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Little Johnny

David Spurr-Smith

        Little Johnny killed himself today.

    He climbed into the attic, found his daddy’s gun, and blew the back of his head onto the rafters.

    Little Johnny killed himself today.

    His mom found him, slumped against an old trunk, staring at his knees, about five pounds lighter than he should have been. She wailed, and wept, and got sick, and almost put the gun in her own mouth.

    Little Johnny killed himself today.

    He sat in his room for a full hour beforehand, willing up the nerve to just do it, just stop another gray morning from coming. Because it was either the attic, or another morning, another day.
The whiskey helped him decide. Half a bottle, and he was ready to climb up the creaky stairs and into heaven. The whiskey, and not looking at her picture. That definitely helped.

    Little Johnny turned thirty-nine today.

    And tomorrow his little girl would turn nine. And she would miss him, but only for a little while, and only on every other weekend. He would fade away, like everything fades away, and that would be that.

    Little Johnny hurt today.

    And the day before that, and the day before that, too. How long since he hadn’t hurt? Couldn’t remember. Wasn’t honestly sure that there ever was such a time. The memories were there, of games, and girls, and booze that brought smiles instead of tears, but they were fuzzy. Out of tune. Skewed. Lost.

    Little Johnny took his pills today.

    He took four in the morning, two in the evening, and none that did any good whatsoever. But he took the pills, so that when asked he could honestly reply, “Yes, I took my pills today.” The very concept of the pills seemed to Johnny about as sensible as prescribing You-Hot for a broken leg. Could pills undo pain? Alter the past? Restore pride? Supply money? Put him back in his own home with his own family, where there was at least the illusion that he was a man and not a pathetic, middle-aged boy? If there were pills that could do that, well, that would be something.

    Little Johnny got up today.

    He woke, and enjoyed a few hazy seconds between the bad dreams and the worse reality. He stared out the window into the back yard of his parent’s home. He walked down the hall to the shower, past the door of his childhood bedroom, pondering how in not quite four decades of life he had managed to move all of fifteen feet. He washed, and shaved, and dressed, and went to work at a place where he called idiots ‘sir’ and demons ‘ma’am’, where rich brats smirked and sulked, and he was pummeled with the simple truth that hopes and dreams were deadly foolish things...

    And on the way home that evening, Little Johnny thought that it might be time to die. And when he looked in the mirror that night, he knew that it was. He could try to make it through another day, but he had no wish to.

    He’d tried, for a long time, but now he was tired of trying. There was too much pain, too much disappointment, too much shame. Afterward, they would call him selfish, but all he wanted was nothing. They would say he gave his pain away, and made others carry it. They would say little Johnny could never just grow up and be a man. They would say he was weak, naive, cowardly, ill, foolish, immature, sad, hopeless. They would say that the weeping, destroyed mother and stoic, wrecked father had failed at their jobs. They would say many things, but only for a short while, and then he would fade away.

    Little Johnny turned thirty-nine today, but he won’t be turning forty...

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