Big Jack Is Dead

by Harvey Smith

  “No, sir,” Jack said. He looked into his lap.

  Big Jack held him with his gaze as the toast smoke rose next to them. When the toaster catapulted both pieces of bread up to the top of the twin slots, Big Jack took them immediately, holding them in the palm of his calloused hand with no regard for the heat. As a welder, his skin was impervious to the glowing tip of a cigarette. Hot toast didn't even register.

  “Don't put this shit in there already buttered. You're gonna burn the fucking house down.” Big Jack boomed down at his son, “Is that what you want? To kill us all?”

  “No, sir,” Jack said weakly.

  “Now get down off the goddamn counter.” Finished with the lesson, Big Jack left the kitchen and went out back.

  Jack's stomach was in knots, but he relaxed as soon as his father walked away. He waited until the kitchen was quiet then pushed himself forward off the counter. Dropping to the floor, he misjudged the fall and scraped the small of his back on the way down. He twisted and moaned, crouching and rubbing his back. Letting out a sigh, he collected himself and started out of the kitchen.

  As he passed the door to the back porch, Jack saw his father outside gobbling up the toast, finishing off each slice in only a few bites. Mouth stuffed with toast, Big Jack swiveled his head like a hostile, backyard blue jay. Unable to speak, he communicated with his face, furrowing his brow severely, scaring the boy into motion.

  That had been months ago. Now Jack stood on a chair, mouth watering as he made toast in the middle of the afternoon. He watched wispy smoke rise up from the toaster and at that moment his father's battered black truck roared up into the driveway, home from work.

  Panic ran through him as he remembered his mother. Hopping down from the chair, Jack raced through the living room. He reached the bedroom door and hammered against it with his hand. The music on the other side was louder now, reverberating through the house. Jack pushed against the door with both hands, palms splayed against the thin wood as he kicked with the rubber toe of his sneaker.

  The door swung open, revealing his mother and Daryl in the bed a few feet away. Jack's mother was on her back and Daryl was on top of her. They were both under the covers, but Ramona's knees stuck out, framing his body. Daryl grunted and snorted out explosive breaths as his hips rose and fell, his face contorted with effort. As the doorknob hit the wall, Daryl and Ramona jolted, snapping their faces toward Jack. Daryl continued to thrust into the woman beneath him, causing the bed to shake and creak.

  “Daddy's here,” Jack whined, holding the doorframe.

  Daryl's eyes popped wide with recognition. He flew up out of bed, sending the tattered quilt flying. His penis swung wildly, swiveling from his mass of pubic hair. In the same instant, Jack saw the pallid flesh of his mother's thighs, the ruddiness between her legs and the damp patch of hair beneath her bellybutton. Her breasts undulated like jellyfish hanging from her chest, soft and white.

  In seconds, Daryl struggled into his jeans and scooped up the remainder of his clothing. Still naked, Ramona helped him out the sliding glass door leading into the back yard. Jack watched Daryl as he fled, hopping and hobbling around the wreckage of a collapsed shed. He disappeared behind an unkempt growth of aloe vera plants just as Jack's father slammed the truck door out front.

  As soon as the sliding glass door was closed, Ramona slipped into her blouse and cutoffs with the agility of an escape artist. Still standing in the doorway, Jack's eyes were fixed on the puff of her hair as it vanished into her cutoffs.

  Working the zipper with spidery fingers, Ramona hissed at him, “Go sit in the living room. Tell your daddy we was playin'.”

  He darted into the other room just as Big Jack tried the front door, cursing and fumbling with his keys. When the door opened, Big Jack struggled inside carrying his plastic lunch box in one hand, holding his keys and a cigarette in the other. The screen door snapped shut at his back. His first words were directed at Jack, standing in front of the coffee table. “Did you lock that fucking door?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, sir.”

  Big Jack stood without moving in the doorway. He roared out his next question. “Ramona, why in the hell have you got this door locked?” His eyes were still pinned to Jack's.

  Ramona stomped into the room, holding a cigarette in one hand and yelling back. “You want me to get raped by some Mexican or something while you ain't here?”

  Big Jack smoldered at her across the room. He deliberated and reached a verdict. “No.” At the coffee table, he dropped his lunch box and truck keys on top of Jack's drawings. He dumped a handful of change onto the table, one of the rituals he performed upon coming home. The coins rained down in a scattered pile that Jack knew never to touch.

  Big Jack straightened up. “What the fuck is that smell?”

  Jack stood paralyzed. Ramona tucked some of her tangled hair behind one ear, confused, but wary.

  Big Jack took six steps in his tiny, nearly shredded work boots and was lost from sight around the kitchen doorway. “Boy, goddammit! What did I tell you about this toast?”

  The words echoed through the house and Jack shrank into himself, cold terror rising in his chest.

  After eating an early dinner and watching an hour of television, Big Jack stubbed out his cigarette, stood up and headed for the bedroom. A plate and an ashtray sat side by side next to his recliner. The plate was splattered with drying spaghetti sauce and the ashtray was so full that it formed a miniature mountain made of ash and butts.

  As he passed Ramona, Big Jack said, “Come on. Let's take a little nap.”

  Jack sat on the living room floor running his Matchbox cars along the grooves in the oval rug. Quietly, he made small vrooming noises with his mouth, mimicking the shifting of gears. He stopped and cocked his head, listening to his parents in the bedroom, arguing. Jack froze, clutching his favorite car as the bed springs began to squeak.

  After a short while, Big Jack came out of the bedroom in his softball uniform. He wore a team t-shirt bearing the Salvation Army logo, some stretchy pants and cleated athletic shoes. In the one-inch cleats, he walked as if he was a figure of towering proportions. They made a marching sound as he crossed the tile floor. The oval rug muffled the noise as he drew closer, dropping his gear and a pristine cap onto the couch.

  “Goin' to play some ball, boy.” Excited, he grinned down at his son with a competitive, almost maniacal grin. After tying his shoelaces, he took up the new cap, pulling it over his head snugly and looking down at his son. “Well, how do I look?”

  Jack faced up, knees folded under him. “You look good. You look like a baseball player.”

  “Softball, remember? Baseball is for pussies who gotta get paid to play.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said.

  Big Jack studied his son for a second. “And little kids in Peewee League. Like you in a couple of years.” Smiling uncomfortably, he reached out and pawed Jack's hair. “You're gonna whoop some ass someday like your daddy, right?”

  “Right,” Jack said, nodding and reaching out to touch the smooth aluminum bat leaning against the couch.

  “I'll bet you're gonna make a good outfielder. Fast, with good eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said.

  “Maybe we can play some catch this summer. You might be big enough now.”

  Jack picked up the crumbling leather glove his father had used since high school and held it out.

  Big Jack took the glove, tucking it under one arm. “Alright. Is my cap on right?” Grinning, he knelt down a bit as Jack came close and tugged on the bill, straightening the cap.

  “It looks A-okay.”

  “Alright, Daddy's gonna go win a game.” Tapping the bat on the rug underfoot, he nodded to Jack. “You be good, boy. I'll see you later, before you go to bed.”

  Jack watched him as he snatched up his truck keys and walked out the door.

  When the truck engine died away, Ramona came shuffling out of the bedroom, dragging now. Wearing nothing but a hou
secoat, she made her way through the living room, taking care to step over Jack's toys on the way.

  He stood up a minute later and padded across the oval rug, carrying his favorite car in one hand. With just the two of them there, the house was quiet. In the kitchen, he hung onto the stove with his free hand.

  Ramona stood at the sink, holding a cigarette and a plastic bag, smiling at him. “Hey, baby.” Lifting the sandwich baggy, she exhaled into it. Jack could see her lips pucker through the plastic as the little bag puffed out. Lifting the cigarette to one side of the baggy, she burned a hole into it, inhaling the fumes deeply while it melted.

  The smell of burning plastic crossed the room, cloying and unpleasant. She closed her eyes, holding the baggy and smoldering cigarette in place, repeating the process several times. The tip of the cigarette made twisting, expanding holes in the baggy. Finally, her hands fell, the bag slipping to the ground like a parachute shredded by hot shrapnel. She opened her eyes and smiled, groggy but happy.

  “Come here, little Jack,” she said. “Come here, my baby.”

  He crossed the room and continued walking until he collided with her body. Ramona rocked gently, settling back against the counter. Draping one hand over his shoulder, she lifted the other to her face, taking a drag on her cigarette. Ruffling his hair with a leaden motion, she exhaled smoke down around him, the soft cloud settling over him like goose feathers after a pillow fight.

  Jack closed his eyes and buried his face against her belly where it was starting to swell with his little brother Brodie.

  Chapter 2

  1999

  The last night of the conference, one of many for work, at a sidewalk restaurant with people I met earlier in the day. Sitting at the end of the table, eating and listening, knowing I would never see any of them again. The light in the sky falling through shades of blue, deepening toward the black eye of the trout lying dead on my plate, staring up at me.

  A Tuscan place in a neighborhood where all the businesses are called firms. Indigo clouds, shot with five more minutes of silver. Watching the last pigeon of the day as it waddles between the tables, hustling for scraps. Everyone goes quiet when it hops up onto an empty deck chair in a portly act of athleticism. Laughter and another sip of mineral water.

  After dinner, I walked several blocks to my car, the wind pushing bits of paper past me along the empty street. Dark trees punctuated the sidewalks in perfect rows, a circle of cobblestones around each tree. At a deserted intersection, the air was alive with the shrieking of birds. They dominated a tree near the corner, a screeching mob. I couldn't see anything within the leaves, but the sound was unrelenting, juggling bodies throwing themselves at one another through the branches. A dark shape flitted up out of the foliage into the night sky. Another dropped from the darkness overhead and was lost in the leaves.

  Halfway across the intersection, I noticed the man on the park bench. He looked homeless, around fifty, though it was hard to tell. Mouth slack, eyes half-closed, body slouched back on the bench. A steady rain of bird shit fell down on him from the limbs overhead.

  How do people end up being such disasters?

  I stopped in the street, afraid, but wondering if I should do something. I imagined him looking up quickly, lurching to his feet, running at me. He stared ahead without moving. White clots fell down from the leaves, plipping from his shoulders into his lap, smearing as they streaked his jacket and got lost in his wiry hair and beard. Some of the shit hit his face, forcing him to blink, but otherwise he made no effort to move. The birds continued with their shrill cries and hidden movements.

  Before looking away, I was struck by something. It took me a minute to figure out that beneath the beard and the filth he resembled my father. Roughly Dad's age and height, there was also something else, something about his expression. Pressing my lips together, I walked to the far sidewalk, heading to my car.

  A couple of hours later I sat at a kitchen table with some friends. Jean and Micheline were putting me up during the conference. Micheline's sister, Clarisse, was also with us and another couple who were visiting from France.

  I lifted my drink and rested the cool glass against my mouth, staring into the darkest corner of the room. In my thoughts, the birds still cackled and thrashed within the tree. I saw the homeless guy sitting on the bench and felt my stomach turn.

  Conversations played out around me in broken English. Someone had thrown a lacy drop cloth down over the table, which was stained with the coffee, orange juice and cigarettes; years of familial tracks. Smoke churned in the air around us, slowly migrating toward an open window at one end of the room. Jean and Micheline had two kids who were sleeping in another part of the house. Earlier, I'd watched Micheline and Clarisse carry them off, lifting their little bodies from the couch and moving them slowly into the other room so as to avoid waking them. The kids slept through it, hair matted with sweat and limbs hanging limply.

  Simon and Marie, the other couple, were smoking cigarettes. We'd gotten high earlier, but my buzz was gone. Partially-filled glasses of white wine and a few beer bottles stood clustered in the center of the table like a flooded city. I let out a sigh and rubbed at the scar cutting through my left brow...what a social worker once called “an act of adolescent curiosity, conspiring with adult negligence.”

  I'd driven up the coast to speak at a conference in Point Reyes. It still seemed strange that people paid me to talk about social apps for creating team culture. In my view, people just did what they did. They were born somewhere, grew up and took shelter; they felt happy, sad or angry; they fought, fucked and in general tried to get what they needed. That was the end of the story, the only speech the world would ever need. But traveling put everything else on hold and the conferences took me to interesting places. Two years before, in Hamburg, I stayed in a hotel that was an industrial cathedral. Every square inch was white or glass. The building itself was a work of art and had won some modern architecture award. It was situated down the street from a modern design museum and adjacent to a harbor full of tankers that seemed like a miracle of engineering, cleanliness and efficiency compared to the shipyards on the Gulf Coast, where I was raised. A company put me up there for a week in exchange for a one hour speech and a couple of interviews with the local media. I'd never been so comfortable; everything was sleek and clean and quiet. Sometimes I thought about that place as a way to relax.

  Sitting at the table, I traded my attention between zoning out and studying Clarisse. She laughed a lot, leaning forward over the table every time she did, revealing the olive skin on her chest. She was attractive…fleshy, with cocoa eyes and lips that turned up in sharp corners.

  “Are you sleepy?”

  I shook my head. “No, I'm good.”

  “Li-ar.”

  I smiled. “Okay, maybe.” We were talking quietly against the background noise of another conversation. Her English was good and it was impossible not to love her accent. Staying with Jean and Micheline, I'd been around Clarisse for several days, chatting, eating dinner and taking a couple of walks. Despite trying, we hadn't managed to get one another into bed. We came close once when the others went out and left us to watch their kids, who were something like four and five. Feeding them, Clarisse and I flirted and played around in the kitchen. Just as we started prepping for nap time, the younger child looked down at his plate, confused, and vomited all over the table. Before that instant, playing faux family was fun and we both seemed furtively aware that we would be fucking as quietly as possible while the children were napping. The vomit ruined all that.

  The conversation at the table turned political and Jean and his friend Simon started to argue. Dull heat rose up through my chest, but I stayed quiet. Simon spoke in broken English for my benefit, ranting against some aspect of French government I didn't understand. Jean argued with him, sometimes lapsing into their native tongue.

  While the two men were spitting at one another, I made eyes at Clarisse. Micheline and Marie looked bored.
After a while, everyone fell quiet.

  Clarisse's eyes darted to mine for an instant. “Uncomfortable silence is good compared to political bullshit.”

  “Oui,” I said.

  She laughed and everyone at the table relaxed.

  Jean and Simon smoked and made small talk, giving themselves a break and trying to show that everything was all right. Simon rose after a while and drained his glass. He patted Jean on the back. After they said a few words to each other in French, Simon leaned close to me and shook my hand. He said goodbye in sing-song English and I couldn't help but notice that several of his teeth emerged at crazy planar angles. His breath struck me like the winds of Hell. I sat there, shaking his hand and smiling, but somehow his teeth brought back the smell of a rotting bird that I found under my house as a kid. My dad forced me to pick it up in my hand and carry it out to our garbage cans, which were wrapped in chicken wire to keep the raccoons and cats out.

  Simon nodded and let me go, as Marie kissed the others and started collecting her things from the table. My stomach rolled because I couldn't help but visualize her tongue sliding into Simon's fetid mouth, past his tragic teeth. Everyone said goodbye for a while and then Simon and Marie left. Clarisse and I sat looking at one another across the table while Jean and Micheline cleaned up. They gathered up a bunch of glasses and bottles, carrying them into the kitchen.

  I looked down at a spot on the table, studying a stain for a second before looking up at Clarisse. She smiled at me, coyly. With the others out of the room, I stood up and reached across the table for her hand. She took mine in a way that was clumsy and intimate, reminding me of elephants linking trunks on some nature show. Near the open window at the end of the room, I sat on the wide sill, leaning back against the stained oak jamb. There were no sounds coming from the kitchen; the house was quiet. Pushing a potted plant into the corner of the window box, I made room for her and she sat down demurely, settling in opposite me and easing her shoulder against the other side of the window. We faced off in profile against the dark skyline beyond, with one of my legs drawn up.