Jimmy Earl's Comeuppance

I was sitting in the dark in Jimmy Earl’s trailer when I heard his rusted-out old pickup truck rattling and groaning into the bare patch that served him as a driveway.

I had only been waiting a few minutes—the time it took me to walk from Pete’s Bar to the trailer and sit down in the chair. When Jimmy Earl got up to go to the john at Pete’s, I knew he would be heading home soon.

Jimmy Earl and I had been best friends since we were kids. When his daddy got drunk and beat his momma, Jimmy Earl used to show up at our house, and my momma would let him sleep on the couch. When his daddy got too drunk to work and they didn’t have anything to eat for Christmas dinner, my daddy took them what we had left so they wouldn’t do without. When his daddy finally killed his momma and then himself, Jimmy Earl came to stay at our house for good.

After we got out of the army, Jimmy Earl moved into the old trailer that had belonged to his daddy and started drinking. He got married for a while, but when he started beating his wife, he got divorced. Jimmy Earl didn’t have a whole lot going for him these days, except a steady check from the government, a crappy old trailer on 10 acres of crappy land, and a winning personality. Jimmy Earl could talk a priest out of altar boys.

I sat in my best friend’s trailer with a twelve-gauge shotgun across my lap, trying to hold my breath to keep from smelling the musty, sweaty, boozy smells of 40 years of binge drinking, hangovers, and regrets. I listened as Jimmy Earl staggered up the uneven cement-block steps to his trailer door, and I watched as he braced himself on the doorjamb as he struggled to find a light switch in the dark. I closed my eyes so the lights wouldn’t blind me when he finally found the switch.

“Goddamn, Willie! You like to’ve scared me to death!” Jimmy Earl slurred, breathing heavily.

“That would have saved me a little trouble, Jimmy Earl,” I said as I swung the shotgun and leveled it at his fat drinker’s paunch.

“What the--?” Jimmy Earl smiled, confused, instinctively bringing his hands up.

“I understand you’ve been fucking around with my wife” I felt cold to the bone. Jimmy Earl’s smile slipped away as the fear crept into his eyes.

“Shit, Willie, I married her first.”

I got to know Joely while she and Jimmy Earl were dating, and by necessity, became good friends with her. There are so few people in eastern Wyoming that you tend to cozy up to just about anybody who shows teeth. When Jimmy Earl started beating her, she only had one place to run to, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t help falling in love with her. After their divorce, we got married. It didn’t seem to bother Jimmy Earl, and Joely seemed happy.

But after a year or so, Joely started to get distant, and Jimmy Earl stopped coming around so much. I’m pretty thick-headed at times, but I finally put two and two together, and one night I followed Joely to church. When she knelt to pray, it was in the front seat of Jimmy Earl’s truck.

I stood up, keeping the twelve-gauge nailed to Jimmy Earl’s belly.

“You got a bottle, Jimmy Earl?”

“Sure, Willie. You want a drink?” The smile was back, I guess because in his drunken mind Jimmy Earl thought I was messing with him.

“No, but you will. Grab it.”

Jimmy Earl grabbed a half-empty fifth of Early Times from a cabinet and took a deep drink.

“Now, let’s take a walk. Hang on to the bottle.”

Jimmy Earl looked at me for a second, and I could see tears welling up in his eyes.

“Where we goin’, Willie?

“Just out back. We need to talk.”

I was taking Jimmy Earl to Bighorn Falls, a few hundred yards through thick woods behind his trailer. Bighorn Falls is a tall cascade of about 125 feet. In high summer, the falls were nothing more than a trickle, but this time of year, they raged and made so much noise you could hear them from the highway almost a mile away. The falls was the only thing that made this crappy piece of land worth having. Jimmy Earl and I had always loved the falls, even after watching my sister Devonia fall to her death on a night like this when we were eight. A flat rock outcropping overlooked the falls, and it had claimed a few lives through the years. People got too close to the edge and slipped or just plain jumped. No one who had gone off that ledge ever lived.

Jimmy walked a few feet ahead of me through the brightly moonlit woods, staggering every few feet. The sound of the falls got louder as we approached, but I thought I could hear Jimmy Earl sob from time to time. I hated to hear that.

We got to the falls, and Jimmy Earl turned to face me. His eyes were dry as he watched me. I hadn’t heard him sobbing after all; somehow that made it worse.

“You want a drink, Willie?” Jimmy Earl offered me the bottle, then took another generous swig from it when I raised the barrel of the shotgun a bit. We had to shout to hear each other over the thunder of the falls.

“No. I won’t be having any.”

Jimmy Earl finished the bottle and set it on the ground at his feet.

“How long have you been messing around with Joely?”

“Willie, we ain’t been doing nothin’. Who told you we was?"

“I saw you, Jimmy Earl. How long?” I had to get this over with before I chickened out.

“Two years. Give or take.” He really was sobbing now.

I motioned with the shotgun toward the ledge. Jimmy Earl turned and walked to the edge, swaying a little as his shoulders sagged between sobs.

We both stood there for a minute, listening to the deafening roar of thousands of gallons of water passing on toward nowhere. I started to cry then. I didn’t want Jimmy Earl to fuck my wife any more, I didn’t want to know the things I knew about them, but most of all I didn’t want to lose my best friend--my brother--over it.

I set the shotgun on the ground beside me and stepped toward Jimmy Earl, touching his shoulder. Startled, he staggered aside, losing his footing on the ledge. Before I could catch him, he was gone.

They pulled Jimmy Earl out of the river three days and 150 miles later. He had bounced off rocks and through tangles of busted trees from the bottom of Bighorn Falls almost to Spearfish, South Dakota. He was so beat up the coroner said he looked like a steamroller had hit him. I had to identify the body.

Jimmy Earl, drunk, sad bastard that he was, had taken out a quarter million dollars of insurance with me as the beneficiary. It paid double for accidental death. The money is in the bank, and the lawyer has my will. Everything I have goes to Joely. Everything I had belonged to Jimmy Earl.

Bighorn Falls is a wonder to behold in the moonlight, like trillions of strands of silver thread crashing down the rocks. The mist rising from below is so thick you can’t see the bottom. You can see things in that mist: faces, ghosts, memories. Devonia. Jimmy Earl.

I wonder if I’ll make it to Spearfish.

© 2002 Brian G. Parker