Story Excerpt

Christopher buried his nose in volume M of a tattered children's encyclopedia. It provided the intellectual stimulation that the slack-jawed yokels he was with could never provide.

"Lord above, one more doctor's report claimin' nothin's wrong," his mother Brandeene sighed, flipping through the papers like they were written in hieroglyphics. "It must be God's will our son is a mute."

Jeffree, her second husband and half step-cousin, wrestled the stick shift into third gear with one hand. The other balanced an open beer on the door’s armrest. “Ain’t mutant kids s’posed to go to some special school?”

"Yeah, but they cost money." Brandeene tousled the hair of their eight-year-old son as if he were a golden retriever. Christopher, unbuckled, maintained a tenuous grip on the center of the bench seat, sliding with every turn.

She finger-combed his hair. "Poor Christopher, if we wasn't so poor, you wouldn't have to grow up deaf and dumb."

Christopher’s jaw clenched. Deaf and dumb. A phrase he’d heard misused a thousand times. He glowered as he stared out the windshield, watching the Mississippi landscape roll by in a parade of mobile homes and shanties.

Jeffree belched. "Is y'all hungry? I'm starving…or gotta take a dump."

"Whichever it is, hon, you oughta stop at the Pump-N-Dump. You know how you get when your tummy hurts. 'Sides, we need groceries."

The Pump-N-Dump gas station and convenience store was exactly what its name promised - a pit stop for motorists needing gas and a bathroom break. Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed like angry hornets as Christopher trailed behind his parents. He watched them fill a basket with overpriced junk food loaded with processed corn syrup while ignoring cans of soup and boxes of meal mixes.

Behind the counter, a young woman with hair the color of cotton candy engaged them with the ignorant enthusiasm of youth. "Hey sweetie, how can I help you?"

"Two dollars on pump three," Jeffree replied as he handed her two one-dollar bills.

"Well, that won't get you very far."

"All we can afford today."

"Y'all hear the state lottery's up to two hundred and fifty million dollars?" She leaned forward with a conspiratorial glint in her eye. "With that much money in the jackpot, if you buy tickets, there's no way you can't win. I bought a dozen myself and already won fifty dollars."

"Two hundred and fifty million," Jeffree repeated, "That's... a lot of zeroes."

"More zeroes than a person can count," the cashier agreed.

Jeffree’s eyes gleamed like the stacks of gold bars he envisioned winning. “How many we gotta buy to win?”

Christopher’s stomach twisted. He knew that look.

Brandeene placed two bags of potato chips, a six-pack of generic soda, a loaf of bread, and a brick of something called "cheese product" onto the counter. Then Jeffree kept buying lottery scratchers until his wallet was empty and their credit card was maxed out.