Jack Gets Mad
What happened to Jack after his days of fetching water.
How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t want to go up the hill anymore. I’ve said it again and again and still your assumption is that I’m just going to go because that’s what people expect. Don’t you understand that it’s not been a good place for me? I don’t fare well up there. It’s a cloudy day. It’s a sunny day. Same thing happens every time. Tell me, why is it, with modern conveniences, that I even have to go up the hill? Can’t I just go to the nearest house, ask to use their bathroom, and assuming the homeowners are nice, they’d allow me the privilege of using their bathroom, whereupon I would turn on the sink faucet and fill up my pail and thank them for their hospitality and leave.
And here’s another thing I wonder about. Why in the world would they put a well on top of a hill and not at the bottom where someone’s much less likely to fall and break something? Oh there are wells at the bottom of hills? Well it’s a little late now to be telling me that, isn’t it? It didn’t occur to you to tell me any earlier? That I might like to know these trips up and tumblings down were wholly and completely avoidable? All those trips to the ER, all the casts, the months of rehab, all the pain medications because vinegar and brown paper on the head only goes so far. Small detail that escaped you. Whoops. Let’s leave that one out of the conversation. Meanwhile I’m trudging up there, tired, hungry, thirsty, through snow and rain and mud, on Sundays when most other people are lounging about in their backyards—no, not me, I’ve got to go up there and get the water. I don’t even know who I’m getting the water for. Not to mention what it’s put my friend though. Let’s not forget about her. She’s got a few things to say about it too, you know. If you thought to ask her. She’s got the injury history and hospital bills to show just like I do, only more extensive. Her ankles still haven’t properly healed.
I don’t know why we always had to go up there together, but we did. It was nice to have company on the way up and yes, on the way down too, even while falling. You know, I think you knew all along what the risks were, before the very first time she and I went up there, and you still watched us go. Why is that? Is it that you wanted to see us come tumbling down? Because it made you feel better about your life? There’s a word for that. It’s called schadenfreude. Where you take pleasure in others’ misfortunes. Repeatedly. Because something essential is missing in your life and you don’t want to admit how bad you feel, or work on it in therapy, so you need to watch us lose our footing over and over again. It’s a shallow fill. You may not see the harm now, but one day you will. One day there will be a word you learn called karma. And it doesn’t help one bit to hear at least you aren’t stuck in a box all day, popping up at random times that are out of your control.
But I can tell you this. Things from this day forward are going to change. Yes they are, because my friend and I have retained counsel. I’ve got two words for you: class action. Plenty more like us who’ve been sold a bill of goods, told to go up the hill, get the water, come back down. Who told them they had to go? Where did the order come from? And more importantly, who owns the hill and the well and the water? Where’ve they been in all this? And why have our misadventures been published for entertainment purposes and without our knowledge or consent? Do the hill owners even know people are getting hurt on their property every day? For no good reason? That’s what they’re going to want to know. Look, contrary to what you may have heard about me, I’m not interested in a big cash settlement. A public apology would be nice, but I won’t hold my breath. I can tell you this. I’ve been going up and falling down this hill so freakin’ much I don’t even know what I want out of life anymore. What would I do if I wasn’t doing that? I have to figure it out, what else would hold meaning, and I acknowledge that’s 100% on me. With open eyes, you do have to look back on it all and find the silver linings.
The most obvious one is that my friend and I are engaged. If I had to explain it, because we are very different in a lot of ways, the foods we like, the music we listen to, our political views, I would say this: falling so many times together led to a bond no one else could ever understand, one that runs from friendship straight through to falling and from falling to something ever after and from ever after back to friendship. I can tell you this though, there’s not gonna be any pails or water or chapel on a hill in our ceremony. I think both of us need some distance on it. It’s hard to sleep at night. I have these vivid dreams of getting the pail of water and thinking everything’s fine, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, there are planes in the sky, and then I look down and there’s water coming out of the bottom of the bucket. There are holes in my bucket. And I’m panicking because I’ve got to get the bucket down to the bottom of the hill mostly full and I’m not going to be able to do that, because I’m sure it will either have all leaked out by then or I’ll trip like always and the rest will spill out as it comes rolling down after me. In my dream, the bucket is huge, like half the size of my body, which I’m not sure how to interpret. The thing is, I’ll be in the supermarket in the pasta aisle and all of a sudden I’ll remember the dream and it will come back to me as if I was dreaming it there and I’ll see the hill like I’m standing right on top of it and I’m terrified, frozen in the pasta aisle as people stare me and ask me if I’m okay and do I need them to call someone. It happens to her too. She’ll be driving, usually on Forest Glen Lane and we’ll get to that incline, not even a steep one, and she’ll start hyperventilating. I talk her through it and she talks me through it when I’m in the supermarket or the mall. That’s just what we do for each other and one of the reasons we need each other, but it’s exhausting.
Some days lately I think to myself, what else could I have done with all that time? What could I have accomplished? What could I have contributed to society? Did the water I collected do anything for anyone? Even the little bit that was left in the pail by the time I rolled to a stop at the bottom. Was I bringing it to those who needed it most? I think I would have liked to have been a bus driver or train conductor, taking people smoothly from one place to the next, calming their nerves with the simple motion of buses or trains or cars. And they would tell me stories about their lives and we would feel connected and they would feel happy that they’ve lived so much when they see my eyes light up with their adventures. We could share them like we would share a sandwich. I could figure out what my last name would be too, maybe taken from one of the famous Jacks out there—Jack Nicholson, Jack White, Jack Black, Jack Kerouac. I might like to be an actor. I might like to stay at a hotel in Colorado in the middle of winter. I might like to play the Sax-A-Boom on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I might like to write the Great American novel on a taped-together scroll of paper 120 feet long. No more hills. No more pails. No more pointless trips up and down fetching water from wells. This is my beginning. This is the story I will write. I’m starting over. I’m leaving the land of valleys and meadows and mountains and broken crowns and going to the city. I haven’t decided which yet. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle. Maybe all of them. I will look up at the stars not with my head pounding from all the falls but pulsing with wonder, light-headed thinking that someday I could travel to the moon if I put the time in, if I studied to become an engineer or astrophysicist. It’s all within range, all ahead of me. I just have to close my eyes and take the first step forward, the one small step, in full trust that my foot will come down on a flat and stable surface and it will not slip out from under me. Then I can take another one. And another. Nothing to carry. Nothing to collect. With the only instruction I hear in my sleep, in the supermarket, in the car, at the dinner table: Live.
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