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Dragon Bread
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Dragon Bread |
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haze Senior Member
since 1999-11-03
Posts 528Bethlehem, PA USA 
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In The Wake of Post-Religious Rapture I never knew John McCaffrey. He died, almost 5 years to the day, before I met his brother. John, Jack (or Jackie to most), was 33 years old when he passed away and had lived most of his life with his mother and brother in a small row house, in a skeletal coal town on the outside, eastern edge of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Everybody said, "You couldn't find a nicer guy than Jackie.” “He was just like a piece of bread.” “Do anything for ya' - Ya' know." And everybody else would nod in complete agreement. "Jackie was one of kind - a good one for sure." It was well rumored, even told by his mother with a certain sense of pride, that Jackie could charm the coal from the mines without ever raising a bucket. But the coal ran out before Jackie came of age and he took a job with ConRail, working the line for one of the last rairoad giants on the east coast. He worked hard on the job. Often he came home late, but was he never too tired to lift a hand to help his mother. "He had a good Christian Ethic that one ... " all of the neighbors said. "And he was raised up right." "Yep. A good Catholic boy.” “Educated too. In the best parochial schools that the area offered.” “ He learned good. He did that Jackie." "What a piece of bread." It didn't matter that Jackie had given up going to church. And it mattered less that he gave up playing basketball on the local C.Y.O. team when he was 25. It didn't even matter that Jackie fathered a child to a nice girl from a town over the ridge and it didn't matter that he never saw his son, or that he never bothered to pay a dime in child support. It didn't matter that Jackie wore long sleeves, even in the summer, to cover the leprositic consumption from the needle tracks in his arms. What mattered was that Jackie was "like a piece of bread." It’s been told and retold. A week before he died, Jackie and his mom, his brother Mike, and Cousin Josey sat around the small Formica table in her dank kitchen playing cards and sucking down brewskies. Bottles littered the floor and the ashtrays overflowed. They were smoking and drinking. Having a high-ole time and playing poker, until sometime after midnight, when there was a knock at the door. Everyone heard it. "Who in the name of Jesus Christ would be calling at this hour?" It was dark in the hall - hard to see who was so late in knocking and was, then, just opening the door. Jackie started to get up. He froze midway between a stoop and a full stance. His brother said later that his face went pale – white - and his mouth hung as if he had just taken a cold-cock to the jaw. “He just stood there, eyes wide, and started crossing himself, over and over, reciting the Hail Mary's with the fervor of a zealot priest.” Then Jackie passed out. Everybody rushed into the hall but no one was there. The door was closed. "But-Hey. We all heard it didn't we?" "Yep. Sure did," was the general - communal response. Everybody was looking around and growing frantic. Mike went up the stairs and returned quickly. "Nope. Nuthin'." Josey flipped the switch for the overhead light and opened the door. They all filed out into the street. Nothing. Only the emptiness that usually hovers in small town streets after midnight. Everybody piled back inside. Josey was last and she closed the door, tightened the latch and double-checked the bolt. As she's been known to tell many times over, especially after more than a few beers, the shadow of the Virgin Mary was imprinted on the wall behind the door. Josey started with the Lord's Prayer and they all came back to behold the miracle. Jackie was still, lying unconscious, on the kitchen floor. No one slept. They raised Jackie and forced him to repeat the story again and again. They all repeated the story again and again. At daybreak, they called the rectory and woke the good Father Wassel from a long hard sleep. Jackie and his mother, his brother Mike and Cousin Josey told the story again. Jackie didn't go to work. Nobody went to work. Their heads hurt and Father Wassel was coming to bless the house. Father Wassel, the rapture-less priest, shy of faith, was coming to bless the house and to hear the story yet again. Jackie went out for a walk. He ended the day sitting in Blaschok's Corner Pub, going over the long-winded miracle with anyone who would listen. He told the story over and over again. The old miners crossed themselves and took boilos to cut the dust. Jackie left the pub. He met a guy from Mount Carmel at the gas station. It was dark in the lot. Nobody saw him much after that until three days later. Jackie showed his face in the railroad yard. He told his story to his co-workers. He told his story to the foreman, Bob Pasheka, a protestant by trade whose grease-stained face and manner didn't have the patience to support it. He put Jackie out on the line, Down Track Nine, to brace the iron that rattled loose from the coupling. Down Track Nine was purgatory. 25 miles from the yard, shadowed between high banks and black ridges of left over pea coal; it was no place you wanted to be. Jackie considered this penance for 3 days away without leave. He took his lunch pail with him in the yellow cab of the ConRail truck. Riding the rail bed was a bumpy, uncomfortable - punishment - at best. Jackie cursed the "God-Damned Protestant" and his lack of faith. Nobody noticed that he was hung in the middle of rapture and nobody wanted to see the shadow of the dragon's tail flicking in his eyes. Jackie parked the truck beside the coupling station. He unpacked his gear and brought his lunch pail out with him. Nobody saw him much after that but the lead man on the line said that he saw Jackie "limping and dragging" about 2 miles further down, some 2 hours later. He told everybody that it looked like he was covered with blood, "...but hell with these Catholic kids - who could tell." Jackie could charm the coal from the mines without ever raising a bucket. He also knew well how to work the lines. He shuffled his gear and got a change of clothes from a buddy in Leesport; hopped a ride and rode the rails from there to Tallahassee, a welcomed guest of the engineers all the way. Jackie was hurting. He had crushed his arm in the coupling because he forgot to disengage the automatic switches. As soon as his iron was forced in the guts, the mechanism shorted and twisted his arm, driving it down like a wedge in between the tracks. The coupling closed and his arm was caught in the mesh. He never said too much more after that. Jackie managed his story at the depots well enough to be given keys to the railroad's charity in long listed prescriptions for morphine. "Double the dose. Never mind what the doctors said." He was plum in the middle of rapture and the dragon was hungry, aching to be fed. Jackie never spoke after that. He died in an abandoned railroad bed, far from the working yards in Tallahassee. I never really knew Jackie until 7 years later. His mother, my then mother-in-law, couldn't find it in her heart to clean out his desk. "It's just too much," she said. So I dutifully accepted the challenge of cleaning-out. Spilling the drawers out onto the floor, locked in the dusty privacy of his old bedroom, I waded through the trash, pitching the piles of condoms and playing cards, the sticky yellow tubing, a burnt spoon, and an oily syringe. I never said much after that. Jackie was, after all, just like a piece of bread. |
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| © Copyright 2000 Haze McElhenny - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
Amazing story! I couldn't read it fast enough.... |
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
Hiya Haze! Welcome to Prose! Hmm, now this I find very interesting in its irony. And the biggest irony is that life often follows paths such as these. I've seen events unfold much as you've described them here, with various accompanying statements made through the blindness of those around. It really bodes as a sad statement for the condition of our apathetic society. They care not to look below the surface they see. Instead, they choose how to view those around them and leave it at that. Well done ma'am. Thank you for gracing us with some insight! Chris |
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Jennis#1 Member
since 2003-07-08
Posts 112IL, Usa |
Great story. I really did enjoy reading it. It touched my soul.  |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
Your title was what really caught me here, but it's definitely the story that's causing me to reply. This is a truly excellent piece of writing and deserves a rise up. You've definitely created a very vivid character here in the form of Jackie. The whole irony of the situation was well portrayed and thorougly enjoyed. That double image was too true oftentimes. Excellent writing "Knowledge is far superior to Belief, for Belief is the way of the uniformed." - Scott Cunningham |
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Beasley Senior Member
since 2003-11-28
Posts 682Cheboygan,MI USA |
This is great. You are a terrific writer. Barb |
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