I remember when Jack was a young boy. He was a happy little lad. Free and easy and only interested in playing and showing himself off to the little girls next door who were also always ready for a little doctor and nurse. Jack and his brother Jacob played this game with the two hillbilly girls across the street, Nancy Ann and Mary Ann. They would sit and play “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine” which progressed to “you touch mine and I’ll touch yours”. This is where their mother caught them one sultry afternoon. Pamela Lou lost her West Virginian mind. Of course their father thought it was funny.
Jack learned about sex this way and from his grand daddy and uncle, oh and there was Warren Harbage the farmer who couldn’t stop himself and his son Lloyd, and I suppose we should mention the baby sitter there on Middle Pike, real creepy fucker always wearing checkered yellow pants and yellow shirts, but yea it was a strange start for a story about life. Jack didn’t come through the ranks without having a few things touched and touching a few more things that he really didn’t want to have touched or to touch but, he liked it when it was Nancy Ann.
Jack Barth this is your life whispering to you, “go ahead and lay down for a bit. It will all be ok”.
Almost every Tuesday of Jack’s life now there is a block of about two hours where he goes to Dr. YeaFoot who is administering care to Jack’s toeless right foot, the grand toe is gone, the big one, yep, gone. At this point Jack’s release from the, (what he has been lovingly calling the gulag), and he can get back to his full time life and job which is handling a bunch of misfits at the his flea market in town. This Tuesday was like every Tuesday with the doc digging at the wound, adding human flesh genes of some kind to the wound, wrapping the wound and sending Jack on his way back to the gulag.
Two more weeks Jack, you dick, you got two more weeks.
Jack’s schedule consists of; Monday, Some damn nurse waking Jack up at 5:00 in the morning to give him a cup of pills, Dialysis from 6:45 am to 11:00 am, physical therapy around 2:00, the rest of the day is spent doing absolutely nothing which is interrupted only occasionally with a nurse checking vitals, checking sugar and giving out shitloads of pills. Jack usually spends most of the day on his computer but he can also have those days where he does nothing but lay in bed and read from his tablet.
Tuesday’s are just as bad. Dr. YeaFoot and the rest of the day is the same as Monday. Wednesday is exactly like Monday. Thursday has changed from nothing, absolutely nothing going on to Jack going to the flea market to work then back to the gulag. This is what happens Friday, Saturday and Sunday now.
I’ve been with old Jack for a long, long time. I have been pulling his hippy ass out of trouble for years and I have been assisting him in having a life other than the self-destructive train ride he can get himself on. Most of my decision have been good ones for Jack. The last couple weren’t so smart but that had to do with the deterioration that was going on with Jack that I was either refusing to notice or actually didn’t notice.
I remember the day that Jack left and he told me that he would always be there for me. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a long time ago and old Jack tried to get back. He really did but it just wasn’t written in his DNA. Jack never really made it back. Hell he sat on the back porch of his house a few years later and told his daughter the same thing but he never made it back there either.
There was something about Jack that made you want to go to him and not wait for him to get back.
I knew Jack was getting ready to jump. He got in a certain mood when he was getting closer to hopping from this perspective to another one. He also would find himself gagging a lot more for no reason.
Jack’s favorite thing to do was to stand naked after a boiling shower and stand in front of the mirror and stare into the fogged up glass that just barely showed through and talk to himself.
“It’s even more frightening when it all turns around, well not everything turns around but the world does, I’m still standing in the same place, a lot healthier but still scared, so damn scared, yet so frustrated and ready to bolt.
The flow has been unbelievable. The concerted realization that this is working even when there are those who try to cease the flow, you can’t, you can’t stop this. I didn’t start this, so you are not hurting me and what is taking place here has so much more power than I do.”
The heartbreak is just how mean we can be to each other for no reason other than some selfish self satisfaction. She can appear to be a relatively nice person and then out of nowhere you see the demon crawling out of the top of her red headed skull and you are reminded at just how vicious and cruel this creature is.
Time to go, yes I know, I’ve heard it all before, it’s time to go little soldier. It’s time to bury the dead of this war and move onto the next one. It’s time to take control of the chaos and let the mongrels continue to feed off of the dead, yes it’s time to go."
cool peace
hippy mike
love
