The Ballad of Jimmy Rose
By Andrew Adams
with Selena Rice
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Jimmy Rose has come unstuck in time.
Jimmy lost consciousness at the bottom of the Stingray Pit and found himself unconscious behind the wheel of a speeding car. Jimmy experienced unconsciousness again in the middle of a drug stupor. And then again while lying in a puddle of another person's blood. He also experienced unconsciousness while connected to a thousand little tubes shoved into his throat and penis.
The first time Jimmy ever woke up, he was opening the window. It popped open and he discarded his crowbar, slipped into the jungle. A sloth began turning its head to see what had invaded its home. Jimmy pressed on.
Jimmy walked down the steps and past the poison frogs. He found himself in a coral reef, surrounded by sharks. The sloth finished turning its head, and Jimmy slipped into the water. His fins kicked and his oxygen bubbled. A stingray swirled around him. He dropped into the Pit and swam to the window.
And then he began the task he'd set before him. He pulled out his loofa.
§
Several decades before Jimmy ever broke into National Aquarium, his mother's water broke. She screamed and fell onto the bed. The engine stopped and his father ran to his mother, grabbed her hands and told her to push.
He came out screaming. His father brought him into the rain and grabbed a wet towel. He used it to wipe Jimmy off. And then he cut the umbilical cord with some pliers and gave Jimmy to his mother. He called the hospital and steered the trawler toward shore.
In the distance, sirens wailed. An ambulance met them at the docks. The ambulance was small. Only she fit. They left his father alone in the storm.
§
The first time Jimmy ever lost consciousness, he was surrounded by a ring of people who weren't really his friends. He was fourteen. He bent down and did a line of cocaine, snorted and coughed. He wiped his nose and there was blood on his sleeve.
His companions cheered and slapped his back. They told him to do another. And so he did. He leaned into the world of white, cleared the table of powder, and coughed up foam. And then his world went black.
§
Jimmy was on his way to work and he stopped into a 7-Eleven to buy some water. He was thirsty. He brought the spring water to the front of the store and pulled out some money. The teenager behind the counter put down his magazine and laughed. "Don't waste your money. There's a water fountain in the back."
"I want the pure water."
"It's the same, man!"
"This tastes better."
"They taste the same, man."
Jimmy looked at the spring water in his hands. It wasn't even cold. It wasn't refreshing. It was a bottle of clean water that meant nothing to him. The water fountain tasted better.
He put down his money and left with the bottle in hand.
§
The first time Jimmy ever fired a gun, he blew up a rack of dirty magazines. His hand trembled. He didn't know if he was scared or addicted. He screamed and pointed the gun at the 7-Eleven clerk. "I don't care what you think! I want the money!"
Jimmy was fifteen and broke. He grabbed the money from the cashier, stuffed it into his pocket, and ran from the store. In the distance, sirens wailed. An hour later, Jimmy was high.
§
Jimmy Rose drifted in the waters, feeling weightless. He scrubbed the viewing window and wiped away stingray shit. A shark swam in front of him.
Alone at the bottom of the Stingray Pit, he felt at peace. He forgot about his girlfriend and his inability to find a promotion at work. All he cared about was the color of the walls. He adjusted the buoyancy and drifted in the waters. A stingray rubbed against him.
And then he spotted some dirt on the ground and he swam down and began to scrub. The floor began to sparkle.
§
"I don't know where you go every night," Melinda said, and she dropped the spaghetti in front of him. "Can't you stay at home with me?"
"I didn't know you stayed home when I went out."
"What else am I going to do?" Jimmy bit on his spaghetti. The noodles were dry and crunchy. "I get lonely, Jimmy."
Jimmy looked up at Melinda then. And they just stared at each other, and Jimmy wondered where she went every night.
She finally spoke: "You already spend all day at the station." And then she sat down on his lap and kissed him. "Spend the night here."
"I have to go," he said.
"Please don't."
And she kissed him again. Jimmy rose, and she fell onto the floor, and Jimmy thought he heard her tailbone crunch. It was the noodles. He apologized and went for his scuba gear.
§
The first time Jimmy ever saw a dead body, it was a rape victim whose neck had been slit. They were naked and would have been pale if they hadn't been coated in dry blood. They had crumpled against a wall in a back alley.
Jimmy reached for his gun, took out his walkie-talkie and called in the body. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.
And then the scent hit him, the rotting smell of perfume and intestines, and he felt his knees buckle, and his world went black he fell into the puddle of blood.
§
Jimmy's father didn't get much time home from sea. Jimmy made a point to see him as much as possible when he came home. December came. They ignored the cold and went to the park to play baseball. Jimmy had practiced and hit a home run.
"Nice hit!" his father called.
Jimmy saw a bird fall from the sky. And his ball tumbled down with it and into the forest.
His father laughed. "You get it. You're not allergic to poison ivy like me."
Jimmy was allergic to poison ivy.
"Okay." And so he dug through the foliage and found the ball lying on an ice patch. And then he saw a small cave. Three teenagers were hanging around the entrance and smoking crack. One saw Jimmy and waved him over.
"You want some, kid?" he asked.
Jimmy scrunched up his nose and ran away, grabbed the ball and went back to the field in disgust. Six days and seven bottles of calamine lotion later, the rashes dissipated enough for him to return to school.
§
The first time Jimmy ever discovered he'd been cheated on, he was sixteen. He was in his girlfriend's room, looking through her drawers and taking money for cocaine. He found her diary. And she'd made out with his best friend.
He waited for his girlfriend to come home. She didn't know why he was there. So he punched her.
§
As a police officer, Jimmy had learned the tricks of the trade. He knew how to break into the aquarium in secret and he knew how to spy on somebody. And so he left for the night but he didn't really, he turned and sat in the shadows and waited for Melinda to leave and find somebody else's bed for the night.
She never did. She stayed up all night cleaning Jimmy's apartment. She knew he loved it clean. She fell asleep on the vacuum. He fell asleep in the alley.
§
It was snowing. Jimmy liked it. It made him feel clean. He went up the steps.
"Hey, Marv," Jimmy said. The security officer waved and let Jimmy walk through. He didn't need to break in through the windows any more. By now every guard on the night shift knew him well and he could just walk into the Pit. He slipped into the tank and swam down to clean.
Jimmy was cleaning the viewing windows when he saw a guard's son exploring. He came over to the window and waved to Jimmy. Jimmy waved back. He'd always wanted kids. He wondered if his girlfriend was ever going to bring one home to him. He wondered whose it might be.
And then a shark swam past him. Its serrated skin cut the hose and oxygen spilled upwards. He panicked and started breathing faster. His oxygen disappeared faster. He swam to the surface but didn't pay attention. His skull cracked into a walking pathway before he even broke the surface and his world went black. His suit kept him pinned to the pathway, kept him pinned underwater, and a few minutes later he had drowned.
Like father, like son.
§
The first time Jimmy ever got into a fight, he was high on PCP. He pistol-whipped a rival dealer and sent him back into the wall. The response came quickly, a right hook to the jaw, and his head fell backward into a dumpster.
And he kicked and cursed and spit and then a well-laid punch knocked him to the ground and his world went black. He woke up scratching at a catheter tube in the hospital.
§
Jimmy didn't want the police to stop his addiction, and so he broke out of the hospital and into the night. His gown flapped open behind him and little girls giggled as he ran past. They didn't know him.
He broke into a car and was out on the road within ten minutes. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. He turned around and saw flashing lights, sped up and kept on driving. Faster now. And then he hit a patch of ice, and it almost killed him. His car spun around and hit a ditch. The world seemed to move at half-speed. And then he was rolling, and the dirt was spitting into the car, and the sirens were coming closer, and the glass was shattering and the ceiling was falling in. And then the car was back on its wheels, and then it was on its roof again, and then on its wheels, and then it had fallen into the river.
Jimmy Rose lost consciousness. His world went black.
When he awoke, a police officer was resuscitating him. The first thing he saw after his near-death experience was a wet, polished police badge. He'd never believed in God, but he thought then was as good a time as any. He vowed to clean himself up and then to clean up the streets.
§
The last time Jimmy ever saw his father, his old man slammed the door shut and sped down the driveway, blasting out to the docks. Jimmy's mother was crying. One week and no word later, a phone call told them that his father had gotten trapped in an oil spill and had drowned.
His mother couldn't cope. She burst into tears and didn't stop crying until she'd let herself wither away in her bed a month later.
At the first funeral, Jimmy walked in on his uncle licking something off the bathroom counter.
By the second, he was joining his uncle. He missed the ceremony to snort cocaine. As far as he was concerned, his world had turned black.
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