Jack's Black Book by Jack Gantos Read Free Book Online Page A

ate flies for fun.
    In a few minutes I had the dirt free from around the edges. I grabbed the handle and pulled up. This time the coffin lifted out and I dragged it across the backyard to the side of the house. Already I could smell something bad.
    When I had the coffin behind some bushes the most dangerous part was still to come. I had to get the top off without making so much noise that I’d wake everyone in the house. I felt around the edge of the lid until I could detect a slight opening, then I jammed my crowbar into the crack and pressed down. Then the odor of rotting BeauBeau hit me. It was worse than his breath. I could feel my face contorting as if someone were trying to rip it off, and I began to gag. Some of Mom’s fish-stick supper came up into my throat. I swallowed it back down, stood up, and tottered far enough away so I could breathe some fresh air. I was this deep in it already, and I had no choice but to finish the job.
    I returned to the garage. I took a rag Dad used forgasoline spills and wrapped it around my face. “No one ever said being a writer was going to be easy,” I said to myself as I knotted the rag behind my head and pulled it down just below my eyes. Then I marched back to the coffin.
    Fortunately, I hadn’t pounded many nails in the top because I had been in such a hurry to get the lid fastened. The gasoline rag only helped a little. I had to stand away from the coffin, take a deep breath, run back, pry up a nail, then run away from the smell and take a deep breath. Then repeat the process. When I had all the nails loose from the top, I dragged the coffin back over to the grave. I turned away, took one deep breath, then did it. I lifted the lid of the coffin, tossed it aside, and rolled BeauBeau into the hole. I peeked down at him. I shouldn’t have. He was covered with a million wiggling white worms that shimmered under the moonlight. I turned away, lifted my mask, and swallowed really hard to keep the fish sticks down. I wiped my mouth across the shoulder of my shirt, lowered my mask, took another deep breath, then worked like a fiend shoveling the dirt back over him and redecorating the ground before I ran to the other side of the yard and took another breath.
    I had one more thing to do. I ran back, grabbed the coffin by a handle, and dragged it to the garage. I slipped a green garbage bag on either end and taped it up around the middle. Then I yanked the gasoline rag up over my head, threw it in a corner, and snuck back into the house. I had done it. No one would believe it. But then there wasonly one person who would have to know—Mr. Gilette.
    In the morning when I woke up I could smell something sickly sweet and disgusting. Something rotting. It was me. I sniffed my hands. I wasn’t rotting, but the smell of dead BeauBeau was stuck on my skin as if it had been glued there. It was in my hair, and rising up from the pile of clothes on the floor. My pillow smelled, my sheets smelled, the air all around me smelled of dead dog.
    Once we had thrown some out-of-date raw chicken in the kitchen trash and had forgotten to take the trash out before going away for the weekend. When we came home the house smelled like a dead person. We couldn’t breathe. And even though we opened all the windows and aired everything out, the house reeked of rotting meat for a week. It was awful. Mom still says on really humid days she can smell the dead-chicken odor in her clothes.
    And now I smelled worse than that. I threw myself out of bed and ran to the bathroom. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and scrubbed my whole body, even my face, with the stiff-bristled back brush.
    When I returned to the bedroom Pete was sitting up in bed.
    â€œOh, man,” he moaned with his face wrinkled up as he sniffed the air. “What did you eat last night?”
    â€œLots of beans,” I said, and rubbed my stomach. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œYou’re