Zephyr Dorsey

DEAD RINGER

There must be two dozen of us manning the phonebank today, most of us sitting in pairs at desks designed for two people. We spend all day, Monday through Friday, calling old people. Every day, the population skews a little older. And every day, our business grows just a little bigger. Some predict that by the end of the century, half the country’s population will be elderly. Talk about job security.

“Hello, Missus Newman. This is Jimmy from the Hospitality Center.”

A curt syllable of perplexity returns over the connection. I push on… “Jimmy Spektor from the Hospitality Center…” “Yes, I call you every week, Missus Newman.”

Family members hire us for all sorts of reasons, idiosyncratic reasons. I’ve found that every family is complex and screwed up in its own complex, screwed-up way, and we cater to as much of that screwed-up complexity as possible.

“What?…” “No, no. I’m not selling anything. I’m calling to check on you…” “I realize you have Caller I.D., but— ” “Police? No, no. You misunderstand me. This is your friend Jimmy from the Hospitality Center. Your son, your son, ahh…” I fumble for the son’s name in my data. “Harlan! Harlan has asked me to call and check-in on you from time to time. Remember Harlan? Your son?”

Some families hire us because the adult children are busy with careers and children of their own and they need us to act as backup, in case they get so wrapped up in their own chaotic lives that they just clean forget to check-in on dear old mum. These people are motivated by the fear factor, the fear that they could wind up the person whose poor elderly parent—the news agency gleefully recounts—was found dead by the pest exterminator in a rundown, rat-infested, trash-piled apartment. In that scenario, we’re sorta like an insurance company. Conscience insurance.

“Yes, that’s him. Harlan…” “Well, I’m sure he’s got his good qualities, too, Missus Newman—” “Well now, that’s a pretty strong word to call someone…” “I’m sure he does get it from his father…”

Some families who use us are, of course, estranged from one another—due to hurt or stubbornness or even something as ridiculous as embarrassment or shame. Some children, now adults, realize that the sound of their voices would only upset their aged parents. In these types of situations, we’re the go-between, the dear family friend that helps keep the parties in quasi-contact.

“Listen, Missus Newman. Harlan wants me to see if you need anything…” “Like from the store or the pharmacy maybe…” “No, I didn’t know that…” “Oh, I bet you were very good at it…” “Well, I’m sure, uh, Harlan appreciates the fact that you gave up such a promising career to care for him and—” “Yes, ma’am. He’s a jackass. You said that already.”

Sometimes, in the minority of cases, the family dynamics are wholesome and loving, and they simply hire us to fill a practical need. Like maybe the grown children live in Bangladesh or Liechtenstein or some place, and they can’t exactly run down to the corner and fill Papa’s prescription. So they hire us, as a person of means might hire a maid service or handyman.

“Yes— Yes, well, I— I understand, but— Missus Newman! Missus Newman, I have to go now. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. I’ll call again next week.”

But of course, let’s be honest here. Most of our money is guilt money. The children feel guilty about abandoning their parents behind the borders of that despicable and desolate country known as Old Age. People who wouldn’t dream of abandoning their dog barely think twice about leaving mommy dearest to try to get by on her own.

But I don’t judge them. Truly. Look at me, for Christ’s sake. I haven’t talked to my own mother in years. Besides, none of these people is to blame for our crappy, life-cycle existence. Birth. Growth. Maturity. Decline. Death. It sucks. We’re each doing the best we can in a universe clearly run without a competent customer service department.

I check my messages to see if any of my No Answers have returned my—Ah! Something from my older sister. That’s unusual. I press the button to play the message.

“Hi Jimmy. Hope you’re doing well…”

It’s good to hear her voice.

“Mumbai is great. Rick seems to like his new job okay, but I never see him anymore…”
My sister’s husband, Rick. He got a promotion of sorts several weeks ago, and so he and Sis were whisked away to India.

“Listen, I just wanted to call and let you know I was thinking about you…”

By thinking about you she means cursing your selfish, despicable soul.

Think I’m being overly cynical? Not really. Before Sis took off for the great, teeming subcontinent, she had asked, then begged, then demanded that I take-over looking after Mama while she was gone. I refused, of course. The only thing I owe that old woman is a belated lawsuit for emotional abuse and child endangerment.

After a few more weeks of badgering, Sis gave up on me, as everyone eventually does, and signed Mama up with a professional care service. She tried to make me feel guilty about it but then remembered who I was and let it go.

“I don’t know when we’ll get the chance to talk again,” she continues. She was always a bit of a babbler. “There’s so much to deal with here. We’re still living out of boxes. Well, take care of yourself, Jimmy. I’ll be back in touch during the holidays, if not before.”

Yeah right.

“Goodbye.”

Sis, ten years older than me, had been off at college for about a week the first time Mama locked me outside. After an hour or so being locked out, it had started to rain, and with the logic of a child, I decided that the best thing to do was to sit in front of the locked door, rain pouring over me, listening to the muffled sounds of Loretta Lynn blasting from inside the house. I pictured Mama being angry at me for sitting in the rain and getting my clothes soaked and muddy, and I enjoyed the idea of making her angry because I knew that when you’re angry, you’re not feeling good, and I desperately wanted her not to feel good for what she had done to me.

I think I felt about the same motivation that time I “accidentally” cracked her crucifix. She slapped me hard for that one. But I didn’t mind. I was glad that I had hurt something she cared about. I can honestly say that, on that day, Jesus taught me how to be happy in my suffering.

In the end, it had been one of Mama’s boyfriends who had saved us from each other. I had opened the door too hard and bumped into him and caused him to drop his beautiful, handblown glass bong onto the floor (in the very same spot I had broken the back of Christ Our Lord—for whatever symbolism I’m supposed to read into that). He looked down at the oozing, foul-smelling mess and began a long stream of obscenities that did not stop when he began hitting me and continued after I had collapsed.

“My poor little Jimmy,” said my mother from inside a cloud of cigarette smoke when she found me.

I got up without a word and went out the front door.

I haven’t seen my mother since that day, although she has started calling me lately, ever since Sis went off to India. But I don’t answer. She can only offer me pain. Thanks to scholarships, grants, loans, and part-time jobs such as this one at the Hospitality Center, I’ve been able to acquire two years’ worth of a decent pre-med education so far. My ultimate aim is to become a researcher. We’ll see. That’s a pretty brazen dream for a guy like me.

I punch-in another phone number.

“Yes, hello? Mister Rucker?…” “This is Jimmy Spektor from the Hospitality Center…” “I’m good. Hey, listen, Mister Rucker —” “Pardon?…” “You pronounce it Wucka? Alright. You got plenty of food on the shelves and full bottles of prescriptions, Mister Wucka?…” “No I didn’t know too much bran fiber could do that…”

Part of our job is to provide a partial remedy for the ol’ “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” syndrome. If a Call doesn’t answer within whatever timeframe is being paid for, we have to go over and check things out. But No Answers don’t worry me much. I’m still pretty new here, so Mister Napier only gives me the healthy cases whose children pay the bare minimum—three days have to go by without a response. That hasn’t happened to me yet. Plus, you gotta remember… all our calls are old people. A trip to the john can take half an hour. The odds are very good at catching someone at a bad time and the call going unanswered with nothing whatsoever being amiss. Well, except for being old, of course.

“Yeah, yeah. You told me that, Mister Wucka—” “Don’t sweat it. I’m forgetful myself. Listen, I just wanted to—” “Yes sir. You told me that, too—” “Oh! Mister Wucka! My boss is signaling me. I have to get off the phone now. I’ll call back soon…”

I end the call. As if in punishment for my lie, I see that my boss really is signaling at me. His thick black eyebrows are raised and pinched together above his squat little nose and his fat lips are puckered between the two pillows of his cheeks. I think he wants me to stop punching numbers. I pull my headset back from my ears so that it settles around my neck. He begins pumping his short arms and legs and heading my way.

“How’s it going, Jimmy, my boy?” he asks when he arrives at my station.

“Fine,” I answer, remaining in my seat.

He glances at my computer to make sure it’s my daily log on the screen and not my personal email or something worse, then gives me a slap on the back and begins looking around the room. His eyebrows remind me of a couple of caterpillars raised up on the edge of a broken stem trying to figure out where to go next.

“You, uh, seen Mister Jackonapes?”

I know that Jack has gone out to the Edmundson place. Again.

“I think he went out to check on a Call.”

“Really? Another one?” He goes over to Jack’s monitor and hits a few buttons and pulls up his log. “Oh. Missus Edmundson,” he says. “Well, that’s the easiest money we make around here.”

The company gets paid every time one of its employees has to make a House Call. Missus Edmundson needs a House Call about once every two weeks. What Mr. Napier doesn’t know is that it’s not Missus Edmundson that needs a House Call once every two weeks but her hot forty-something daughter, who’s more than happy to pay our House Call premium twice a month for a little of my deskmate’s special attention. From the way Jack tells it, Missus Edmundson’s daughter pays a visit to her mother, puts the old dame in the other room to drool or nap or watch soaps or whatever, then takes the phone off the hook and waits for Jack to arrive.

“Here he comes now, Mister Napier,” I say, trying with all the intonational influence I can muster to impel him to go over and meet Jack at the door instead of hanging out here at our station. I’d rather talk to old people than have Mr. Napier over my shoulder.

Jack catapults into the room in those confident long strides of his. For reasons obvious only to me, Jack, and Missus Edmundson’s daughter, there is a certain, shall we say, spring in his step. Mr. Napier moves hesitantly toward him, and I breathe a sigh of relief. But he pauses when Jack stops by the desk of our office manager, Tammy (who gets her own desk by the way). I watch as Jack leans over Tammy’s desk so he can say something quietly into her ear. Whatever he tells her makes her giggle, and she slaps him playfully on his shoulder. He leans up and thwacks her desk with his fingers and comes quickly our way.

Mr. Napier tucks-in his half-tucked shirt and pulls up his pants by the beltloops. If caterpillars coiled, Mr. Napier’s eyebrows would be coiling right now. I’ve always had the impression that Mr. Napier secretly does not like Jack. I’ve also had the impression that Mr. Napier very much does like Tammy. There may be a connection there. I don’t know.

“Welcome back, Jackonapes.” Mister Napier’s pants slide back under the curve of his belly.

“Thank you, sir. Good to be back.” Jack rounds our shared desk, glancing at me and rolling his eyes. I pretend to scroll through the data on my monitor.

“Missus Edmundson was fine as usual, I presume?” says Mr. Napier.

Jack plops down in his chair and rolls it back a foot or so.

“Who? Oh yeah, yeah. Phone offline again. Poor old lady can’t remember how to end a call properly.”

“When you go over, do you play nice, Jackonapes?”

“Oh, I play a very nice Jackonapes.”

“You don’t show your frustration with the situation?”

“I am the opposite of frustrated by the situation, sir. It is absolutely my… pleasure to go over there.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“We all have our jobs to do, sir.”

“Quite right, quite right.”

Mr. Napier continues to stand beside our desk. He nods his head and twitches his furry eyebrows. I feel guilty, like I’m eavesdropping on a private conversation, when I realize I’m watching him debate something inside his head.

“Listen, Jackonapes,” he says at last. “About Mister Chandler this morning…”

“Yeah. That was a shame. Poor guy. I liked him.”

“Another one?” I can’t keep myself from saying.

“Yes, indeed,” says Mr. Napier. “Third one in as many months, isn’t it Jack? Seven in the last two quarters?”

Jack is putting on his headset and looking at his monitor. I see the flash of realization cross his face that someone has been snooping at his station, but it is only a flash.

“Drowned in the tub, the poor geezer,” Jack says, jabbing fingers at his keypad. “Shriveled like a prune.”

For the first time since Jack has returned I realize that he’s high on something. I’ve learned to consider that normal. I’ve also learned that Jack is a fast talking, perpetual motion machine who is never caught doing less than two things at once. His life is a never-ending rollercoaster ride of caffeine, nicotine, speed, and alcohol, intermittently interrupted by sudden seizures of sleep. I’ve seen him pounding energy drinks and telephones one minute, his eyes bulging with energy, only to find him the next minute passed out sound asleep in his car, his personal phone stuck between his ear and shoulder.

“You’re not gonna take your day off?” I ask.

At the Hospitality Center, when one of our Calls dies, we get the day off with extra pay. Jack calls the extra pay the “Death Bounty.”

“Can’t afford to, Jimmy, my boy.” Just to irritate me, Jack likes to call me by the nickname Mr. Napier has for me. “Got relocation expenses coming up.” He glances up at Mr. Napier. “I’ll just take the double pay like last time.” He hits the send key on his keyboard with a flourish of finger and wrist.

“I think you should take the day off, Jack,” says Mr. Napier.

Mr. Napier never, ever calls anyone by a mere syllable.

Jack pauses.

Jack Jenkins never, ever pauses.

A halted Jack is like a stationary waterfall. An unnatural event.

I study Jack’s face. He looks suddenly ten years older and very tired.

“Mister Chandler was in bad shape,” he says. “I think he was relieved to go, by the end. His expression when I found him was so… so— Hello! Miss Ashcroft!” Jack holds up a hand and swivels toward his monitor and reaches for the can of stale soda on his desk and the waterfall has been turned back on. “This is Jack Jenkins from the Hospitality Center calling. I wanted to see what I could do for you today…”

Mr. Napier and I watch Jack for several seconds, absently, like watching fish in a tank. We both read something there in Jack’s blustering smoke and flame, but probably no man reads the same message in a fire.

My attention is soon distracted by Tammy, as it often is. She is making adjustments to the Big Board, putting another heart by Jack’s name, this one for Mr. Chandler. For some of those working at the Hospitality Center, getting a “Dead Ringer” (what we call it when one of our Calls dies on us) is a big emotional deal. Some people never come back from a Dead Ringer. For Jack, I guess it’s just another bonus check.

“Never seen such a run of bad luck,” Mr. Napier is saying when Tammy turns her shapely figure and returns to her private desk. “Jimmy, my boy, you wouldn’t mind taking over some of Jack’s Calls while he takes a little— “

“Screw that!” Jack says. “Sorry, Miss Ashcroft. I was talking to someone else.”
Mr. Napier pushes a heavy stream of air through his pursed fat lips. The corner of a sheet of paper flits on my desk. “Jimmy, my boy?”

“Yes, Mister Napier?”

“Step into my office for a moment, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Napier begins toward his office. I hold back long enough to give Jack the “what the Hell are you doing?” look, then begin my dash toward Mr. Napier—only I’ve forgotten to take off my headset, and I’m yanked back by the neck so hard and suddenly that I lose my balance and end up stretched out on the floor. I hear and feel Jack hit the floor beside me. I lie on my back, looking up at the florescent lights, listening to Jack bust a gut with laughter.

He usually holds his drugs better than this, I think. Maybe the Dead Ringers really are getting to him.

I hear Mr. Napier’s voice, sounding far away, as if he’s calling from the opposite bank of a river. “Jimmy, my boy?”

“Coming sir.”

I throw off my headset, leaving it dangling from the desk, and head toward Mr. Napier’s office.

Mr. Napier’s office is actually just a raised platform against one of the walls. There are no doors, no walls, no windows. Just this stage-like area big enough for a desk, two chairs (on opposite sides of the desk), a table, and a filing cabinet.

“Please, have a seat,” he says, motioning toward the chair closest to me while he takes the seat behind the desk.

His chair is too low and when he clasps his hands together atop his desk, the edge of it runs nearly under his armpits. He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, staring out over the double-desks covering the call center. I watch the caterpillars dance upon his brow as different thoughts flicker through his mind. I remember Jack telling me once that the Hospitality Center is facing a lawsuit for negligence or unlawful death or something like that and that’s why Mr. Napier’s been looking especially rough lately.

“Jimmy, my boy, here’s the deal. I’m worried about Jackonape’s mental state.” He pauses to look for something, I don’t know what, in my face. “You’ve been here long enough to know what a P.D.R. is, right son?”

“Yes, sir. Possible Dead Ringer.”

“Well, the next time your deskmate gets a P.D.R., I want you to go with him.”

“Go with him?”

“It’ll just be for a few weeks. He’s put in his notice already. He’s going to do some government contracting work overseas.”

“Yes, he told me he was going back over.”

Mr. Napier leans forward, practically scooting his jowls across the top of his desk. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Like all these dead people showing up on that boy’s Call list.” He leans back and tugs at his shirt to smooth out its wrinkles. “I mean… a couple of months, a couple of deaths… that’s not so unusual in our line of work… what with our call volume. But poor Jackonapes, he’s been dealing with Dead Ringers for a while now, and never taking a day off. I’m worried about his mental health.”

Mr. Napier pulls at his tie and goes quiet for a while, staring off in the direction of Tammy’s desk. I peer out from the corner of my eyes to see if anyone is looking at us. Everyone seems to be going about their business. I continue sitting patiently, watching Mr. Napier obscenely stroke his tie, waiting for him to dismiss me.

“Uhm, anything else, Mister Napier?” I ask.

“Hmm? Oh, no. But, ahh… Listen, Jimmy, my boy. You make sure to keep your eyes peeled. And you report anything to me that seems odd, okay?

“Okay.”

“Good man.”

Jack is on his way out the door when Mr. Napier and I stand.

“Jackonapes!” yells Mr. Napier. “Jack!”

Jack pretends not to hear us. Mr. Napier runs after him, and I run after Mr. Napier, but we miss Jack at the elevator. A hard-breathing Mr. Napier puts his hands on his knees and looks up at me.

“Go!” he says, flailing his left arm around.

“What?”

“Go! Get him. Take the—take the stairs. And be careful Jimmy, my boy. Death is afoot.”

I take off down the stairs and meet Jack coming out of the elevator.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jack says, not breaking his stride.

I hustle to keep up.

“Mister Napier sent me to— “

“I know what Napier sent you to do. To leech onto me.”

We’re in the parking lot in no time at all. Between the run down the stairs and keeping up with Jack, I’m out of breath.

“He says—he says someone should go with you. Just—just for a while.”

Jack turns on a heel and throws a finger in my face. “I don’t need no babysitter!” His phone rings. He looks at it. “Christ! It’s him.”

He begins walking toward the back of the lot where he always parks.

“You should answer it,” I call, trailing after him. “You’re on the clock, and he’s our boss.”

The phone comes sailing at me from over his shoulder.

“You answer it. You’re the babysitter.”

I answer the phone as we approach Jack’s car.

“Uhm… Jack’s phone? Yes, Mister Napier….” I move toward the passenger-side of the car as Jack unlocks the driver-side door. “Yes, I think it’s another P.D.R. Jack and I are getting in the car now.”

I look across the car’s roof at Jack. His face says he’d rather run me over than unlock my door. He slides into the driver’s seat.

“Sure. I’ll call you as soon as I find out what’s going on.”

The engine starts.

“Alright. Goodbye, Mister Napier.”

The passenger side window rolls down, and Jack’s voice and a puff of cigarette smoke roll out.

“Well, you waitin’ for a handwritten invitation or what?”

I get in and hand Jack his phone, which he takes, turns off, and tosses into the backseat.

He drives like he lives, like a bat outta Hell. We speed between the towering, glass-and-steel cliffs of the city over a careening river of asphalt. High above, confined within their assigned strata like needles in their grooves, personal jettys stream across the blue sky like exotic birds.

“Where we headin’?” I ask.

“Eventually, to Rosewood and Bowman,” he answers, tossing his cigarette butt out the window and pulling a small, wrinkled paper-bag out from under his seat.

“Eventually?”

“Last week’s Death Bounty,” he says in answer to my questioning look at the bag full of money. “We gotta make a pit-stop first.”

We cruise on for a while in silence, to a part of the city I’ve never been to. Jack’s face is tight with concentration.

“What did you do in the Stan?” I ask, to fill the silence.

“The Stan? Don’t call it the friggin’ Stan!”

“Sorry.”

“It annoys the Hell out of me when people call it the Stan. You can get away with that shit with a country like Vietnam. There’s only one of them. I mean, it’s not Turkmeni-nam, is it now?”

“No.”

“Or Kazaki-nam.”

“Nope.”

“Or Paki-nam—It’s just Viet-friggin’-nam.”

“That’s true. I never thought—”

“No, you never did. Damn, man… You know how many Stans there are?”

“No. How many?”

“There’s, uh,—well, there’s a lot, that’s how many. Just don’t call it the Stan. That’s just ignorant.”

“Okay, okay. Geez. What did you do in Af-ghan-i-stan?”

“I killed people, Jimmy. That’s what our parents paid me to do.”

Jack swerves the car into an alley that I would have never noticed, much less driven into.

Two guys are sitting on a few steps crumbling down from some business’s back door. Jack drops the paper bag out his window but doesn’t look at the men. I turn and stare through the rear window as we continue rolling forward.

“Turn the fuck around!” Jack orders.

I swing around in my seat and face forward. “Sorry. Don’t know the etiquette.”

We keep easing forward down the alley. It feels sorta like being in a carwash at night. I see two more guys up ahead. They stand and walk away as we approach, one of them on his phone. He looks over his shoulder at us as they disappear into the bright sunlight flooding the end of the alley.

Jack allows the car to drift to a stop. He has let us coast so close to one of the buildings that he can lean out and touch it, which he does, reaching into one of the decrepit old building’s crevices. He withdraws something and tosses it into my lap. We move forward into the glaring sunlight and exit the alley. It’s not long before Jack is back to performing his breathtaking maneuvers along the city streets.

I stare down at the bag in my lap like I’m waiting for it to eat through my pants and set my crotch on fire.

“What’s this?” I ask, my hands up near my face.

“Grits. Want some?”

“It’s not grits.”

My phone rings. I exchange glances with Jack. He shrugs. I fish the phone from my pocket.

The number displayed is the one that my mother has been calling me from since my sister skedaddled to India. My mother’s recent attempts to re-enter my life has thrown me for a psychological loop. It took me so long to get away from her, and now her she is, back again, like a zombie hand reaching up from the ground to grab your ankle just when you thought you’d reached the movie’s end-credits.

While I’m still deciding whether I should answer the call, it goes to voicemail. I put the phone back in my pocket. You might be surprised how many decisions I make by making no decision at all.

Jack pulls over to the curb in a suburban neighborhood and grabs the bag from me. He opens it. “Mmm… True grit.” Using his pinky finger to reach inside the bag, he sucks some of its contents up each nostril, then looks over at me. “Whattiya say… Jimmy? My boy?”

“No, thanks. I’m—I’m tryin’ to cut back.”

“Good man.”

He rolls the bag closed and stuffs it under his seat. He checks his look in the rearview and wipes his upper lip.

“You sure you okay, Jack?” I ask.

He looks at me for a moment, a sad expression beginning to spread across his face.

“Actually, you guys were right.”

“We were?”

“All these people dying. And me the first one to find them, sometimes only moments after they’ve passed…”

I’m surprised by Jack’s sudden sincerity. “I know it’s got to be difficult,” I say.

“Oh, it is difficult, Jimmy.” He looks like he’s about to cry. “Their faces haunt me.”
“Their faces?”

“Yeah. I see them everywhere.” Jack is talking very quietly now. I have to lean in to hear him.

“Whattiya mean?” I ask.

“I see dead people,” he whispers. Then points and screams, “There’s one now!”

Startled by his sudden shriek, I jerk my head around to look where he’s pointing. There’s nothing there. Just a block of nearly identical houses.

Jack laughs hard, slapping the steering wheel and rocking back and forth against the back of his seat.

“That was pretty lame,” I say truthfully.

“Listen, Jimmy. I was in Afghanistan for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen things your pansy ass couldn’t imagine.” He points to the house that I assume is his P.D.R. “This shit? This shit ain’t nothin’. Old people keeling over, that’s the natural order of things. Their flesh is falling away from them. Their brains have turned to mush. They’re only lingering because mid-century science has seen fit to nail their spirits to the Earth by keeping their bodies alive. But they’re suffering, Jimmy. Suffering. Trust me, they’re better off dead.”

Jack opens his door. I reach for my own doorhandle.

“Uh-huh,” he says. “You stay in the car.”

“But I’m supposed to— “

“You ever had a Dead Ringer before? You ever even seen a dead person?”

“Well, no. I—”

“For Christ’s sake! A friggin’ virgin! You’d think if Napier’s gonna saddle me with some babysitter, he’d send someone with some experience or somethin’.”

“You just said that it ain’t nothin’.”

“Yeah, nothin’ to me, genius. Nothin’ to me! But we walk into the wrong situation, and we could mess your whole world up.”

“I think I can— “

“What if it’s a Stinker?”

“A what?”

“A Stinker is when you find someone who’s been dead for a while. You walk into the place, and you smell something, something so horrible that you wanna vomit—and that’s before you’ve even seen anything. You ain’t never smelled nothin’ worse than a dead human body. Not dogshit, not dead animals, not nothin’. Maybe it’s all the toxins and crap we put into our bodies, I don’t know. But when you walk into a house with a Stinker, your whole body starts to shake. A million years of evolution warn you that you’re not supposed to be there, that you should run, run for your life. There’s Death straight ahead. You have to fight against all your instincts just to keep moving forward. Then you turn the corner and—boom!—there it is. A stinkin’, rotting corpse. Steeped in fumes and decay. Oozing rot into the sheets or carpet or couch cushions. The color of some dead log you step in on a hike in the woods, the kind of thing your foot sinks down into and little maggoty things start writhing around.”

“Maybe so, but— “

“Be cool, Jimmy. Hold tight. I’ll be right back.”

He exits the car, and I watch him stride up to the front door.

After he’s been inside for a few minutes, I get bored and I decide to check my voicemail and see what my mother had to say.

The message is nothing more than an irritated sigh and the sound of a disconnect.
I’ve got to put a stop to this. I’ve already moved on from her once. Once should be enough.

After several more minutes tick past, I can’t stand waiting any longer and decide to go inside. Besides, I know Mr. Napier will be growing impatient to hear from us.
I exit the vehicle and cross the yard and step up on the porch. The door to the small house is slightly ajar, and I nudge my way in.

It’s dark inside. I have to walk carefully until my sight adjusts to the dimness. It stinks in here, but thankfully it is only the stench of stale cigarette smoke. I bump into a small stand in the short entry hallway and hear trinkets bobbling, but nothing crashes to the floor. I continue forward slowly.

As my eyes adjust to the dark, I can make out a couch and a low coffee-table. There’s an old-fashioned stereo against the wall.

Recollections of my mother wash over me, memories so quick and overwhelming that they begin to blur like the numbers on a spinning roulette wheel, and I’m left with nothing but the raw feelings of hurt and hate and sadness.

I walk through the tiny living room and into the narrow hallway. I come to a doorway and peer into the room beyond. The scene is blurry. I realize I’m looking through tears and wipe them away.

A woman in an old-fashioned nightgown is lying on her back. Jack is sitting on the edge of a bed, holding a pillow over her face.

My eyes drift up the wall to the cracked crucifix hanging on the wall.