They didn’t blame me for the things I couldn’t control.
There were two people that blamed me for everything. My mother, who was dead, and my ex-wife, who sat beside me sobbing.
My mother hated me. When she looked at me she saw her father reflected in my eyes. I wish she would have looked at me and seen that I was just a boy that couldn’t control himself. Maybe if she had, she would’ve been the kind of mother who sought help for her damaged child. Instead, she inflicted more pain on me, made me believe I was the devil reincarnate and not someone who needed help. Maybe if she had, then my son would be alive.
What is wrong with you? You’re crazy!
I could still hear her shouting at me, taunting me, until I started to doubt myself. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me, but the more someone tells you you’re crazy, the more you start to wonder if you really are.
After she died no one called me crazy. Not the same way she had.
You’re a crazy motherfucker, Bulldog!
You’re fucking crazy, brother.
Sure, I did some fucking things that would have my brothers thinking I might have had a screw loose somewhere but they didn’t look at me and ask what was wrong with me. They just made me think I was a badass motherfucker who didn’t give a shit. They wiped away the doubt my mother instilled in me and gave me back the confidence she stole from me.
I turned and watched Connie rise to her feet, her body trembling as she started for the coffin. I wanted to reach out to her, to wrap my arms around her, desperate to grieve with her. She was the only one who knew exactly how I felt.
But she hated me. She blamed me.
Please, get help!
There is something not right with you, Jack.
I’m begging you.
I leaned back in my chair, watching her boyfriend wrap a steady arm around her waist as she kneeled before our son and sang him a lullaby. I blinked, tears falling from the corners of my eyes as her voice traveled through the quiet chapel.
“Sleep, baby, sleep. Your daddy’s away. Sleep, baby, sleep. And mommy will pray.
Sleep, baby, sleep
Your daddy’s away
Sleep, baby, sleep
And mommy will pray”
I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand as her voice hitched as she sobbed. I hated seeing her cry, always did. We were one another’s first love. I watched her turn from a girl to a woman and then made her a mother. We were twenty years old when our daughter, Lacey, was born. Twenty-one when we married, twenty-two when Jack Jr. was born, twenty-three was the year it all fell apart and twenty-four was the year it ended. Now, twenty-five, we’re burying our baby—both of us dead inside.
Connie leaned over the coffin, peppering Jack’s face with kisses as she cried and pleaded with him to take her with him. Her boyfriend wrapped both arms around her, prying her away from the coffin. She turned in his arms, buried her face against his chest and let out an anguished cry that tore through my heart. She lifted her head, her angry eyes meeting mine, and she stilled.
“This is all your fault,” she shrieked. “My baby is in that box because of you.” She slapped her boyfriend’s hands away and stepped closer, her green eyes lifeless as they pierced through me.
She used to look at me lovingly.
She used to look at me sympathetically.
She glared at me now with hatred.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
And I was. Because she was right. Jack was dead because I was too proud to accept the things I couldn’t control. My son paid the price because I was too ashamed to get help.
The demons in my head stole my son.
But I allowed them to.
He was a fucking Fed, a fucking federal agent out to destroy me. If that wasn’t a slap in the fucking face, nothing was. I gave him everything. I tried my best to do right by him. And this is how he repaid me? I put that spoiled prick through school, busted my ass so he could get ahead in life.
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Lacey asked, looking frightened.
I lifted my arms above my head and swung the hammer against the Sheetrock.
“Go inside, Lacey,” I muttered, dropping the hammer at my feet and stuck my arm in the gaping hole. I pulled at the Sheetrock with my free hand, widening the hole.
Where the fuck was it? Where did that bastard put the fucking bug?
“Daddy, you’re scaring me,” she cried.
I was sure it was there. I just needed to find it.
He wasn’t going to bring me down. No fucking way.
“Jack?” Lacey sniffled, wiping at her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt. “Daddy, I don’t know where Jack is.”
I lifted the hammer over my head and took another swing, this time at a different wall. I beat the Sheetrock again and again until the hole was wide enough for me to stick my head inside. I felt out of control, like I was grasping at straws but I was so sure he played me. I didn’t just imagine it. Did I?
I was fucking desperate.
I needed to know I wasn’t crazy.
My brother was a Fed.
I was an outlaw.