A Kind, Caring Person
Where the shotgun hit, the tree is black, like the bottom of an old oven. Jackson blinks in the mother tree’s wound, his eye framed by the clean opening. Levi vomits. To know Jackson is to know this feeling. Dehydration heavy in the face. Brain matter lost for good. With Jackson, it’s always been like this. Levi has no excuse.
Jackson holds up the baby, spit bubbling in the toothless face.
“This is Teresa’s baby,” he says.
It’s wrapped in a shirt from a theme park, a place where Levi, as a boy, had great memories. Under a roller coaster, the baby’s hand opens and closes.
He waves Jackson off, hands still gripping his knees. He thinks of Teresa, her whippet canisters, the roots of her blonde hair going black. Even if Jackson isn’t the father, he and Teresa are perfect together.
“I know whose baby that is,” he says.
“Let’s go leave it at the fire station.”
“Bad.”
The night before, the house was full of people like them, the lost, ruined debris of the town. The place belongs to a man they don’t know. He has a hideous concave chest and works at the morgue. He doesn’t care who’s in his house, what they’re doing. He is one who glows for the anarchy of strangers.
Jackson had gotten drunk and was threatening to kill himself. Levi didn’t like the way he looked; his face red and bright, features like a smearing of paint.
“Don’t wake the neighbors?” Jackson cried. “I’ll wake the fucking neighbors.”
He went inside and brought out a shotgun. As he lined up the sight, the tree in a bullseye, his shadow was a bonfire swell against the house, a phantom son of all that came before. He fired. Bodies crushed to the narrow hall, the jaundiced bathroom. The lights snapped off and there was silence. But the man with a concave chest was laughing. Shirtless, his thumb stroked the sinkhole of bone and skin. Levi wanted to punch him. He’d never done something like that before.
Minutes later, a police car crawled over the blacktop, automatic and lifeless. Then it was gone.
When the gun fired, Levi thought Jackson had shot himself. It had been a relief.
Levi doesn’t believe in God. Call it rebellion, something he might outgrow. But now, he’s begging God to make this feeling stop. Make it go away and he’ll never drink again.
Jackson reenacts how he shot the tree. He squares his aim over the bonfire pit, ashen ground where heat and colors of life had once refined the night. He yells boom. The baby laughs in a carrier.
To the small human, Jackson explains guns and photosynthesis. In the future, he says, all the trees of the Amazon will be cut down. The earth will have no more oxygen. The baby might live to see it. Jackson won’t.
He calls over. “Are you mad at me?”
“No,” Levi says.
“I love you man.”
“I know it.”
“Say it back.”
“I love you, Jackson.”
At a gas station, Levi buys egg sandwiches, paying with dimes and quarters. It’s what he has. Against the rainbow wall of cigarettes, he feels the clerk’s pity.
Walking back, shame turns to claustrophobia, then ambition—a feeling he’s never quite learned to get his fingers around. In his mind, a plan rotates. It blurs. He and Jackson can fix all the bad. Enough of this crashing they don’t ask for, their lives a lift and tumble of white lottery balls.
Upstate, a network of factories build half the RVs in the world. His cousin is a floorman there. The work has given him a lot: good money, a good trailer, a good wife from Mexico. Levi and Jackson can have this life. Like his cousin, they’ll go to the Mexican dance halls, the windows strung with paper lights of pink and blue, the scent of straw and perfume in the air. As a trumpet guides the dancing crowds, Levi will meet a girl in a ribbon skirt, and they will kiss and hook their bodies on the gravel outside.
He has to say it. They have to get out of here. If not the RV plants, then somewhere else. Anywhere. For the first time in their friendship, Levi will be direct and honest with Jackson.
They eat on the steps of the house, the baby in Jackson’s lap. Spines curving, they lick up the grease and wax paper. The meal tastes of being foraged.
Levi is quiet. Everything burns for it, but he can’t get out the words. Losing Jackson means losing a part of himself.
With its eyes, the baby tracks the falling breadcrumbs. It makes a nervous jerk, resembling something like a hooked fish.
As Jackson readies a bottle with formula, he says, “Biscuit.” The baby points at the house and he says “Mortgage.” It points at his face. He strokes his chin.
“Handsome,” he says. “I used to be handsome.”
Every town is the story of a family who once owned it. Theirs is no different. Long before Levi and Jackson, a rich family built a mason jar factory on the south end. For the town, it brought natural gas. For the family, it brought money.
When Levi was a boy, the family moved to California, taking their fortune with them. The factories shut down, but the town never did. If it wasn’t for those glass jars, everything and everyone he’s known would never have existed. No mason jars; no Jackson. Maybe that would be a good thing.
All that’s left of the family is the campus, one of their donations to the state. Like molars in a jaw, the structures of orange brick and white gable pack in a great stillness on the edge of the town’s river. It is a mummy of a world no longer.
Down the curving walkways of the campus, under the shade of tulip trees and oak, Levi and Jackson carry the baby. The college girls are pretty, and Levi can’t find a footing in the crowds. He worries that he looks like a drunk.
They reach a clock tower at the center of the quad. A beam of sunshine hits the limestone, striking the baby in the face. It whimpers. Jackson folds over the carrier.
“Why are we here?” Levi asks.
“To see the aunt,” Jackson says. “Teresa told me to visit her.”
He’s grinning. Levi doesn’t believe him.
On the sight lines, heavy doors of wood and brass swing open, a sound like soft thunder. These doors were closed to Levi a long time ago. He doesn’t know how it happened.
“I’m broke,” Jackson says. “More broke than I’ve ever been.”
“I know that, Jackson. I’m broke.”
“You know what’s in there? Purses.”
“Jackson.”
“Look at this cute fucking baby. It’s a gold mine.”
The quad empties and the carillon plays. A corkscrew of heat travels up Levi’s back. They stand looking at one another. Levi turns away.
“Are you my friend?”
“Jackson.”
“Say you’re my friend.”
“I’m your friend.”
“We’re going to do this.”
“This is bad.”
“This is nothing.”
Inside, the office is monochrome and has the icy air of a butcher shop. Out of the cubicles, Teresa’s aunt and her coworkers poke up their heads. They are shaped like pears.
“Jackson!” the aunt cries.
“Did someone order a baby with extra cheese?” Jackson says.
The women sway over, Velcro shoes hissing on the carpet. Their excitement over a witless baby is depressing. It occurs to Levi that maybe his life isn’t so bad.
“I’m the great aunt,” the aunt clucks above the straining, round face. “Am I the greatest?”
Cubicle by cubicle, Levi empties all the cash he can. Anything painful to lose—jewelry, credit cards—is left behind. He’s methodical and steady, and thinks he’s finally found something he’s good at.
About to undo a latch of fake gold, he feels like he’s being watched. He whirls. At a door frame, a young boy looks back.
Levi meets the boy’s gaze. He crouches. He sees himself, a face like his, sculpted by a million things unsaid. Does the boy come here after school? It must be so confusing the way mom solders down the moments of her life. Better to imagine race cars or rocket launches. When that gets boring, try to count the ceiling panels.
Levi holds out the cash. The bills fold like a wilted flower.
“I can handle this,” he says. “I’m strong enough for the both of us.”
Him and Jackson leave. Spilling back to campus, the day is white, overexposed. Yes, it’s big money, enough for a month of food and gas, the deposit for a new place to live. But Levi feels off, as if something has been cut out of him. This is the Jackson he needs to get away from.
The baby starts to hack and cry. It’s learning to not like close bodies and cold air, voices it doesn’t recognize. Jackson grunts at it like a mule. The crying stops. From the carrier, Jackson lifts the baby and goes skipping over the quad. Its laugh grows louder with each bounce in his arms.
“We’re rich you fucking nerds,” Jackson yells.
A long time ago, Levi saw a documentary about the great-grandson of the richest man who ever lived. All that inheritance, and what did he do? He went to Papua New Guinea to study the tribes, islanders who live in huts and wear face paint. On one trip, he disappeared. They say the islanders killed him and ate his body. As the credits rolled, Levi realized something. Money—no matter the sum—lowers to the imagination of the person who has it.
“Levi,” Jackson shouts over the quad. “I want to get drunk.”
The Blue Ox is an old factory bar. At the entrance, a 20-foot statue of Paul Bunyan is at guard. The paint is chipped, the colors petrified, an entree for dozens of winters. In his gaze, Bunyan looks not to the empty jar factory, but down the railway marking the center of town.
Levi’s grandpa had a lot of stories about the Blue Ox. When the factory was still open, a beer cost only a quarter. Station wagons and union-boss Cadillacs rumbled in the parking lot. In the basement, illegal bingo was known to end by knife fight. If a man was very drunk, his shift was over. If he was half drunk, his shift was about to begin.
It makes Levi nervous, the thought of going there. It’s a time, a place that doesn’t belong to them. But Jackson begs to go. It’s a short walk from where they are.
Inside, it’s only the real alcoholics. These men reek of a golden anniversary of cigarette smoke. In their stiff joints and dusted flannel, the pain is implicit. It’s enough to make Levi wince.
The bartender puts a hand up. No kids allowed.
“You have to let the baby in,” Jackson says. “Who do you think is buying?”
The bartender has a gunshot laugh. He tells them to sit. They drink and tear off bits of french fries. When they place them in the baby’s wet mouth, its face lights up as if it’s found the meaning of life.
Mementos from the factory days ring the wood panels of the bar. Photographs. News clippings. Deformed mason jars. On the bar top, a plastic lid covers a row of engraved silver tags. They bear the names of men, the dates they lived. Levi thinks of death.
“Best bar in the world,” Jackson shouts at the bartender.
A bell rings at the door and they turn. It’s a face they recognize.
“Fuck,” Jackson says.
Billy swings into the room, eyeing the wall of beer and liquor. Levi enjoys watching someone who doesn’t know they’re being watched. Eventually, Billy’s gaze falls on them. He swears under his breath. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. But Teresa says Billy is the baby’s father.
He rushes at Jackson and pins him to the bar. Struggling, Billy’s arm around his neck, Jackson lifts a beer to his lips. Insults break in Billy’s voice. He says something about pride and family. It sounds so funny to Levi. Around here, only idiots care about that.
He watches on. The two men sigh and twist, and after a while, Billy gives up and shoves Jackson to the bar.
Levi explains their day, that Teresa gave Jackson the baby to go and visit the aunt. Still angry, Billy winds the floor like a fighter in a ring, nose flaring, elbows loose. The baby hacks and bleats anew.
“It doesn’t like you,” Jackson says.
“Be nice,” Billy snaps.
He takes the baby, trying to cradle it. He’s no natural, not like Jackson.
“You’re a fucking bum,” Billy says. “The worst of them.”
“Thanks, Billy,” Jackson shakes his empty bottle at the barman. “I had no idea.”
Billy needles at Levi. Why is he always with Jackson? Why are they best friends? Every terrible moment—Jackson’s talk of suicide, his taking without asking—plays in Levi’s head. He’s afraid to say anything. He can’t disappoint either of them.
“I’d like to go north,” Levi says. “My cousin could get us jobs in the RV factories.”
“Sounds like the worst god damn idea I’ve ever heard,” Jackson says. “Levi just wants to marry a Mexican.”
“Those are good jobs,” Billy’s warm at the thought. “Levi will do fine. But you’d fuck it up.”
“If I’m lucky, he’ll fuck off,” Levi says. “Go give the clap to the Amish.”
“You hate me,” Jackson says.
“I should join,” Billy says. “I’m broke as hell. Not like you two of course. But still.”
“Leave. I’ll raise your kid.”
“Be nice. Last warning.”
“‘Billy? Goo-goo-ga-ga. Who the fuck is Billy?’”
“Last warning Jackson.”
Jackson gets up. He lifts his beer and wraps an arm around Billy. He coos down at the baby, calming it.
“We’re not so different, Billy,” Jackson says. “We both love Teresa. That means I love you.”
“Alright,” Billy laughs.
“Say you love me.”
“I’m not going to say it.”
Jackson screams, his voice fracturing, “I love you!”
Billy throws him off, nearly dropping the baby. There’s a long pause in the room. The baby starts to whimper. The ice machine rattles. Levi can feel it. It’s a pressing intensity. All the drunks, the bartender too, look at Jackson. How often do they see a man with a choice like that, where a moment clamors for decision? Fight or flight. Buy or sell. Win or lose.
Jackson drops to his seat.
“You look like an idiot,” he says. “It’s not even your baby.”
A bottle sails in the air, catching Jackson on the hairline. It makes a deep, hollow sound but doesn’t break. Billy places the baby on the bar top. In a smooth, geometrical motion, he draws a hook that strikes Jackson on the ear, blowing him to the ground. There’s clapping from the drunks and bartender. Jackson fingers at his left eye. Blood streams out of it, leaving his nails red. He rocks by the end of his spine, but Billy, precise and gone of anger, hacks on his cheekbone.
Billy turns up to Levi.
“Hit him,” he says. “Hit him. You never wanted to hit this guy? Him?”
Levi looks at the baby. Tiny pellets of skin run over its nose and cheeks. How unformed it is. The pink softness makes him sick, like an open wound he’s afraid to touch.
What comes next is reeling and slow. Levi crouches. Jackson doesn’t see him coming. His knuckles pass over Jackson’s face and they pass back. He does it again. A weight presses into his back. Jackson looks away, his hair tangled and damp. The wildness in him is gone.
It makes Levi furious. More violence—kicking, stomping—rise out of him. He’s blind by it, and he doesn’t stop until Jackson’s features are writhing, the ugliness set like that of a corpse.
When he’s satisfied, Levi falls to the bar, exhausted. Pain shoots through his hand. He’s never felt anything like it.
Billy has gone. The baby lays on the bar, a pool of beer soaking its diaper. It wails in the dreadful silence, a raw nerve-ending of a new life all alone.
Jackson struggles up. They look at each other. Steadying himself on the bar, Jackson spits on the floor.
“Are you happy?” he says.
“No,” Levi says.
“I have to tell you something. But promise me you won’t get mad.”
“Jackson.”
“Teresa doesn’t know I have the baby.”
“You kidnapped it?”
“You’re mad at me.”
Levi steps back. The high wall of bottles, their colors—red, white, and green—looks different. He tries to see the level of booze within each tube of glass. He thinks of all the alcohol he’s ever drunk. How many bottles could it fill? How many rooms? Jackson hasn’t done this to him. He’s done it to himself.
“Are you my friend?” Jackson calls.
Half in the door, a sunset crashes in. Levi gazes back. Against the bar, Jackson belongs to a glow of blue. He faces no direction. The baby is quiet now, rocked in the carrier by Jackson’s hand. He does it because that’s his nature. It’s the right thing to do.
From his pocket, Jackson takes out the stolen money. He puts down one more bill.
“Levi,” Jackson says. “Are you my friend?”
Outside, Levi feels drunk. The pain of the morning is gone, at least for a while. It’s the hour where gold and red, far from extinguished, menace in the sky. Above him, Bunyan rises up against the colors. The axe, the beard, the red cap. What’s one more lie parents tell their children?
He walks off into a world of pavement. Places to live, women to love, jobs to work—fantasies are both known, sewn to the lining of his heart, and void of all detail. As he goes, high fencing blocks off a white lake of concrete. The factory stares back at him. Glaciers of brick and glass, it jettisons from the earth, as if formed by plates and drift over a million years.
Lucas T. Robinson is a writer and journalist. He lives in San Diego, California.