Big Jack Is Dead

by Harvey Smith

  “What happened, Brodie?”

  The younger boy spoke quietly. “He bit me and I slinged him into that wall.” He started crying.

  “It's okay. Let me see.” He reached over and took Brodie's hand, prying it open. “You're all right…it barely left a mark.”

  Boss Hog still crawled along on his front legs, advancing a few more inches.

  “You go to your room and I'll take Boss Hog to Dad. Okay?”

  Brodie stopped crying. He nodded and walked off, skirting his wounded hamster and pausing to scoop up a superhero action figure.

  When his brother was gone, Jack got lower to the floor and inspected Boss Hog more closely. Tears welled up in his eyes as the hamster pulled itself through the dense carpet. Jack stroked it once, very gently, from the top of its head to the base of its stubby tail. Boss Hog ducked, but otherwise didn't react, continuing his slow passage toward the den, according to his own arcane compass.

  Hearing the door to the garage open, Jack called out to the kitchen, “Dad? Can you come help?”

  “What is it?” Big Jack came into the room holding a monkey wrench.

  “Boss Hog bit Brodie,” Jack reported. “I think Brodie dropped him and now he can't walk.”

  Big Jack came closer, taking stock of the situation. He towered over the hamster, but was only slightly taller than his twelve year old son. Grunting, Big Jack knelt. He made a quick diagnosis after watching the hamster. “Back's broke.”

  Jack let out a soft breath. He knew from TV that nothing survived a broken back.

  “Here,” Big Jack said. “Let's take him into the kitchen.” With a meaty, but careful gesture, he herded Boss Hog into his hand. He straightened and walked into the kitchen, holding the hamster in one hand and the monkey wrench in the other.

  Jack followed his father quietly, pride competing with sadness; he was doing something with his father that Brodie was too young to do.

  In the kitchen, Big Jack set Boss Hog onto a dishtowel. “Don't let him get away.”

  Jack stood at the counter, looking down at the hamster while cradling it in the dishtowel. He eased it back onto the towel each time it tried to crawl. He felt like a soldier with a minor, but important role to play.

  Big Jack set the wrench down and moved over to the walk-in pantry. Digging around in the dark, he came back with one of the plastic baggies his wife used to wrap up his sandwiches for lunch. At the stove, he turned on the back burner, which no one ever used because the pilot light was broken. He sidestepped a little to get closer to Boss Hog and Jack moved out of the way.

  Big Jack picked up the hamster and gingerly eased it into the plastic baggie. He stole a glance at his son next to him at the counter. “This way, he won't feel nothing. The gas'll just put him to sleep.”

  Jack nodded. A cold calm come over him. The small animal was injured beyond repair and this was the only way. He accepted his father's judgment without question. The boy mouthed the words, “Goodbye” as the smell of gas filled the kitchen. The broken back burner, the one his mother had cursed many times, hissed out the invisible air that would put Boss Hog to sleep forever.

  Big Jack moved a step closer to the stove with the baggie. Inside, Boss Hog pushed against the plastic cocoon with his front legs, testing it and wiggling his whiskered nose. Big Jack held the baggy up to the burner, off to the side, trapping as much of the gas as he could.

  Jack moved so he could get a better view of the scene, face solemn as he watched.

  Somehow the broken pilot light ignited, creating a burst of flame like a magic trick. It happened so fast that both Jack and his father were stunned. The small bag melted around Boss Hog in a split second, burning up his whiskers and coating him with molten plastic and fire. The hamster emitted a horrible scree sound, struggling spastically as Big Jack flung the entire mess down onto the stove.

  “Goddammit,” he said. His face constricted in disbelief as he shouldered his son aside and snatched up the monkey wrench. Big Jack brought the wrench down so fast on the flaming, struggling creature that the wrench dented the sheet-metal surface of the stove. The fire around Boss Hog was snuffed out by the blow and his skull was crushed in the same instant.

  Lips drawn back, Jack looked down at the smoking remains. The hamster's body was covered in a blackened sheath. Its forelegs stretched up plaintively toward the ceiling. Jack could make out one of the tiny, articulated hands where it emerged from the melted baggie. The claws were somehow pristine, tiny points of translucent nail splayed out fiercely. A last streamer of smoke wisped upward before fading from sight. The kitchen smelled of burnt plastic.

  Big Jack dropped the wrench on the counter and ran his hand over his forehead. “Goddammit, I didn't mean for that to happen. Goddammit.” He looked at the burner in wild shock. It held a perfect crown of flame. Big Jack looked at his son. “That thing don't never light…it just don't. It ain't never worked.”

  Jack stood stunned and mute.

  Big Jack used the dishtowel to scoop up the remains of the hamster. He took three quick steps to the pantry and threw the entire bundle, towel and all, into the trash.

  There was a papery rustle from the entrance of the narrow kitchen. Both Jack and his father turned to the doorway, where Brodie stood leaning back against the refrigerator. Colored magnets fell to the floor behind him and one of his elementary school drawings floated after them. He called out, wailing, “Daddy, why did you do that to Boss Hog?”

  Jack crept back into the kitchen later that evening. The dinner dishes sat heaped in the sink. In the den, Jack's father and mother watched television with the lights out. The volume was up loud and light flickered at the edge of the dark kitchen. Walking quietly in his socked feet, Jack stole over to the pantry.

  He tried to find Boss Hog's body in the dark, but could not. The smell of coffee, rotting vegetables and roach killer rose up from the trash. Holding his breath, he eased the pantry door closed at his back, stepping down six inches onto the concrete floor. A knotted cord hung overhead. When he tugged it, dim light lit the pantry.

  Rooting around, he shoveled aside a pile of cold macaroni and cheese, finally locating the hamster's remains. It sickened him throughout dinner, knowing that Boss Hog was down in the trash a few feet from the table, wrapped in the dishtowel.

  Jack lifted the bundle out and brushed coffee grounds from the towel. Reaching up again, he turned out the pantry light with his left hand. In the darkness, he pushed the door open and moved to the far end of the kitchen. The back door let him into the yard and he breathed again only when he was away, out in the night air.

  On the side of the house, he moved to the edge of the porch light. Crickets chirped in every direction. He set Boss Hog's rag-wrapped body on the ground and looked around in search of his mother's trowel. Ramona almost never used it and the yard was in dismal shape. However, every few months she got the urge to go into the backyard and dig around, entertaining visions of some grand landscaping scheme that she usually abandoned within the hour. Jack found the rusty trowel sitting on a small wall made of cinder blocks, originally intended to contain a tomato garden. He brought it back to the base of the tree where the grisly package waited. He knelt and started digging. After the hole was eight inches deep, he paused and looked down at the dark earth. His own body blocked most of the light, making it hard to see. There was enough light to make out the dishtowel, the hole and the glinting trowel.

  Tears formed in his eyes. He had rarely played with Boss Hog, but he could see the hamster running on its wheel, feet a blur. The cage smelled of urine because Jack hardly ever changed the wood shavings. He choked out high-pitched sobs and his cheeks ran with hot streaks.

  The dishtowel was damp under his hand as he arranged it tighter around the body. The melted bag had hardened and he could barely feel Boss Hog at all through the plastic and the towel. The bundle crackled in his hands. Reverently, he placed it into the hole then set a nearby brick down into the grave with equal care, covering the hamst
er's body to protect it from dogs, opossums or anything else digging around in the yard. Filling the hole with dirt, he used the trowel to cover the brick entirely, patting the earth smooth as he put Boss Hog to rest.

  As Jack turned away from the tree, a wood roach launched itself from one of the branches not far away, gliding past. It flew upright as it whirred by and landed with a tap against the siding close to the kitchen window. Jack cringed, looking at the thing, a dark spot on the wall. Even the sound of its flight filled him with loathing.

  Skirting wide and moving with stealth, he made his way to the back door and went inside, hands covered in dirt.

  Chapter 12

  1999

  Standing at the mirror, dressing for my father's funeral, I found myself wondering how many people had fucked in my motel room. A slide show of couples went through my mind, holding each other down, thrusting against one another with anger, betraying someone else, crying out with sounds that could have been anguish or ecstasy. I worked on my tie, pulling it too tight against my throat, then leaned close to the reflection as my fingers loosened the knot.

  The funeral was scheduled to start at four, but there was a casket viewing for family and friends earlier in the day. I planned on attending both, but wasn't sure why. When I was young, I treated my father like some sort of wild animal, approaching him with caution or avoiding him altogether. Later, he just seemed tired and pathetic...broken. He brought me into the world then used me as a dumping ground for hate until the day I was strong enough to wage war in return. That defined our relationship, so why bother?

  Long before his death, I worked as a temporary employee at a Web-based start-up. I'd just moved to California and the job consisted of testing the company's software and entering bugs into a database. Explaining it to Dad was difficult; he barely grasped the concept of working on something—manufacturing something—that did not exist in the physical world.

  Confusion ran across his face, eyes cut to the side, watching me warily as we sat together at his wobbly dinner table. It was early in the morning. Dad was smoking and drinking coffee. I told him that I was only making eight dollars an hour and that I sat in the back of a warehouse at a folding table.

  Recognition dawned in his eyes. He nodded vigorously and seemed to recognize the type of work I was doing. For a second, I thought there might be some kind of connection between us, over work if nothing else. Then he said, “That's a woman's job, boy. You'll get something better later on.”

  I studied him, deflated.

  He asked, “Hey, they got plants out there, don't they?”

  I took over the quality assurance department by the age of twenty-eight, doubling my father's blue collar wages. After that I moved into an amorphous production role that took advantage of my personality and strengths. By then my salary quadrupled Dad's pay. I called him each time I got another bump, chatting with him before mentioning that I had good news. He was always excited at first, seeing any increase in pay as a blow struck against the bosses. But when I told him how much money I was making, he stopped smoking for a while as he fought with my words.

  “That can't be right, can it? They really givin' you that much?” Silence passed and I could hear the bones in his back snapping and popping. This was almost supernaturally satisfying, this silence coming through the other end of the line.

  Maybe death was the final mastery. He was gone. Buzzards wheeled high over his spirit, a black mobile over a crib. The funeral signaled the last stage of the long ritual between the two of us.

  I was finished with the knot of my tie, but I stood in front of the mirror, arms down at my sides, thinking about how he'd lived his entire life on the Gulf Coast. Over thirty years working in the chemical plants scattered across the same county where he was born. Thirty years walking through that concrete and salt grass landscape, under rusted skies made of pipes and catwalks...in a shower of molten slag, breathing the chlorinated air that hugged the ground for miles.

  He married and divorced six times and that didn't even touch upon the countless women he met in the white trash dive bars, redneck diners and trailer parks dotting the region. His attraction to women like my mother, wounded in spirit, was a kind of magnetic force that he could never escape.

  His life must have been an endless series of shocking disappointments. His mother's coldness and his father's violence, a string of broken relationships, decades of meaningless toil in a toxic atmosphere. How many times had I dashed his dreams? He wanted a son who played quarterback or brought home a trophy deer every year. I started to laugh, but the laughter died on my face.

  Dad had lived a life of pain and failure that lasted over half a century. Once the final decision was made, once his finger was irrevocably committed to the act of pulling the trigger (squeezing slowly, breath held, to keep the gun from kicking), it must have been the sweetest release he'd ever known. I felt sorry for him and no emotion could have stunned me more. Under that, there was something else, a longing for some version of my father that never existed.

  Pulling out my phone, I dialed the short number.

  The operator responded, “Nine-one-one…what's the nature of your emergency.”

  “Can you transfer me to the police station? I need the non-emergency line.”

  “Hold please.” The line went quiet.

  A woman answered after a second, stating her name and saying something else so quickly from habit that I couldn't follow.

  “Hello. This is delicate, but I need your help with something.”

  “Okay, sir, go ahead.”

  “My father killed himself a couple of days ago…” I gave her time to grasp the words.

  “I'm very sorry to hear that. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to talk to the officer who was in charge of the investigation, I suppose.” I never dealt with law enforcement and had no idea whether anyone had been in charge or whether there had even been an investigation. “I have some questions about...how they found my father.”

  “I understand. I'm so sorry, dear. Hold for a moment.” A pre-recorded public service announcement began to play over the phone, warning me of the fines and penalties associated with driving while intoxicated.

  Someone else picked up the line. “This is Officer Ramirez. Can I help you?”

  “Hello, yes, my name is Jack Hickman. Junior. My father's name was also Jack Hickman. He killed himself a couple of days ago and I'm here trying to get everything taken care of. The funeral, his things and my family. I just wanted to ask you about some of this.”

  “You're the oldest son,” Ramirez said.

  “Right.”

  “I met with your little brother, Brodie.”

  “Yeah, he mentioned it.” I looked down at the floor, thinking about what my brother had done. “I was just wondering what you could tell me over the phone.”

  “Well, Jack Hickman committed suicide, as you said. With a handgun, two days ago.” Unlike the woman who had been on the phone earlier, Ramirez's voice contained no trace of empathy. “I have the address if you need it.”

  I pressed my lips together. “No, that's not necessary. I just...I wanted to know something.” It was hard to ask. “Was there a note?”

  “No.” Ramirez said the word flatly. “There was nothing like that at the scene of the investigation.”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, seeing images of my father's final home in snapshot form, taken from the crazy, tilted angles of murder scene photos on TV. Except that no one murdered my father; he did it himself. I saw his body on the floor of the old rental house, legs twisted beneath him, face hidden. His t-shirt was soaked with blood and his scarred cowboy boots jutted up in the foreground. The lighting was harsh, reflecting off against my father's skin, making it shockingly white. Shadows crept in from the corners of the room.

  I wondered what this man Ramirez knew. Had he drawn an outline in chalk? Had he recorded the precise angle of the body and the location of all the bits of flesh that must have been scat
tered through the room, matted pieces of hair or brain. Did he make jokes? Know what the last thing that went through his mind was?

  My legs felt unstable beneath me and my voice was raspy. “It's just, I've heard…” Thoughts came into my head like half-blind birds crippled by impact with a window. “I've heard that most of the time, in the overwhelming number of suicides, there's a note. They almost always leave a note.”

  “No, sir. There was no note. We looked.”

  I waited for the world to become solid again. Drifting over to the bathroom, I leaned against the doorjamb. “Are you sure?” My voice was quiet, but I had already given up. I knew the answer.

  “Yes, I am. We went over the house like we always do, according to our procedures. We conducted an investigation and looked at everything. His belongings were transferred to a storage facility at the request of the nearest local relative…a former wife, I believe.”

  I took several breaths, studying myself in the mirror. My eyes were hollows looking back. I reached up and touched my face.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  Officer Ramirez weighed his words. “Your daddy knew what he was doing.”

  I closed my eyes again. “Okay. I…appreciate your time.”

  “Not a problem. I regret what you've had to go through. That's all I can tell you over the phone. If you need anything more, you can stop by the station. Now, Mr. Hickman, is that all?”

  “Yes.” What else was there? He waited quietly for me to hang up.

  Brodie stood on the steps behind the funeral home, smoking a cigarette. I waved at him as I wheeled the car around. He waved back, holding the cigarette up, but his expression was dead.

  As I got out of the car, he called out to me across the parking lot. “What happened?”

  “Sorry I didn't make it.”

  “Where'd you go after you left? Mom freaked out. You wouldn't answer your phone. A bunch of people showed up at her place.”