Old Jake
Jake lived down Dump Hill. Nobody ever knew his last name. His mailbox was next to ours and all it said was Jake. I'd see him check his mail every once in a while. Never saw him get anything. I'd wave at him and say hi. Sometimes he would nod and grunt in return. I never heard him speak.
His house was made from things he would find in the dump. Really it was just a shack. All of us kids thought of him as the keeper of the dump. My dad would send me across the street to throw some trash down the hill. While I was there I would often wonder if Jake was waiting nearby to sort through my trash as soon as I leave. Sometimes I would go down the hill to his shack. I never went alone. I would always have a friend or two with me. Then I’d see something I had thrown away sitting in his yard.
Jake had a chicken house behind his shack. He always had 6 to 10 chickens. I guess that’s what he lived on.
We used to laugh at Jake’s ‘toilet’. It wasn’t really a toilet or even an outhouse. It was two boards nailed to a couple of legs. The boards were wide enough apart so he could sit on it and crap between them on the ground. He had a stick to push the pile off to the side when it got too high.
Jake was a lonely man. The only visitor he ever had was Jimmy Long. Jimmy had his own shack in the woods up above the ball field. Jimmy’s shack wasn’t much better than Jake’s. But Jimmy had a last name. Somehow, that made him seem more human than Jake. I’d often see Jimmy walking down the hill to visit Jake. I never did see Jake go up to Jimmy’s place.
One day while I was working in the yard, I saw Jimmy heading down to Jake’s. After a few minutes Jimmy came running up the hill yelling something. When he got to the top I could hear his words. “Help! Help! Something’s wrong with Jake!”
My dad was in the garage and came out to see what the shouting was all about. Jimmy ran up to him.
“I can’t believe he did it!” he said.
My dad called for me to follow and we started down Dump Hill.
“It’s bad. It’s real bad” Jimmy said. “Maybe the boy shouldn’t come down.”
Now I really wanted to see. I looked at my dad and said “I’ll be okay.” He nodded.
When we got down to Jimmy’s it was real bad.
Jimmy was laying in the yard. His feet were wrapped tight with wire. His throat was cut from ear to ear. It looked like a big bloody, red smile.
“He killed himself” Jimmy said.
My dad leaned down over him. “He’s not dead” he said.
Just as he said it Jake started to move a little bit and gave off a gurgling sound.
<Check back for the rest of the story>
Copyright Edward D. Clark, Jr.