John Jodzio - Knockout

On the way home, I swing by Beacon Point. As a surprise, I pull out a checkered tablecloth and spread it on the ground. I grab a bottle of champagne from a cooler in my truck, pop the cork. As we drink the lights of the city are below, hazy streetlamps cutting through the darkness. Maybe it’s nothing to brag about, maybe most people don’t give a shit about electricity unless it’s gone, but my family’s responsible for almost everything that happens down there, from lighting the houses, to opening the garage doors, to heating up everyone’s split pea soup. Everybody is always fawning over the police and fire departments, calling them real American heroes, letting them be in parades, buying their charity beefcake calendars. Would they be anything without having the electricity to make their alarms ring, though? Would they be so great if their dispatch radios were dead and they weren’t receiving any of the pertinent details of fires and robberies and murders? Every night I rescue everyone from total darkness and no one has ever asked me to ride on a float.

I pour champagne into our flutes and clink glasses and take a gulp. Then my cell phone rings. It’s my dad.

“Let it go to voice mail,” Flor says.

“It might be an emergency,” I say.

It’s not really an emergency. A crow has crawled into the house through the heating vents and perched itself on the top of Antonio’s bookshelf. This is old hat for Flor and I, something that happens at least once a month, something we’ve grown accustomed to, but which is freaking out my dad.

“Hang tight,” I tell him. “We’ll be home in few minutes.”

The next day, I’m eating a burrito in the cafeteria when I see Hollenbeck riding away from the graveyard on a moped. He’s got a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and his vestments are flapping behind him in the wind. I run down to the parking lot to give chase, but before I get to my truck I hear the crackle of Vincent’s radio telling me I should get out to Chet’s grave quick.

When I get there, Vincent and Uncle Jimmy are standing over the grave looking into Chet’s empty casket.

“I don’t know how Hollenbeck got past me,” Vincent says. “He must’ve cut a hole in the fence or something.”

I race over to the rectory. Hollenbeck’s sitting on his porch drinking some ice tea. He’s paging through his newspaper like nothing’s happened, like everything’s normal. I bound up the stairs and lift him up by his shirt.

“Where the fuck are my brother’s bones?” I yell.

Hollenback laughs at me then, long and hard, a hardy, mocking chuckle, full of garlic from his lunch, and Jesus Christ, something ratchets up inside me and I can’t stop myself, I pull out my taser and blast that fucker, blast him really good this time, crank up the voltage full throttle and hold down the trigger until his cackling stops and that shit-eating grin slides from his jackass mouth and the tears falling down his cheeks combine with his drool sliding over his lips into one long sad gushy river that slides off his chin and onto the floorboards of the porch.

Luckily for Hollenbeck, Ethel comes outside and slaps the taser out of my hand.

“What is wrong with you?” she yells. “He’s a helpless old man.”

Ethel pushes me away and then she gathers up Hollenbeck. All of the color from Hollenbeck’s skin has disappeared, his body looks spectral, so pale, like he might glow in the dark.

When I get back home, Antonio’s sitting on the front steps. At first it looks like he’s playing with a large stick, but when I get closer I see that it’s a femur. Antonio’s crows are sitting near him in the grass, watching me.

“Where did you get that?” I snap.

“From there,” he points.

I find Chet’s bones in a duffel bag on the front porch. I grab the bag and run out the door. I want to rebury Chet quietly, before Flor sees him again, before any of her old feelings for him are dredged up again. On the way to my car, I try to yank the femur from Antonio’s hands, but he’s got it pulled tight to his chest, won’t it let go.

“No, Uncle Bryce,” he says. “This is mine.”

“I’ll get you a different bone,” I tell him. “A leg bone from a bear. Or one from a cougar. But I need this one back now, okay?”

Antonio shakes his head no, no, no. I don’t have time to bargain with him, to explain how much this might scar him in later life, so I just wrestle his father’s femur away from him. I’m expecting a shitload of tears and howling, but Antonio doesn’t react at all. He looks through me, like he’s in a trance.

“You’re going to die in a car crash,” he says. “Your truck is going to flip over ten times, but that isn’t going to kill you. Your truck will explode after the crash and you’ll suffocate in the fire, trapped inside.”

And Jesus Christ, again, it’s just like a reflex, my anger, like a cresting wave that can’t be stopped from flipping itself down onto a sandy shore. Before I can stop myself, I yank my taser from its holster and quickly zap Antonio in the arm because not right now with the death shit, okay? It’s hardly even a tase really, just a little pop, something that might jumble your brain for a second, make your arms go limp so you let go of your father’s leg bone. I let go of the trigger before he even pees his pants, okay? Yes, yes, after I do this I know I’ve done something truly messed up, that I’ve overstepped my bounds as both a parent and uncle, maybe overstepped my bounds as a human being, that I’ve done something awful.

Antonio is howling now. I think about bribing him with a new bike to quiet him down, but I don’t even get to offer the bribe because Flor sprints downstairs to see what’s wrong. She’s wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet from the shower. I’m holding my taser and Antonio has two fresh burn marks on his arm and it doesn’t take a whole lot for her to add everything up.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “He did his soothsayer thing to me and I overreacted.”

I kneel down in front of Antonio to give him an apology hug, but before I can wrap my arms around him Flor scoops him up and carries him inside. I don’t get to explain anything about the bones, about Hollenbeck.

“Go!” Flor screams before she slams the door. “Leave now!”

For a while, I stand outside our house yelling apologies to the two of them from our driveway. I tell them about how I’ll change. I tell Flor that I’ll do whatever she wants me to do to make this right. I tell her how much I love her and Antonio and how I can’t live without them. I yell out apologies for a long time, but Flor doesn’t unlock the door. I decide to give her some space and so I leave to go bury Chet. Before I go I set the femur on the welcome mat as a peace offering to Antonio. Then I grab the duffel bag with the rest of Chet’s bones and drive to the graveyard.

After I dump Chet’s bones back into the casket, I shut the lid and use the plow on my truck to push the dirt back over his grave. The bottle of champagne is still in the cooler in my trunk and even though it’s flat, I finish it off while I watch the old men fishing on the banks of the river, their bait slapping down into the water whenever they throw out a cast.

When I get back home that night, Flor and Antonio are gone. No note, no nothing. I call Flor twenty times, over and over, but she never answers. I flop down on the couch and try to figure out where she and Antonio might have gone. Are they with one of my relatives? At a hotel? As I’m sitting there mulling everything over, the power goes out. It is really weird and eerie when the rattling of the world goes suddenly quiet, when the whirring and white noise that is constantly all around you flips off. I look outside and everything is dark. I pour myself some whiskey and I sit on the couch. After a while I remember there’s a flashlight in one of the drawers in the kitchen. I dig through the drawers. I desperately pat them down. I keep thinking the flashlight is in one of them. I keep thinking the flashlight will be the next thing I touch. I flail my hands around, searching, but I don’t ever find the damn thing.