Jelly Beans & Juice

Because the gathering was mostly made up of his parents’ horseshoe buddies it meant nothing to Joe except the occasional clang of metal on metal until the old man who owned the general store in the village just down the road came by with a giant jar of jelly beans. According to this man the jar was Joe’s now because Joe had made a guess closer than anyone else as to just how many jelly beans were in the jar, and even though when the old man pressed him on it Joe could not remember what his winning guess had been, could not even remember having made a guess, he was more than willing to accept the prize. But his father who had been standing by watching this exchange as though he had a stake in it or perhaps was jealous that he had not won the jelly beans for himself had other ideas about what should happen to the jar.
	“You can’t eat all those yourself,” he said, taking the tone he always did whenever he was trying to teach Joe a lesson. “You’ll be sick. You’ll be throwing up all over the place. I know, why don’t you share them with our guests?”
	“Nuh-uh,” Joe protested, for he could not understand why if he had been the one who had won the jelly beans he should not be able to keep them all to himself.
	“All right, I’ll tell you what,” his father said, taking the jar from the old man for whom it was beginning to get heavy and placing it on the ground in front of Joe. “If you can lift this jar and carry it to your room, you can have all the jelly beans yourself. But if you can’t, it goes on the table for the others until it’s down far enough that you can lift it,” and he pointed at the table he had in mind, a card table that had been brought out and placed next to their two picnic tables which were all lined up together in a row. “Well, I’m waiting.”
	Joe stared at the jar, which nearly came up to his chin and might have been wide enough for him to crawl into if not for the jelly beans already inside. Still, he tried to lift it. He got close to it and cocked his knees to the side and then bent over and wrapped his arms around the glass, but he was unable to lift it off the ground, could only slide it an inch or two toward the house before his grip gave out and he fell back onto his bottom. Undeterred, he got up and tried again, and though this time he did not fall, nor did he move the jar any further, and when his strength finally gave out and he became exhausted from his efforts he stood back and stared at the jar as if it had now become his enemy.
	“Well, that settles that,” his father said, who picked the jar off the ground with only the slightest of strain and placed it right in the middle of the card table where Joe would not be able to reach the lid in order to open it. Then, brushing his hands together, he added, “You might as well go and play now until dinner is ready. Your jelly beans won’t be going anywhere until then.”
	Joe wanted to argue but he knew if he did his father would only find a chore for him to do instead, and so off he went to look for his sister Jenny and when he found her in the living room playing with her dolls he told her about the jar and how he had won it and everything that came after, emphasizing just how big and heavy the jar was and how unfair it was that he was going to have to share the jelly beans with everyone when they rightly all belonged to him. But Jenny who was nearly two years younger than him didn’t understand and only asked if she could have some jelly beans, too, and when he said no, by which he meant that she could not have any jelly beans now, because no one could, she began to cry. Within a minute their mother appeared and picked his sister up and though Joe tried to explain to her what had happened she told him that he should go to his room now and take a nap.

*   *   *

When Joe next saw the jar of jelly beans it was surrounded by all kinds of other food along with a stack of paper plates and plastic utensils. The jar itself was open and his parents’ friends had already begun to dip a large spoon into it in order to scoop the jelly beans out and put them on their plates next to their ribs and potato salad. When someone saw Joe they thanked him and then everyone else followed suit and though it still rankled Joe that he had to share the jelly beans it no longer felt quite as unjust as it had when his father had first forced him into the deal. What was even better was when his mother dished him and his sister up and he was able to taste the jelly beans for himself and see that his sister was enjoying them as well. Still, throughout the meal he kept a dog’s watch on the jar and felt a pang in the pit of his stomach every time someone dipped the spoon inside and took out another scoop of jelly beans, and it was only when the meal was over and the guests began to get ready for another round of horseshoes that he suddenly wished they had taken more, because when he saw how many jelly beans were left he knew that he would still be unable to carry the jar to his room. He began to worry that his father might propose another deal like giving half of what was left to the cattle, but before he could get too worked up about it his father, perhaps reading his mind, informed him that now that the guests had had their fill he would personally see to it that the jar got to his room safe and sound with no more jelly beans removed.
	“So forget about the jar, all right?” he said in between sips of beer. “You and Jenny go run along and play.”
	Content with this arrangement, Joe and his sister went and played on their swing set for a while and afterward took turns throwing a tennis ball for their dog Blackie to retrieve, and when it began to get dark they went inside and played Operation until it was time for bed. It wasn’t until the next day when he awoke and did not see the jar in his room that Joe once again thought about the jelly beans, but now that they were in his mind again they were all he could think about, and so as soon as his father came to the breakfast table he asked him where they were. His father, who was rubbing his forehead the way he did when he had a splitting headache, groaned and took a bite of pancake, and only after that did he begin to speak.
	“Yeah, well, there’s something I need to tell you about that, Joe,” he said, his voice softer than usual. “You see, the McClusky brothers, you remember which two they are? Anyway, they got a little drunk last night and started arguing about some woman from the past—”
	“John,” Joe’s mother snapped, who was over by the stove pouring some more batter onto the griddle, “you don’t have to tell him the whole story.”
	Joe’s father nodded, and swallowed another bite. “Anyway, while they were scuffling with each other they bumped into the table and knocked it over, and the jar fell off and broke. I’m sorry, it was my fault. I should have taken it to your room right away when I said I would. But I’m going to make it up to you, all right? When I go into town on Monday I swear I’ll pick you up some more jelly beans and maybe some of that black licorice like so much. How does that sound? Is that all right?” 
	“So the jelly beans are gone?” Joe asked, trying to make sense of it.
	“Well, they’re still out there in the yard if that’s what you mean.”
	Instantly Joe jumped off his chair and ran into the living room where he climbed onto the couch and looked out the window. There they were, scattered across the lawn, hundreds of jelly beans intermixed with shards of glass. 
	“Believe me, Joe, I’m just as upset as you are. Now I’ve got to spend my morning cleaning all that up.”
	Joe climbed down from the couch and came back to the table. He mused awhile over his eggs before he said, “I want to help.”
	His father looked up from his plate. “You mean, you want to help clean up?”
	“Me, too,” Jenny said enthusiastically. “I want to help, too.”
Their father smiled. “Well, I—”
	“No,” their mother intervened. She came over to the table with her own plate of pancakes and poured what was left of the orange juice into her glass. “It’s too dangerous. And besides, you two have to clean your rooms today, remember?”
	But Joe didn’t remember anything about having to clean his room; as far as he was concerned, his room was clean. “But they’re my jelly beans,” he complained.
	“The jelly beans aren’t the issue. It’s the glass I’m worried about. You’ll cut yourself.”
	“Nuh-uh. I’ll be extra careful.”
	Joe’s mother looked to his father for support.
	“We’ll have them wear gloves,” he suggested instead.
	“Jenny doesn’t have work gloves.”
	“So she can wear her winter gloves.”
	“Mittens—and they’ll get sticky.”
	“So what? They’ll be too small for her come winter anyway. And besides, we’ve got other things we’ve got to get done around here. The sooner we get that cleaned up the better.” Joe’s father reached over and squeezed his wife’s hand. “C’mon, Joan, they’re asking to help out. That’s a good thing, ain’t it?”
	Joe’s mother frowned; she looked just like she did whenever Joe’s father asked if they could turn in early. “All right, you two can help. But you’ll keep your gloves on at all times and you won’t pick up any glass, just jelly beans—and you won’t eat any of them. Promise?”
	“Promise,” Joe and Jenny said together.
	“And Joe,” his mother said especially, “you’re responsible for your sister, understand?”

*   *   *

Joe’s mother and father each had their own ice cream pail in which to place the broken glass while Joe and his sister shared a single pail for the jelly beans, though when they filled the first one up their mother supplied them with another. The work was more tedious than Joe had expected, mostly because his sister with her winter mittens on struggled to get at the jelly beans that had sunk between the blades of grass and he kept having to come over and dig them out for her only to have her tell him not to place them in the pail but to put them back on the ground so she could pick them up herself, which might not have been so bad except that more often than not she accidentally pushed the jelly beans back down between the grass and he had to come over and dig them out again. What kept him going was that every time his parents were looking the other way he would slip a jelly bean into his mouth and chew it up and swallow it before they caught him, though that all came to an end when Jenny saw him and started doing it too, because she accidentally placed in her mouth a piece of gravel that had been kicked over from the driveway and had to spit it out, which drew the attention of their mother.	
“All right,” she said in the tone she reserved for when she had a suspicion of wrongdoing but no actual proof, “I think you two have done your part. Why don’t you go and get started on your rooms now.”
	“Can I have some juice first?” Joe asked, for between the dust on the jelly beans and the growing heat of the day his mouth had gotten dry.
	“We’re out of orange juice, dear. Don’t you remember at breakfast?”
	“Not orange juice,” he laughed. “Red juice.”
	“Oh.” His mother wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist while she considered her answer; clenched between her fingers were several weeds which she had taken to rooting out along the way. “All right, but no mess, you hear?”
	“Why don’t you bring me out a glass, too, Joe, while you’re at it,” his father said, who was taking his shirt off in order to get some extra sun.
	Joe promised both his parents to do exactly as they had requested and then grabbed his sister’s hand and led her into the house where after taking off his own gloves and dropping them on the floor he helped her off with her mittens. 
	“I want some juice, too,” she said as she rubbed her sweaty hands on her lavender dress.
	“I know,” he said. “Go sit at the table.”
	Not long ago their parents had endowed them with a shelf of their own in the cabinet right beneath the drawer where the silverware was, and from this shelf Joe chose a cup that was green while for his sister he picked out a cup covered in giraffes because he’d remembered how she only liked to drink juice out of cups with animals on them.
	“Do you want a straw?” he asked her over his shoulder.
	“Are you having one?”
	“No.”
	“Me neither.”
	He closed the cabinet door and brought the cups over to the table. Right away Jenny picked hers up like she was expecting there to already be some juice inside of it and when she saw there wasn’t any she held the cup sideways in front of her as if trying to locate where the juice might have gone. Joe ignored this childishness and went to the fridge where after pushing a carton of milk aside he found a large clear pitcher brimming with what he was calling juice. In order to lift it safely he had to grip it by the handle with one hand while placing his other hand on the pitcher itself, and once he managed to get it over to the table he had to climb onto his chair and kneel on it in order to pour. At first nothing came out except for a few leaky drops but then he remembered that he had to turn the top on the pitcher to get the holes in the cover to align with the spout, and after that he was able to fill his cup up to the edge but without going over.
	“Set your cup down,” he told his sister but instead she brought it to her chest and held it there protectively.
	“I wanna pour,” she said.
	“You’re not strong enough.”
	“Yes, I am!”
	“Okay, but if you spill any I’m telling Mom it was all your fault.”
	Joe set the pitcher down and then looked on with his knuckles between his teeth as his sister stood up on her chair and took hold of the pitcher, but before she had even begun to tilt it she bumped into her cup and knocked it over.
	“Hold it for me,” she ordered her brother.
	“You’re gonna spill,” he said reaching across the table to retrieve the glass.
	“No, I won’t.”
	Joe held the cup firmly and squinted in fear as his sister with her little tongue sticking out began to tilt the pitcher over. At first Jenny had the spout so far away from the giraffes that it looked like she was going to pour the juice right out onto the table, but as the liquid began to stretch itself lengthwise along the inside of the pitcher she moved it closer until finally it made contact with the inside of the lip. She only filled her cup halfway up before she stopped and set the pitcher upright on the table. 
	“See, I didn’t spill.”
	Joe let go of her cup and then slid the pitcher to the other side of the table so that it wouldn’t be in their way. He took a gulp and then another and when the cherry flavor and the cool sensation had washed over him he smacked his lips together and said “Ah!” just as his father often did when he would take a drink of something, and when Jenny was finished with her first few gulps she also did the same. Joe looked at her and laughed.
	“What?” Jenny asked him.
	“You got a juice mustache.”
	Jenny frowned and reached for a napkin but in the process bumped into her cup with her forearm. The cup fell over and what was left of her juice spilled out across the table with some of it dripping onto the floor. Her eyes went wide and she tried to cover it up with her hands but it was far too diffused to conceal it all, and besides, Joe had seen it happen. He could have said I told you so but he knew he would be in just as much trouble as she would be because he always got blamed for stuff she did when he was supposed to be watching after her, and so instead of saying anything he reached for the napkins himself and began to wipe up the mess. He then handed a napkin to Jenny and told her to wipe her hands while he got down on the floor to clean up the rest.
	“Hey, look, a butterfly!” she exclaimed a moment later.
	“Where?” he said and got up quick only to bump his head on the edge of the table. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing the bump. Then he looked out window on the other side of the table overlooking the backyard. “Where?”
	“It’s gone.”
He frowned and got up to put the wet napkins in the trash can beneath the sink. 
	“Look!” Jenny shouted, this time pointing out the window. “There it is again!”
	Joe ran back to the table and this time he saw it: it was a large yellow butterfly and it was hovering over the top of their mother’s flowerbed just below the window. For a second or two it landed on a flower and just as quickly hopped to another, and then another, until finally it flew away, moving in a zigzag motion over the top of the propane tank which heated their house before dropping down and disappearing out of view. Then, just about when he was going to give up on looking for it, the butterfly reappeared at the side of the tank and landed on a dandelion. 
	“Let’s chase it,” Jenny said and before he could argue with her she jumped off her chair and began running for the back door. 
Joe groaned, for he felt he was too old for chasing butterflies, but he did not want to leave his sister alone in case he was still supposed to be looking after her, and so after putting the juice back into the fridge he traipsed out onto the back porch like a sullen adult burdened with too much to do. By then Jenny had already made it past the propane tank and was nearing the raised mound which encircled the pond his family used for a skating rink in winter. At present the pond was dry and most of the dirt was cracked but there had been some rain a few days earlier leaving behind a few puddles here and there. Fearing that his sister might step in one and get her shoes all muddy he called after her and when she would not stop he chased her down just as she was descending the mound into the pound.
“Hey,” she said, “I almost caught it.”
But this wasn’t true: the butterfly was well ahead of her and in another second flew up and disappeared over the long strands of wheat which marked the end of where they were allowed to play.
“You’re not supposed to get muddy,” Joe remarked harshly while pointing at the puddle right in front of her. Right away he could see that he had upset her and she looked like she was about to cry, so he did the only thing he could think to do and tapped her on the shoulder. “Tag, you’re it,” he said, and then he took off running.
“No fair, I wasn’t ready,” she said, but soon she was chasing him anyway.
Joe ran around to the other side of the propane tank and when she had caught up to him he began running circles around it until he got bored of being chased and let her tag him so he could chase her instead. To make it interesting he let her get a head start and while he waited Blackie wandered up to him and sniffed his shirt. He saw that there was something on it, right where the dog was sniffing, which was also where his sister had tagged him. It was something red.
“Hey,” he called out after his sister, “you got juice on my shirt.”
“Nuh-uh!” she yelled back as she made her way to the swing set. 
“Yes, you did. Come back here.”
After Jenny had passed the first swing she stopped and turned around, holding it out in front of her like a shield. “You’re trying to trick me,” she said.
“No, I’m not. Look,” and he held his shirt out so she could see.
Suddenly Blackie shot off as if he had seen a mouse, and by the time Joe had recovered from the start it had given him his sister had nearly returned to his side. 
“Let me see your hands,” he said to her.
“No,” she said. “Put your hands behind your back first.”
Joe did so, and so Jenny did as he had asked and held her hands out, palms up, revealing to both their surprise just how red they were. But it was her wrists that were really red. and growing more so, until the redness became so pronounced that it leaked off the side of her arm and began to drip upon the ground.
“Why’s everything so heavy?” she asked, and then collapsed.
Joe looked down at her, wondering if this might be some new kind of game. “Hey, get up. Jenny, get up.” He nudged her with his shoe. “Jenny?”
	“Joe?” his father called from the porch. “What are you doing?”
	“What?” Joe said, peering over the top of the propane tank.
	His father came forward to the wooden railing and rested his hands upon it. “You didn’t bring me my juice. And there’s streaks of it on the table. You’d better get back in here and clean that up before your mother sees it.” He looked around the yard, scratching the hair on his belly. “Where’s your sister?”
	Joe didn’t answer.
	“Honest to God, we can’t leave you two alone for a second without you getting up to something. Now go and find her and come inside. You need to get started on your rooms.”
	As soon as his father went back inside Joe looked at his sister again. She hadn’t moved and didn’t appear to be breathing either. He got down onto the ground next to her and tried to shake some life into her but it didn’t work.
	“Jenny. Jenny, wake up.”
	He looked around the yard and saw a hose nearby hooked up to a sprinkler. He remembered how last weekend he and Jenny had run through it with their swimsuits on and how happy they were, and then he remembered a story his mother had read to him once about a princess who had cried over a dead prince and when her tears had struck his cheek it brought him back to life. He ran over to the hose and disconnected the sprinkler, but because he was afraid his parents might get mad if he made a puddle in the backyard he first dragged his sister’s body into the pond before turning the water on. The hose didn’t quite reach far enough but he was able to put his thumb in the stream as he had seen his father do in order to get more pressure and that allowed it to reach her. Soon a pool began to form around her. It reminded him of when they took a bath together and how they had a rubber ducky and he would put it under the water and one time when he let it go it floated up and smacked him in the chin. His sister thought that was funny and laughed, and he laughed, too, and now he laughed again at the thought of it. And that’s how Joe’s parents found him: pouring water from a hose onto the corpse of his dead sister, and laughing.

Wolfgang Wright is the author of the comic novel Me and Gepe. His short work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Short Beasts, The Collidescope, and Waccamaw. He doesn’t tolerate gluten so well, quite enjoys watching British panel shows, and devotes a little time each day to contemplating the Tao. He lives in North Dakota.