew. He would have understood what CLC was like. Maybe this Cajun boy really would understand more about me than anyone else.

It was dark, but the moon was bright, and it illuminated the anger that filled his face as he thundered at me,"Why the fuck would you ask me that? You've got to go for the slam, dig that thorn as deep as you can get it?"

"I wasn't…I asked for a reason." I said softly, appealingly. Somehow I knew that my rage and my anger would never measure up to Jackson's.

Jackson enraged was terrifying. He'd parked his bike again to stand tall, nearly a head taller than me. His hands were balled into fists.

"Which is to remind me of my place!"

His place?! "I wasn't! I swear!" I protested. "Why would you say that?" My heart was racing as he towered over me, breathing heavy in my face.

"How about asking what my favorite book is? Or what class I liked best?"

I took a breath, trying to calm down. He was kind of scary like this. Alright…forget kind of. He was scary like this.

I placed my hand on his chest and stepped closer, fighting the instinct to run away. He wouldn't hurt me. I breathed him in, resting my head on his chest. He smelled of the bayou, and of home. Of soft breezes, and of some masculine scent all his own. He was so tense, but at my touch his framed seemed to subtly curl around me. The hands that had fisted at his sides rose to grip my hips, squeezing just a bit too tight, before relaxing and just gripping firm, holding me close.

"I'm sorry. I saw the tape on your hand. The punch reminded me of the rumors that had been circulating all week that I'd made myself ignore. There are some things about me that are too deep and painful that I'm not ready to tell you. You're allowed a pass on that kind of stuff too. I just though since I'd shared some heavy stuff maybe … but it's fine. Those are some good openers."

Part of me wondered though. If he was playing me, he certainly wouldn't be willing to tell me anything deep, or he might have been willing to lie…trying to shrug off my doubts I asked, "So what is your favorite book then?"

His deep voice echoed stong and firm under my ear. "Robinson Crusoe." No hesitation.

"Why?"

That turned out to be a great opener. Jack spent the next fifteen minutes telling me about why he liked the novel so much and it actually told me more about him than I had hoped to learn, even as I asked a few probing questions about why he said this or thought that about Robinson. How information could mean the difference between acting with valor or acting like a coo-yon. This explained why Jack was such a knowledgable person. He valued intelligence. I cringed in the dark at my own lack of knowledge and experience. My mother's words over the years echoed in my mind. "You let mother worry about that and you worry about school." Somehow I didn't think a boy...a man like Jack would accept an answer like that.

He liked that Crusoe had made do with just the crude materials he'd had, bettering his situation when he'd had practically nothing to start with. Learning from his mistakes and doing better, fighting to survive in harsh conditions. Considering the poverty Jack had likely grown up with, it made sense that he would respect this. Crusoe was also religious, like the Cajuns. He spent a lot of time telling me the details of how exactly Crusoe had survived, what tools he'd salvaged from the shipwreck, how he'd learned to preserve food, learned to grow food, adopted animals for companionship, freed slaves from cannibals for companionship.

It told me a lot about what he valued. No wonder the insult of "good for nothing doll"would be so harsh. I cringed again thinking about how he'd called me soft because I was scared of lightning. In the new world that would be formed, he'd probably have some valuable skills growing up as he had. Cajuns were known for being hard workers. That reminded me…

"Jack, will you make sure those fliers I gave you and Lionell get passed around your area tomorrow? I don't know if many cellars exist in your area, but can you make sure the word gets out?"

"You trying to save the world now?"

I thought about all the people and children I'd seen looking up at the lights. I spoke my thoughts.

"No one deserves to die like that Jack. This thing is going to be awful, and life after, harder still."

"Did you think that maybe it might be better for some not to know what's coming if they can't be prepared for it? That maybe dying quickly might be kinder than starving to death after?"

My eyes brimmed with tears at that. Starving to death. Watching the people you loved starve to death. Watching the people I'd warned starve to death. Is this what I'd set in motion? A choked gasp tore from my throat and tears ran from my eyes. No! I stopped walking, staring ahead at Haven, just visible in the distance, the cane fields now on either side.

Jack turned, "Evie?"

I stood, dazed, envisioning the devastation of the future I had set in motion. My friends, all of my friends slowly starving to death, all my fault.

Jack stood in front of me gripping my shoulders shaking me a little, "Evangeline, snap out of it."

I looked up at him, my face awash with tears. My voice was weak with tears when I whispered, "What have I done?"