bear hands

“Did you kill her?” John was a shorter than Jack, so when he asked the question, he had to look up.

Jack had just used his cell phone to call his brother John. Jack had smoked a cigarette while waiting for John. Now John had arrived and he was not going to able to brush of the question that had been asked.

Jack looked down into John’s eyes and he replied, “No.” shaking his head.

“Jack,” John had just been introduced to the corpse of Meryl, Jack’s former wife, “how is it then that she is no longer breathing? Explain that to me if you didn’t - if you didn’t just kill her.”

Jack didn’t say a thing but he continued to stare down at John trying to convey that he had not killed his wife, through his steady gaze.

“Did you kill her?” John said yet again.

Jack didn’t reply.

“Jack! You call me here? In the dead of night? I ask you a question? Could you just answer the question? I get out of my bed at midnight to see a DEAD BODY AND MY BROTHER AND YOU CAN’T EVEN TELL ME THE TRUTH?”

“No, John, I didn’t kill her.”

John looked slightly comforted, and then looked up into Jack’s eyes apprehensively.

“Did you?” He said making a move towards Jack.

“No!” He looked at his watch and then down at John and slowly said,

“Well yeah.” Jack started to move the body, which was currently lying on the pavement parallel to their car which was parked on the side of an empty road.

“You did then? Okay, so now we’re just killing our wives? That’s what we’re doing now? You’re just going to-”

“Yes. That’s what we’re doing now, grab the feet.”

Jack and John were standing at the front of the car on the side of the road looking down at Meryl’s head. John scurried around the left side of the car, getting his shoes in the mud and ending up inefficiently by the trunk of the car and at Meryl’s lifeless feet.

Jack and John carried her body into the trunk of Jack’s car. Jack got into the driver’s seat and John walked over to the passenger side.

“No, we need your car, follow me.” Jack said to John, but he kept staring straight ahead as John walked to his car which was parked right behind Jack’s car.

They drove separately towards a place that only Jack knew about. As Jack drove he started to cry. He looked in his rearview mirror to make sure John was still keeping up. Jack tried to stiffen his face and clench his jaw but noises erupted from his nostrils and he could not stop himself from weeping. Jack wept until his face got tired from the emotion, so he started drinking whiskey instead of weeping. The whiskey soothed Jack enormously.

Meanwhile, John followed Jack in his very safe looking car. John was feeling nervous so he chewed a piece of gum and he kept chewing it even when it ran out of flavor.

They drove for a long while on the same road. Jack drove with his window open to feel the cold air on his skin. If he had a better sense of smell, he would have noticed the smell of the city streets, rain on cement, urine on the sidewalks, and engine exhaust, shift towards the smells of the farms on the outskirts of town, the rain settling into the mouths of the flowers, the morning fog drifting into place around the fields, and the mint of the herbs growing sporadically on the side of the road.

John drove with all of his windows rolled up, so he would not have noticed the changes of aroma, even if his sense of smell was better than John’s.

They arrived at the place that only Jack knew about and got out of their cars. Jack told John that if he wanted, he could leave now. He could leave now and have no involvement with the situation. He could drive off, and forget that any of this ever happened. This, of course wasn’t true. John’s fingerprints were on Jack’s car, the tire tracks of two cars were already at this place where Jack was going to dispose the body, so the statement he was in the middle of making held no validity. John shook his head, no, he would not leave Jack, he was in it now and he would stay and help dispose of the body. As Jack went to open the trunk John mumbled something under his breath about owing him big. Jack rolled his eyes because he had heard John mumbling and he resented his attitude about all of this.

End.