Big Jack Is Dead

by Harvey Smith

  Back in the kitchen, he lit a cigarette with trembling hands and smoked. Squinting his eyes and looking off to the side, he tried to work it all out. One hand crept through a wide hole in his t-shirt, fingers clambering along his ribs as he stared toward the refrigerator. When the compressor kicked on, it startled him.

  He took a drag and transferred the cigarette to his left hand. Holding it with two fingers, he chewed at the edge of his thumbnail. Eyes still cut to the left, he spat a piece of skin out away from him.

  The sun had started to set. Stubbing out the cigarette, he reached for the pack and lit another one. The lighter clinked as he snapped it shut and jammed it into his pocket. The refrigerator shut off again, leaving the house in silence. He reached up and wove his fingers through his hair then pulled hard, rocking in place so that the kitchen chair threatened to buckle.

  He tried to say something, but made an urking sound.

  Reaching out with his right hand, he clutched at the pistol, dragging the cloth around it and picking up the entire bundle. The weight felt good under his palm. Pushing his chair back from the table, he rose and staggered toward the bedroom.

  *****

  I realized that our long struggle had ended, that there would be no resolution; none that made sense. My father had made me and then he had unmade himself.

  Rubbing my face, I imagined a great nothingness outside the walls of the house, a hissing television on a dead station. It had eaten up the world, causing every single thing to fly apart until nothing was left but a shimmering, buzzing void, dissolving my mother and all the missing pieces of her mind, my lost brother and even the fresh corpse of my father, barely human by my understanding of the word.

  I was afraid to go to the window, afraid to open my eyes. Licking my lips, I dropped my hands and stared at the floor, unsure of what to do next.

  There was a closet across the bedroom. I walked over, stumbling, and opened the door. There was nothing inside but a roach trap in one corner. I was about to turn away when I noticed a small panel set into one wall, hard to spot in the low light. Stepping inside, I knelt down. The sunlight from the dirty bedroom window was barely strong enough to illuminate the closet. The air was pungent with long-dead animals; mice or opossums under the boards of the floor.

  The panel opened with a squeak, revealing a compartment within the wall. Two metal pipes ran behind the ancient sheet rock. There were valves attached to the pipes and a discolored inspection tag hung from one of them. Flipping it over, I saw that it dated back to the 1970's and had been signed by someone named Braeden. My eye caught a small object, something that I recognized instantly. Reaching into the space, I fished it out and looked it over.

  Sitting in my palm, the pocketknife was five inches long. The handle was ribbed with black and green rubber. Using my thumb, I snapped it open, exposing the blade that my father kept razor sharp for almost three decades. Stretched across my hand, it flashed in the filmy light creeping over my shoulder. The metal had been discolored by time, with patterns that looked like lakes seen from high above, a prismatic coastline running along their edges. I studied the blade, catching a warped reflection of my own face in the surface. The knife felt good in my hand. How many deer had Dad gutted and skinned with this thing? Over the years the rubber grip had dulled to some unnamed shade of aqua-gray.

  I wondered how the knife had come to rest in the small compartment. My father was a practical man, always focused when busy with his hands. Had he been working on the pipes? I could see him sitting in the closet in the morning light with a cup of coffee on the floor in front of him. I could see him using the knife to cut off the tip of a caulking tube, unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes squinted against the smoke.

  A shudder ran through me as I remembered what it was like to be near him while he was working, watching him as he muttered and tinkered. Like I shouldn't exist, a feeling interrupted by overpowering fear during those moments when he needed something that I failed to deliver fast enough or in exactly the right way. I could see his twisted expression, radiating hostility and guilt. No, boy, the goddamn socket wrench.

  Sitting on the floorboards, I turned the pocketknife over in my hands, depressed the lock and closed it. The pivot was smooth as it clicked shut. I opened and closed it several more times, listening to the sound. The metallic parts were cold, draining the heat from my hand. I tapped the butt of it against the floor a few times, very slowly.

  The smell of urine hit my nose, cutting through the antiseptic tang of cleaners and the dusty closet odors. As the air turned rotten, the house creaked and something slapped softly against the floor.

  A dark figure stepped into the doorway, blocking the light. He loomed over me, head large. One of his chubby hands reached up and rested on the closet doorframe. In the low light, it took my eyes a second to register the curls, rash of bumps across his pale belly, the low-sagging diaper.

  I dropped the knife in surprise and it slid down my body, hitting the floor with a clatter. “Fuck!” My face drew up, lips pulled away from my teeth in a grimace. Half rising, I choked on an intake of breath. The smell from the child's diaper made me want to vomit. He recoiled and his eyes shot wide, huge in his face. Hopping up on one foot then the other, he did a strange little jig.

  I stared at him in the darkness, sucking in air through my mouth. When I spoke, my voice was unrecognizable, mewling and strangled. “It's okay. Please...just get out of here. Go home.”

  Clumsy on his toddler legs, he backed up two steps, pale face dissolving in the dark. Turning, he ran, but fell to the floor before rising and disappearing around the corner. A long wail followed him.

  “Goddammit,” I said to no one. I almost stood, almost left the house. Instead, I sank back to the floor. The boards beneath me creaked like wooden scaffolding and the wind moaned through the windows of the old place. Exhaustion fell over me like a heavy quilt. With a great sigh, I put my back to the wall, tucking my knees so that I barely occupied any space at all.

  Again my eyes settled on the place in the bedroom where my father put the pistol into his mouth. There was a sound and I realized that it was my own voice, that I was laughing. Staring at that clean, clean spot on the floor, I kissed the blade of the knife. The metal felt smooth and cold against the warmth of my lips.

  With a fierce motion, I dragged the blade through the meat of my neck. I barely felt the pain and was surprised by the splashing heat of my own blood. A strange relief came over me, something I had never known. Nothing bad could happen. Nothing else, ever again. Noises came from my ruined throat, a voice crying out in a sustained moment of need. There was a great rushing in the darkness around me.

  A while later, I took a deep breath and pulled myself up, leaving the knife behind on the floor. My eyes had adjusted to the gloom and when I got back to the kitchen I stopped and took it all in. The quiet, emptiness. There was a shuddering intake of breath over against the wall, then a sniffle. Walking close, I put one hand on the refrigerator and extended the other down to the toddler, who was sitting on the floor. He looked up at me, face slick with snot and tears.

  “Hey, hey,” I said. “It's all right. I'm not mad.” His eyes were locked on mine, searching my face. “Come on, you didn't do anything wrong. I'll take you back to your momma. Okay?”

  He gave another involuntary shudder and nodded.

  Holding his grubby hand, I stepped out onto the porch, kicking the bottom edge of the door when it got stuck. I wanted to get away, like I'd done something terrible, but I forced myself to walk at his pace. Next door, his mother didn't answer, but he slipped past the screen door and went inside. Partially hidden by the darkness of the house, he stared at me for a few seconds before turning and plodding off to find her.

  There was no traffic on the dead end street. The light and the breeze from the levee washed over me standing in the center of the road. Running my hands through my hair, I closed my eyes, listening to the water, the cry of a gull, cars a block or two a
way.

  Pulling out my phone, I called Mandy and told her to get me the earliest flight home. On the plane heading back, I wondered how long it would be before someone moved into Dad's little house. Through the window, into the burning gold of the clouds, there was a trick to the horizon, making it hard to tell whether the sun was coming up or going down.

  Deep gratitude to the following readers and allies for their efforts and insights: Leah Smith, Ricardo Bare, Jim Magill, Charles Lieurance, Denise Fulton, David Fugate, Laura Lewin, Stephen Powers, Jane Pinckard, Austin Grossman, Richard Rouse, Debra Ginsberg, David Kalina, Lulu Lamer, Matt Udvari, Bennett Smith, Susan O'Connor, Eric Zimmerman, Michelle Bagur, Monte Martinez, Patricia Maness Nolan, James Teems, Elizabeth Spear, Phil Bache, Anne Spear, Starr Long, Eugenie Long, Jeff Lake, Raphael Colantonio, Florence Colantonio, Kain Shin, Theron Jacobs, Kimberly Whitmer, Tracey Thompson, Angela Ramsey, Laura Ferguson, Jason Rosenstock, Jo Lammert, George Royer, Katie Kizziar, Damien Di Fede, Kristy Bowden, Koley Porter, Brady Dial, Kate de Gennaro, Anthony Huso, Angie Bare, Lauren Magill, Stephanie Whallon, Jeff Lafitte, Anthony Broussard, Jerald Broussard, Brady Fiechter, Sheldon Pacotti, Bruce R. Ladewig, Quin Matteson, Trey Ratcliff, Shay Pierce, Jake Simpson, Seth Shain, Brenda Brathwaite, Joe Houston, Bill Money, Leon Hartwig, Karen Petersen, Rich Wilson, Rita Wagenschein Rosas, Nathan Regener, Brandon Sheffield, Lisa Machac, Brian Sharp, Kris Fregia, Christian Primozich, Kendall Marie Lynch, and Jordan Thomas. Special thanks to Thomas P. Moore and Rebekah Smith for supporting my early efforts.