Son of Destruction

16




Jessie


It’s still fun thwarting Fort Jude’s expectations, so for the biggest party the Lunch Bunch has mounted, ever, Jessie sidesteps the pudgy prospect they picked out for her and teams up with Wade Pike. She needs backup for this one.

And oh, they do turn heads, coming in. Jessie chose a simple red silk sculpted to her best self – plus diamonds, all high end and stylishly low-keyed, and bless him, Wade looks almost elegant in his bespoke linen suit. She sees people’s heads snap around as they enter, and thinks, OK. Fine.

In a way, it’s kind of funny, her new best friends’ eyes glistening with envy, their tight smiles. Look at them all, looking at us. She elbows Wade, who hasn’t noticed. ‘We clean up real nice, don’t we?’

For Pierce Point trash. Fort Jude society never says these things out loud, but that’s what these ex-girls said behind her back, from first grade through high school graduation week and on until she left town. She came back somebody, and that changed. They pretend there was never any difference between them, and for complicated reasons, Jessie lets it play. She is, after all, one of them now. She almost forgives, but she never forgets. In first grade she fell down in the lunchroom and it was horrible. Girls giggled and boys and scraped their fingers at her because her mom didn’t so much wash her clothes and eewww, she smelled. It was so bad that she got up and socked Brad Kalen. The fat little shitass started it, but Jessie’s the one who got sent home for two weeks.

When you get up fighting, you get strong. From then on Jessie scrubbed out her underpants in the sink and later she shoplifted a little bit, so she’d never have to go out dirty ever again. She worked at K-Mart afternoons and the early shift at Mook’s Tavern, although she was underage. She handed over grocery money, but she kept back enough for makeup and cute things. She turned heads in tank tops, hoop earrings and flippy skirts, and f*ck the snots from Coral Shores, they were just girls. Jessie did what she had to, and mostly it was fun, until life boiled over and she got the hell out of Dodge.

At the time she swore she’d never come back and she didn’t, not even to bury her mom. With Pierce Point behind her, she swore to God she’d make something of herself, and she has. She never intended to come here even though she could buy and sell those bitches, but Fort Jude has a way of calling you back, and here she is.

She’s known the Pike brothers since forever, she and Wade used to play together in the dirt. In first grade they got bussed in to Northshore Elementary along with Walker, something about testing better than Southside Elementary kids. Walker was in second grade. He was handsome and broody and in fifth grade Jessie was sort of in love with him because he slouched around under a shadow, all, don’t bother me. At recess he paced the playground like a captive wolf and Jessie yearned. Boy, did she yearn. If the Pike boys had a mother, she was gone. Wade never said what happened. Either he didn’t know, or he didn’t want to say. Wallace Pike put chicken wire over the doors to keep his babies in the house while he worked, and they crawled around filthy until Walker was big enough to take Wade outside. Mr Pike was a mechanic, running his business out of a shack, and the boys had to work in the shop. They came to school with black grease under their fingernails and raw, stained hands.

Jessie hated how the Coral Shores girls flirted with the Pike boys, smarming up against them in the halls, all excited and shivery: Oh, you dirty boys.

Wade’s come a long, long way since their white trash days. He’s not as interesting as Walker, who got a scholarship to MIT, but unlike Walker, he moves in the best circles in Fort Jude. With a shove from Coach Askew, Wade played football at F.S.U. and pledged Sigma Chi, and now he hangs with the good old boys. He started at Coleman Chrysler before Buck and he rose fast. After all, growing up in a body shop, the man knows cars. When Mr Coleman died, Wade was senior so Wade runs Coleman Chrysler now.

She’s proud of him, standing here like an A-list contender in his Palm Beach suit. He looks a hell of a lot sharper than Sammy Kristofferson that the girls keep pushing at her, plus, unlike Sammy, Wade has kept his hair. The Kristoffersons may be a first family, but in the realm of survival of the fittest, Wade’s the comer now. He, and not Sammy, will probably be the next Commodore of the Fort Jude Club.

Smiling her brightest smile, Jessie takes Wade’s arm. Together, they’ll work the room, where Fort Jude’s nearest and dearest plus friends and relations from as far away as Atlanta are here in their best, making a party for little Patty Kalen.

Which is, of course, the problem, and for Jessie, it’s big. Sooner or later, the creeping slime mold on the backside of the scuzziest sector of the rank, stinking universe, will have to come. The Father of the Bride.

He’s also a problem for the good old girls in the Lunch Bunch, who seize on her with frantic smiles. With three bars set up and banks of white flowers and silver streamers in the ballroom, with the Tony Crimmons orchestra tuning up, the F.O.B. is nowhere around. Sallie Bellinger grips her wrist. ‘Jessie, have you heard anything from Brad?’

She jerks away. ‘Why would I be hearing from Brad?’

‘Wade, we have to borrow Jessie for a little bit.’ Betsy Cashwell separates him from Jessie with an expert sweep of the hand. ‘Girls, we have to rally.’

Through locked teeth, Sallie says, ‘When Brad comes in, we’re reading him the riot act!’

‘If he comes in,’ Kara Coleman says. ‘The boys are out looking for him.’

‘He is, after all, the father of the bride.’

Jessie is a pageant of mixed emotions. ‘And we’re going to . . .?’

And in a frenzy of social innocence, Sallie grins, motivating like the head cheerleader. ‘Why, we’re going to make this the best night of Patty Kalen’s life!’