“Yes,” said Miz Powell, “but then there’s never been anyone quite like you in the family before, either.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
“It is a compliment, Haley dear,” she told me. “You’ve been awaited for a long time. You’re going to fulfill a much-needed role.”
This was not the first time she’d said that to me, but I never knew how to take it. Was I, in fact, the one to replace Grandma? Was that why she had disappeared? Words are nothing—they cease to have meaning when repeated too often. Some things it was better not to talk about. It was better just to let them happen, neither provoking nor being provoked. I was already doing things that I’d sworn earlier I would never do, womanly things—having a baby being the prime example. When I was little, I’d believed I had the choice of being a man or a woman when I grew up, and part of me still felt that way. Yet I was astonished to see myself choosing the role of a woman. Two years ago, I never would have done such a thing.
Mother hired a midwife to come and check up on me as I came closer to full term. She was a lithe, dark woman named Lydia, who wore a plain cloth wrapped around her head as she examined my cervix and pronounced it slightly dilated. It would only be a matter of days now, perhaps only hours. I insisted on being left on my own in my house until the time came, mostly because I couldn’t stand them fussing over me. Yet it was nearly impossible for me to move, and so when there came a knock at the door one day in early spring, it was a struggle for me to get to the door.
When I opened it, there was Adam.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Your timing is impeccable.”
His eyes bugged out at the size of me. Gone was the willowy girl with the shaven head. I was back to my old girth, a house again—ankles and legs swollen, belly massive, my face puffed up with the water retained in my tissues.
“Hi, Haley,” he said. “Can I come in?”
I stepped well aside to make room for him, but he brushed against my belly anyway as he came through the door. I felt nothing at his touch, not a twinge. There was no electricity. I didn’t even offer him a seat.
“Hi,” he said.
“You said that,” I said.
“I, uh…came to tell you thanks for saving my fadder’s life,” he said. “He finally went to the doctor, and you were right. It was his colon. There was something growing in there. But they took it out, and they say he’s going to be all right. You caught it in time. Zo, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Zo,” he said.
I waited.
“Dere’s something else,” he said. “I, ah…”
I kept waiting.
“I’m not very proud of the way I’ve been,” he said. “When that happened in the woods wid us, I didn’t know what to tink about it. It chust happened, like. Den, you came and told me you were pregnant. And…I got scared. I admit it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“It wasn’t the right thing to do,” he said.
He looked around at the bare room. I could tell he was appalled at the lack of comfort there. To someone like him, who had never lived in the woods, he wouldn’t have known that I didn’t need a lot of extras. All I needed was me.
“Not the right thing to do,” he repeated.
“Adam,” I said, “what do you want?”
“I want to help,” he said.
“Help how?”
“Well…” He gestured around us. “Look at this. I feel bad you don’t have nottink. You shouldn’t live like this.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Yeah, but…de baby should have things too. Nice things. It should be warm, for one ting. You don’t run the furnace?”
“I get along well enough with the stove,” I said, though in truth I’d been going over to Mother’s all winter just to get warm.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t ask any special favors. I don’t know what you think of me, but I know what I think of you. You deserve to have the things you need. I want to take responsibility.”
If he’d said that with a touch of pride, with even a slight puffing of the chest—as if to say, Look how wonderful I am for being accountable for my actions—I would have thrown him out on his ass, then and there. But that wasn’t Adam’s way. He meant what he was saying.
“I guess you don’t want to get married, after the way I been,” he said.
“You didn’t ask me to get married.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Okay,” he said. “Me neither, not really.”
“Glad that’s out in the open,” I said.
“But I do want to be a fadder.”
“I see,” I said.
“I mean, dis baby…every baby needs a fadder. I didn’t have very good parents. That’s why Mutti and Fatti took me in. So I tink every baby should have good parents. And not just one. Two is better.”
“You saying you want to live together?”
“I’m saying,” he said, “you can ask me to do anything you want, and I’ll do it.”
“Anything.”
“Yah. Anything.”
“All right,” I said. “Put your hands on my belly.”
Adam’s eyes widened in surprise. I lifted up the three sweaters I was wearing and showed him my stomach, stretch marks and all.
“Touch it,” I said.
Adam extended one finger and poked it gently.
“Come on,” I said. “Like you mean it.”
He rested his palm on my stomach and left it there, rough and warm. I put my hand on top of his and pressed it in deeper. The baby had been active for a while now, and at our combined touch it began to do cartwheels inside. Adam was startled. He almost jerked his hand away, but I held him there until he relaxed.
“Wow,” he said. “Dat’s amazink.”
“That’s what we made,” I said. “That’s you and me in there, for whatever it’s worth.”
A smile crept across his face.
“Don’t you get smug,” I said. “Don’t you dare get smug, or I swear to God I’ll kick your ass.”
“I want to be dere,” he said. “Can I?”
“When I give birth?”
He nodded.
“You haven’t earned it,” I said. “You know that. You have to earn something like that. I’ll call you afterwards and tell you how it went.”
His face fell, but he seemed to accept it. He knew I was right. But, seeing how disappointed he was, I softened. He had finally come forward, after all. He had finally accepted his role in all this.
“Tell you what,” I said. “You can wait outside, and you can come in as soon as it’s over. All right?”
His spirits rose again. “Yah,” he said. “Dat would be great.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Zo,” he said. “When’s it going to be?”
At that moment I felt a sudden stirring inside, and something deep within me popped. A great gush of water hit the floor between my feet and spread out like a small lake.
“Looks like right now,” I said calmly. “You want to walk me over to my mother’s, please?”
I have done some hard things in my life. I’ve survived on my own in the wilderness, I’ve ridden bareback all day, I’ve communicated with the dead. But nothing could have prepared me for how difficult it was to have a baby.
It was a long labor, this being my first child—eighteen hours from start to finish. I had decided early on that I was going to have the baby at home, with Mother, Miz Powell, and Lydia to assist me. Adam was relegated to the hallway outside the bedroom, where he paced incessantly until I yelled at him to quit it because I could feel the creak of every floorboard. I didn’t want drugs and I didn’t want a doctor—doctors were for people like Mr. Schumacher, who was sick, but not for people like me, who was healthy. Pregnancy is not an illness. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a labor, and the final hours of those nine months are the hardest labor of all.
&n
bsp; I pushed until every muscle burned and my throat was parched. Lydia gave me ice chips to suck on. She refused to give me water, which was right, and when I called her a fucking bitch she knew it was the pain talking, not me. I called Miz Powell a bitch too. I called Adam a faggot Nazi lover, or something equally nonsensical. I insulted the entire world’s mother. I pushed until my hips felt like they were dislocated. I pushed until endorphins mercifully flooded my body, so that I didn’t feel it when my perineum tore and the baby came out; I didn’t feel a thing, not even when Lydia was stitching me up afterwards and Mother was toweling the baby off. I faded in and out of consciousness then, and saw faces floating before me that I knew weren’t really there: Grandmother, my father, Frankie.
Grandma said nothing. She only looked on in approval.
My father was beaming. He said, or I thought I heard him say, that he was sorry he’d had to leave me so young. It had been an accident, he said. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But he was all right now, and so was I. I would not be joining him today.
And Frankie smiled too, excited because everyone else was excited.
“Franks,” I muttered. “You’re the only one I didn’t insult. I left you out.”
“What is she saying?” Mother asked Miz Powell.
“Something about trout,” Miz Powell said.
“Show her the baby,” said Lydia. “She’s ready now.”
“Here you go, darling daughter,” said Mother. “I am so proud of you.”
“What is it?” yelled Adam, from the hallway.
“It’s a girl,” I mumbled.
Mother and Miz Powell exchanged glances, amused.
“Sure about that?” said Lydia. “Look again.”
I was too weak to pull back the blankets myself, so Miz Powell did it for me.
“There he is,” she said. “Perfect in every way.”
“What is it?” I asked, because my brain wasn’t believing what my eyes were telling me
“A boy!” Mother and Miz Powell said, in unison.
I had to smile, in spite of my exhaustion. I’ll say one thing about my life—it’s always been full of surprises. I was so tired I was cross-eyed. Lydia helped me pull my gown aside and guided the baby to my breast. Pinched monkey face, two bootblack eyes—that was all I could make out. If the rumors were true, I had a son.
“Wow, buddy,” I whispered to him. “Are you ever going to make things interesting around here.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For matters pertaining to herbal remedies and their uses, I relied largely on Hanna Kroeger’s book, Heal Your Life with Home Remedies and Herbs, published by Hay House, Inc., in 1998.
I would like to express my gratitude to my wife, Alexandra, who has made my life so much fuller simply by being in it, and whose critical assistance helped shape this book.
Also, thanks to my agent, Anne Hawkins, and my editor, Marjorie Braman, whose support is, as always, deeply appreciated and impossible to repay.
About the Author
WILLIAM KOWALSKI is from Erie, Pennsylvania, and now makes his home in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for The Adventures of Flash Jackson
“Unusual pacing and grace…. Kowalski has developed a distinctand highly pleasing prose style. Here he has crafted a tale reminiscent of Twain and he sells it to the reader with warm humor and touches of poignancy.”
—Edmonton Journal
“This…is a tight book with a plot that arches where it’s supposed to, characters that sing with life, dialogue that is lovely and real, and images that resonate.”
—Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“[Kowalski’s] story is rich in laugh-out-loud humor, his dialogue is nothing short of superb, and he has successfully separated emotion from sentiment, allowing his readers to supply their own…. Kowalski has created an endearing character in Haley Bombauer, aka Flash Jackson, one we won’t easily forget.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Amusing, slightly bizarre…. Haley is a winning narrator whose dry sense of humor keeps the celebration of womanhood from getting too syrupy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An appealing and original story.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Somewhere South of Here
“Has all the bravado of a barstool reminiscence…. William Kowalski’s characters could be escapees from a Kerouac novel.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Kowalski’s graceful, almost lyrical style moves along briskly and elegantly, ensnaring the reader in the atmosphere of Santa Fe.”
—Providence Sunday Journal
“Kowalski is a talented and vivid stylist.”
—Washington Post
“Perfect beach-weather fare.”
—Tampa Tribune
“One of the sweetest-tempered books around.”
—East Valley Tribune
“Kowalski shines when writing in the female voice [with] true dialogue and sincere emotions.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Enchants the reader with insouciant charm.”
—Baltimore Sun
Praise for Eddie’s Bastard
“Eddie’s Bastard is a rich kaleidoscope of a tale that draws the reader in from the get-go and refuses to relinquish its hold. Most of all, it’s a family’s story told with warmth and humility, rich with imagination and grit.”
—Denver Post
“A grand debut…. A beguiling blend of narrative con brio, human-heartedness, and zany surprises.”
—Gail Godwin
“Exuberant…. Kowalski is a talented stylist.”
—New York Times Book Review
“For readers who enjoy the eccentric and rambling family narratives of John Irving, Eddie’s Bastard is a first novel that deserves attention.”
—Baltimore Sun
“There’s a honeyed glow to Eddie’s Bastard which…avoids sentimentality in this tale about the truth and consequences of knowing who you are.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Vividly impressionistic prose.”
—London Times
“The twenty-eight-year-old author gives his first novel an appealing Dickensian flavor.”
—People
“A rich and readable family history, filled with tales of wars, stolen treasure, hauntings, family fiascoes, and, most of all, a young man’s self-discovery…. Kowalski is a gifted storyteller who deserves a following.”
—San Antonio Express-News
“The novel is ultimately an absorbing, redemptive exploration of a young man’s search for himself, wresting an identity out of generations of secrets.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kowalski writes in a style so natural that the reader is only aware of the story it transports.”
—Library Journal
“A mesmerizing debut…. Skillfully crafted and highly imaginative.”
—Tulsa World
“This is a big old-fashioned book in every possible way…often funny, at times aching—a fine beginning to launch a novelist.”
—Brooklyn Bridge magazine
“A notable literary debut…. Here’s one satisfying novel by a writer of great promise.”
—America magazine
Also by William Kowalski
Eddie’s Bastard
Somewhere South of Here
Copyright
THE ADVENTURES OF FLASH JACKSON. Copyright © 2003 by William Kowalski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or me
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Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195115-2
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William Kowalski, The Adventures of Flash Jackson
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