And we is doin’ good. Real good. Daddy is helping to take care of Jacob and we have us a routine. Daddy don’t help too much with the cleaning of Jacob on account of how rough he is. When he uses the hose, I ain’t sure if he can’t actually do the thing right, or he knows that if he done a poor enough job, someone else will take over for him. Daddy mostly helps with the feeding and carrying Jacob out to his workin’ out contraption and the heavy lifting type things what all is too hard for me and Momma.
Jacob seems to be taking well to the machine in the tree, and Momma and me is the ones that use the ropes on him. At first it was just as funny as when Daddy was in it, but after a while, I started feeling like we was playing with a puppet and it gave me a shiver, especially when Daddy would sometimes pretend that Jacob was talking while we was lifting his arms up or legs up.
After he done that, we all got quiet and like we done something like we oughtn't. It felt like spitting on the floor of a museum, we ain’t make fun of Jacob no more after that. We just lift his arms and legs up enough so that we was somewhat satisfied that he was getting some kind of exercise. The garden was still giving us all the food we wanted, at least vegetable wise, so I guess we is mostly vegetarians unless I can spot and wing something out of a tree with the gun, but that ain’t happen as much as I thought it would.
We got our routine down just fine with feeding him from the garden and we done figured the easiest things to feed him such as tomatoes and corn and some squash, only the trick is, you have to mush them all up first into a paste and that gets down his throat easy enough without the need for us to move his jaw. As we went along, we discovered things we ain’t been doing for him such as brushing his teeth. The second we got close enough to catch a big whiff of his rotten smelling teeth, we done added that into the things we done for him too. We was his doctors and his dentists and personal chefs. He ain’t need for nothin’ and things went by like they were supposed to.
I think that’s why we’s up here. To live as long as we can unless something comes along and changes it. Live and wander around and eat a few things from the garden until it was time to die, and I suppose that’s what everyone else does too, only in different ways.
Time came where Daddy started to realize he was caught in exactly what he was trying to get away from in the city. Beholden’ to someone else without him having a say. It done took a slow tole on him. He ain’t doing nothin’ with Jacob no more. Day comes where daddy ain’t even around to carry Jacob to the tree to partake in his exercises. Momma says she knew this day would come and she hoped it would take longer for Daddy too figure out he had himself a job out here after all.
Running away ain’t stop nothin’ from needing to be done and even washing yourself becomes a job if you think hard enough about it. We ain’t sure where all Daddy goes. He ain’t going out drivin’ for the truck has been sitting on the driveway in the same spot for some time, long enough for weeds to grow around the tires. We both figure he’s just out there in the woods somewhere, kicking rocks and sitting on a log. We is starting to resent it, especially since Jacob ain’t getting the movement he needs.
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Me and Momma still ain’t strong enough to get him into the saddle of the machine. Sometimes I catch Momma grumbling about having to take care of Jacob, especially when things ain’t go as easy as they could, like if the mushy food falls out of Jacob's mouth onto his shirt and now that shirt needs to be washed. Sometimes, I guess the vegetables don’t sit well with Jacob and his pants fill up with a big mess and Momma swears under her breath that she ain’t sign up to take care of no retard. I say “what you say momma?”
Like I ain’t heard what she said and she smiles at me guilty and says, “nothin’. I ain’t mean nothin’ by it. Sometimes adults like to complain out loud so the aggravation has somewhere to go.” I say ok, and we keep on taking care of him. Some days is easier than others, but Jacob do take up a lot of our time. We do all of Jacob's functions for him and clean him up. I’m starting to forget what all Jacob sounded like when he talked. I ain’t sure how long he’s going to be like this and I will admit, although I am ashamed to do so, that it would be easier if he ain’t around no more.
Maybe Daddy would come back then and throw me in the air like he used to and take me out for pizza pockets at the gas station and callin‘ me his scamp. The Days turned cold and Momma lit the first fire, the barrel of our wood stove giving off a burning dust smell, the metal creaking and ticking like a grumpy old man.
Our garden started to wilt.
Momma runned out there with a big basket and a wheelbarrow to hoe a little and gather up what she could and everything was on the verge of brown. she looked at it curious and looked at the sky and back down at the garden. She come back inside and sighs and flops on the couch, says “well, I do believe we are in for it.”
“What you mean momma? We ain’t gonna have anything to eat?” She says that time done got away from us, what with taking care of Jacob. She supposes that we may have had a cold enough night that there was frost and she ain’t know how it snuck up on her so fast. she says “this is the first time I ever had me a garden. I know a little about it, like you put the seeds in the ground and water it some, and take out the plants what you didn’t invite into the garden. Everything is supposed to grow ok. You can take them crops and boil ‘em up, and put ‘em in jars, and save ‘em for when there ain’t no proper ground to grow things in. I ain’t know they could all go at once like that.”
She wipes a smudge off her forehead with her hand and looks at it curiously. “If only your daddy was doing something what could free me up enough to take care of that garden proper, maybe we ain’t get in this mess in the first place.” I sit next to momma, “but we done got them veggies in the jars, right? I seen you jarring up them fruits of the field and is they enough to last?”
Momma gets up to check on them.
She opens the cupboard and says “we got us about a baker’s dozen left. What all with you two boys growing and eating everything in sight and Daddy helping himself to everything around without lifting a finger to help, these here are going to last us all about four days. if we ain’t partial to only eating tomatoes, for that’s all I done got around to jarring up.” She looks closely at one of the jars, then pulls all of them down onto the counter and shakes her head.
“Make that four jars, these ones here got some kind of blackness in them. Maybe I ain’t boiled them enough and something got all inside.” She holds one now and is quiet, then she walks quickly outside. I follow to the door and she heaves up and throws the jar hard across the yard. It bounces on the grass and hits a rock and breaks open, spraying red chunks and shining glass every which way. Momma’s fists is clenched and she is shouting for Daddy now to get back right this minute. She is using his full name and I ain’t never seen Daddy not respond when she does that.