Jerry

"Jerry, you're like a fortune teller, tell me my fortune."

Jerry was not a fortuneteller at all actually, he was just an old asshole with a loose mouth. He had no grasp on the future, he just happened to be right in one particularly famous incident.

"Well then, how did you know? You must be psychic," Frank pushed on.

"You're an ass."

"He really is psychic!"

It was a tense scene, a room filled with men called on to put the murder case to rest, and somewhat surprisingly, it was a wonderful turn out.

Years of unkempt use left the church hall grimy. They stood and sat on wooden planks that splintered here and there. The room had chairs scattered about without any form, and only a few of the men decided to sit. Most were flighty and ready to disrupt whatever proceedings were to follow.

Sid walked in with the pastor behind him. Spines rolled into place at the sight of pastor Mike. The devil was close, they all felt him burning on their necks. They all felt the eyes on their backs, but they hid it under blank faces.

"Let's get down to business," Sid said in the center of the room, "I don't want to be here any longer than we have to be."

"I still don't get why the hell we're all here."

Pastor Mike was agitated by the general agreement, "You know damn well why we're all here, Mac. Somebody here knows what happened to Harry, and murder is not just a crime but also the worst kind of sin. This town needs to repent, this town needs justice."

Everyone looked at each other honestly, Jerry looked at pastor Mike with uncertainty. The pastor looked them down one by one. He looked in their eyes, in their heads, but he saw nothing but men.

"I don’t think it was any one in this room, and I think you know that Mike, no one really knows,” Jerry reasoned with the pastor. He didn’t have to be psychic to know how Harry died.

Jerry thought back to the night before, to the drunken assembly and all the brash decisions that followed. He thought back to the floor where his vision was blurred by the sticky blood that dripped from his eyebrow.

"You know Harry, there is probably a good moral here."

"Don't fuck with me, that's a good moral."

"No, that's definitely not it."

Harry punched Jerry below the eye. His head hit the tile and bounced without effort. He was too old for a hit like that.

"Respect your elders, now that's a good moral," Jerry sputtered through blood.

Harry punched him again, and raising another blood-stained fist he hesitated. Harry started to cry. His fist missed Jerry's head and he used it to stagger to his feet. Harry started to walk away in uncertainty.

"Now look here! Christ be with us on this faithless night, no one is leaving here until we repent!"

Sid looked uneasy and turned towards Jerry, "what about you, Jerry, what do you know about this mess."

"Me? Well, why me?”

"You’re the one who knew Harry was going to bite it. Care to explain how you knew? "

"Well...It was sort of a lucky guess."

It was really a stupid thing to tell everyone, something Jerry regretted. There was no way of knowing the faux pa would blow up like this, and it was a situation like this that Jerry had failed to anticipate when he dislodged the words from his throat.

"What about the fight you had with him last night."

"He split my eye open but couldn't give the final blow. It was just another bar fight Mike."

"Well, what precipitated the fight?"

Jerry paused, now questioning Mike's worldliness, "Harry was always a fucker," he responded rather flatly, and that was really all the explanation he had to give. The men agreed with little nods, double blinks, or turned lips. Jerry went on without necessity, "Harry was a bad man Mike, he stole wives, he was that shadow in the alley that was always finding fights. Harry drank too much, fucked too much, and he fought too, too much."

In the end everything came down like the steel bat that left an earthquake of crick-cracks! It was only the oak that had folded like pine. The table collapsed in on itself leaving four legs attached to nothing but splinters.

Sid turned to Harry now with the table defeated, soon there was a bat coming towards Harry's head with dire certainty. In this moment, in this one frame, the men knew nothing. Harry went out. Harry went down.

Pastor Mike turned away from Jerry satisfied. There was no escaping the guilt any longer though, Jerry started to cry.

Started as a page in a notebook about people on a bridge. Jerry, a young(er) cynical asshole dropped a rock onto a car, and I don't remember the rest.

My professor liked the intensity of it at the end, the power it evoked. I don't think I noticed it until I read it again. I think it's too disjointed to really deliver at the end honestly. It's hollow and not the kind of hollow where I just didn't explain it well enough, but hollow in the way that I honestly didn't have a story to tell. It's like a hat without a head. Oh well...

-Dan