by John Brhel
overhanging rock, to see for herself. “Cool. How far back
do you think it goes?”
“Dare me to swim under there?” asked Lisa, grinning.
“Sure.”
“What do I win, if I do?”
Kelly smirked. “I’ll give you Coke Can Guy’s number.”
“Deal!” Lisa took a deep breath and dove under the
ledge.
Kelly watched as her friend’s blurry body disappeared.
She was surprised that Lisa could fit her whole body into
the space, assuming it wasn’t an actual cave but a deep
depression.
“Lisa?!” Kelly called out after ten or fifteen seconds;
time ticked breathlessly away as she waited for her friend.
She watched a series of bubbles emerge from beneath the
overhang and reached under it to see if she could feel Lisa.
A half-minute passed and Kelly instinctively dove
beneath the ledge. Her arms reached into the darkness,
finally finding her struggling friend. She grabbed hold of Lisa’s calf and yanked her out of the cave. To Kelly, Lisa didn’t feel like she was stuck, but rather weighed down by some object.
When Kelly finally got her friend free of the rock
overhang, they both hit the surface and gasped for air.
“What happ—” choked out Kelly, who didn’t finish
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her thought, as a third person emerged from beneath the
surface, face down.
“Oh my god!” said Lisa between several harsh coughs.
Both women instantly recognized that a nude, dead
man had floated to the surface between them. His body was
bloated from submersion—a pasty white, red, and purple
bespotted corpse. They quickly backed away and scrambled
out of the water, trying not to touch the remains.
Lisa finally stopped hacking and spoke. “It- it- it felt
like someone had their arms around me and was pushing
me toward the bottom. I couldn’t turn around!”
Kelly didn’t reply, and both girls looked back at the
body, which was still drifting on the surface of the water like some hideous raft. Oddly, they both anticipated some sign
of life, as they stared at it, open-mouthed.
“I must’ve swam under him or something,” said Lisa.
“Thanks for pulling me out.”
“No problem.” Kelly looked down at the corpse again
and grimaced. “Let’s get out of here. We need to call the
ranger or something.”
As soon as the girls had retrieved their clothes, dried
off, and dressed, they began vomiting violently, and they
were soon defecating on their long walk back to the parking area. They were severely dehydrated and were stumbling
along the trail with blurry vision, when the fortysomething hiker extraordinaire from earlier that day, Adam, caught
up to them.
“What the hell are you two doing out here?!” screamed Adam as he ran up on the young women, holding two
sagging plastic shopping bags, his barking dog at his side.
“You can’t expect me or anyone else to clean up after you.
I’ve already filled two bags full of your filth!”
Both girls paused, heaving and panting from their
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THE BLUE HOLE
exertion. Their stomachs rolled and gurgled. “Sir, we think we found your friend at the swimming hole,” said Kelly,
her voice hoarse from vomiting. “And now we’re super sick
because of it.”
Lisa nodded, then ran off into the bush to defecate.
“What do you mean?” asked Adam, incredulously. “I
didn’t see anyone back there.”
Kelly scowled at the gangly older man. “What do
you mean, you didn’t see anyone? Remember the man’s underwear in the tree? He drowned. He was stuck beneath
the ledge and Lisa knocked him loose. His body came to the surface.”
Adam stared down the sickly young woman. “Miss, I
just spent fifteen minutes cleaning vomit and picking up
bottles from around our once-pristine Blue Hole. I can
assure you, there was no body in, or around it. The two of you are obviously drunk beyond comprehension, and I’m
contacting the rangers as soon as I get back to the trailhead.”
• 153 •
• XVI •
JESUp
T.J. Westerberg had a passion for exotic, out-of-the-
ordinary pets. In his room, tucked away in a corner
on the second-floor of his stepfather’s 5,000/sq.ft. home, he maintained several glass terrariums. The 12-year-old
devoted countless hours to feeding and caring for his
animals: a gopher snake, tarantula, red-footed tortoises,
a variety of uncommon fish and insects. They were strange
creatures, a far cry from the dogs and cats owned by his
peers. T.J., being an odd specimen himself, felt a certain kinship with the animals. He felt that he understood them, and that, in some inexplicable way, they understood him
too.
It was a hot summer afternoon in Binghampton. T. J.
had just gone upstairs, and was about to open his bedroom
door, when his mother, Carolyn, called out to him from
the stairwell. “Thomas James, what do you think you’re
doing with all that?” she said.
“All what, Mom?” said T.J., attempting to conceal the package behind his back, as Carolyn came up the stairs.
“All what? Ha. I don’t know, how about that ground beef you’re hiding behind your back?”
T.J. sighed. “But, mom. They like it.”
“Ground beef? Your turtles like ground beef?
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CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
“No, Kip does,” said T.J., referring to his pet snake.
“The turtles like—”
“Do you know how expensive that is per pound?” asked
Carolyn.
“No.”
“Well, it’s expensive. Greg doesn’t buy the cheap stuff.
He only buys grass-fed beef. You can’t be giving that to
your pets, T.J. Do you want to lose another one?”
“No,” said T.J., thinking of Darwin, the blue-tongue
lizard which Greg had taken away just a month earlier.
Darwin was quite fond of Greg’s organic bananas—the
lizard sometimes ate two a day. It didn’t take Greg long
to pin T.J. as the culprit; and for his deeds his stepfather unceremoniously threw Darwin out the kitchen window,
into the bushes behind their home. T.J. went out that
evening to search for his beloved pet, knowing the cold-
blooded creature would not fare well overnight without his heat lamp. He returned empty-handed, sobbing.
“How much did you plan on giving Kip, anyway? That’s
enough to feed a small bear.”
“It wasn’t all for Kip. I have a lot of pets, Mom.”
Carolyn rolled her eyes and made T.J. hand the package
over. “Don’t look at me like that. You’ve got plenty of mice and other stuff to feed them.”
“I wish Dad was here. He lets me feed them whatever I
want, and as much as I want.”
Carolyn smirked. “Good for your father. He’s not
the best with budgeting for food, or anything else for that matter.”
T.J. ignored his mother’s jibe. “Can he come over this
weekend?”
“You just saw him Sunday. He has visitation rights
; every other weekend. You know this.”
• 156 •
JESUp
“But there’s a special exhibit at the zoo this weekend
and he said he wanted to go.”
“You can go next weekend.”
“But it’s only this…. Ugh, never mind.”
“One more thing. The maid told me your bathroom
door is locked. You need to leave it open so she can clean in there.”
“Why?! I never use it.”
“Sure, you don’t. Just make sure it’s unlocked when she comes Thursday.” Carolyn took a step toward the bathroom
door, then crouched down. “She said she saw some water
pooling under the door the other day. Did you clean it up?”
T.J. shrugged and Carolyn left. When she had gone
downstairs, T.J. returned to tending his small zoo. His
room was dark, covered in posters celebrating nature’s least cuddly, slimiest creatures. Terrariums lined the shelves
and tables.
He dropped a live mouse inside one terrarium for
Kip; the snake quickly snatched up the rodent and crushed
it to death. T.J.’s thoughts turned to his father, who had purchased the snake for him as a birthday present. Sure,
Joseph didn’t have much money (a fact his mother seemed
to revel in pointing out), but what Joseph lacked in wealth, he made up for in his enthusiasm as a father. Though nearly a year had passed, T.J. was still beaming from the trip he and his father had taken to Lake Jesup, Fla. the previous
summer. For five days, they swam, boated, ate seafood, and spent countless quarters at an arcade. They even stopped
at an alligator sanctuary and hatchery in Georgia on their way home, something that T.J. had been asking Carolyn
and Greg to do for ages. T.J. and his dad took an airboat
tour of the park, which concluded with a 20-minute live
demonstration and the chance to hold a real, live alligator.
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CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
Joseph was elated, knowing that his son hardly ever
got to engage in anything that suited his interests. A kid at heart, Joseph genuinely appreciated the boy’s company,
and made the most of every bi-weekly visit (there wasn’t a movie theater or hiking trail within a 40-mile radius that he and T.J. hadn’t visited together.) So, it was with great difficulty that Joseph dropped his son back off at Greg and Carolyn’s every other Sunday evening. He truly believed
the boy was an afterthought to them.
Greg and Carolyn worked hard—Greg as a software
engineer at R.M. Snüd Labs and Carolyn as an admissions
counselor at Binghampton College—and what little time
they had left, they devoted solely to each other. They
enjoyed visiting vineyards, dining at upscale restaurants, and had no interest in taking part in anything T. J. himself enjoyed: watching superhero movies, playing video games,
eating at greasy pizza places. Even when they did take him out, the pair paid him little attention, preferring that he occupy his time with his smartphone while they got to play the part of the well-off, unburdened couple. They certainly didn’t care for T.J.’s “critter collection,” and often found themselves shaking their heads in frustration over the boy’s strange way of looking at the world.
T.J. was a nuisance, but he was their nuisance. And despite Joseph’s repeated attempts to secure more visitation rights with his son, they repeatedly denied the father,
whom they saw not only as a bad influence on the boy, but
as someone whom Carolyn was not done inflicting pain
upon, due to a particularly nasty divorce proceeding.
T.J. was in his room, watching a YouTube video of a
fully-grown python swallowing a deer, when his bedroom
door suddenly flew open. Standing in the doorway,
teetering from the effect of five evening beers, was Greg,
• 158 •
JESUp
glaring at his stepson.
“You little prick! Feeding my organic meat to your
fucking pets!”
T.J. winced at his stepfather’s abrupt and hostile
entrance. “I didn’t. Mom stopped me earlier—”
“I paid $40 dollars for that, straight from Chesnik
Farms. Is your turtle or snake or whatever the hell you fed it to going to cough it back up, or am I going to take it out on your ass!”
“I’m sorry, Greg! I won’t do it again.”
Greg lurched toward T.J., causing the boy to shrink in
his chair. But the man went past him and hovered over a
terrarium that sat on a shelf beyond the desk. He stuck his hand into the glass cube and yanked a turtle out, holding it as if he were going to crush it.
“Greg, no! Please don’t! I’ll pay you back for the meat.”
“I know you will,” snarled Greg. But rather than place
the creature back into its immaculately tended habitat, the man sauntered to T.J.’s open window and tossed the turtle
outside, down two stories.
T.J. screamed and ran to the window. He looked out to
see his turtle, Sammy, in the grass, unsure if it had survived the fall.
“That’ll teach you,” said Greg.
“You asshole!” T.J. ran out of the room, down the
stairs, and out the front door. He found Sammy alive, but
the creature had a large crack in its shell.
Quickly, T.J. grabbed his bike and pedaled two miles
into town to the veterinarian. The doctor treated the
injured area and covered the turtle in gauze, saving it from infection.
No matter how good Sammy’s diagnosis was, however,
T.J. was irrevocably damaged by the incident, and wanted
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CORPSE COLD: NEW AMERICAN FOLKLORE
nothing but to see Greg take a fall of his own. When he
recounted the story to his mother she, as always, sided with Greg.
T.J. was in his personal bathroom the following morning,
filling up the tub, when he heard a knock at his bedroom
door. He quickly turned off the water, and went to answer
the knock, shutting the bathroom door behind him.
“What took you so long?” said Carolyn, as the door
opened. She looked beyond T.J., at his unmade bed and
the clothes strewn about the floor.
“I was…going to the bathroom.”
“I thought you said you didn’t use it,” said Carolyn.
“Listen, I’m leaving for a recruitment trip to Minnesota.
I’ll be gone for most of the week, so it’ll just be you and Greg. I don’t want any funny business, you got it? Just do as he says. It’s not that hard.”
“So, sit around while Greg drinks and watches baseball?
He doesn’t let me do anything fun. I asked him to take me to Elmdale Mall once, just for an hour, and he said he didn’t have the time. All he did was watch TV.”
“He’s a busy man. It’s not his job to entertain you,
Thomas James. You spend most of your time in your room
anyway. I’m sure you’ll get by for a few days. What’s the
difference?”
“Why can’t I spend some time with Dad, if you’re not
even gonna be here?”
“We talked about this…”
“But, Mom.”
But Carolyn was already down the hall before T.J.
could come up with a new argument for why he should get
to see his dad.
• 160 •
JESUp
The following morning, Carolyn left for the airport, while Greg drove to his job in the hills of Binghampton. T.J.,
who had another month before
the start of seventh grade,
spent most of the day in his room, reading a book titled
Alligator mississippiensis.
It was a quiet, uneventful day for the boy, but things
got much more interesting when Greg came home. T.J. had
just returned to his bedroom, with food for his pets, when he heard Greg yelling out in the stairwell. His eyes darted to the bathroom, which was still cracked open. Before he
could go and close it, Greg had entered his bedroom.
The stench of alcohol on Greg was unmistakable. “You
shithead!”
“What?! ” said T.J., having momentarily forgotten the small rotisserie chicken sitting on his desk.
“You’ve got my goddamn dinner!” squawked Greg,
catching sight of the plastic container.
T.J. looked at the chicken, then back at Greg. “Hey,
I’m sorry, Greg. The chicken was just sitting there for a
couple of days. I didn’t think anyone was going to eat it.”
Greg stumbled over and snatched the container up,
cradling it under his arm like a football. “Christ, what were you going to do? Feed it to your fucking snake? You want another one of these bottom feeders tossed out the window?!”
T.J. scowled at his stepfather, then turned to look at
Sammy, all bandaged up. “I want to leave. I want to see my dad!”
“Your mother already told you, you can’t see him until
the weekend,” said Greg.
“What’s it to you? You’re just going to sit around and
get drunker than you already are.”
“Shut your mouth, kid.”
“At least my dad’s not a drunk.”
• 161 •
JESUp
“You little shit. You want to see your old man? Fine by me. Why don’t you get the fuck out of here!”
“Huh?”
“Go see your dirtbag father. Get out of here!”
“But I...”
“Go, punk!” Greg stumbled toward T.J. and slapped
him on the back of the head. When the boy recoiled, Greg
grabbed him by the shirt collar and led him into the hallways and down the stairs.
“What are you doing?!” yelled T.J., his legs dragging
along the fine bamboo flooring. “Asshole!”
“Get out!” said Greg, holding the boy’s shirt in one
hand and opening the front door with the other. He tossed
T.J. outside like a sack of trash. Greg then retreated to the living room for another scotch, but he fell face-first to the floor before he could land in his favorite drinking chair.