Career Day

Part Three

Jasper had grown up with a killer in the house. A killer for a father. Combine the murderous impulse with the paternal impulse and you got...

Well, you got Billy Dent. A guy who raised his son to understand the human body in a very special way. A guy who taught Jasper how to hit an inside fastball and how to separate an arm at the shoulder joint. Who showed Jasper how to spell his name in neat, conservative print, and also showed Jasper how to wipe a crime scene free of clues in just as neat and conservative a manner, leaving nothing to chance and nothing for the cops.

Jasper sat at the desk in his room. He could have done Mrs. Hereford’s assignment on his computer, but for some reason it just seemed easier to write his thoughts out. Maybe he would type them up after he had them down on paper.

He took out a pencil and his father’s voice came to him, suddenly, unbidden, as it often did.

Make your J like this, see? He could remember it like yesterday. No, more than that —worse than that. He could remember it as though it had happened seconds ago, as though he were once again a child and his father —Dear Old Dad —would come around the corner and lean against the doorjamb the way he always did and grin and say...

Say...

It could have been anything, in that deceptively simple drawl of his, that local-yokel voice that caught everyone off- guard. It could have been Want tacos for dinner? or it could have been Let’s go to the movies or it could have been I’m still thinking about that redhead I killed; let’s go look at that necklace I kept of hers again.

His father’s hand —rough, strong, sure, steady —on his own, helping him to trace the lines of his name...

And then the A. A little A. Some folks make ’em like this, just a circle with a little stem, and that’s fine, Jasper. Ain’t nothin’wrong with that. But maybe you want to try this cute, clever little number here. More like a typewriter or a computer, see?

His father’s hand, guiding him.

Think about what your parents do, Mrs. Hereford had said. Whether you want to follow in their footsteps —maybe go into the family business?

Which family business was she talking about? Itinerant salesman or serial killer?

Or would you rather do something different, maybe even a little crazy to some people?

Jasper nearly collapsed there at his desk. He thought of Connie, of the kiss, of the softness and the yielding of her. He had never thought he would kiss a girl. Not when the world knew him as the son of a serial killer.

He would love nothing more than to live a normal life. To be a man who went to a boring job and who never, ever took his tie off, who never, ever went wild.

But Billy’s voice whispered to him so often. His father had been in jail for three years, and Jasper had never visited, and still...

Still it whispered. Jasper, it said. Jasper, there’s so many out there. So many special ones for you to kill. I can’t do it anymore, son. They done locked me up for good. But you got a hell of a career waitin’for you. Best job in the world. Lots of vacation time, lots of travel, no boss lookin’over your shoulder, and all the rape you can handle, Jasper...

“Please stop,”Jasper said quietly. He stared at the homework assignment in front of him until the words all blurred and his father’s voice went away.

At the top of the paper, he started to write his name, the way he’d done it his whole life. He didn’t get to his last name, pausing instead to take in the word Jasper in his obsessively neat penmanship. The J, its hook perfectly aligned with the lower loop of the A, which was precisely the same size as the S, the P dropping just slightly below the line...And then the E, the same width as the A —the exact same —and the final R, its crook like a perfect little hanging peg.

He stared at its too-perfect alignment, its unwavering sameness, its unalterable consistency.

And then —before he knew exactly what he was doing —he savagely erased it and scrawled, in a sloppy hand, Jazz, the two Zs misaligned with each other.

Yes.

Better.

He pondered the question for one more moment —What do you want to be when you grow up? —and then, without hesitation, wrote a single word:

 SAFE