I Didn't Mean to be Kevin
Caleb J. Ross
 Jackson Jacoby lives a life of abandonment. His father died when he was young. He and his mother suffered a falling-apart when Jackson was only ten. He lives alone in a studio apartment, uses the delivery truck he drives for his snack-vending job as his personal mode of transportation, and has just two friends: one of whom, Creg Deja, is a kindred without a mother or a father. Jackson’s hatred for his job is a common point of conversation between him and Creg. After a particularly heated discussion one afternoon in a Laundromat, Jackson retires to his apartment to browse classifieds ads in search of a new job, but instead comes across a plea, disguised as a want-ad for day laborers, from an abandoned mother begging for her runaway son to return home. Drunk and confused after a night out, Jackson dials the phone number unwittingly beginning a phone relationship with the mother. The next morning, feeling bad about misleading the mother, Jackson visits his other friend, his Uncle Marve. Jackson respects Uncle Marve more than he respects most people. He's a cryptic man, full of stories and hatred for Jackson’s mother (“The mother needs the kid, the kid needs the mother. Take out the ‘need’ from either pair and you’ve got either a woman who considers her son an obstacle, like in your case, or you’ve got a boy who is just floating around without roots.”). Via the morning’s discussion, Jackson’s hatred for his real mother is rekindled. He decides to continue his ruse with the fake mother despite moral hesitation. Creg spends his days at a Laundromat searching Spanish TV programs for his lost mother. She left him when he was a child, citing her desire to become a Spanish soap opera star. In return for his TV time, the owner of the laundry, Luisa, employs Creg to destroy surrounding Laundromats in order to obliterate competition. Jackson joins him on one of these errands which ends with police chasing them and only Jackson escaping. Afraid of the law and with no substantial reason to stay in Veranda, Jackson embarks on a journey to Delaware, home of the runaway’s mother. Along the way, he meets a variety of characters, and to them he repeats a certain story: that of his theft of a cauliflower ear from a B.W.P beef plant worker named Marion Garza. Jackson boils with pride by this story, from meeting the man years ago at a truck stop diner, all the way to the hows and whys of Jackson stealing the ear. He tells of a plan he made with a truck stop prostitute named Gina; that they were going to travel the county stealing abnormal body parts and selling them to tourist trap human parts museums. Very few of the strangers believe his stories. As he nears Delaware, he meets and befriends many people, two of whom, Bradley and Robert, especially interest him considering their similar situation: neither have a mother. Taken by Jackson’s story of his road trip to Delaware they join him and venture eastward. They arrive at the specified church where a will reading for the runaway’s grandfather is to take place, but they find only a room full of men, ages roughly eighteen to forty. The crowd waits hours for the will reading but after too long, the boys disperse, leaving only Robert, Bradley, and Jackson. Upset, they track the mother down, and discover that she had been planting the want-ad pleas in random newspapers throughout the country in hopes that her son might find one. Instead, she lured three motherless, hopeful boys. The ruse upsets everyone. The three of them—Jackson, Bradley, and Robert—part ways. Jackson returns to Veranda, stopping along the way at a tourist trap called Pen’s Maze, a snow labyrinth that melts during the spring. He steals an ear from the curator, hoping to feel vindicated by the proof of a real ear (after accepting that Marion Garza’s cauliflower ear was a fake). Instead, he feels nothing. Upon reentering Veranda Jackson passes on visiting the park in which Uncle Marve usually sat—it being full of cameras and news vans—and heads instead to Luisa’s Laundry to tell Creg of his journey. But he discovers that Creg, who is always at the laundry, is not there. After slight pleading, Luisa admits that Creg left for Mexico to find his mother. The TV, normally tuned to Spanish stations, instead broadcast the local news; a story of a local man found dead whom Jackson recognizes as Uncle Marve. Via a note found with the body police investigators discover hundreds of pounds of metal hidden in the park. Jackson remembers one of the many things Uncle Marve taught him: “Who am I without the war? Who is your Marion Garza without BWP? Who are you without Marion Garza? An old man, a sad Mexican, a lost little boy.” Validation, he learns, is something universally desired and universally needed.