Jacks Magic Beans

It smashed into a lamp that Carolyn’s mother had given to us for our fifth wedding anniversary. I stared at the fragments, felt fresh blood running down my chin again, and sighed.

I’d been contemplating it for weeks, but it wasn’t until then that I decided to die.

I went to the gun cabinet. Inside were my hunting rifles, kept for a pastime that I didn’t enjoy, but that I had to partake in to be considered a normal guy. My hand was steady as I unlocked the case and selected the 30.06 and a box of shells. The bullets slid into the chamber with satisfying clicks. I sat down on the bed with the gun between my legs.

I had seen pictures online of failed suicide attempts. Cases where the poor slob had placed the gun against the side of his head and pulled the trigger, writhing in agony when the bullet traveled around his brain and left him alive. That was no good. I needed to do this the right way. I placed the barrel in my mouth, tasting the oil on the cold metal. I breathed through my nose, deep-throating the gun the way I’d done my Uncle’s shriveled pecker when I was nine. As the barrel touched the back of my throat, I gagged, just like back then. Tears streamed down my face.

I glanced at the wedding picture on the nightstand. There was me and Carolyn. Two smiling people. Happy. In love. Not the balding loser who sat here now or the fat cow the woman had turned into.

The woman who I had promised to love forever so long ago.

“I’d die without you,” I mumbled around the barrel.

Then I pulled the trigger.

The initial force jerked me backward. The gun barrel impaled the roof of my mouth. I felt it blast open my head and heard the wet slap of my brains hitting the wall, turning the ivory flowered wallpaper crimson. Grey chunks of brain matter and eggshell splinters of my fragmented skull embedded themselves in the drywall. My right eye dribbled down my face as my bladder and sphincter let loose, staining the bed sheets.

The pain stopped abruptly, as if someone had flicked a light switch. One moment I was writhing in agony and trying to scream around the gun. Then there was nothing.

But I was conscious.

I wasn’t dead. I’d fucked this up, too.

I pulled the trigger again. The second shot erased what was left of the top and back of my head. My face sagged down a few inches, making it hard to see clearly. Bits of skin and gristle dangled down my neck. The room stank of blood and shit and cordite.

The gunshots echoed throughout the house, drowning out my heavy breathing.

Letting the rifle slip from my numb fingers, I shuffled to the mirror and looked at the damage I’d inflicted. I had to shrug my shoulders a few times in order to get my face back up to eye level.

It wasn’t pretty.

I should have been dead, yet there I stood. I reached behind me, letting my fingers play across the gaping hole where my brain had been. There was nothing. No bald spot, no scalp, no skull. Nothing.

The phone rang again. It sounded muffled, thanks to my one remaining ear. After four rings, the answering machine clicked on.

“Hi, honey.” Carolyn. “I just wanted to see how you were feeling.”

“My headache is gone.” Laughing, I spat out a piece of myself. “I’ve cured the common headache.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “I’ve got to get back to work. See you when I get home. I love you.”

“I’d die without you.” My voice dripped with sarcasm.

Then it hit me—the reason that I was still alive.

So now I’m sitting here at the kitchen table, writing this while my insides dry on the bedroom wall. I’m almost free of this hell that is my life. Carolyn will be home soon, and I will fulfill the promise that I made to her so long ago.

***

The original version of this story appeared in my first short story collection, No Rest For the Wicked, which is long out-of-print. Several years ago, I revised the story considerably for a collection called A Little Silver Book of Streetwise Stories (which is also now out-of-print). I’ve always liked the idea, but hated the writing in the original—it was the amateur work of an author still struggling to find his voice. I like this version much better and am happy to share it with you here. The story was inspired by a late-night conversation with an old friend.

I Am

An Exit

I found him lying along the interstate, bleeding in the moonlight under the sign for Exit Five. It was bad—real bad. Blood covered everything; from the guard rail and median strip to his frayed blue jeans and crooked birth- control glasses with the cracked lens. They called them birth control glasses because wearing them insured that you’d never get laid. You only got glasses like that in the military and in prison. He didn’t look like a soldier to me.

Far away, barely visible through the woods, an orange fire glowed. A hint of smoke drifted towards us on the breeze.

I knelt down beside him, and he struggled to sit up. His insides glistened, slipping from the wound in his side. Gently, I urged him back to the ground and then placed my hand over the gash, feeling the slick, wet heat beneath my palm. The wind buffeted the Exit Five sign above our heads, and then died.

“Don’t try to sit up,” I told him. “You’re injured.”

He tried to speak. His cracked lips were covered with froth. The words would not come. He closed his eyes.

With my free hand, I reached into the pocket of my coat, and he opened his eyes again, focusing on me. I pulled my hand back out, keeping the other one on the gash in his side.

“Robin.”

“Sorry friend. Just me.”

“I was—trying to get home to Robin.”

He coughed, spraying blood and spittle, and I felt his innards move beneath my palm.

“She’s waiting for me.”

I nodded, not understanding but understanding all the same.

He focused on me again. “What happened?”

“You’ve been in an accident.”

“I—I don’t—last thing I remember was the fire.”

“Sshhhhh.”

He coughed again.

“My legs feel like they’re asleep.”

“Probably because you’ve been lying down,” I lied. “They’re okay.”

They weren’t. One was squashed flat in several places and bent at an angle. A shard of bone protruded from the other.

“D-do you have a cell phone? I want to call Robin.”

“Sorry friend. Wish I did, so we could call 911. But I’m sure someone will come along. Meanwhile, tell me about her.”

“She’s beautiful.” His grimace turned into a smile, and the pain and confusion vanished from his eyes. “She’s waiting for me. Haven’t seen her in five years.”

“Why is that?”

“Been in prison.” He swallowed. “Upstate. Cresson. Just got out this morning. Robbery. I stole a pack of cigarettes. Can you believe that shit? Five years for one lousy pack of smokes.”

I shook my head. I’d been right about the glasses. And the sentence indicated he wasn’t a first time offender. Pennsylvania had a three strikes law, and it sounded as if he qualified.

A mosquito buzzed in my ear, but I ignored it. In the distance, the fire grew brighter.

“We’d been dating before it happened,” he said. “She was pregnant with my son. I—I’ve never held him.”