Jamie was determined to hide his anger. Bullies turned his anger against him. They made him look helpless and dumb to everybody on the school bus. Worse: they turned his joy against him too. Like that time when word got around that he was into dinosaurs and everybody started calling him Jamiesarus. Or when everybody found out he still watched Mr. Rogers after school and all the bad things that happened after that. And if Jamie ever got mad and made a fist, or answered back to defend himself in any way,  the whole bus would turn against him like they always did. They never turned on the bullies or the bad guys; everybody always turned on him and made him feel weak and crazy too since he never did anything against anybody, and mostly tried to make himself as small as possible and to stay out of everybody’s way,  and to mind his own business.

Jamie was in first grade when he trained himself to breathe normally while the other kids laughed at him. He learned to answer taunts and name calling with mute smiles and a self-effacing shrug. The passive strategy came naturally, and was praised as a “sign of maturity,” by the adults who didn’t view his confidence as a sign of weakness, and an excuse to pile on. In the beginning Jamie’s breathing exercises and his friendly disposition helped to de-escalate most threatening situations. But meanness finds a way and halfway through second grade Jamie resolved to absorb any physical abuse that came his way until he couldn’t absorb any more. He was a man now and determined to stay silent and expressionless and upright as much as possible. Someday, when the time was right, he’d unleash fucking hell.

“It’s your stop, Porkchop,” Doug shouted at Jamie, just as bus driver Jackson downshifted, and the rusty yellow loaf he commanded groaned and lurched to a stop in front of Jamie’s house. Doug was twelve years old and in fifth grade. He and his seven-year-old brother Danny had called  Billy  “Porkchop”  since that awful day in Mrs. Loweb’s kindergarten class when Danny was seated next to Jamie and Mrs. Loweb asked if any of her students knew a word starting with the letter P and Jamie raised his hand first, like an idiot. He’d never make that mistake again.

Doug and Danny didn’t make good grades in Language class but used words like surgeons use bone saws, and with a little trial and error their taunts refind into sharper, more hurtful instruments.

“His name’s not Porkchop, Doug,” Danny corrected. “His name’s Jamie. Jamie. A girl name to match those girl tits!” Everybody on the bus broke out laughing except for Jamie and his 11-year-old sister Carol who pushed past her brother so she could get off the bus first when the doors opened in front of their house at the top of Rust Hill. Carol was sitting on the back bench where nobody could see her chewing gum and holding hands with Freddy Hankins. She was at an age where she had trouble seeing things that weren’t Freddy Hankins, especially things that didn’t affect her directly. So Carol saw Jamie most clearly when he was an obstacle.

“Your stop Porkchop,” bus driver Jackson said, loud enough for everybody to hear. He’d been driving the same route for as long as anybody could remember and was the only adult who called Jamie “Porkchop.” He’d gagged with laughter the first time he heard Danny say it and took to using the nickname right away. “Don’t make me write you up for causing another disruption,” he said.

Jamie forced a smile. He shrugged at bus driver Jackson and followed his sister off the bus. The doors closed hard on his heels.

“You shouldn’t provoke them,” Carol scolded over her shoulder, picking up her pace and not looking back at her obstacle brother. Jamie wasn’t listening. He’d barely heard most of what Doug and Danny had to say because he’d heard it all so many times before and today something else was occupying his mind — Something wonderful.

Jamie watched his sister disappear into the brick cube where the children lived with their grandparents, Buddy and Alice. As soon as the door closed behind Carol, Jamie took off running for the backyard, which consisted of a poured concrete patio and a sharp, weedy slope leading down to the edge of the woods. He was excited to check on the rabbit trap he’d built with Buddy who was retired and collecting Social Security, and who had done his level best to be a real parent to Jamie and Carol after his daughter Karen and her husband Eric died in a fire that swept through the Suit-U shirt factory.  Alice’s face was badly scarred in the same fire and she’d lost three fingers and most of the feeling in her dominant hand but still worked part-time at the recently expanded facility. Alice was frequently exhausted: a  less enthusiastic surrogate than Buddy, but determined to carry her share of the burden with all the good humor and grace she could muster.

Alice didn’t help  build the rabbit trap; she designed it though and she filled an entire plate full of tiny grilled cheese sandwiches stacked up like a pyramid to motivate the construction crew. “We’re gonna catch so many rabbits with this trap,” she said while Buddy cut pieces from scrap lumber and Jamie glued and set the pegs. “We’re gonna have fried rabbit and gravy for breakfast all winter long.”

The idea of rabbit for breakfast every day appealed to Buddy and Jamie who pretended to fight over the last biscuit (a prize they would eventually half) any time Alice made her famous gravy. The promise gave clear meaning to their labor, and so the cuts and joinery on Alice’s “basic wooden box” were as tight and finely made as the cabinets and quality furniture Buddy built before the company he hitched himself to for the better part of 40-years moved operations to Mexico. Alice’s box was fitted with a dowel trigger so perfectly notched it wouldn’t be fooled by heavy winds or by larger animals passing nearby,  but it was sensitive enough that the least bit of movement inside the box by anything more substantial than a skink or a sparrow would spring the trap, making its heavy plank door drop like lightning in a perfect groove, eliminating any hope of escape with a satisfying crack. It was an elegantly imagined prison for rabbits, providing the rabbits cooperated.

Although the trap was baited with plump lettuce leaves and one unusually large carrot, a whole week passed without discernible activity. As soon as Jamie stepped off the school bus and into the crisp, fall air, something told him today would be different and better. He knew it was right too when he arrived in the backyard and discovered the beautiful trap he’d built with Buddy and strategically placed near the edge of the woods by a catfish pond dividing his family’s property from the neighbor’s, was sprung at last. The plain wooden box was shut up tight and wiggling like something big inside wanted out. Jamie could practically smell Alice’s biscuits and he sprinted to greet tomorrow’s breakfast.

Jamie was trying to decide if he could just wring the rabbit’s neck with his hands like it was a chicken or if he’d need to use a hatchet when he knelt down by the trap and tipped it backward, causing the bunny inside to fall to the bottom of the box with a meaty thump. “I can probably just wring its neck,” Jamie assured himself as he slid open the plank door to claim his meal. Only, instead of a rabbit, cowering and twitching at the bottom of the box, Jamie was greeted by horrible hissing and the gaping mouth of a real life monster. It was hideous and black-eyed and seemed to radiate pure malice. Thousands of needle-like teeth gnashed as it leapt to escape but the trap’s design worked flawlessly and the door snapped shut again as soon as Jamie dropped the box and stepped away.

Jamie blinked. He blinked a second time. Then a third. Then he blinked a lot.  He felt betrayed. The people he trusted most led him to believe this was a rabbit trap. What had he done wrong? Was he misled? Did everybody else know this was a monster trap? Had nobody thought to warn him? After patiently watching the occupied box wiggle and dance long enough to be sure the leaping, hissing horror within couldn’t easily escape, Jamie went to Buddy for a game of accusations and answers.

“You didn’t catch a monster,” was Buddy’s first and only reply to Jamie. He pushed his grandson aside with a disappointed sigh, and went to see what kind of varmint had crawled inside the box. “Probably a raccoon,” Buddy grumbled, stalking off down the hill toward the pond.

From the back patio Jamie could see Buddy lift the box, and look inside. He watched as Buddy’s eyes widened like he’d also seen a monster and Jamie laughed when Buddy also dropped the box and stepped back a respectful distance. Then Buddy snatched the trap off the ground and stalked back up the hill to Jamie. When he arrived at the patio he opened the sliding door and dumped the box’s contents. A fat possum landed on the concrete first followed by a cascade of lettuce leaves and the lone carrot which was enormous and, unlike the shriveled, partially gnawed roughage, looked as fresh and crisp as the day he and Alice brought it home from the Supermarket. 

“I want to teach you something about possums,” Buddy said. “I want to show you how they protect themselves by pretending to be dead.” With a quickness that surprised Jamie, Buddy snatched the carrot off the patio and grabbed the possum by its hairless, whip of a tail. The caught possum squirmed and struggled to not be upside down so Buddy, who’d also spent some time working as a part-time Sheriff’s deputy, swung the carrot like a cudgel and it struck the possum’s head with a dull “thunk.”

“Sull!,” Buddy commanded, but the possum continued to squirm. “I said sull!,” Buddy repeated, clubbing the possum a second, third and fourth time. The possum only struggled harder to not be upside down. “Sull!” Buddy barked, delivering a final, decisive blow with the carrot, which seemed to grow in his hand until Jamie was sure it was as big as a tree. The possum hung limp and lifeless.

Once the possum gave up its struggle, Buddy paraded it around the backyard, sometimes poking it with a stick. Then he stretched it out in front of his grandson and stepped back; gesturing grandly. “You see,” he said. “You see how this ‘monster’ you caught will act like it’s dead. The predators won’t eat something that’s already dead. Some will. A lot of ‘em won’t though. Some people will eat a possum too. We don’t eat Possum, but some people will. And I hear they can be good eating too, if you clean ‘em right and cook ‘em with sweet potatoes, but your grandmother would skin me alive if I ever brought one home for her to fix.” Jamie felt sick. The possum still wasn’t moving. It didn’t seem to be breathing either.

“I need to pee,” Buddy said, walking away and leaving Jamie alone to reflect on his afternoon, and his grandfather’s object lesson. Jamie sat down on the concrete a few feet away from the possum and he waited there for what felt like hours. He thought about Doug and Danny, and about Freddy Hankins, who his sister Carol would probably marry someday even though his clothes were grubby and he smelled like pee all the time. Jamie wondered what it could be that made all those guys and so many of the girls identify him as different. Had he been born with a target tattooed on his back everybody could see but him? Could anything ever erase it?

It was just getting dark and an owl was mouthing off nearby when the possum stood up suddenly, as though it had never been bludgeoned into unconsciousness with a giant carrot. It shook out its fur, and waddled off in the direction of the pond but, before it got more than five feet from the place where Buddy had spread it out like roadkill, Jamie was on top of it. He picked up the heavy wooden trap and used it like a hammer to crush the possum’s skull. “Sull!,” Jamie commanded as he raised the box and brought it down again and again.

While Jamie was smashing the possum, Carol stuck her head out of a nearby window and called him to supper in the same way pig callers call pigs. “Here Jamie-Jamie-Jamie-Jamie!” she chanted. “Supper’s ready, Porkchop!” Jamie didn’t flinch or make a sound. He didn’t shrug or smile or blink. He stared straight ahead and thought about fucking Hell and what that might look like when he finally unleashed it. He wondered if unleashing it would hurt or if he’d feel natural and free the way he felt right now. He wondered if, like charity, fucking Hell begins at home.

– Chris Davis