Jack Daniel’s Revenge (1972, a story out of Minnesota) He had drank a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s empty, he had it in a paper sack, he liked the best, if he was to drink at all, he drank the best, and he drank that liquor in particular, because his name matched. He said to himself: “I’m glad they’re dead! They had a death coming—both of them. When he got married he married a Catholic woman, in a Catholic Church, never went out on his wife, never thought to do it. He let her raise the child in her faith, and he hated the church for not baptizing his child, because he was of no denomination, thus, because of this, they refused to baptize the child. That started it all. Kulin Schultz, was muscular, with a most pleasant face, ten years younger than Jack Daniel, and five years older than his wife, Anna Lee Daniel, and Kulin, was forty. She was of a light brown race, and Kulin was a black German-Jew, Jack was Caucasian. They all lived in a small city outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The township less than ten thousand, which support some four churches—two Catholic, one Baptist, and one Mormon church, had one Main Street, two small hotels, one closed. The open Hotel was clean—not quite inside of town but about three miles on the outskirts, the rooms well heated in the winters, even had a cat for a few dollars rent if you wanted company at night. Kulin a handsome blue eyed fellow, who smiled more than not, fell in love with Anna Lee, met her at one of those two Catholic churches, dark blond roots to her light blond hair, cut short, for easy combing. Kulin was a police officer, employed by the city, Jack, who mostly sat cross-legged on a chair most of the day, sold insurance. It was a beautiful church made romance, for these two handsome individuals, a man and woman, not a perfect picture but one that could get Anna’s baby baptized. And so the love affair and this case in point, developed along these lines intricate as a rat’s maze, especially in the wintry hotel on the outskirts of the township. (Jack now is sitting in his room looking back at the situation, he is cozy in his little cottage like home, after all, this affair with Kulin and Anna had gone on and off for a year, and he now is talking to himself about it—seemingly at peace with it.) “The amazing thing is, not a soul seems to know anything about this case, and it’s hard not quite to believe it.” SS (His Mind’s eye, or his second self): “There are reasons for that.” “Whatever they are it is like a jigsaw puzzle to me now, I’ll never been able to put it all together, after the fact.” SS: “I shall begin from the beginning, go over it with you, and take a look at what’s inside of you.” “I think of all the beast on earth without a doubt, man is the most hateful…the only one who inflicts pain for the sport of it, who lives and dies with a nasty mind.” SS: “Are you regretting what you did to Anna and Kulin?” “I should be, shouldn’t, I?” SS: “Well, you filled up two coffins; I guess that is what you might call a good beginning.” “He was a lawyer, right?” SS: “Wrong, he was a policeman.” “Eh, that’s right, I forgot.” SS: “He was a happy-go-luck kind of fellow, policeman!” “Whose side are you on?” SS: “Amazing isn’t it, nobody appears to know a thing about this case.” “Didn’t we say that before?” SS: “Yes, I suppose we did. It didn’t take you long to figure out how to murder both of them.” “Someone, I think you, immediately, an hour after I saw them in the hotel, doing you know what—that’s something I’ll never forget. Anyhow, that’s when I got thinking about revenge, and pain.” SS: “Go back, describe it exactly to me.” “Why don’t you do it?” SS: “Okay, I will. Neither one had an enemy. The police couldn’t trace it to anyone. Everyone liked them, and you even pretended to like them. The morning was cold and snowy, and when Kulin went and left the hotel to get something in his car, and to warm it up to take Anna home—wam! One of the three rats you put into the car bit him—one after the other that is, all three injected with amphetamine, to make them hyper and wild and more vicious. They tore him apart. The police thought it was crazy, some Satanic group from out of town playing a trick, it was Halloween, wasn’t it. They bit his arms, cheeks, legs, hands scratched out his eyes. He surely didn’t die instantly.” “I hope not!” SS: “I know that is one hope you really hoped for. And then Anna, who would have ever thought of using liquid nicotine—and Anna being a chain smoker, a pure poison, fast, powerful, colorless, odorless, and it killed her with one big gulp of Jell-O. And they didn’t think of you because you didn’t fit the pattern of a murderer, and you got that $150,000-dollars insurance.” “I wasn’t thinking of that at the time, perhaps it got lost in my mind, but it wasn’t there when I thought all this up.” SS: “You mean, when we both thought all this up. What are you going to do about Alvaro’s Baptism? You are a well-to-do man now.” (Twisting his lips hissing and snorting…) “Good question. It’s hard to say now. But damned if I will go back to a church and beg them to do what they’re suppose to do again, and had they done it in the first place, I do believe I would not have had to drink all that Jack Denial’s down this evening. SS: “Uh-huh. I figured as much.” No: 793 (4-9-2011)
Dr. Dennis L. Siluk’s has published 72-International Book. He is a poet since twelve years old, a writer, Psychologist, Ordained Minister, Decorated Veteran from the Vietnam War, Doctor in Arts and Education, and Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of Central Peru, UNCP. He was nominated Poet Laureate in Peru. One of his books, “The Galilean”, took Honorable Mention at the 2016 Paris Book Festival and received an award from the Congress of Peru, for his cultural writings.
