The Dark Stirrings of a Jungle Man’s Soul

When the divorce was finalized, somehow my father ended up with the old house and I, my brother Bryan, and my mother moved across town. This meant that I finally got my own room. It was even the biggest room in the house … and it was in the basement, had low ceilings, exposed wires, no sheetrock, and no carpet. Despite all of this I loved my new place, except for the one drawback.The great thing about having the basement room in the new house was simultaneously also the worst part about having the basement room in the new house: all the ventilation was directly traceable back to the vent right above my bed. I could hear everything anyone said at any time of the day or night.

Usually, the things I heard ranged from “dinner will be in ten minutes” to “we’re having pork chops.” On one special Christmas night however, I got to hear the darkest stirrings of a jungle man’s soul.

One thing I learned about my new step-father right from the start was that he loved to be the center of attention. This manifested itself in a variety of different ways, from the somewhat subtle manner in which he would look at a book and either laugh or cough loudly until someone asked him what was so interesting, to the more direct approach when he would pull a microphone out of someone’s hands and start to sing “Heart Break Hotel” at the top of his lungs.

One day, on Christmas Eve, depressed that there were not as many wrapped packages under the tree for him as he might have liked, Mike went out for a night on the town. Around one in the morning I heard him stomp up the steps, directly above my room, trip, and stumble onto the porch. A silence of about three minutes followed, during which he made no attempt to rise. I stood up on my bed and put my ear against the vent. I heard soft, choked sobs, coming from the floor above.

“Does anyone get me any Christmas presents?” The sobbing became louder. My head tilted in contemplation. Was the thirty-one year old man above me really crying his eyes out because no one had bought him an acceptable Christmas present?

“I work and I work and I work… and what do I get?” the ceiling shook for a moment, and I realized that Mike was pounding his fists against the porch in frustration. Again, there was a silence, filled with Mike’s sobs. What followed was what I like to refer to as Mike’s Soliloquy.

Never before in my life, and never since, have I heard a drunken man as pathetically moan about being short-changed by life as Mike did that night. For half an hour, he blamed God, the color of his skin, his lack of skills, and his family life for all of his troubles. After he ran out of standard material he suddenly shouted, “Why God!? Why did you give me these tiny little arms and legs when my body is so long?” Then the entire porch above me seemed to shake, as Mike kicked and pounded it shouting “All I want is some fucking normal sized arms and legs!” For a moment my head tilted further, in contemplation. Had Mike really just blamed the relative shortness of his arms and legs in comparison to his torso for all the ills that had befallen him on this Earth? Mike continued before I had time to work up a full force chuckle at the thought.

“I’m sick of this! I’m sick of being treated this way! Do you hear me, Darcy? I’m sick of it!” I heard the two relatively short legs clumsily stumble down the front steps. I heard an engine fire, and a truck drive away. I went to bed thinking that if he drove into a ditch and bled to death that I would start going to church again just as soon as he was buried in the ground.

The next morning, under the tree, sloppily wrapped in shiny green foil was a long rectangular object. It had not been there before. My brother Bryan looked at me, mouthing the words: “Did he buy himself a Christmas present last night?” I shrugged and mouthed back: “I don’t know.” I still have no idea where he found it so late at night.

We found Mike passed out on the couch in front of the Christmas tree, in front of a pile of freshly cut green foil, and bits of tape. When we woke him, his head popped up his hair wildly flailing from the momentum of his jerking. Instantly, he looked under the Christmas tree. “Oh… it’s Christmas time!”

Without waiting for anyone else Mike positioned himself Indian style in front of the tree, sitting only in his white briefs, grabbed the long green box, dug into the green foil and tore it off. It was a Remington 12-gauge Pump Action Shotgun. He looked at it as if he had never seen it before.

“Darcy! Get the camera! I want a picture of me holding it!”

While we were all made to pose with Mike and the gun for several minutes we were given to understand that Mike was “easy to please” unlike us, who would always need more, Mike’s desires could be met with such a simple object as the shotgun he held that was more expensive than all of the other gifts combined. “Brandon, isn’t this the most freaking primo shotgun you’ve ever seen?” I shrugged which caused him to exhale in awe at the sleek steel of his new gun’s barrel.

Finally he looked at me, my brother, and my mother and said, “I just really want to say thanks guys. This is the best Christmas present ever.”