Big Jack Is Dead

by Harvey Smith

  Jack studied his father's face, dreading his next words. Something distracted him and he looked through the living room window. Ramona stood on the porch. She stared at the front door, mouth wide.

  Jack winced. “Why is Mom outside?” he asked, watching her. She seemed unable to move.

  “Goddammit,” Big Jack said. He hopped up from the recliner and yanked the door back. He stepped into the opening, blocking Ramona when she tried to enter. “I told you…your shit is at your momma's and you can have that car.” He waited a minute, but Ramona did not speak. “Goddammit, woman…you can't stay here no more. You got to go. If you don't, I'm gonna call the law…”

  Ramona didn't move. Her mouth still hung open.

  “What's going on?” Jack asked.

  Big Jack whirled and pointed a calloused finger at his son. “You shut the fuck up if you know what's good for you.”

  Jack went silent, taking on a dead expression.

  Big Jack turned back to Ramona. “Now get the fuck out. Get off my property. Take your car and go to your momma's. Every bit of your shit is there.” He looked over his shoulder at Mincy, on the couch. Her face was flush and she gripped the hem of her skirt, working the fabric with her plump fingers.

  Leaning out through the doorframe, closer to Ramona, Big Jack hissed at her in a voice Jack had never heard before. “You got about five fucking seconds to walk your ass down to that car and get the fuck out of here before I do something you ain't gonna like.”

  Mincy got up as fast as she could, causing the couch to undulate and the springs to groan. She crossed the floor and stood next to Big Jack. “You've got to go, Ramona. If he calls the law, you'll be going to prison. You've just got to go.” She reached out with one finger and poked the other woman roughly in the stomach. “You can't do that around them boys… If the police hear one word of it, you'll spend the rest of your life behind bars and I promise you won't like that.” She pursed her lips as she finished speaking.

  Big Jack leaned further forward. “Git. The fuck. Out.”

  Ramona's face lost all color. She turned and fled down the walk. Opening the door to the Honda, she slipped behind the wheel and sat looking forward, motionless except for quick glances back at the front door.

  When she drove away, Big Jack closed the front door. Mincy put one hand on his shoulder and rubbed it.

  “That was hard,” she said. “I know it was hard, but you had to do it for these boys.” She indicated Jack with an open palm. He stood near the coffee table, a stunned look on his face.

  “Yeah, I know,” Big Jack said. The vein in the center of his forehead was so swollen that it looked like it was going to rupture. He looked at Mincy then his son. “Boy, I hate to tell you this…I know it's just terrible. But your momma was smokin' marijuana.” He scrutinized Jack, waiting for his words to sink in. “And that ain't right around you and your little brother.” He slowed down, trying to explain. “Niggers use drugs. Drugs ain't good.” He shook his head in time with the last three words.

  Mincy spoke up from beside him. “Your father told her that he was going to call the police if she didn't leave. You can't say anything to little Brodie, but the social services would have taken you boys away from your daddy and put you into a foster home.” Her eyes rolled up toward the ceiling again, exclusively white. “…maybe even separate foster homes.”

  Jack stood perfectly still, watching her.

  Seeing that he was unconvinced, she continued. “You're thirteen, so you're old enough to know about this, but Brodie isn't…you can't tell him about any of these matters.”

  Jack turned to his father. “You came home early to pack up her clothes and stuff?”

  “I had to, boy!” Big Jack was incensed by the question. “She'd woulda fought tooth and nail if I hadn't. I didn't want to have to call Johnny Poe-leece on her ass.” He gazed at his son for a minute, somewhat lost. “You don't want your momma in jail, do you?”

  “No.” Jack spoke quietly, but he wanted to scream, wanted to ask more questions, but he knew that his father would not provide the answers. Already pushing his luck to the limit, he felt growing caution. His father's patience was unpredictably thin. “What's gonna happen?” Jack asked.

  Big Jack looked at Mincy first then his son. “Well…it'll be just us men for a while. We'll be alright.” He grinned at Jack. “Hell, boy…might even be fun around here.”

  A couple of weeks after Ramona moved out, Jack heard his father's truck pull into the driveway at roughly the same time it always did. His stomach rumbled to life as the engine died. Big Jack brought fast food home each night instead of cooking. Usually, it was fried chicken, sometimes burgers.

  Jack noticed something different this time, but he wasn't sure what it was. Only when he heard voices raised in conversation and laughter did he realize that two truck doors had slammed instead of one. Resting his paperback on the carpet and sitting up from the couch, he watched his father and Mincy unloading luggage from the bed of the truck. As Big Jack hauled her suitcases up to the front door, she followed with an excited, breathless expression.

  Big Jack entered through the front door and piled everything on the carpet by his recliner. “Phew,” he said. “Goddamn, woman.”

  Mincy giggled, standing on the doorstep. She looked at Big Jack expectantly. He searched her face before realizing what she wanted.

  “Oh…shit,” he said. “Hang on.” He walked over to the doorway and made an effort to lift her up.

  Jack watched from the couch, curious and wary.

  His father looped his arms under Mincy's enormous ass and heaved her a few inches off the ground, gasping as he did. They managed to stagger forward by a foot or two, nearly toppling before Big Jack released her just inside the doorway. When he stood up, his face was red. Grunting, he put a hand on the small of his back. Mincy smiled delicately, smoothing her flower-printed skirt.

  Big Jack noticed his son. “Hey, boy. Where's your brother?

  “In his bedroom, I think.”

  “Brodie!” Big Jack bellowed. “Brodie, get in here.”

  A few seconds later, the younger boy peeked around the corner from the hallway. He crossed the living room and inched backward onto the couch beside Jack.

  “Boys,” Big Jack said, “Mincy and me got something to tell you. Good news.”

  “Is Momma coming home?” Brodie asked.

  Mincy stood next to Big Jack, looking down at the boy with heavily-lidded eyes. “No, Brodie, your mother can't come home. If she does, she'll get in trouble with the law because she is a dope user.”

  Brodie looked confused. He looked from Mincy's face to his father's.

  “What we gotta tell you is this,” Big Jack said. He took in a deep breath. “Mincy'll be moving into the house with us.” He tried to smile at his sons. “That'll be good, huh?”

  Fear settled over Brodie's face as he began to whine. “You said Momma was coming back.”

  Big Jack lunged toward the eight year old, “Your momma fucks niggers now, boy. She ain't never comin' back.”

  Brodie gazed up at his father.

  Jack tensed for his brother's cries, bracing himself for the outpour that accompanied such interactions with their father, but this time Brodie was silent.

  Chapter 16

  1999

  At the cemetery, we stood under an awning erected over the site. Big Jack's casket was suspended over his grave, held in place by the straps that would lower him into the ground. A wreath of flowers sat on top of the coffin.

  I studied the darkness of the grave through a gap between the bottom of the coffin and the neat edge of the earth. A specialized machine had extracted a perfect geometric cavity from the ground. The machine was mounted to the back of a tractor parked nearby, thick slices of mud stuck to its blades. Indoor-outdoor carpet was spread over the area to protect our dress shoes from the fresh mud. The wind blew through the massive pecan trees in the old graveyard, sending the occasional branch or husked pecan down into the
grass below.

  I looked at the coffin and trembled. My father is in that dark space. He will never come out. I felt the world changing again in some fundamental way.

  The ceremony was short. The preacher read a passage from the Bible and led us in prayer. About half the people from the funeral were there to see Big Jack settle into his final resting place. They began to disperse when the preacher finished his last rites. Watching them head off to their cars and trucks, I knew I would never see most of them again. I stood for a long time with Jenny, Mincy, Ramona and Brodie.

  Two black men who worked for the cemetery hovered nearby, waiting to lower the casket down into the earth. One of them asked, “Y'all want us to wait some more?” His expression was neutral, just a man at work, asking a question about the job and wanting to get out of the wind. “We can come back…”

  Everyone turned to face me. “No,” I said. “Go ahead and do it.”

  “You don't wanna watch this,” Brodie said.

  Something about his earnestness made me want to hit him. It smacked of a folksy simplicity that he lacked. After all the shit he showed us when he was alive? And by the way you looked at the goddamn police photos of the suicide. I almost said it aloud, but held my tongue, too exhausted to fight.

  “Yes, I do. I'll stay. Everyone else can leave…I don't care.” I released Jenny's hand and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Well, we're gonna go,” Mincy said. She came over and hugged Brodie, then me, something I found touching. Some of my tension eased. Stepping back, she took my mother's upper arm and led her away. Ramona had a strange smile on her face and held one hand curled like a talon between her sagging breasts. Mincy made eye contact with me a last time and smiled. Jenny reached up to touch my shoulder briefly then followed the other women.

  Once they were gone, I turned to one of the cemetery workers and nodded. He ambled over to the lift and it rattled to life, coughing out blue-white smoke and the cloying smell of diesel. It spooled out the canvas straps supporting the coffin, lowering it into the grave.

  Unsure of what to do, I reached down and took up a clod of dirt lying on the indoor-outdoor carpet. When the top of the casket dropped below the surface of the ground, I released the dirt and it fell with a thump onto the metallic surface. Brodie watched me then did the same.

  Chapter 17

  1980

  On a winter evening in Lowfield, Big Jack called his sons out into the front yard. They stood in their coats with the hoods up, every breath a puff of white air. Jack stood next to Brodie, watching their father mumble to himself and move about the yard.

  “Hard fucking freeze comin' tonight.” Throwing it over one shoulder, he pulled a garden hose further into the center of the yard. “S'posed to get down to fifteen goddamn degrees.” From the back pocket of his jeans, he drew out a fan-shaped sprinkler head and attached it to a second garden hose. Both hoses snaked off to the side of the house where they connected to the spigot. Using tent stakes and old wire from his shop in the garage, he positioned the hoses so that they pointed up toward the tall Chinaberry tree in the front yard. During the warmer months, the boys climbed in the branches of the tree and picked the hard berries to throw at one another.

  “Dad, whatcha doing?” Brodie asked.

  Bent at the waist, Big Jack turned toward them and smiled with a kind of secretive glee. “You watch, boy.” He continued to make adjustments, forcing a tent stake deeper into the cold ground and tightening a wire.

  “Okay, go turn it on,” he said to Jack.

  Moving into the cold shadow between the two houses, Jack treaded along stiffly in his coat, wary of dog shit. Standing close to the foundation of the house, he could feel the cold coming off the concrete. As he cranked the valve to maximum, the hose shifted under the pressure and a spray of mist emerged around the spigot where the hose was imperfectly threaded.

  As he reached the corner of the house, he slowed because he could hear his father cursing.

  “Now goddammit, boy. Did I ask you to turn it on all the way?”

  Jack stopped, studying his father. “I thought you wanted it on,” he said.

  Brodie looked back and forth between the two of them.

  A menacing, disgusted expression crossed Big Jack's face. “I did want it on. Just not all the fuckin' way. You better use your goddamn head.” He pointed at his head with two fingers, jabbing himself in the temple. “Turn it on halfway.”

  Jack stared, demeanor sullen, but his father didn't seem to notice. Returning to the side of the house, Jack's face was red, his jaw clenched. He kicked at the dried body of a toad, hit by the lawnmower weeks before and stripped by fire ants. Balling his fists, he beat them four times against his thighs. The light was falling fast and the air was colder. Through the nearly naked branches of a bush, he could see an abandoned bird nest. Letting out a deep sigh, he cut the flow of water by roughly half before returning to the front yard, where the sprinkler sent a flat arc up into the branches of the Chinaberry tree.

  The air was full of water vapor and the chilly weather was suddenly more miserable. Huddling in his coat, Jack took up his position next to Brodie. Their father joined them and lit up a cigarette. They all stood together and watched the deluge for a minute or two.

  Big Jack's mood shifted entirely. Working his mouth around the cigarette, he chuckled to himself. “You just wait. This shit is gonna be pretty slick in the morning.”

  A car coming down the street slowed as it passed the house, the driver twisting to gawk at the tree and the sprinklers, mouth open. Jack could barely discern the pale face of another passenger, leaning forward in curiosity. Big Jack scowled at them and the car sped up, cherry taillights shrinking in the distance. He turned to go inside and the boys followed him.

  That night a hard freeze hit Lowfield, as predicted. The cold weather burst pipes and killed off houseplants across town. The next morning, everything was covered in a layer of ice. The sidewalks and roads were slick and treacherous.

  As Jack awoke, he could hear his father bellowing in the living room. At first the words made no sense, coming from far away. He blinked as he woke up, arching his spine and stretching his arms overhead until they made contact with the cool, white wall. As always, he'd thrashed in his sleep, tangling the sheets and the blanket. Exposed, the skin on his chest was chill to the touch.

  He groaned and rolled over onto his stomach, grinding his erection into the mattress. Even at thirteen, he still sometimes peed in the bed, which confused and mortified him, but this morning his sheets were dry. Closing his eyes, he let waves of pleasure wash over him as he pressed himself down into the bed, humping slowly a few times. He considered slipping into the bathroom to masturbate before breakfast, but his father called out again.

  “Boys, come see!” Big Jack cackled and said something inaudible. When only silence returned from their bedrooms, he yelled, “Goddamn it. Get up, you little fuckers!”

  Jack rolled out of bed and landed on his bare feet. Brodie bumped the wall in the next bedroom as he jolted awake.

  Jack's room was very neat, almost empty. He crossed the floor and opened a drawer, pulling out a pair of sweatpants and tugging them on. Struggling with the drawstring, he hoped the sweats would hide his erection. When he came into the living room, he was still unsteady from sleep.

  “Hurry the fuck up,” his father said.

  Mincy entered just ahead of Jack, wearing a silky robe that revealed much of her cleavage and only covered the rest of her body down to the mid-thigh. Her ass was several times larger than Jack's head and each of her thick legs was deeply dimpled. She moved up next to Big Jack, looping an arm around his waist and cupping the blade of his hip bone through his jeans, which he'd donned upon leaping from bed. She stood roughly the height of her husband and craned her neck to see out into the yard.

  Big Jack pointed out through the front window. “Look at that shit. It worked!”

  “Oh my god,” Mincy said.
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  Big Jack looked at her sharply, surprised by her reaction. Staring at her briefly, his mouth drooped and his eyes showed concern, but the expression changed to pride as he realized that she was impressed.

  Jack walked over next to them, slipping between the recliner and an end table, moving up against the window. Mincy's flesh shifted beneath the robe, causing him to shudder with lust.

  Out in the yard, the Chinaberry tree was completely encased in ice.

  Staring out the window, his father spoke with reverence. “Looks like goddamn Disneyland, don't it?”

  Big Jack's handiwork dominated the front yard. The area was so radically changed that Jack's breath caught in his throat. Ice encrusted the Chinaberry tree to its full height, extending out along all its branches. The spray from the water hoses had cascaded down around it for ten feet in all directions, freezing drop upon drop through the night until the tree itself was lost. It resembled a raging fountain, frozen in mid-torrent. All around the yard, the grass was stiff and ghostly.

  While there was no snow, the entire block was frosted over, the weather leeching much of the color from the world. Everything was gray or white and the sky overhead was a monochrome void. Just over the houses across the street, the first pale sunlight was evident. Everything was more still than usual.

  Brodie trundled up behind them and stood quiet. Eyes wide, he was stunned with excitement.

  “That's just so pretty,” Mincy said in disbelief. She turned and tilted her head, pecking Big Jack on the cheek. “We've just never had anything so pretty.”

  They all stood at the window. Jack could feel the cold reaching his skin through the glass, but the view was mesmerizing.

  “Let's go outside and look at it up close,” Big Jack said. When he snapped his head toward his sons they both jumped from the sudden motion. “Don't fucking touch it,” he said. The vein on his forehead puffed up in an instant and looked like it was going to pop. After holding them in his gaze, he made his way into the kitchen to refill his coffee cup. The others moved through the house to put on warmer clothes.