| Excerpt: East of Jesus
East of Jesus
by Katrina Stonoff
Chapter One
He looked dead, but Grace Hackett had fantasized her husband’s death so many times she didn’t trust her eyes.
He lay in his recliner with the footrest extended and a Dukes of Hazzard rerun blaring on television. His hand was extended, palm up, but the remote had fallen to the floor. His mouth gaped open, which wasn’t too surprising since he was chronic snorer, but his eyes were open also and glazed over. And that was a bit surprising, so she screamed and dropped the groceries. He didn’t move.
“Um…Howard?” She cleared her throat. “Are you asleep?”
When he didn’t respond, she touched him with the tip of one finger. He was cold. Not that this was unusual either. He’d never exactly been warm. He always said he moved to the desert to thaw out his feet.
So she poked him, and he toppled halfway out of the recliner.
“AHHHH!” She jumped and ran away, through the kitchen and out the door. Sitting on the deck steps, she rocked back and forth, taking deep lungfuls of the dry air, trying to quiet her hammering heart.
Hysteria rose in her throat like bile, but she swallowed it back. Howard can’t be dead. He hadn't planned to die today; he was supposed to go hunting in the morning. And if he didn't plan it, it couldn't possibly be happening. She took a deep breath and released it slowly.
“Everything’s fine.” Her voice sounded cheerful and certain. “I’m sitting on my back porch, and my husband is in the living room because he fell asleep in the recliner again. He’s not dead; he’s not.” Something brushed her leg. It was the calico kitten from next door. “Shoo! Scat!” Howard hated cats. He would set poison bait if he saw the cat here.
Howard. Who looked dead.
She snuck back into the house, tiptoeing on the beige carpet. He was lying across the arm of the recliner. His head hung down, and his comb-over pointed to the floor like a white-haired Mohawk with a side part. One arm flopped down, still reaching for the remote.
“Oh, my god,” Grace said in a tiny, tinny voice. “Howard is dead.” She put both hands over her mouth and whimpered. She’d pictured him dying a hundred ways: drowning, aspirating on his own vomit, crushed in a violent car accident, but she’d never imagined past the moment. Never saw herself dialing 911 or dealing with morticians or even standing nobly at the graveside as he was lowered into the ground.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered. “This isn’t my fault. It isn’t.”
A little nauseated, she reached for the chair’s arm to steady herself, but instead of the worn velour, she felt the clammy coldness of his skin. She jerked her hand away and spun on one heel, intending to flee, but she stumbled, falling into the recliner that Howard still half-occupied.
“Oh, excuse me!” She leapt up.
Or rather, she tried to leap up, but she was wedged into the narrow space between the chair’s arm and his massive derriere. She kicked at the footrest, and the chair folded, pitching them both out and onto their feet. Clinging to him, she struggled to keep her balance, and for a moment they moved around the living room in an awkward embrace, like junior high schoolers who hug and sway because they can’t dance. But finally he tilted to one side, and she lost hold of him. He timbered to the ground, shaking the little trailer as he landed, one arm fully extended, still trying to control the television.
“Howard!” She squeaked at him. “What should I do?” Her breathing sped up, got lighter and lighter. Her diaphragm was stretched tighter than a snare drum, and she could feel a hysterical giggle rattle across it. She fanned at her overheated cheeks and gulped for air.
“Figure it out for yourself, Grace,” Howard said. “You’re a big girl.”
But he didn’t, of course. He couldn’t. He was dead! He was dead, right?
If he hadn’t been dead, she would have said (and she did), “But Howard, you always tell me what to do. Tell me what to do now.”
“Dammit, Grace. Do I have to do everything around here? Call 911, you ninny.”
Oh, yes. 911. That’s right. He’s right. She took a deep breath. She straightened her skirt, smoothed her hair and walked to the phone: Woman Under Control. She dialed. 9…1…
What was it he’d said? Just last week, wasn’t it? She stood with the phone in her hand, her finger poised above the last “1.”
“I’ll tell you what I said.” His booming laugh filled the room. “I said the truth. I said someday I’d be gone, and you’d be sorry because you’d be penniless. Ha ha ha!”
“Gotta think, gotta think.” She’d lived dependent for so long, spent the money he doled out, shared the roof he purchased and heated…without him, how could she live? She had a two-year bookkeeping degree, but she hadn’t worked in 20 years. What if he was right? She lowered the phone.
“What now?” he burst out.
“Shhh. I’m trying to think. How could I be penniless? I know we’re not rich, but there’s your retirement, and I’d get social security…”
“Chicken feed.”
“Still, it’s something. And there’s income from your property.”
He began to chuckle.
“I know it’s not much, but I don’t need much. I can live on that.” Grace picked up the phone again and punched the “9.”
Howard began to guffaw.
“What?” She reached for the “1.”
Does Howard have a will? Her finger hovered above the button. Of course, Howard has a will. He's probably had a will since he was 30.
His laughter hurt her ears, and she laid the phone gently into its cradle.
“What the hell?” He roared from his place face down on the carpet.
“S-s-sorry, Howard. I can’t. At least not now. I have to think.”
“You sure the hell can. You have to.”
“It’s not like it would help,” she pleaded. “You’re already dead. They’d just haul you away, and I’d be broke and nobody would benefit.”
“You can’t just leave me here,” he shouted. “Get off your lazy ass and call 911!"
She flinched. “I can’t think with you screaming at me.”
“I’ll scream all right!”
“Shhhh!” She sat on the couch, covered her ears with her hands and shook her head, over and over. But his threats continued, getting louder and louder, more and more angry.
She snapped. “Shut up!” She slapped a sofa cushion over his head. He still sputtered, but it was muffled. She piled all the cushions on him, dumped a laundry basket of clean clothes on top. Now she couldn’t hear him.
She walked around the house in a daze. Though it was early afternoon, she pulled the heavy blinds. Picking up the dirty socks he’d left by the recliner, she put them in the hamper. It was getting full, so she collected a load of whites and put them in the washer on warm. Howard always said using hot water for laundry wasted money.
The toilet bowl cleaner was on the dryer, so she cleaned the toilets. She picked up the groceries she’d dropping in the living room. Then she made an apple pie. While it was baking, she took a package of deer steak from the freezer for dinner and unloaded the dishwasher.
The dryer buzzed, so she folded the clothes on the kitchen table, but when she walked through the living room to put them away, she tripped over a pile of pillows and laundry.
And Howard. Who not only looked dead but was dead. Howard was dead!
Shock released the hysteria, and Grace began to giggle. She tried to stop but just laughed harder. She snorted and snickered and chortled and hooted and cackled and bellowed until her stomach muscles ached, and she gasped for breath. The impossible had happened. Howard was dead. She was free. She could do whatever she wanted.
But what did she want to do? She hardly remembered.
Giggles started to burble up again, and she gulped. First, she had to quiet these nerves.
She stumbled through the little trailer and into the spacious room he’d added onto it. Paneled with dark wood and with a stone fireplace along one wall, it was a man’s room and held only a massive oak desk with executive chair, a gun case and a liquor cabinet.
Still giggling, she climbed onto a chair and took the key from its nail on the back of the cabinet. Though she occasionally drank a glass of wine with dinner, she wanted something stronger now. Shuffling through the stash, she saw a dark bottle with a dingy wax seal. Howard had bought Glennfidditch scotch in Hong Kong decades ago and planned to open it the day he made his million.
Carrying it into the kitchen, she worked the stopper out of it. “Here’s to you, Howard.” She held the bottle up in a toast toward the pile of clothes in the next room. “This is the day your ship has come in.” She took a deep slug.
“BLAAACCCHH.” Coughing, she spit it across the floor. “This tastes like a burn barrel. How can you drink this stuff?” It couldn’t be that bad. Howard loved Glenfidditch, and he considered himself a connoisseur of scotch. She must be missing something.
Maybe she wasn’t drinking it right. She held up the bottle and squinted. The print blurred, so she straightened her arm. Now it was clear, but too small to read. Oh, well, there probably weren’t instructions anyway.
How did Howard drink Scotch? He didn’t drink it straight (“Straight?” he roared. “The term is neat!”). Pouring a few inches of water into a glass, she matched it with the amber fluid and took a cautious sip. “Ick.” Still tasted mostly like smoke.
She found a six-pack of Diet Coke in the pantry. Mixed half and half, the scotch was at least tolerable. She filled a large iced tea glass with the mixture and carried it into the den (not looking at the body as she walked through the living room). The scotch settled in her stomach like a warm furnace, burning away her nervous giggles, and the future looked beautiful in its smoky light.
She sat in the big leather chair, opened a drawer and found his cigars. Pulling a cigar out, she rolled it between her fingers. She laid it on her upper lip, scrunching her face to hold it like a mustache.
Then she pulled out a lighter and held the flame against the end, like a candle. It failed to light. She bit off the end, but unsure which end you were supposed to bite, she bit the other one as well. Then she put it in her mouth, sucked and held the flame to the end.
She began to cough. It tasted like mildew, and the timid glow disappeared the moment she stopped inhaling. Putting the cigar down, she drank some more. Warm Diet Coke and scotch was beginning to taste rather palatable, so she finished the glass.
Returning to the kitchen, she stepped over the pile. “Pardon me.” She refilled her glass and sat on the back deck. Silhouetted by the Superstitions, the sun was going down over Phoenix, one of those desert sunsets where dramatic colors are painted across the sky: bright orange topped with red and fuchsia and streaked with purple. With the sun setting, the day’s warmth was fading into cool, and she saw the swoop of the first bats coming out to play. It was so perfect, so beautiful that her throat closed in, and she began to cry. She swallowed more of the scotch & Coke as she watched the orange fade into violet.
The sunset reminded her of a Bob Ross painting with happy little mountains and pretty little clouds. She smiled, thinking of his gentle smile and big hair, his fuzzy beard. Bob Ross. She needed him. Right now. Needed his quiet voice and calm spirit.
She stumbled out to the car to drive to the studio where she kept her paints and easel and a black-and-white TV she’d found by the side of the road.
It wasn’t easy to hide the rental from Howard, but the company never sent a bill as long as she paid on time, and she covered the expense by collecting receipts people dropped at the gas station, the grocery store, and fast food chains, and turning them in to her husband as her own.
It had gotten her into trouble.
“What’s this?” He demanded once when he saw the receipt.
She flushed. “Just a trip to the grocery store.”
“But Grace…pickled herring? You bought pickled herring?”
“Yes. I just had an urge for it.”
“But where is it? Where’s the jar?”
“Uh…ummm…I couldn’t wait. I ate it in the store.”
“You ate a 12-ounce jar of pickled herring while you were shopping?”
“Yes?” It sounded like a question. Grace could feel the guilty lie on her face.
He beetled his eyes at her. “You pregnant?” She shook her head. “You better not be. If you’re leadin’ me down the primrose path, it’ll come out ‘cause I’ve had that surgery you know. I’ll tell all those church ladies who visit you.”
She ducked her head, shame burning her face. “I’m not pregnant,” she mumbled. And of course, she wasn’t.
He definitely laughed last though. She didn’t even like pickled herring, but for years after, he bought pickled herring for every holiday, and she had to pretend to love it, had to eat the whole jar in front of him at one sitting while he watched with bright eyes. Eventually, she developed a taste for it and began to look forward to his infrequent gifts, but the fun must have disappeared for him because he stopped buying it not long afterward.
Pickled herring. A little pickled herring would be nice. Maybe she’d pick some up on her way home from the studio. Opening the car door, she slid in. She turned the ignition while she groped on the floor for the mouthpiece of the ignition interlock. When the tone sounded, she hummed into the tube and blew.
The headlights came on, shining at the living room window where her husband lay dead. They began to flash: bright, dim, bright. Her horn began to honk: a long, loud “BLEAT!” like a toddler playing in a car.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Grace turned off the car, and looked at the interlock. A red light blinked. “Must not have been ready,” she muttered. She tried again, with the same result. The third time, a row of red lights blinked. She turned the key off, then back on again, but nothing happened. None of the lights came on, and the starter didn’t even click.
“Must be a battery problem,” she thought. She turned on the overhead light and dug through the glove box for the maintenance record. Howard had purchased the battery at the beginning of the summer, and it was only November. Desert heat was hard on batteries, but not that hard.
As she put the record away, she realized she had no trouble reading it with the bright dome light. Couldn’t be batteries. Maybe that annoying ignition device. She leaned forward, but she couldn’t read the tiny print. She pulled reading glasses from her purse, adjusted them on her nose and tried again. “Failure,” the lights said.
“Failure? Never seen that one before.” She pulled the manual out.
“Want me to blow it for you?” Howard said, mocking.
“Shut up! This is your fault. I told you not to put the stupid thing in my car.” She pored over the manual. “Failure,” she read aloud. “If three tests in a row are positive for alcohol above the allowed limit, the vehicle will not start, and the failure light will come on.” She lowered the manual and stared unseeing through the dusty windshield.
“So I repeat, you want me to blow for ya?” Howard asked. “You did it for me a few times, not that you wanted to, and I’m offering, just this once, to return the favor.”
“Oh, my god.” Grace covered her mouth with both hands. “Am I drunk?”
“Ding, ding, ding! You win! A new car! Complete with your very own, state-of-the-art ignition lock!”
Grace started to cry. “I’m a drunk driver. I’m as bad as he is. Driving drunk!” She stumbled out of the car, forgetting the key, and back into the house (which, fortunately, she’d forgotten to lock anyway).
It had been 25 years since she’d been drunk enough to pass out, but this looked like a good night to try it again. She tottered toward the kitchen to refill her glass, stumbling over the body.
“Sorry,” she said.
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