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I grab a sack of cedar chips ... he’s standing in the mud and he’s got no shoes on ... I swing the plastic sack of cedar chips at the TV he’s holding, to knock it out of his arms, and the sack breaks open when it hits and the chips fly all over him, he topples backwards slowly like a bookshelf, still clutching the TV, but when he hits the ground the TV falls out of his grasp and into the pit. Mark is lying on the ground, panting, he’s saying “aaaaaaaaa” but he’s also kind of laughing ... Emma doesn’t seem to understand what’s just happened ... but you can’t hear anything very well because the TV is still on in the bottom of the pit, and somehow either because reception is better down there or because the volume knob got bumped or because of the acoustics of the hole itself, the volume is really immensely loud, public-address level it seems, it echoes, and apparently while all this drama was happening, Joe said something wrong and Barb is now calling him on his bullshit, and now they’re having a full-fledged vicious argument, and Joe is calling Barb a Sneak and a Slut and a Sybil and saying he’s going to cruSh her aSS into the Sidewalk! And a floodlight goes on over the back yard of the Bad Taste people two doors down.
    Mark gets up onto his knees, he’s panting and feeling himself all over but, amazingly, he seems to be conscious and perhaps not badly hurt, but his mood has totally changed. “Definitely time to bail,” he says, and just then we see Joe’s silhouette slide open the upstairs window and peer out at us, and we just start hauling ass as fast as we can, Mark grabbing Emma’s arm and half-lifting her off the ground. Halfway back to the house Mark stops to try and undo the last link of the extension cord, and it takes him a little while because he also knotted it, and only then I notice: at the Bad Taste House some figure is standing on the back porch, holding I think a bottle of something in one hand, just quietly watching and listening.
    We can all hear Joe hanging up on Barb, dialing 911 and talking to some operator there. All he can say is “There’S treSpaSSerS on my premiSeS!” and she keeps asking him if he needs an ambulance, or is there a crime in progress, or is his life in danger, and he says “EaveSdropperS in my yard! They’re liStening on my Sellphone!” and she’s asking him over and over, Are you injured? Have you been shot? I swear I can hear whoever it is up on the Bad Taste Porch laughing. Then it goes instantly dark and quiet, and Mark grabs the free end of the cord and we all make a quick fucking getaway.

What Jack Was Like:

    Some people are like cliffs that you can jump off of and fall to your death on the dry jagged rocks below. Some people are like long hallways you can shout down and hear the distant echo of your own voice coming back at you, but no other signs of life. Some people are like albino ferrets that hop up and down when they’re excited and that are cute but kind of bad-smelling. Some people are like dwarves, in fact they actually are dwarves. Some people are unable to cope in normal society and yet rise to the occasion in conditions of pure survival. Some people have extra nipples. Some people owe me money. Jack was all of these things, and more.
    He lived in a hole in a shoe in a forest in a can, in France, in the summer, in June in debt in a constant state of doubt, on some land near a continent with oceans next to it somewhere north of Antarctica. He had a certain indescribable something. He kept it on a string looped around his waist. He liked cats, falafel, long walks on the beach, honesty, Grand Marinier, his mom, films, breathing, himself, food that didn’t have giant quivering gobs of pus and fungus with tiny eyeballs and tentacles and raspy teeth crawling all over it, large unexpected government benefit checks, cheese, and people with names beginning with vowels. His turn-offs included: nuclear winter, human feces, being beaten about