The Smell of Eldridge Plank

Guilt and Innocence

Photo by Leah Wilson on Unsplash

I sat down to write a letter to my mom, first letter I’m writing her from The Fish Bowl.

That’s what they call it. 

I guess that’s what we call it.

The Martin W. Fischer Correctional Facility, Gundstrom, Michigan.

Been here a hundred and two days.

My mom hasn’t visited once.

My half sister Clare says I gotta write and invite her, because she’s still mad.

Well, I’m still mad too.

I told her the truth.

Maybe I won’t write to her at all.

I wish Tazzy could come visit.

Tazzy could smell rabbits.

He was blind since he was a little baby, he could see the sun if you turned his face up to it, but that was about it.

He had some Braille cards, was good at solitaire, and he could smell rabbits.

We would take him out into Poinsettia County Field, and we’d just walk,my brother Jared and Tazzy and me, Jared with his Golden 39 he took better care of than his dog, and me with this old Ithaca saddlegun that my grandfather cobbled together from pieces of somethin’ else.

Kinda like our family.

We had a lot of fun, rabbit huntin’, and we never felt like we were hurtin anything by crossing Eldridge Plank, where hunting is illegal. 

Tazzy is blind, and some days he didn’t smell rabbits east of Eldridge Plank.

He could smell the hot asphalt too, in the summer, and he hated that smell, but across the road, near the little cluster of shagbarks, he’d smell rabbits.

Most people laugh-they used to laugh, anyway-when I’d tell em a blind man shot some rabbits.

But it’s true.

I’d give him my gun, and Jared would kinda point him in the right direction.

He shot one his third try, and let’s say, I don’t know, like his 410th. 

And both times it was on the wrong side of Eldridge Plank, so you can’t really blame him for smellin’ rabbits there.

Now this is what I told my mom, the day it happened, and what I told my lawyer to tell her once they found me behind Stabler Truckwash and locked me up..

This is why I’m sitting here, not understanding why she’s mad at me, and why I’m having a hard damn time trying to explain it to her again.

Some DNR officers showed up one day. Only way I can describe em, so you’ll understand and this letter will make it out of the Fish Bowl, is that it rhymes with “gum” and “luck”.

Tazzy hadn’t shot a rabbit in about two hundred tries since that second time he got one.

So he asked to use Jared’s favorite little baby with the golden trigger.

I laughed, laughed out loud, like ain’t no way that’s gonna happen. But for some reason, Jared told Tazzy yes.

And then he started givin’ Tazzy instructions like he was eight years old, and not a grownass man who graduated high school and sometimes reads radio PSAs for the Boys Club and the Leukemia Foundation on WJHL.

So we got back to rabbit huntin, and here come the DNR boys, guns drawn, hollerin.

Now Tazzy can hear just as good as anybody. And smell better than anybody. And I can see with two eyes, and like I was confused because we been out here across Eldridge Plank thousands of times and I know a couple DNR clowns but I didn’t know these guys, and they’re hollerin to drop the guns, so Jared says “drop the gun Tazz,” but shit, after his lecture about taking care of the damn gun, o’ course Tazzy wasn’t just gonna drop it.

And he didn’t.

I had my left hand up and my Grandfather’s piece pointed at the ground and the deer cop named Peter Riordan shot Tazzy in the head.

So I shot him.

Both of em died, right there in the field west of Eldridge Plank.

Riordan’s partner shot back at me. I know his name but he’s still alive and I don’t think they’ll let this letter out of the Bowl if I name him.

I dropped and rolled and when I was convinced he emptied his revolver I stood up and ran.

I looked back once, Jared was on his knees with his hands behind his head.

And that’s why my mom is mad.

Why couldn’t I be like Jared and just surrender?

Well, dammit, Jared didn’t have a gun on him. He gave it to Tazzy, otherwise there’d be no dead deer cops, because neither of us are blind.

Not that I blame Tazzy.

Tazzy was blind, and shot two rabbits.

Peter Riordan shot one blind guy.

Jared is on probation and by some messed up felony statute or whatever, he can’t come visit me.

And I got two eyes, but I don’t see how I’m gonna write a letter to an old woman that doesn’t already understand I didn’t do anything wrong, beggin’ her to come visit, when I know damn well she’s gonna tell me I did.

***

Author’s Note:

Hey! I have a bunch of new free subscribers.

Welcome.

Most of my posts are going to be behind a paywall, which is kind of an ominous, forbidding word.

I don’t want it to be like that, but that’s the reality. A watchmaker has to love making watches to do something so intricate and time consuming, but watchmakers don’t give them away for free.

I give away one free watch a week, sometimes two.

You would really be helping continue the best and most prolific fiction library on Substack just by upgrading to an incredibly inexpensive subscription.

You can cancel at any time, but once you dig into the archive of almost 1000 stories, you’re not gonna ever want to leave.

Thanks,

Jimmy