Doctor jack bright (part 2)

3

--------------------------------------------------_--------------------------------

"This phone number has been disconnected." Standing in the hospital phone booth, Jack fumbles in his pocket for the crumpled piece of paper, glanced around to see if anyone was watching, and punched in the code.

"Please hang up and try again."

4 – 5 – 3 - 3- 8 – 4 - 7 - 4 – 4 – 4 – 5 – 1 - 0

The prerecorded telephone message cuts off into the long, undisturbed electronic beep of a phone left off the hook. Jack counted the seconds and looked around again- a car pulls up to the front door, and he watches as a mother and her new baby get in, father in tow. The heat of the day fogs up the scratched plastic of the tiny booth, creeps up under his shirt, makes him sweat. Mikell usually did this. The fear of somehow messing up wells up inside him. Jack checks his father's ballpoint pen cursive, yes, it y 128 seconds. Has it been that long yet? Maybe he should try again-

"Please recite your connection code." It's the same woman that told him to try again. The grey Toyota minivan drives up the faded rural hospital parking lot and disappears over the hill.

"Um, yeah, uh- Travis, Elder, Forty-two, sixty-six-oh-eight, Secretary. Red case condition."

There's a moment that Jack Bright holds his breath, waiting for confirmation, knowing that there wouldn't be one. To his delight, the phone-off-the-hook beeping doesn't continue. He checks his father's cursive again, under the title Call in case of emergency. The corn in the neighboring field rustles softly in the hot, stagnant wind.

"Operation, please give your request and connection type."

"A-Adam Bright, level 4, family connection, emergency code six-ten-oh-five? It's Jack."

"Oh, kid, um-" It's a woman's voice, which doesn't come as a surprise—Jack has never spoken to his father at work, only ever a spiraling array of female assistants. He had suspicions about this, as all three of the brothers did; they didn't have the heart to tell Claire, at six, that their father was most likely not returning home to his only four children. "-Look, he's busy. Can I take a message?"

"Yeah, um. Tell him that TJ's in the hospital-" The phone starts crackling wildly, and Jack squeezes shut his eyes in desperation as he hears the sounds of the line being crossed with fuzziness.

"Ja-" The line drops back into the sound of the phone off the hook, and he knows this time that it won't pick back up. The man in the booth slams the phone back into the cradle and takes a moment to wipe the gathering sweat from the nape of his neck before pulling out the second quarter, the one that he'd taken from Claire's piggy bank 45 minutes ago for this exact purpose, and sticking it into the iron slot. Dad hadn't paid the bill for the landline; at this point, they didn't complain, just improvised. Most of Jack and Mikell's time when their parents were away was spent like this: improvising.

Jack dutifully punches in the 10 digit phone number and selects the correct connection code for the black void his parents dissipated into so often. Mom didn't always pick up, either, but what his Evelyn Bright lost in correspondence she made up for in afterthought; the hospital bill would be miraculously paid, maybe, or there would be a hastily written letter pushed into Mikell's hand while getting gas. An afterthought was better than nothing.

"Operation, please give your request and connection type."

"Evelyn Bright, level 4, family connection, emergency code five-oh-oh-seven."

"Hold please."

Jack opened his mouth to reply before realizing that there was nothing to reply to. Birds chirp and sing in distant trees, contradicting his mounting anxiety.

His parents told them that they would be gone for about two weeks on business.

Two weeks passed, then three.

Months passed. Halloween and Christmas passed. Mikell started paying their bills with the money he earned at work, wherever that was. Keep the government from finding out they'd been alone for nearly eight months now. Mikell was skilled at calling their work because he did it each Wednesday night at the phone booth at the rickety gas station two blocks away. Mikell rode his bike back every Wednesday night as Jack and TJ started putting Claire to bed. Mikell walked in the door every Wednesday night saying no, they didn't pick up, not this time, and Mikell would then take his father's revolver from on top of the fridge and check that there was a bulletin each chamber, click, click, click, click, click, click, spin it in a circle like a child's toy with his finger on the trigger, Jack sits in the living room and thinks that one Wednesday night he'll just shoot it right in the kitchen, just right into the tile or at the window or into the roof of his mouth, the click of playing with death to the tune of crickets chirping in the soybean fields outside—

"I'm sorry, can I take a message?" It's the man on the other end again. Jack jerks back from his thoughts.

"Yeah! Yeah. Um, just tell her-" Jack fell back on the story that he and Mikell had discussed. "-that TJ fell off the roof while helping Mikell shingle, and got hurt. We're at the hospital right now, they're saying he'll be okay but he needs stitches and they're keeping him overnight. Mikell's up with him right now, and Claire's here with us just to be safe."

There was more than Jack wanted to tell his mother. Maybe something about wanting her to come home, or at least speak to them at all. About everything that's been going on at home. About Claire or Mikell. Anything. Just to hear her voice at all.

But Jack kept his mouth shut when the secretary asked him if there was anything else, then thanked her and said goodbye and put the phone back on the hook and the paperback in his pocket and his heart back in his chest and walked through the dusty revolving door back inside.

4

--------------------------------_------------------------------------------------

"…Jack."

"Mmm."

"Jack."

Jack comes around slowly from his place in the stiff wooden hospital chair to the sound of crickets outside and a six-year-old child tugging at his dirty Walmart t-shirt.

"Claire…" Jack rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye, sleepily looking at the digital clock at TJ's bedside. 3:46 AM. "…Shit. What is it?"

"I gotta pee."

Jack groaned.

"Why can't you ask Mikell to take you?"

"He's not here."

"…What? He's…" Jack squinted through the darkened hospital room towards the folded-out couch, where Claire had insisted Mikell sleep next to her. Empty.

"…Okay. Just, let's…um… come on."

Jack heaved himself to his feet and held out a hand, feeling tiny fingers curl around his own.

"Be quiet, okay? We don't wanna wake up TJ, yeah?" Jack cast his gaze over at the figure sleeping on the bed, at the faint glow of orange curls against the filtered country moonlight. Purple-blue black eyes swollen and closed, his youngest brother was still sleeping, recovering from the tight, black stitches sewed in his forehead.

"Yeah."

"Hey! Cut that out. You're too old for that."

Claire removed her thumb from her mouth as Jack led her down the empty hallway to the bathroom. Although Jack had had his moments with Claire, she was closest to TJ, then to Mikell, then to him. That was what it was like having multiple siblings. You knew where you were on the totem pole of love, and Jack, as the cynical middle child who made and sold questionable alcohol out of the back of the garage, did his best not to be engraved as a role model in any way, shape, or form. Mikell did fatherly things like shingle roofs and load guns and work late nights at a job. Jack made sure that the amount of cash he got didn't become suspicious to the bank. Mikell hunted deer to save on groceries and skinned them on the back porch and cooked them and sold the horns and pelts to the farm store down the road to make money and froze the rest of the meat so they wouldn't starve and showed them how to cook a meal and trapped rabbits and squirrels and chopped firewood with an ax-like fucking Paul Bunion and earned a what he suspected was a hard, honest living, like being left alone at 21 years old to care for three siblings was what he was born to do.

Jack shoplifted and gambled gently and ate a worm for $2 just last week.

He liked to think it was an equal trade-off, even when he felt worthless in comparison- they about broke even on legally and illegally obtained cash when the two of them sat down to pool their earnings at the end of the week. They had a system: Mikell would take the cash and tell him that he looked like he did well this week at his explicitly legal minimum wage job, and he would say yeah, he did, and then pass Mikell a flask of the leftovers under the table. If Jack got caught in front of TJ or Claire, Mikell would make a show of condemning such hideous underage acts and Jack would act in mock horror of what he had done, and they would continue to brew and gamble anyway because it had become a surprisingly stable form of income in recent months, especially when the electricity was cut off mid-December and they scrambled to pay in a week-long scare. Promote good citizenship, live off bad citizenship. The Bright way.

Halfway down the hall back to the room, in the haze of fluorescent lights and cracked wallpaper, Claire stopped walking. It caught Jack by surprise, making him lurch back and stumble.

"Hey, come on."

Claire stood, thumb in mouth, staring down the hallway. Let go of his hand. Tears welled in her eyes.

"No."

Jack sighed. Oh, he was not doing this at 3 AM.

"Well, where are we gonna go then?"

"No."

Jack knelt to her level.

"Claire, come on. What's wrong? Hey." Jack reached out to take her hand, seeing she was crying harder now. His little sister reached out to his forearms.

"Don't hurt."

"What?"

"Don't leave. No. I don't want you to get hurt."

"What, you think I'm gonna leave?"

"You will."

"Claire, I'm not gonna leave."

"Promise you won't get sick."

"What do you mean?"

"Promise."

Jack sighed.

"Look. Look at me." Jack raised her chin with a finger, so her line of sight matched his own. "I'm okay. See? I'm gonna be fine. I'm fine. Yeah?"

"Promise."

"Okay. I promise."

Claire seemed satisfied.

Jack took her by the hand again and led her back to the darkened room, praying she would fall back asleep. When she did- with Jack laying next to her on the couch – he slipped out of the room, closed the door behind him, and made his way down to the sidewalk outside.

Jack's eyes widened at the sight of Mikell.

"Dude. Mom is going to kill you."

"Not if she doesn't find out." His older brother exhaled smoke from the cigarette in his hand. "Isn't that right?"

"Oh." Don't tell mom. "Yeah. Yeah, it's just…"

Mikell raised an eyebrow. Don't talk to me about it. Jack relinquished, swallowed, and went to stand next to him, his brother raising the cheap Camelback to his lips. They stood in silence for a minute, looking off at the darkened fields of beans and corn, the singular farmhouse in the distance. The stars shone and the crickets sang. Smoke drifted from his older brother's mouth as he breathed.

"Some guys came to TJ's room earlier."

Jack looked at him. Mikell exhaled.

"They were asking questions. About what happened."

"Really? You think they saw?"

"Depends. Probably to some extent. If we keep our story straight, we'll be fine, just don't tell anyone."

"What do you think they'll do to him? Like the X-files or something?"

Mikell smiled.

"You know where mom and dad work?"

"Yeah. The government." Jack looked forward again, examining the shadows on the pavement. "I don't know. They said they couldn't tell me."

"Yeah, they can't tell you."

Jack jerked his head back to look at Mikell.

"Wait, do you know something about them?"

"I work there too." Mikell smiled and looked at him. "I'm not going anywhere though, don't worry. But anyway. People like TJ…You know."

"No, actually, I don't think I know." Jack's blood rushed with anger and anxiety.

"Oh…" Mikell looked up at the stars, contemplating. "Look. You know what they say about, 'If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?'"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Well, here's how I see it: there have always been people like TJ. You read about them in the old world texts or whatever, like, witches and warlocks and shit. Back in those days, when stuff like this happened, you know, people didn't know how to describe them, and they just passed it off and the person went to live in the woods and nothing bad happened. Like yeah, people cared, but it was magic, or someone pissed off Jesus or something. You follow?"

"I guess."

"Yeah. Well, now that we're no longer living in the dark ages, people are smart. When someone like TJs is born, there's no casting them off to live in the woods. It's systematic removal. I'm talking CIA and FBI caliber. So when shit like this happens, where I fell from the roof and TJ was the one to take the injury from the fall, people start watching. It's no longer the fact that god didn't will me to take those injuries or some shit like that. These people see that, and they see something larger, someone, that is, a witch or a warlock, and they start watching. And they keep watching. And they watch and watch, and if they see something that indicates that something deeper is going on, then they get taken. No more problems. The situation is safe, the people are safe, and the people will continue to be safe through this happening over and over again. That's the idea. So, like, if it happens, and there's no one around to see it, then it's fine. But I think they might be keeping an eye on him."

"Where do they go?"

Mikell shrugged.

"But anyway. The way I see it, it's like…" He waved his cigarette. "You know. TJ has always been special."

"Wait, what?"

"You haven't noticed that? Like, when he was younger. He could always do shit when he wanted to. Like when you were nine and fell off your bike, you remember that?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"He healed you."

"No, he didn't. I got lucky. I fell on the grass."

"And he was bleeding."

Jack opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. Shit.

"Look, like…" Mikell exhaled more smoke. "…I think it's different now, though. Like back then, he wanted to take that for you. He was eight, he felt empathy for you. He healed you. But this time, I think he was trying to help me, and something happened and he accidentally took it. I don't think he wanted to feel my pain, I think he was trying to make sure I wasn't dead, you know? And that's when it happened."

"So he's changing."

Mikell shrugged.

"Puberty. What can I say, he was always a late bloomer."

"What about Claire?"

"What about her?"

"Is she special too?"

"I don't know. I think TJs the most obvious, we're gonna have to work to keep that covered up. Claire…If you watch her, Jack. She's…I don't know. She knows shit."

Jack laughed.

"You're fucking crazy. Listen to yourself, Mikell, she's seven, she likes fucking Polly pockets and cabbage patch girls or whatever shit. What the fuck does she know?"

"The future."

Jack wheezed.

"I'm dead fucking serious, Jack. Look, okay, I was shaky on it too, but last fucking week, last fucking week she was coloring, and she gave me a picture of me on the roof."

Jack stopped laughing.

"Significant events, Jack. I don't think she knows what they are, but she sees them." Mikell dropped the cigarette onto the pavement and put it out with the heel of his boot. "Look. Don't tell anyone what I just told you about, okay? This is between you and me. We keep TJ safe, we keep Claire safe, we make sure nothing happens."

6

TJ is a pale, freckled child with red hair- their father's- and a frame that stands wiry in worn hand-me-downs. Often onlookers comment on his striking resemblance to Mikell, but to Jack, his youngest and oldest brothers look and are, in essence, entirely different people. TJ lacks Mikell's broad shoulders and tanned shoulders and arms, his sunburnt neck, his iron resolve, and firm competence. TJ wavers in the path of decisions; Mikell thrives in it. TJ is soft-spoken and feminine; Mikell is accustomed to confidence, a short-haired cowboy with adventurous resolve.

His older brother has always moved as a subtle and direct force of nature one might even call clean, careful, swift, (lethal)— but such thoughts do not occur to him then.

So when addressing the conflict of TJ's acquired tendencies, Jack and Mikel first make sure he's asleep in the other room and then speak over the dining room table. His older brother drinks a cheap beer from a can, and after a moment, Jack moves to the fridge and gets one for himself, too- he is not yet of age, but such things are a formality in the battered barns and sun-bleached houses of small Midwestern farm towns. It's disgusting, but he drinks it anyway. The alcohol fills a widening pit of frustration in his stomach. It calms his nerves.

(it calmed his father's nerves, too, in a time before TJ and Claire were born, when it was just the two brothers and their mother and the smell of heavy alcohol and charms from AA meetings, but they understand to this day that they are not to discuss this time)

They reach a decision, or at least, a heated compromise. Jack finishes his beer and Mikell takes another from the fridge not because he wants another, but to give him something to do to keep himself from throttling some god damn sense into his younger sibling. Jack goes to bed. Mikell plays with the revolver in the kitchen, even though it is not Wednesday, and the next week- with TJ recovered enough to return to school- Jack outfits him in long sleeves, long pants, and thin gloves, and sends him off with one instruction: touch no one.