Page 282 - What They Did to the Kid

270 Jack Fritscher

world with Jack dead and Jackie in mourning? Hard work could move
me through the world. Whetted appetite grew to craving necessity.
For all the sports at Misery, I felt weak, enervated by Misery itself. I
had been a priestling. I joined the most forbidden Protestant gym in
town, the Peoria YMCA. I did sit-ups and pull-ups and push-ups and
watched the other men lift weights until I could lift them myself. I
read the pamphlet in the lobby that explained that masturbation was
recommended for students and workers to help them keep studying
and working. I was shocked to see in print in a public lobby, another
word, one of the very words I had been punished for writing from
translation. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made
flesh. I never even had to think how fast I must move.
I had been kidnapped.
I screamed.
I had been in real danger.
I’d been circling the drain.
Time so lost had passed with no trace of me in the world. Streets
and movies and people rushed into my senses. Who needs salvation
when you need rescue? Jack had his brains shot out in a car. I panted
for life’s embrace. I sat crying in the movies. Where was my wife?
Where were my children? Had they gone speeding by in a car? I had
been robbed of any head start in life. What now? Is now enough?
And Jack dead. Dear Jack. Gone, taken lost from us. Seeing double:
his death, my death. Death should end the past, not the future. I
escaped one world to find another. Adrift, untied. Without him.
Where? Barbarians reared up in the uncivilized street. His brain
blown away. Zap. Zap! Zapruder! The wind, the blowing wind,
Dylan, blowing in the wind. Jackie climbed across the car. Dropped
the yellow roses of Texas on the blood-spattered black upholstery.
She didn’t remember crawling across the trunk of the car. I love you,
Jack: she placed her ring on his finger. Parkland. Bethesda. Oh Love
Field. Women in leopard-skin coats like to make love. Arlington and
crepe. Jack and Jackie. The curtain descends. Everything ends. Too
soon. A simple matter of a bullet through the head. Ich bin Berliner.
Auch Ich. A fear more than grief folds its black wings hovering over
everyone crying from Thanksgiving through Christmas and into
the new year. Happy Birthday, Mr. President. I should have held

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK