Jack's Black Book (6 page)

In a few minutes I had the dirt free from around the edges. I grabbed the handle and pulled up. This time the coffin lifted out and I dragged it across the backyard to the side of the house. Already I could smell something bad.

When I had the coffin behind some bushes the most dangerous part was still to come. I had to get the top off without making so much noise that I'd wake everyone in the house. I felt around the edge of the lid until I could detect a slight opening, then I jammed my crowbar into the crack and pressed down. Then the odor of rotting BeauBeau hit me. It was worse than his breath. I could feel my face contorting as if someone were trying to rip it off, and I began to gag. Some of Mom's fish-stick supper came up into my throat. I swallowed it back down, stood up, and tottered far enough away so I could breathe some fresh air. I was this deep in it already, and I had no choice but to finish the job.

I returned to the garage. I took a rag Dad used for
gasoline spills and wrapped it around my face. “No one ever said being a writer was going to be easy,” I said to myself as I knotted the rag behind my head and pulled it down just below my eyes. Then I marched back to the coffin.

Fortunately, I hadn't pounded many nails in the top because I had been in such a hurry to get the lid fastened. The gasoline rag only helped a little. I had to stand away from the coffin, take a deep breath, run back, pry up a nail, then run away from the smell and take a deep breath. Then repeat the process. When I had all the nails loose from the top, I dragged the coffin back over to the grave. I turned away, took one deep breath, then did it. I lifted the lid of the coffin, tossed it aside, and rolled BeauBeau into the hole. I peeked down at him. I shouldn't have. He was covered with a million wiggling white worms that shimmered under the moonlight. I turned away, lifted my mask, and swallowed really hard to keep the fish sticks down. I wiped my mouth across the shoulder of my shirt, lowered my mask, took another deep breath, then worked like a fiend shoveling the dirt back over him and redecorating the ground before I ran to the other side of the yard and took another breath.

I had one more thing to do. I ran back, grabbed the coffin by a handle, and dragged it to the garage. I slipped a green garbage bag on either end and taped it up around the middle. Then I yanked the gasoline rag up over my head, threw it in a corner, and snuck back into the house. I had done it. No one would believe it. But then there was
only one person who would have to know—Mr. Gilette.

In the morning when I woke up I could smell something sickly sweet and disgusting. Something rotting. It was me. I sniffed my hands. I wasn't rotting, but the smell of dead BeauBeau was stuck on my skin as if it had been glued there. It was in my hair, and rising up from the pile of clothes on the floor. My pillow smelled, my sheets smelled, the air all around me smelled of dead dog.

Once we had thrown some out-of-date raw chicken in the kitchen trash and had forgotten to take the trash out before going away for the weekend. When we came home the house smelled like a dead person. We couldn't breathe. And even though we opened all the windows and aired everything out, the house reeked of rotting meat for a week. It was awful. Mom still says on really humid days she can smell the dead-chicken odor in her clothes.

And now I smelled worse than that. I threw myself out of bed and ran to the bathroom. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and scrubbed my whole body, even my face, with the stiff-bristled back brush.

When I returned to the bedroom Pete was sitting up in bed.

“Oh, man,” he moaned with his face wrinkled up as he sniffed the air. “What did you eat last night?”

“Lots of beans,” I said, and rubbed my stomach. “I'm sorry.”

“You're stupid, and you smell,” he said as he rolled over and pulled the covers across his head.

I raised my fist in the air. “You'll die later,” I said. “Once
I figure out a way to dispose of your body.” Then I dressed as quickly as possible and went back into the bathroom. I sprayed myself from top to bottom with Bay Rum cologne. What powerful cologne did morticians use, I wondered. I'd love to get some.

When I opened the door to the garage the same gamy smell was in the air. It made the inside of my nose sting. There was nothing I could do about it. I put another layer of trash bags around my coffin and then balanced it across the seat of my bike and the handlebars. I walked it to school. If I took the bus, kids would be climbing out the windows to get away from me.

Mr. Gilette must have thought I would never do what he suggested in order to pass shop. When he saw me drag the coffin through the classroom door he seemed pretty shocked. Then when he smelled me he jumped to action.

“Take that outside,” he ordered, as he marched toward me with his hand over his nose and mouth.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. I took it around back where all the scrap lumber was kept and began to unwrap the tape and pull off the plastic bags.

When he caught up to me he put his hands on his hips and stared down at the coffin. “Did you actually dig up your dead dog?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I didn't have time to make another coffin.”

“Is the dog still in there?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I replied.

“Well, it smells like he is.”

“It's all the worms,” I explained. “And maggots.”

I thought he was going to throw up so I got right to the point.

“Are you going to pass me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he wailed, pulling the neck of his T-shirt up over his nose as he stepped back. “But not because of your woodwork. Because you're a sick puppy and I don't want to have to deal with you again.”

I smiled. “Thank you, sir,” I replied.

“Now I want you to go home and put your dog back into that coffin and rebury it,” he instructed. “I'll write you a pass.”

“Okay,” I said. “That was my plan, anyway.”

I took the long way home. I wanted to make sure everyone was gone by the time I returned. For a moment I was relieved that I wouldn't have to repeat seventh grade, or go to wood-shop camp. But then I began to imagine what it was going to be like digging BeauBeau back up in the light of day. I could make nose plugs out of Kleenex and cologne, and wear sunglasses. I was going to need rubber gloves to grab him. And I didn't think I'd ever eat a Slim Jim again.

My dad always said that in order to make a hard job easier you needed the proper tools, like having the perfect three-pound hammer for cracking BeauBeau's legs into place. So I went on a search until I found the perfect writing tool. It was an old portable Underwood manual typewriter that sounded like a Gatling gun when I really got it going. It came in a square black carrying case with a built-in lock and key, and I could fit it into the big front basket of my bicycle and take it to the library, or the beach, or any other lucky writing spot. Plus, it made me look like a writer. A real writer. Not a scribbler. Not a dabbler. Not some kid with a writing hobby. But a real professional with a novel in his brain just aching to be written. That was me. All I needed was a good story and I was ready to cash in.

I got the Underwood for a great price at a yard sale. I had been riding my bike down the street when I saw it. I
pulled into the driveway of a very tidy house. Everything the lady had for sale—old photographs, pottery, kitchen utensils, and books—was marked with a little orange price tag neatly stuck to it.

“Does this still work?” I asked the lady, and pointed to the machine.

She looked at me and adjusted the black orchid she had pinned onto her hair. “Try it,” she said with a sniff, then puckered her nose up as if she smelled something bad.

There was a sheet of paper in the roller and some non-writers who had only played with the typewriter had typed out a lot of misspelled nonsense. But someone had written, MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT FIT TO RUN THEIR OWN LIVES. That statement was so true it stunned me. In one sentence it summed up exactly how I felt about the world. Excellent writing, I decided. I had to read it twice so I could memorize it. Well, I'm not one of those unfit people, I thought as I rolled the paper up to a clean section. I'm taking charge of my life. This is the summer where I leave the kid Jack behind and leapfrog over high school to become Jack the man. Jack the famous writer. Otherwise, I thought gloomily, I'll have to go back to Sunrise Junior Prison Camp for eighth grade.

I spread my fingers over the keys and pounded out my name and title. JACK HENRY, WRITER. The mechanical sound of the clattering keys snapping forward to hammer the paper was a thousand times better to me than any piano music. The typewriter action was smooth beneath my fingers, and I could tell that the machine liked me. I
took roll call, tapping out all the letters, numbers, and punctuation marks in a crisp line, shoulder to shoulder, across the page. They were all there, my troops, and I knew if I could position each one of them in the perfect order I would create something awesome, like when you start one of those ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. First, you find the four corners, then you link together the straight-edged border pieces, and after that you work like a fiend until you've assembled something as monumental as the entire Battle of Gettysburg. I figured a whole book was written in pretty much the same way, piece by piece.

I rubbed my fingertips on the keys, warming them up, and then I bit down on my lip and typed out my favorite writer's motto: A WRITER'S JOB IS TO TURN HIS WORST EXPERIENCES INTO MONEY. I had read it in the latest issue of a writers' magazine at the drugstore, and thought it was by far one of the most important statements ever written. A lot of small things had gone belly-up for me, but I didn't bother writing about my measly problems. I was waiting to write about something really big and bad. Something hugely disastrous, and so disgusting someone would want to pay money to read it. But so far, nothing good and juicy had come my way. Still, I wasn't panicked. The summer had just begun and there was plenty of time for pain and sorrow and
tragedy.

I typed a silly poem I had memorized in first grade. BILLY BUILT A GUILLOTINE, TRIED IT ON HIS SISTER JEAN. SAID MOTHER WHEN SHE
BROUGHT THE MOP, THESE MESSY GAMES HAVE GOT TO STOP. The keys didn't stick and the ribbon was still full of black ink. The last writer didn't get much work done. I figured he probably had a cushy life without a problem in the world to write about. My heart started to pick up speed. In an instant I knew that if I owned this typewriter I could turn my
worst experiences into money.
I had to have it. Without it, I was like Samson without his hair—a loser.

“So what do you think, young man?” the yard-sale lady asked me.

“It's okay,” I called back to her, lifting my hands from the keys and looking uninterested as I checked my fingertips for dirt. “How much?”

She cleared her throat so loudly the birds in the trees flew away. “I believe the tag clearly reads ten dollars,” she replied, and sniffed again in my direction. “Do you smell something foul?” she asked.

It was the curse of BeauBeau. No matter how many showers I took, I still smelled like rotting dog.

“Just mothballs,” I said, and curled the corner of my lip up at an open hatbox filled with faded bras and panties she was trying to sell.

It was Sunday afternoon. Her yard sale was almost over. She wouldn't want to drag the typewriter back into the garage, and there was no way I would pay ten bucks for anything, not even to ransom Pete from deranged kidnappers.

“Two bucks,” I shot back, and tugged a Baggie with
forty nickels from my pants pocket. I shook it up and down so that the jangle of the coins might entice her.

Her eyes bugged out. “Two dollars?”

“Okay,” I said calmly. “One dollar.”

Her voice went up an octave, and she got all huffy. “Why don't you just steal it?” she screeched. “Just grab it and run.”