The Suitcase

It was midnight, September the 10th, in the year 1951, when my cousin Junior Jupiter Gumdrop killed Uncle Brown in his bed.   I know, because I was there.  I watched from a hidden place.  I was thirteen years old then, the same age as Junior.  I watched as he smothered our helpless uncle by the light of a kerosene lamp, and the memory of this night-- the shame of it-- has haunted me ever since.  Tonight I sit in my modern city apartment, far removed from our old farm by space as well as time.  The years have rolled by and I’ve grown old.  I sit writing this recollection now in the hope that someone, somewhere, will understand why I, a successful and respected old man who recently retired from a life of sin and luxury at one of the world’s most prestigious law firms, am about to end my own life in a manner bizarre. 

By the time anyone reads this, I will be a charred corpse.

As I said, I am an old man now.  I don’t even know what year it is anymore, but it’s surely late.  I’m nearly 100 years old.  I sit in my apartment, writing these memories on a laptop computer.  I may be an old man, but I know how to use a computer.  Don’t scoff.  I said I was a successful attorney.  This IS the 21st century, is it not?  I think it is, at least.  Anyway, when I finish writing my tale here, I intend to email it to a former business associate, and then take my own life. 

The light cast by the fluorescent desk lamp is starting to take on the warmer, old fashioned tones of an orange glass kerosene lamp.  Do I smell lamp oil? Have the modern aluminum blinds been replaced with a heavy, old-time fabric curtain?  In my mind, they have.  Let me tell you the nature of my sins. Let me tell you what Cousin Junior did, and what my role in all of it was.  Let me tell you why my life has been a disgrace.

We grew up on a lonely old farm in the middle of nowhere.  Back in those days, our time was spent doing chores, helping our mama make pickles in the root cellar, and going to school.  After school we liked to walk around in the whispery and desolate fields, looking for arrowheads left behind by dead Indians hundreds of years ago.  For as long as I could remember, my cousin Junior Jupiter Gumdrop had lived with us, and this suited me fine. 

We were the same age and spent our time doing typical country-boy things.  Supposedly, his parents had died in a fire when he was born.  How Junior escaped was never mentioned outright, but we both heard enough secretive gossip being whispered at family gatherings to deduce that he had survived the fire by hiding in a bathtub filled with gum drops.  He was probably 3 years old at the time. 

No, you may be saying to yourself, this old man’s losing his mind!  Didn’t he just say that Junior’s parents died in a fire when he was born?  I did at that.  Their house caught fire when the boy was born.  It simply took three years to burn down, and in that time, the family was apparently unable or unwilling to get out.  The house burned for three years, and only then did his parents die, while Junior hid in a bathtub full of gum drops, hence his name Junior Jupiter Gumdrop.  Jupiter happens to be our family name.  If I failed to mention, my own real name is Jesse Jupiter.   Not surprisingly, people used to call me J.J. Well, I changed my name to George 80 years ago to try and avoid my past, but the past wouldn’t leave me alone.  And tonight, as an old man relating his tale and soon to perish hideously, I am J.J. Jesse Jupiter once again, for the last time.

Back in 1951, when Junior and I were 13, the other members of our little family on the farm were my mama, my sister Elisabeth ( who was 16, and a whore, according to mama ), and the man we called Uncle Brown.   My daddy had died in World War Two, you see, blown up by Japanese Nazi Jewish Landmines, or something like that.  I was five years old when he died, and I never really figured it out.  All I know is that one day, daddy was drafted and sent to war, and all that came back was his ear, petrified, delivered in a little box by an apologetic man in a suit.  There was a medal pinned to the ear.  Mama hung it on the wall in the parlor, and from that moment on, things only got stranger.