Chili Con Corpses Read Online Free Page B

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    “Where’s the goddamn good fryin’ pan?” Jackson demanded as he noted the presence of his only child. “How am I supposed to make breakfast with no pan? And you’re just sleepin’ away like you’re at some kind of fancy hotel with no work to go to and nothin’ to do but sit at the pool and sip fancy little drinks with fancy little umbrellas.”
    Despite his fatigue, James tried not to smile. At times, his father’s childish fits could be rather amusing. “Are you hungry, Pop?”
    Jackson’s furry eyebrows drew together to form a single fuzzy line. “I’ve been up for two hours workin’ in the shed.” James noticed that his father never mentioned the word “painting.” When he was locked outside in the shed, he was merely “working,” just as though he were still tying on his green apron and heading out for the family hardware store, which had been bought out by one of the mammoth home improvement chains several years ago.
    “’Course I’m hungry.” Jackson sulked.
    James examined the littered floor. “Let me tidy up and I’ll cook you something, but it’s got to be quick.” He eyed his father. “If you helped, I could get to the cooking part faster, you know.”
    “Ha! You won’t be able to fry anything worth swallowin’ without that pan.” Jackson continued to sulk, making no move to assist in the cleanup.
    The pan his father was referring to was one of the few remaining from the original set his parents had received as a wedding gift. Jackson firmly believed that all food tasted better when cooked in one of these old pans. James agreed, though he couldn’t understand why this was the case. The cooking surface of every pan looked like it had been scratched by a bear claw and the orange coating on the outside had flecked off in so many places that the pans looked like they were wrapped in tiger pelts. Still, anything precious to James’s beloved mother, who had died suddenly over a year ago from heart failure, was precious to both her husband and son.
    “It’s okay, Pop. That pan’s in the dishwasher. See?” He dropped the dishwasher door and pointed at the clean dishes inside.
    Jackson shook his head. “I just can’t get used to these newfangled contraptions.”
    James glanced at the eggs and milk on the counter. “Would you like scrambled eggs with cheese?”
    “And fried ham.” Jackson indicated the deli-wrapped package on the counter next to the eggs and settled himself at the kitchen table with the cartoon section of the newspaper.
    As James began to cook the eggs, the sight of his father reading the newspaper reminded him of the advertisement Lindy had showed them last night. James had been so distracted by Lucy’s announcement that he hadn’t fully understood the gist of the ad. He finished with the eggs and divided them equally onto two plates. He then began to fry several slices of Virginia ham in the same pan.
    The two men ate their breakfast in silence. Jackson read through the classifieds, occasionally snorting at what he considered absurd prices for “those little yappy dogs that can’t even fetch their own tails.” He then moved on to the Goings-On section while James scanned disinterestedly through the sports pages. He wanted to read the ad Lindy had clipped, but he knew better than to ask for any section of the paper until his father was finished with it.
    “What are you up to today, Pop?”
    “I’m gettin’ goin’ on my bathroom. Gonna rip up them old tiles and clean the gunk off the floorboards underneath. I got a pile of new tile comin’ on today’s UPS truck.”
    James thought about the wallpaper in his parents’ bathroom: a silver, iridescent style fashionable in the seventies. It had always reminded James of tin foil. “Are you going to repaper it, too?”
    Jackson frowned. “I’d sure like to, but I’ll likely just paint it. I can’t pick out that kind of decoratin’ stuff like your mama could.”
    “I could enlist some female