Jasper Jones

by Craig Silvey

I realize I’ve been betrayed by the two vices that fiction promised me I’d adore. Sal Paradise held up bottles of booze like a housewife in a detergent commercial. Holden Caulfield reached for his cigarettes like an act of faith. Even Huckleberry Finn tapped on his pipe with relief and satisfaction. I can’t trust anything. If sex turns out to be this bad, I’m never reading again. At this rate, it will probably burn my dick and I’ll end up with lesions.

I’m boiling over with words, they’re like a swarm in my head; I just can’t order them. They swirl and dip like insidious insects. Haunting and noisy and nonsensical.

And it occurs to me for the first time that people can do this to each other. People really can. And I wonder: How thin is the line? Is it something we all have in us? Is it just a matter of friction and pressure? Is it shit luck and a poor lot? Is it time and chance?

A world that kills parents and makes orphans of children and kicks away cricket balls and lies through its sharp teeth. That makes a decent person feel like rubbish all his life because he’s poorer and browner and motherless. That hosts three billion folks, each of them as lonely as the other. A world that’s three-quarters water, none of which can quench your thirst.

Upon trying again, he unbuckles and unzips and unleashes a ridiculous torrent of piss onto his garden bed. It goes forever. He must have a bladder the size of an oak barrel. I’ve seen smaller streams of fluid from a firehose. I have some breed of noxious spider on my neck, poised to strike with inch-long fangs, and this man is siphoning the Ganges with his dick.

But Jasper Jones has to keep that poker face. He has to throw that cloak over his heart. I wonder how much of Jasper’s life is spent pretending he doesn’t give a shit. It must be a lonely way to be.

I tole you, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Everyone ages. Everyone can learn a trade and pay taxes and have a family. But that’s not growin up. It’s about how you act when your shit gets shaken up, it’s about how much you see around you. That’s what makes a man.

“Right. I guess it must be comforting to actually believe in God and Jesus and all that. It must fill in all that space so you don’t have to worry about it anymore. But it’s a bit like closing a door when there’s a cold draft, isn’t it? It’s still cold out there, it’s just that you don’t notice anymore because you’re warm.”