Jack Gets a Thesaurus
It’s cruel and murderous and children of all ages love it. It’s about eight inches long, made from 1/4 “ steel rod, curved like the upper part of a question mark, the topmost end ground to a point. The lower end of the rod is fixed through the middle of a round wooden handle that fits comfortably across the palm, the steel extending between the fingers of the hand so that a question sprouts from the end of the arm.
You’ve got to imagine this sharp hook being driven into your shoulder with a solid thunk, perhaps at the base of your neck—the answer of inarticulate blood welling up around the shaft—or slamming between your tenth and eleventh rib. You may call it a hay hook if you like, a tool, an implement, a cunning device for grabbing and moving the heavy unwieldy bales. Or you could think of it as a pointed question—but it’s also known as the narrative hook.
So there’s this old man, walking, and it’s winter, and he’s wearing a drab overcoat, carrying an old-fashioned cane crooked over his left forearm, its curve pressed into his lower ribcage. He’s appeared suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, walking over Hyde Park Bridge high above the railroad tracks. He doesn’t think it unusual that he’s appeared suddenly, since that’s what characters are supposed to do, and since he thinks of himself as a character. He’s about to meet a young boy, but he doesn’t know this yet.
The old man’s hands are out in front of his belt, the fingers of his left hand plucking coins from his right palm as he counts them, over and over. It’s more money than his relatives in Europe see in a month, though it’s less than a dollar. Back in Europe his relatives are living their lives embedded in their peasant culture, following the traditional ways of their forefathers. They are beating the sheep with sticks to make them grow more wool, beating the cows to make them give more milk, beating the chickens to make them lay more eggs. They don’t beat the hogs because their eyes are too human. They feed cloves to the hogs to sweeten their breath and to soothe the spirits of men that may be imprisoned within them. They don’t know if any of this works, but the hogs seem to like the cloves and the bleating and bellowing and frenzied clucking is a music, a primitive blues—and even if it doesn’t work, their neighbors hear the commotion and know they are living according to tradition.
Now, this old man doesn’t know what his relatives in Europe are doing, and he doesn’t know about the boy walking toward him, but we do. We know, and God knows. This is the omniscient point of view.
This also involves foreshadowing. The most important foreshadowing has to do with death. That’s the darkest shadow of all. God foreshadows your death by having other people die. Someone will die in this story. Perhaps it will be the old man, which would be natural, although it could be the young boy because that would be sadder, even though we don’t know him yet. Your not knowing creates dramatic tension. It’s mild right now—you can scarcely feel it. You can say you don’t care, but you’ve been penetrated by the narrative hook and it’s wiggling around just enough to keep things interesting.
So the young boy and the old man approach one another near the top of Hyde Park Bridge. There’s a train whistle in the distance. The boy is wearing a red jacket. We’ll call him Jack, because names are important in fiction, and because that’s his name. This boy could grow up to be president.
They’re only a few feet apart now and Jack can see that the old man is counting money. Perhaps the old man needs to be helped across the street, he thinks. If he helps him, the old man will give him twenty-five cents and he’ll buy bubblegum with a baseball card. He’ll get a card which will be worth hundreds. Jack has a hopeful expression on his innocent face. Suddenly everything gets blurry and there’s a lot of wavy lines, smoke from a train shrouding the top of the bridge, or fog, maybe.
When it clears, it’s obvious this is a flashback because Jack finds himself in a kitchen with a woman who’s his mother. The old man’s not there. He’s immobilized in mid-stride on top of Hyde Park Bridge, a nickel pinched between thumb and forefinger, waiting for the boy to return. This happens in real life all the time. It’s why the days just don’t seem long enough.
Jack’s putting on his new red jacket. His mother, whose name is Rose, is telling him how important it is to respect old people. Jack’s listening, his face very serious. His mother’s found out that he and his friends have been tormenting an old man who lives at the end of the block near an open field.
This old man keeps rabbits in a shed. Each day he goes to the field with a long scythe over his shoulder to cut fresh green grass for his rabbits. He looks like death moving slowly in the field. The scythe is like a partly formed question. The boys have been following this old man into the field at a safe distance and screaming “Shitava!” at him. They believe this means “die” in the old man’s old-country language. It doesn’t matter what shitava really means, or if it means anything at all. What they think it means is what matters—and they like the way it has shit in it, a word they’re forbidden to say.
This has gone on all summer. What’s bewildered Jack is that he’s just learned that the very old man with the bright unfinished question is the grandfather of one of his friends—the one who screams shitava the loudest and laughs the hardest.
Jack promises his mother that he won’t taunt the old man again. When he’d told her what they’d been yelling—he’d had to mumble it several times before she understood—the word shitava had crumbled into dust. It didn’t mean anything anymore. You had to scream that word at an old man carrying a scythe into a field before it had any power.
Out the door he goes. It’s very foggy outside. As soon as he steps into the fog he finds himself on top of Hyde Park Bridge, a few paces away from the old man with the coins. The air is clear. He has just enough time to stare at the wooden question hooked over the man’s left arm before they pass. He’s missed his chance to respect the old man, to help him across the street, to own a baseball card worth hundreds.
His sense of loss is so sharp that he finds himself lifted inches off the pavement, falling forward onto his hands and knees. The seat of his pants has exploded. The old man had turned and kicked him savagely in the ass. He scrambles to his feet, tears in his eyes. Is there a potential for conflict here, or what? But people don’t act like this for no reason, even characters, especially characters. There’s got to be motivation: without it there’s a crisis in verisimilitude, which should be avoided. So the motivation will be made evident in a little while.
“Summonabitch!” the old man says, advancing. He’s waving his question mark, now. Jack stays long enough to notice the old man is a lefty. He’s getting in position to deliver another kick and it’s the left foot that keeps drawing back. Jack runs down the slope of the bridge, tears in his eyes, wind in his ears, ass aching, face contorted with fear and anger. “Summonabitch! Summonabitch!” floats after him. Maybe it’s a word like shitava.
This is Jack’s introduction to Joe Crappianna, which is a name made up by the same boy who made up shitava. This boy knows the importance of names. They all have to have some excrement in them, although this is a word he won’t know until he gets his first thesaurus. He plans to be a writer of stories because he loves to make things up. The only thing holding him back is his spelling, which isn’t so good, and a poor vocabulary, which he plans to correct by getting a thesaurus, eventually.
So the kick in the ass has recruited Jack to be part of the army that hollers “Joe Crappianna!” at the old man when he appears in the street. This is the reason Joe Crappianna kicks kids in the ass every chance he gets. It’s a vicious, ass-kicking circle. Jack goes to school and kicks a third-grader in the ass, who goes home and whines and pouts over his Spaghettios until his mother sends him to bed. He’s too young to kick anybody in the ass yet. But he will, because this is the way narrative works: one event after another, linked by causal effect that can’t be denied.
Joe Crappianna’s coming through the front door of a saloon, now. It’s raining. He’d stopped in the middle of the street to wash his hands in a puddle. Car horns had blared. Inside the saloon they’d known he was on his way.
“Greaseapiece!” the old man yells, letting the door slam. “Greaseapiece!” He’s gesturing as if he’s going to open his fly. They don’t like Joe Crappianna in the saloon—and this is a place where one of the regular customers routinely drops his upper plate into his beer. It rests on the bottom of the glass while he drinks. Most of the time he doesn’t take the teeth out of the glass when he gets a refill. But vulgarity has its limits.
Twelve years go by just like that. You can tell because Jack’s red jacket is faded and way too small for him. The cuffs are hitting his arms just below the elbows. He walks crookedly. He’s got a bad back from that kick in the ass he got so long ago. That kick had killed his political promise—he’s sure of it.
So he’s in a saloon himself, now, not the same one Joe Crappianna had visited in the previous decade, but the same kind of a saloon. This night’s been foreshadowed, but Jack doesn’t know it. The place is crowded and Jack is tying on a good one when he sees a very old man, face like a wrinkled potato. “Greaseapiece, summonabitch,” he’s muttering. “Buy me a drink.” He’s pulling on coat sleeves, rapping his cane on the bar. Everyone’s trying to ignore him. They don’t like him in this saloon, either.
Jack’s staring at him so hard that sweat pops out on his forehead. This is a sign he’s going to think of something else almost immediately. And he does.
He thinks of another old man, the one with the scythe, who’d died just before Jack got out of high school. He’d gone to the funeral home because the old man had been his friend’s grandfather. Jack had reminisced with his friend about the summer they’d spent yelling shitava at the old man. His friend had looked at him with an expression so blank you’d have had to draw features on his face to recognize him.
“Bullshit!” he’d said, finally. “You made that up. Why would you make up such a thing? I loved my Pampy.”
Maybe I did make that up, Jack thought. But I don’t think so. That’s a true story and the proofs right there in the coffin. Still, he had a lot of questions, none of which he asked his friend. It wasn’t the right time or place. But what, for example, had happened to the rabbits? A story is a curious thing. You make it up, but it’s true. You use the right words, somebody laughs, somebody cries, somebody dies.
Meanwhile, Jack’s still staring at the old man he knows is Joe Crappianna. Somebody’s bought the old man a draft beer and he’s slurping at it, standing at the bar. Jack eases up to him. He’s a lot bigger than Joe Crappianna, now.
“Hey!” he says. “Joe Crappianna!”
It’s a magic name out of the past. All the heads in the saloon tum to point faces in the same direction. There’s a deep murmuring of ]oe Crappianna, Joe Crappianna, Joe Crappianna, like the low rumble of big trucks on a far-off highway. Every ass in the saloon’s been kicked by Joe Crappianna, some repeatedly. Even the bartender’s ass had been kicked, twenty-three times, by actual count.
But these are a good bunch of guys, who know how to take a joke. What’s past is past and what’s a couple of kicks in the ass among friends? But they’re all friends only because they shared foot-in-the-ass childhoods. So they don’t plan what happens next. They aren’t talkers, anyway. They’d never mastered that ventriloquist’s trick of talking while drinking a glass of beer.
They’re just grumbling some, words unrecognizable, grunting, drinking, saying “Ahhh” after swallows of beer as if an invisible doctor were examining their throats. Then the bartender remembers that a couple of weeks ago his eight-year-old son had come home from school complaining that an old man had kicked him in the ass—three times, it turns out. The son can’t run any faster than his father could before him.
The bartender squeaks out this information with surprise. He’s put two and two together, or twenty-three and three, as it was.
Now two things happen simultaneously.
A man at the bar is lighting a cigarette.
Joe Crappianna shrugs and says “Summonabitch” by way of explanation. The shrug says he can’t help himself, that God moves his leg, that a good kick in the ass is just what kids need.
The man who’s lighted his cigarette tosses the still burning match at Joe Crappianna. It lands on the shoulder of his overcoat.
Jack watches the overcoat start to bum, just a small spot, no bigger than a cat’s eye.
Jack’s sweating again, immobilized, trapped in a flashback. This time he’s at a blues festival. He can almost hear the music, old-time twangy and plinky. people always losing something, something already lost. Leon Redbone was scheduled to be the main act. He usually wore a brim-down fedora and, even at night, which it was, sunglasses with fuzzy eyebrows, a big nose and a mustache—or else that was his real face. Jack had never been able to understand a word he said—it was all guitar accompaniment, rhythm and mood. river calls, work groans, mule hollers, and choking on grits—Laze-ribba, uhh, Sonni-nu, ]aiz Fir, uh—but he thought if he could get close enough to the stage that he would finally understand and that monumental questions would be answered.
He got down close and sat on the grass. Overhead, beyond the reach of the stage lights, stars were shining. Beyond the stage, the Niagara Gorge fell into darkness, river flowing down below unseen. Two emcees were fighting over the mike, telling bad jokes, each saying the other had promised to drop his pants. “We got Leon Redbone backstage!” they kept announcing. Ten minutes of their disconnected remarks dragged by. The audience was drinking a lot of wine, most of it from gallon jugs being passed around. The crowd noise kept increasing. Glass shattered somewhere behind Jack.
“We got Leon Redbone backstage!” one of the emcees repeated for the sixth time. He was answered by a hoarse voice from the crowd. “We don’t care what color his bone is! Get him out here!” Maybe it had been Jack who yelled it, but he couldn’t remember.
So the emcees fade and Redbone slouches to the edge of the stage, dragging a chair in which he sits, holding his guitar. He’s doubled over, face hidden. He strikes a chord, groans “Uhhh,” plucks a string, lets “Ree-ahh” from between his lips. He’s got stomach pain for sure, but it’s elemental, dirt-level blues all right. It’s too much, even for Redbone and he takes out a box of wooden kitchen matches from a deep coat pocket. He lights one and tosses it into the rows of people nearest the stage. Slaps guitar strings, “Oohah,” another burning match sails into the audience. Then another match and another. The stars are shining, the river flowing, and Redbone is lighting candles in the darkness, warming up the crowd.
Joe Crappianna discovers the burning cat’s eye on his shoulder and slaps it out. “Summonabitch!” he says. He’s looking around at the big guys who want to kick his ass, but who can’t bring themselves to it. A lighted paper match bounces off his hat. He whirls, striking out with his cane. Another match scribes an arc toward him, a shooting star on which he probably makes a wish. Perhaps he wishes for all the stars of heaven because he is suddenly illuminated by scores of matches that fly at him from all directions. For a moment he shines in a romantic blaze, cane held high, an inquiry about Joan of Arc, about burning bushes, bonfires, arsonists, fire-eaters, flame throwers, Chicago. Then the last of the matches wink out. Spires of bitter smoke rise around him. There’s nervous and harsh laughter-and then someone shouts an alarm. Joe Crappianna’s pant’s cuff is on fire, burning merrily. It’s a crown of bright flame for his foot, licking upward for the knee, and J.C. is jumping and kicking, but fire goes upward in a flash and his whole leg becomes a torch.
“Summonabitch!” he screams. “Summonabitch!”
He’s really kicking now, place kicking, punting, one-step, kick, two-step, kick, flames sighing heavily, foot aiming for the ceiling, then higher, kicking for glory, kicking for the ass of God when he gets tangled up with his cane and goes down like the still burning remnant of a fireworks display fallen to earth.
The guys had given him wide berth when he was jumping and kicking, but now they circle around and one of them smothers the flames with a door mat. Joe Crappianna is unconscious, his leg smoking like a stick of incense. But it’s smelling like some animal that got trapped in a dump fire.
“What happened?” someone asks.
As it turns out, nobody knows what happened. The next-day newspaper says “Cruel Prank Puts Senior in Hospital.” The guys in the saloon speculate: careless smoking, a hot-foot, who’d have thought? The leg had gone off like a blowtorch—all that grease from greasinapiece all those years. See? Don’t play with matches. There’s a lot of truth in those old sayings.
Jack sneaks into the hospital room. Joe Crappianna’s in the bed like something discarded. His eyes are closed. On the bedstand there’s only a plastic water pitcher and glass. The burned leg’s been amputated, first the foot, then off at the knee, then halfway up the thigh. A doctor’s been whittling away at him, probably a doctor whose ass Crappianna had kicked twenty years earlier. It’s the left leg that’s gone. This is called: irony, poetic justice, divine retribution, coincidence, contrived. Choose one or more of the aforementioned.
Whatever it is, it makes Jack happy, although there’s a moan trapped in his chest that can’t get out. Up close to the bed, he leans over. “Crappianna. Joe Crappianna,” he says quietly.
Joe Crappianna isn’t his name, but one eye opens anyway. “Summonabitch,” he says, voice scarcely audible.
“So how’s it going, Joe?” Jack asks.
“Keepin busy,” he says after a moment.
“Yeah,” Jack nods, looking at the flat bedsheet where Joe Crappianna’s left leg should be. “I can see that. Busy as a one-legged drunk in an ass-kicking contest ...
The old man doesn’t say anything, but Jack thinks a ghost smile comes and goes on his lips.
“You want anything?” Jack asks. “A drink of water?”
Joe Crappianna shakes his head no. The eye is looking at Jack as it closes.
“So take care of yourself. Joe” Jack says. He watches the old man for a long moment, but there’s no sign that he’s heard. Jack bends closer. “Shitava,” he whispers. “Shitava, shitava, shitava.”
Outside in the street Jack’s got this big simile spread over his face. Ass-kicking contest. He’s going to be a writer, after all. So, okay, it wasn’t original exactly, but it had fit in real good back there.
Two days later, Joe Crappianna dies, and the moan trapped in Jack’s chest escapes. Life’s a long lesson. It’s just as they say: don’t play with matches unless you’re ready to sing the blues.
So it’s over, but it isn’t over. The hook’s in there still—that’s the way it is with stories: there’s this image of an old man dancing with his leg on fire that won’t go away. That’s the climax, probably. It’s a tiny image, dim, too, in spite of the bright flames, with a half-life of sixty seconds—it’s nothing at all compared to that far green light shining across the water from the end of the dock, to the great white whale floating eternally in the mind, to a skinny old knight on a horse.
Still, we need more denouement than we’ve had. That’s what comes after the climax, when all the loose questions lying around are gathered up and answered, when your partner is untied and you have a cigarette, even if you don’t smoke, as you mull everything over.
So here we go.
Q. What happened to ... ?
A. The rabbits died with no one to cut them green grass.
The scythe went in a garage sale. Its blade was
painted gold and it hangs over a fireplace in a home on
24th Street. Joe’s son, Michael Crappianna, got his
father’s cane. It’s in the back of a closet. Michael
can’t stand the thought of throwing it out. Maybe
he’ll use it himself when he gets older.
Q. What was Joe Crappianna’ s real name?
A. Joe Crappianna. You think this is made up?
Q. Why did his leg get amputated?
A. Poor circulation, deep infection resistant to
antibiotics, toxemia, commonly known as blood poisoning.
Q. Did the boy who made up those words ever become a writer?
A. No. He got his thesaurus, finally, but later sold it
to Jack. The boy’s love of making things up and the
dream of becoming a writer got thrown in with the sale.
The price of three bucks made it an affordable dream for Jack.
Q. The kindergartner—did he get bigger and kick someone in the ass?
A. Yes, he got bigger. He also kicked another boy in the ass, once.
The boy turned around and beat him bloody, so he never tried it again.
That portion of the vicious circle died out.
Q. What about Jack?
A. He got married. His wife gave birth to a boy six months later.
She’d had a boy because she knew he couldn’t cope with a girl
just yet. They talked it over and named the boy Joseph.
The boy’s nine, now. Jack’s trying desperately to teach him to
respect old people. Sometimes Jack fights down a terrible impulse
to give him a good kick in the ass. The other boys in the neighborhood
walk around fearlessly, not even looking over their shoulders. They
don’t know what a kick in the ass is all about. Jack has recurrent
nightmares. He’s chased by two old men. One has cut off Jack’s feet
with a gleaming scythe, and he runs on the raw stumps of his ankles
while the other old man, his leg ablaze, kicks his ass. Jack is leaving a
bloody trail everywhere he goes. He wakes up sweating, certain he is
going to be a writer. He’s got this yearning. He’s got that thesaurus.
He’s going to write a novel about this guy he knows or imagined.
The novel’s all written in his head. He’s just got to get some paper and
some time. The title’s going to be Captain Hooter at Niagara. Maybe
Joe Crappianna will be in it. But maybe not. Those pages are blurry in
his mind.
Q. What about the guys in the saloon where Joe Crappianna was set on fire?
A. What about them? It was an accident. They didn’t mean for anyone to
get hurt. You expected them to join a religious order, to spend the rest
of their lives praying and tending the residents of a nearby nursing home?
None of them drink in that saloon anymore.
Q. How come this story’s so crude and violent? Why isn’t there any
romantic interest in it?
A. Well, there’s Jack’s wife, who gets a mention—but, finally, your question
reveals more about your perceptions and expectations than anything else.
Read the story again. You might have missed something.
This is a love story.
+++
"Jack Gets a Thesaurus" first appeared in Slipstream, Issue 21.
You’ve got to imagine this sharp hook being driven into your shoulder with a solid thunk, perhaps at the base of your neck—the answer of inarticulate blood welling up around the shaft—or slamming between your tenth and eleventh rib. You may call it a hay hook if you like, a tool, an implement, a cunning device for grabbing and moving the heavy unwieldy bales. Or you could think of it as a pointed question—but it’s also known as the narrative hook.
So there’s this old man, walking, and it’s winter, and he’s wearing a drab overcoat, carrying an old-fashioned cane crooked over his left forearm, its curve pressed into his lower ribcage. He’s appeared suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, walking over Hyde Park Bridge high above the railroad tracks. He doesn’t think it unusual that he’s appeared suddenly, since that’s what characters are supposed to do, and since he thinks of himself as a character. He’s about to meet a young boy, but he doesn’t know this yet.
The old man’s hands are out in front of his belt, the fingers of his left hand plucking coins from his right palm as he counts them, over and over. It’s more money than his relatives in Europe see in a month, though it’s less than a dollar. Back in Europe his relatives are living their lives embedded in their peasant culture, following the traditional ways of their forefathers. They are beating the sheep with sticks to make them grow more wool, beating the cows to make them give more milk, beating the chickens to make them lay more eggs. They don’t beat the hogs because their eyes are too human. They feed cloves to the hogs to sweeten their breath and to soothe the spirits of men that may be imprisoned within them. They don’t know if any of this works, but the hogs seem to like the cloves and the bleating and bellowing and frenzied clucking is a music, a primitive blues—and even if it doesn’t work, their neighbors hear the commotion and know they are living according to tradition.
Now, this old man doesn’t know what his relatives in Europe are doing, and he doesn’t know about the boy walking toward him, but we do. We know, and God knows. This is the omniscient point of view.
This also involves foreshadowing. The most important foreshadowing has to do with death. That’s the darkest shadow of all. God foreshadows your death by having other people die. Someone will die in this story. Perhaps it will be the old man, which would be natural, although it could be the young boy because that would be sadder, even though we don’t know him yet. Your not knowing creates dramatic tension. It’s mild right now—you can scarcely feel it. You can say you don’t care, but you’ve been penetrated by the narrative hook and it’s wiggling around just enough to keep things interesting.
So the young boy and the old man approach one another near the top of Hyde Park Bridge. There’s a train whistle in the distance. The boy is wearing a red jacket. We’ll call him Jack, because names are important in fiction, and because that’s his name. This boy could grow up to be president.
They’re only a few feet apart now and Jack can see that the old man is counting money. Perhaps the old man needs to be helped across the street, he thinks. If he helps him, the old man will give him twenty-five cents and he’ll buy bubblegum with a baseball card. He’ll get a card which will be worth hundreds. Jack has a hopeful expression on his innocent face. Suddenly everything gets blurry and there’s a lot of wavy lines, smoke from a train shrouding the top of the bridge, or fog, maybe.
When it clears, it’s obvious this is a flashback because Jack finds himself in a kitchen with a woman who’s his mother. The old man’s not there. He’s immobilized in mid-stride on top of Hyde Park Bridge, a nickel pinched between thumb and forefinger, waiting for the boy to return. This happens in real life all the time. It’s why the days just don’t seem long enough.
Jack’s putting on his new red jacket. His mother, whose name is Rose, is telling him how important it is to respect old people. Jack’s listening, his face very serious. His mother’s found out that he and his friends have been tormenting an old man who lives at the end of the block near an open field.
This old man keeps rabbits in a shed. Each day he goes to the field with a long scythe over his shoulder to cut fresh green grass for his rabbits. He looks like death moving slowly in the field. The scythe is like a partly formed question. The boys have been following this old man into the field at a safe distance and screaming “Shitava!” at him. They believe this means “die” in the old man’s old-country language. It doesn’t matter what shitava really means, or if it means anything at all. What they think it means is what matters—and they like the way it has shit in it, a word they’re forbidden to say.
This has gone on all summer. What’s bewildered Jack is that he’s just learned that the very old man with the bright unfinished question is the grandfather of one of his friends—the one who screams shitava the loudest and laughs the hardest.
Jack promises his mother that he won’t taunt the old man again. When he’d told her what they’d been yelling—he’d had to mumble it several times before she understood—the word shitava had crumbled into dust. It didn’t mean anything anymore. You had to scream that word at an old man carrying a scythe into a field before it had any power.
Out the door he goes. It’s very foggy outside. As soon as he steps into the fog he finds himself on top of Hyde Park Bridge, a few paces away from the old man with the coins. The air is clear. He has just enough time to stare at the wooden question hooked over the man’s left arm before they pass. He’s missed his chance to respect the old man, to help him across the street, to own a baseball card worth hundreds.
His sense of loss is so sharp that he finds himself lifted inches off the pavement, falling forward onto his hands and knees. The seat of his pants has exploded. The old man had turned and kicked him savagely in the ass. He scrambles to his feet, tears in his eyes. Is there a potential for conflict here, or what? But people don’t act like this for no reason, even characters, especially characters. There’s got to be motivation: without it there’s a crisis in verisimilitude, which should be avoided. So the motivation will be made evident in a little while.
“Summonabitch!” the old man says, advancing. He’s waving his question mark, now. Jack stays long enough to notice the old man is a lefty. He’s getting in position to deliver another kick and it’s the left foot that keeps drawing back. Jack runs down the slope of the bridge, tears in his eyes, wind in his ears, ass aching, face contorted with fear and anger. “Summonabitch! Summonabitch!” floats after him. Maybe it’s a word like shitava.
This is Jack’s introduction to Joe Crappianna, which is a name made up by the same boy who made up shitava. This boy knows the importance of names. They all have to have some excrement in them, although this is a word he won’t know until he gets his first thesaurus. He plans to be a writer of stories because he loves to make things up. The only thing holding him back is his spelling, which isn’t so good, and a poor vocabulary, which he plans to correct by getting a thesaurus, eventually.
So the kick in the ass has recruited Jack to be part of the army that hollers “Joe Crappianna!” at the old man when he appears in the street. This is the reason Joe Crappianna kicks kids in the ass every chance he gets. It’s a vicious, ass-kicking circle. Jack goes to school and kicks a third-grader in the ass, who goes home and whines and pouts over his Spaghettios until his mother sends him to bed. He’s too young to kick anybody in the ass yet. But he will, because this is the way narrative works: one event after another, linked by causal effect that can’t be denied.
Joe Crappianna’s coming through the front door of a saloon, now. It’s raining. He’d stopped in the middle of the street to wash his hands in a puddle. Car horns had blared. Inside the saloon they’d known he was on his way.
“Greaseapiece!” the old man yells, letting the door slam. “Greaseapiece!” He’s gesturing as if he’s going to open his fly. They don’t like Joe Crappianna in the saloon—and this is a place where one of the regular customers routinely drops his upper plate into his beer. It rests on the bottom of the glass while he drinks. Most of the time he doesn’t take the teeth out of the glass when he gets a refill. But vulgarity has its limits.
Twelve years go by just like that. You can tell because Jack’s red jacket is faded and way too small for him. The cuffs are hitting his arms just below the elbows. He walks crookedly. He’s got a bad back from that kick in the ass he got so long ago. That kick had killed his political promise—he’s sure of it.
So he’s in a saloon himself, now, not the same one Joe Crappianna had visited in the previous decade, but the same kind of a saloon. This night’s been foreshadowed, but Jack doesn’t know it. The place is crowded and Jack is tying on a good one when he sees a very old man, face like a wrinkled potato. “Greaseapiece, summonabitch,” he’s muttering. “Buy me a drink.” He’s pulling on coat sleeves, rapping his cane on the bar. Everyone’s trying to ignore him. They don’t like him in this saloon, either.
Jack’s staring at him so hard that sweat pops out on his forehead. This is a sign he’s going to think of something else almost immediately. And he does.
He thinks of another old man, the one with the scythe, who’d died just before Jack got out of high school. He’d gone to the funeral home because the old man had been his friend’s grandfather. Jack had reminisced with his friend about the summer they’d spent yelling shitava at the old man. His friend had looked at him with an expression so blank you’d have had to draw features on his face to recognize him.
“Bullshit!” he’d said, finally. “You made that up. Why would you make up such a thing? I loved my Pampy.”
Maybe I did make that up, Jack thought. But I don’t think so. That’s a true story and the proofs right there in the coffin. Still, he had a lot of questions, none of which he asked his friend. It wasn’t the right time or place. But what, for example, had happened to the rabbits? A story is a curious thing. You make it up, but it’s true. You use the right words, somebody laughs, somebody cries, somebody dies.
Meanwhile, Jack’s still staring at the old man he knows is Joe Crappianna. Somebody’s bought the old man a draft beer and he’s slurping at it, standing at the bar. Jack eases up to him. He’s a lot bigger than Joe Crappianna, now.
“Hey!” he says. “Joe Crappianna!”
It’s a magic name out of the past. All the heads in the saloon tum to point faces in the same direction. There’s a deep murmuring of ]oe Crappianna, Joe Crappianna, Joe Crappianna, like the low rumble of big trucks on a far-off highway. Every ass in the saloon’s been kicked by Joe Crappianna, some repeatedly. Even the bartender’s ass had been kicked, twenty-three times, by actual count.
But these are a good bunch of guys, who know how to take a joke. What’s past is past and what’s a couple of kicks in the ass among friends? But they’re all friends only because they shared foot-in-the-ass childhoods. So they don’t plan what happens next. They aren’t talkers, anyway. They’d never mastered that ventriloquist’s trick of talking while drinking a glass of beer.
They’re just grumbling some, words unrecognizable, grunting, drinking, saying “Ahhh” after swallows of beer as if an invisible doctor were examining their throats. Then the bartender remembers that a couple of weeks ago his eight-year-old son had come home from school complaining that an old man had kicked him in the ass—three times, it turns out. The son can’t run any faster than his father could before him.
The bartender squeaks out this information with surprise. He’s put two and two together, or twenty-three and three, as it was.
Now two things happen simultaneously.
A man at the bar is lighting a cigarette.
Joe Crappianna shrugs and says “Summonabitch” by way of explanation. The shrug says he can’t help himself, that God moves his leg, that a good kick in the ass is just what kids need.
The man who’s lighted his cigarette tosses the still burning match at Joe Crappianna. It lands on the shoulder of his overcoat.
Jack watches the overcoat start to bum, just a small spot, no bigger than a cat’s eye.
Jack’s sweating again, immobilized, trapped in a flashback. This time he’s at a blues festival. He can almost hear the music, old-time twangy and plinky. people always losing something, something already lost. Leon Redbone was scheduled to be the main act. He usually wore a brim-down fedora and, even at night, which it was, sunglasses with fuzzy eyebrows, a big nose and a mustache—or else that was his real face. Jack had never been able to understand a word he said—it was all guitar accompaniment, rhythm and mood. river calls, work groans, mule hollers, and choking on grits—Laze-ribba, uhh, Sonni-nu, ]aiz Fir, uh—but he thought if he could get close enough to the stage that he would finally understand and that monumental questions would be answered.
He got down close and sat on the grass. Overhead, beyond the reach of the stage lights, stars were shining. Beyond the stage, the Niagara Gorge fell into darkness, river flowing down below unseen. Two emcees were fighting over the mike, telling bad jokes, each saying the other had promised to drop his pants. “We got Leon Redbone backstage!” they kept announcing. Ten minutes of their disconnected remarks dragged by. The audience was drinking a lot of wine, most of it from gallon jugs being passed around. The crowd noise kept increasing. Glass shattered somewhere behind Jack.
“We got Leon Redbone backstage!” one of the emcees repeated for the sixth time. He was answered by a hoarse voice from the crowd. “We don’t care what color his bone is! Get him out here!” Maybe it had been Jack who yelled it, but he couldn’t remember.
So the emcees fade and Redbone slouches to the edge of the stage, dragging a chair in which he sits, holding his guitar. He’s doubled over, face hidden. He strikes a chord, groans “Uhhh,” plucks a string, lets “Ree-ahh” from between his lips. He’s got stomach pain for sure, but it’s elemental, dirt-level blues all right. It’s too much, even for Redbone and he takes out a box of wooden kitchen matches from a deep coat pocket. He lights one and tosses it into the rows of people nearest the stage. Slaps guitar strings, “Oohah,” another burning match sails into the audience. Then another match and another. The stars are shining, the river flowing, and Redbone is lighting candles in the darkness, warming up the crowd.
Joe Crappianna discovers the burning cat’s eye on his shoulder and slaps it out. “Summonabitch!” he says. He’s looking around at the big guys who want to kick his ass, but who can’t bring themselves to it. A lighted paper match bounces off his hat. He whirls, striking out with his cane. Another match scribes an arc toward him, a shooting star on which he probably makes a wish. Perhaps he wishes for all the stars of heaven because he is suddenly illuminated by scores of matches that fly at him from all directions. For a moment he shines in a romantic blaze, cane held high, an inquiry about Joan of Arc, about burning bushes, bonfires, arsonists, fire-eaters, flame throwers, Chicago. Then the last of the matches wink out. Spires of bitter smoke rise around him. There’s nervous and harsh laughter-and then someone shouts an alarm. Joe Crappianna’s pant’s cuff is on fire, burning merrily. It’s a crown of bright flame for his foot, licking upward for the knee, and J.C. is jumping and kicking, but fire goes upward in a flash and his whole leg becomes a torch.
“Summonabitch!” he screams. “Summonabitch!”
He’s really kicking now, place kicking, punting, one-step, kick, two-step, kick, flames sighing heavily, foot aiming for the ceiling, then higher, kicking for glory, kicking for the ass of God when he gets tangled up with his cane and goes down like the still burning remnant of a fireworks display fallen to earth.
The guys had given him wide berth when he was jumping and kicking, but now they circle around and one of them smothers the flames with a door mat. Joe Crappianna is unconscious, his leg smoking like a stick of incense. But it’s smelling like some animal that got trapped in a dump fire.
“What happened?” someone asks.
As it turns out, nobody knows what happened. The next-day newspaper says “Cruel Prank Puts Senior in Hospital.” The guys in the saloon speculate: careless smoking, a hot-foot, who’d have thought? The leg had gone off like a blowtorch—all that grease from greasinapiece all those years. See? Don’t play with matches. There’s a lot of truth in those old sayings.
Jack sneaks into the hospital room. Joe Crappianna’s in the bed like something discarded. His eyes are closed. On the bedstand there’s only a plastic water pitcher and glass. The burned leg’s been amputated, first the foot, then off at the knee, then halfway up the thigh. A doctor’s been whittling away at him, probably a doctor whose ass Crappianna had kicked twenty years earlier. It’s the left leg that’s gone. This is called: irony, poetic justice, divine retribution, coincidence, contrived. Choose one or more of the aforementioned.
Whatever it is, it makes Jack happy, although there’s a moan trapped in his chest that can’t get out. Up close to the bed, he leans over. “Crappianna. Joe Crappianna,” he says quietly.
Joe Crappianna isn’t his name, but one eye opens anyway. “Summonabitch,” he says, voice scarcely audible.
“So how’s it going, Joe?” Jack asks.
“Keepin busy,” he says after a moment.
“Yeah,” Jack nods, looking at the flat bedsheet where Joe Crappianna’s left leg should be. “I can see that. Busy as a one-legged drunk in an ass-kicking contest ...
The old man doesn’t say anything, but Jack thinks a ghost smile comes and goes on his lips.
“You want anything?” Jack asks. “A drink of water?”
Joe Crappianna shakes his head no. The eye is looking at Jack as it closes.
“So take care of yourself. Joe” Jack says. He watches the old man for a long moment, but there’s no sign that he’s heard. Jack bends closer. “Shitava,” he whispers. “Shitava, shitava, shitava.”
Outside in the street Jack’s got this big simile spread over his face. Ass-kicking contest. He’s going to be a writer, after all. So, okay, it wasn’t original exactly, but it had fit in real good back there.
Two days later, Joe Crappianna dies, and the moan trapped in Jack’s chest escapes. Life’s a long lesson. It’s just as they say: don’t play with matches unless you’re ready to sing the blues.
So it’s over, but it isn’t over. The hook’s in there still—that’s the way it is with stories: there’s this image of an old man dancing with his leg on fire that won’t go away. That’s the climax, probably. It’s a tiny image, dim, too, in spite of the bright flames, with a half-life of sixty seconds—it’s nothing at all compared to that far green light shining across the water from the end of the dock, to the great white whale floating eternally in the mind, to a skinny old knight on a horse.
Still, we need more denouement than we’ve had. That’s what comes after the climax, when all the loose questions lying around are gathered up and answered, when your partner is untied and you have a cigarette, even if you don’t smoke, as you mull everything over.
So here we go.
Q. What happened to ... ?
A. The rabbits died with no one to cut them green grass.
The scythe went in a garage sale. Its blade was
painted gold and it hangs over a fireplace in a home on
24th Street. Joe’s son, Michael Crappianna, got his
father’s cane. It’s in the back of a closet. Michael
can’t stand the thought of throwing it out. Maybe
he’ll use it himself when he gets older.
Q. What was Joe Crappianna’ s real name?
A. Joe Crappianna. You think this is made up?
Q. Why did his leg get amputated?
A. Poor circulation, deep infection resistant to
antibiotics, toxemia, commonly known as blood poisoning.
Q. Did the boy who made up those words ever become a writer?
A. No. He got his thesaurus, finally, but later sold it
to Jack. The boy’s love of making things up and the
dream of becoming a writer got thrown in with the sale.
The price of three bucks made it an affordable dream for Jack.
Q. The kindergartner—did he get bigger and kick someone in the ass?
A. Yes, he got bigger. He also kicked another boy in the ass, once.
The boy turned around and beat him bloody, so he never tried it again.
That portion of the vicious circle died out.
Q. What about Jack?
A. He got married. His wife gave birth to a boy six months later.
She’d had a boy because she knew he couldn’t cope with a girl
just yet. They talked it over and named the boy Joseph.
The boy’s nine, now. Jack’s trying desperately to teach him to
respect old people. Sometimes Jack fights down a terrible impulse
to give him a good kick in the ass. The other boys in the neighborhood
walk around fearlessly, not even looking over their shoulders. They
don’t know what a kick in the ass is all about. Jack has recurrent
nightmares. He’s chased by two old men. One has cut off Jack’s feet
with a gleaming scythe, and he runs on the raw stumps of his ankles
while the other old man, his leg ablaze, kicks his ass. Jack is leaving a
bloody trail everywhere he goes. He wakes up sweating, certain he is
going to be a writer. He’s got this yearning. He’s got that thesaurus.
He’s going to write a novel about this guy he knows or imagined.
The novel’s all written in his head. He’s just got to get some paper and
some time. The title’s going to be Captain Hooter at Niagara. Maybe
Joe Crappianna will be in it. But maybe not. Those pages are blurry in
his mind.
Q. What about the guys in the saloon where Joe Crappianna was set on fire?
A. What about them? It was an accident. They didn’t mean for anyone to
get hurt. You expected them to join a religious order, to spend the rest
of their lives praying and tending the residents of a nearby nursing home?
None of them drink in that saloon anymore.
Q. How come this story’s so crude and violent? Why isn’t there any
romantic interest in it?
A. Well, there’s Jack’s wife, who gets a mention—but, finally, your question
reveals more about your perceptions and expectations than anything else.
Read the story again. You might have missed something.
This is a love story.
+++
"Jack Gets a Thesaurus" first appeared in Slipstream, Issue 21.
