Big Jack Is Dead (17 page)

My stepmother worked the area, moving among the attendees deftly despite her bulk. I watched her amid the assembly, chatting with each person soberly; shaking hands, hugging and sobbing. She leaned in close to an older woman and whispered something confidential, first looking around dramatically. The older woman reached out and grabbed Mincy's shoulders, holding her a short distance away then hugging her close.

I stood on the back wall, resting against the painted white brick with Brodie. It felt entirely natural to stand with him, despite the occasion, despite the emotional distance between us. It's one of those things from childhood that stays with you. You walk into a room, spot your brother and you go stand next to him. It made me feel better, but at the same time it reminded me that I didn't really know him. Our earlier argument had slipped away; Brodie didn't mention it again and I managed to resist my perverse curiosity. What did it matter if he believed some crazy shit about Dad's death? We stood quietly, watching people enter and mix.

Brodie had fetched our mother an hour earlier, and now she sat alone in a corner, stuck between stupor and grief. She looked out one of the windows blankly, without moving. A steady line of tears ran from her eyes and a trail of shiny mucus stretched from her nostrils to her liver-colored lips. Each time she caught my gaze, I was puzzled; I wasn't sure how to interpret her reaction.

“John-David won't be here, given that he passed away last year,” Brodie said.

Suppressing a laugh, I studied my younger brother to see if he was joking. John-David scared the shit out of me as a kid; him and his psychopath sons.

“I guess you knew he had a heart attack.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No, I didn't.”
And how the fuck would I have known that? It didn't really make the news out West.
 

“Yeah, they said it was just an explosive heart attack...out on a deer lease somewhere.” He took a sip from the Coke he'd gotten from a vending machine in the funeral home break room. That alone made me laugh. The funeral home sold refreshments. He was so earnest, so disconnected. I wondered what it was like to live anesthetized. “You know he was a big man,” he said evenly.

I snorted, unable to help myself. “If by big man you mean morbidly obese ogre, then yes.”

Blinking a couple of times, my brother looked at me then at the ground. The lines at the corners of his eyes made him look like he was flinching. He watched my face, surprised at my reaction but finding his nerve. “John-David was a real good friend of Daddy's, you know.”

“You're kidding? That's what you think?” I could feel my forehead knotting. Brodie seemed so genuine that it confirmed the existence of a massive delta between our perceptions. “You think they were friends?”

“Hell yeah, I do.” His face tensed up; I'd pierced the opiated veil. “They were friends for years, Jack. They hunted together, worked together, drank beer together. He might have been one of Daddy's best friends.”

I was at a loss, with no idea what to say. Remembering all the sullen stand-offs, punctuated by moments of cruel humor, I realized that I didn't understand what the word
friend
meant down here. Looking away, I shook my head. “I guess. His friends never made sense to me.” But what the fuck did I know? Maybe they had been friends and it was my view of the world that was flawed. Maybe I had no idea what the word friend meant anywhere. Suddenly I wanted to make peace with my brother. “At least John-David died hunting.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, true. That's probably what he would have wanted.” Indicating a direction with his Coke can, he said, “Kohen is here, his son.”

While I was trying to find Kohen in the crowd, an elderly man nearby pointed to Brodie. “That there is his son, one of 'em.” Brodie nodded and smiled, walking toward the old man, leaving me alone.

Kohen stood in a corner. He was huge, just as his father had been, over six foot five and fabulously thick. Dressed in a pin-striped suit, he wore wire-frame glasses and fancy cowboy boots. We'd been around each other as kids, but I hadn't seen him in over a decade. Sweat ran from his brow and neck, dampening the dark bristles of his hair. His sideburns were a straggly mass attached to the jowls of his face.

We saw each other across the room and moved closer, shaking hands in the center of the room.

He looked me up and down. “Jack...man, you look good. You still as skinny as you were in high school.” He smiled down at me generously, with warmth.

“Thanks, Kohen.”

“California is treatin' you right.”

I forced myself to smile. “You look good too.”

He laughed. “Well, I don't know.”

“I appreciate you coming.”

“Yessir...” His face became serious. “I felt like I needed to be here, you know. Your daddy was a real good man.”

I sucked on my bottom lip for a second, rolling it between my teeth as I remembered my father regarding me with a sharp, avian scrutiny. “Thank you for saying so. It's good to hear that people thought of him that way.” As monsters go, he was unbeatable.

“I guess you heard we lost Daddy last year…John-David, I mean.”

I ground my teeth together. “Yeah, I was sorry to hear about his passing. Someone I know mentioned it out in Sunnyvale.”

Kohen's eyes went wide behind his glasses. “I'll be damned.” He blinked a few times.

Resisting the urge to laugh, I nodded. “Your father knew people everywhere. He was well regarded.” I studied him, watching his reaction.

Kohen bobbed his chin slowly, looking out over the crowd. He took a deep breath. “Yessir. Yessir, he was. Daddy knew a lot of people and everybody loved him, no matter where he went. He'd done real well at work and out in the world. There were over a hundred people at his funeral.” Looking uncomfortable, Kohen cut his head toward me. “Well, goddammit,” he said, “I didn't mean nothing by that. I swear I didn't, Jack.”

I looked around and tallied the people in the area at probably twenty. Feigning ignorance, I said, “I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, I just didn't want you to think that I meant something bad about your daddy. He was a good man. Yessir, he was…”

I studied the room, pausing deliberately. “You mean because there are so few people here?” Turning, I faced him fully. “Is that what you're saying?”

“Aw, lordy, Jack…I'm real sorry for saying that. Sometimes I just say stupid things. That was always Daddy's biggest gripe with me.”

I looked at the floor.
You terrified me as a boy, mother-fucker.
“I guess it's true that there aren't many people here…two dozen, if that. He wasn't a great man, Kohen, even though it was nice of you to say that.”

He shook his head. “I am so sorry, I really am.” Sweating, he reached up and adjusted his collar where it bit into his neck fat.

“I guess that's why he did it,” I said, as if the idea was just occurring to me. “He must have known the thing you're talking about…that he wasn't worth much.”

Kohen rocked back on his heels. “Lord God, Jack…I wasn't tryin' to infer nothing bad about your daddy.”

“No, no…it's okay. Maybe he's better off this way.”

“Oh, man, don't say that…”

I regarded him soberly, done with this, wanting to get away. “I'm going to walk around for a while.”

He was still distressed. “I feel so stupid, Jack. I am truly sorry.”

I smiled up at him, “It's okay. Your dad was a great man and mine was a failure. No one really cared for him. In the end that's why he put his mouth down around the barrel of a pistol and blew out the back of his head.”

Kohen looked ashen and clammy.

“Thanks for coming. I'll talk to you later.” I walked away from him.

My amusement faded as soon as I left Kohen. With no real connection to anyone here, I didn't know what I was supposed to feel. I moved past the knots of people, pretending not to notice when someone gestured toward me or said my name.

As I passed, someone with a drawl mentioned my father owning a dog. “Yeah, he wrote a hot check for that thing and it was expensive…a bird dog from a breeder up in Montana. But he never did mess with it, so the thing was just half crazy…nearly goddamn dead from starvation when they found it.”

The comment made me falter in my step. Head down, I left the Communion Hall. A moment later, I stopped in a corridor outside. Windows ran the length of the passage, bringing in light and making the dingy walls brighter.

There was a drinking fountain in the corridor. The thought of cold water flowing over my face and into my mouth was appealing. My lips were dry and cracked...I needed some kind of relief, some comfort, but I was unable to force myself to drink. The fountain was old, with mineral deposits caked around the spigot. A steady leak ran slowly across the flat aluminum trough and down into the drain. There was a mossy smell emanating from the niche in the wall where the fountain sat. The aged compressor kicked on, filling the hallway with humming and rattling sounds.

I was looking for the break room, but before I could find it, an old man emerged from the restroom and stepped in front of me. He was leaning forward, head down as he toddled along, digging vigorously in one ear with his pinky finger. In his seventies, his hair had once been black, but was now frosty white. His body had once been muscled, but now sagged. I recognized him right away.

“Mr. Bornado.”

“Eh?” He looked up, sternly at first, then a gleeful smile came over his face. “Little Jack. Well, I'll be damned.” Even as old as he was, the man still had a ruddy complexion as if he spent every spare hour out under the sun. Several of his teeth were missing now, creating holes in his smile.

“Hey, Mr. Bornado.”

Obviously happy to see me, he cackled and twisted his head to the side. He probed my face with his eyes. “How are you, boy?”

“I'm good, sir. As good as can be expected.” I gave him a perfunctory smile.

He scrunched up his face in regret. “That's a terrible business with your daddy.” He shook his head from side to side and made a
tsking
sound. “But truth be told, Big Jack was one pissed off son of a bitch.”

I nodded calmly, looking down at the shrunken man in front of me. His skin was discolored along his hands, forehead and nose, mottled with patches of mauve or red. Though his body had lost its bullish mass, his eyes still bulged in their sockets with infernal vigor.

“No, I mean it...you might not see this 'cause he was your daddy and you loved him, but I mean he was just always mad as hell. I never understood it.” His voice was twice as loud as necessary and it boomed off the walls. “Every single time I tried to stop your daddy to talk, he acted like I was a horse thief or something.”

I smiled, caught between amusement and loathing. “Dad had problems.”
Most likely, one of those problems was that he didn't enjoy the thought of your hairy ass pounding the fuck out of his wife.
 

“…just always pissed off, even out at the plant. Some of the boys just didn't even wanna work with him.” Tilting his head down for emphasis, he balled his fist and held up a crooked, knotted finger, poking me in the chest to punctuate his words.

My jaws locked together when he touched me.
An urge came over me, to grab his arm and yank until the gristle popped in his shoulder. I saw myself biting down on the claw of his finger, crunching and slicing through the first knuckle with my teeth, taking him by the throat and throwing him through the window. I imagined him lying in the gravel and leaves just outside the window, covered in his own blood, shards of glass rising from his body and trembling with his breath like the fins and plates of some decrepit dinosaur in its death throes.
 

“Hey!” The old man looked up, grinning maniacally. “I saw your momma out there.” He looked up into at my face with wide-eyed excitement. Pinching up his mouth, he squinted as if in pain. “Ooh…she looks rough, don't she?”

I actually laughed out loud. “Yes, sir, I believe she does. She looks rough.”
Then again, so do you.
Running my tongue over my teeth, I wondered how much longer Mr. Bornado would walk the world. How many years, or months, until he fell and broke a hip, or forgot where he was one too many times.

“Yeah,” he said. “She looks real rough.”

“Well, it's good to see you, Mr. Bornado, but I need to go get ready.”

“Aw, yeah, aw, yeah. I'll see ya out there.” He turned and angled around me, moving down the sunlit hall, his gait mechanical, broken.

Listening to him shuffle away, I stared out the window into the courtyard. When he was gone, I headed toward the funeral hall to take my place.

The off-kilter quality of the day continued; everyone was in the right place, more or less wearing the right clothes for the occasion, but no one was quite sure how to act; nothing felt right. Everyone attending Big Jack's funeral seemed bewildered. There was confusion in the air and latent tension layered over it. Is it possible to miss someone like him? Does anyone really feel sad about this?

I chose to sit at the far end of the first pew, closest to the wall and farthest from the center aisle, with Brodie at my left. Mincy and Ramona sat further down. They rarely spoke, but occasionally my stepmother directed my mother in some small way…sliding her down the pew a few inches, telling her to pick up her hymnal or tuck her purse back further under the seat. Ramona did these things slowly, but without question. Mincy watched her with what seemed like concern, which surprised me.

The only light in the chamber filtered in from eight stained glass windows that were vaguely religious, but technically non-denominational. An organ player sat at the front of the room, a rail thin woman wearing enormous glasses. She barely moved as her hands crawled deliberately over the keys. Between each song, she paused for thirty seconds then nodded to herself twice as she launched into the next piece.

Handling all the arrangements with efficiency, Mincy had reserved the facility and hired both the preacher and the organ player. My stepmother hadn't been married to Dad for many years, but she was undoubtedly the right person to manage the affair of his funeral. The preacher she enlisted had never met my father, but Big Jack was not known to keep the company of preachers, or to keep the company of any other men save co-workers from the plant or the occasional deer hunter he met out on a lease.