Sameson Jameson

// Wally Rudolph

“First, get you a good sized mason jar or other suitable petroleum-resistant container and fill ‘er about three-quarters a way with gasoline. Then, get you a styrofoam cooler – like what you find at a beer store or the seasonal aisle at your local market. Break the styrofoam into pieces about the size of your fist, and drop them into the gasoline. Stir the pieces in with a wooden spoon, a hunting knife or a long screwdriver, and the pieces will dissolve and thicken the mixture into a sticky, flammable substance that will adhere to just about anything. This napalm can be used for a myriad of sovereign endeavors, and I will let your imagination be your guide so as not to incriminate myself. God Bless.”

— Jameson Schreiber, Dallas, Texas 1993

That recipe was discovered by my best friend’s little brother, Curtis, the Texan summer of 1993. There’s nothing spectacular about this memory; the heat was no more arresting than any other summer. Humidity and beer seemed to organize life at an approachable rate. The day Curtis discovered napalm, Forrest, Curtis’ older brother; Michael Goldman, a second generation Russian Jew; and myself were taking turns hotboxing ourselves inside a burnt-out fridge in the garage. This late-seventies Kenmore had ample room to fit a man just under six feet, if you took out the shelves and drawers. I’m sure a flexible person just over six feet – say, at the most, six-three – could fit with a fair amount of neck craning and eastern pliancy. But then, in those cases, the said man’s confined exertion would obscure his esteem of this grand hazard, a kind of lucy fur’s mirth.

The story follows one of these seventeen-year-old young men inside the fridge, in the garage, in the heat of the late summer with our hands gripping and shaking a small, metal reefer pipe filled to the lip with dry, Mexican dirt weed. The other two sopanauts shut the door tight and quickly duct tape around the seal of the fridge, locking their comrade in the seizing pitch.

Now. Due to this new systematic oversaturation method of THC-ingestion known as “The Fucking Fridge Hotbox, Man,” we, the inventors, found the regular emphasis and importance of restraining the marijuana smoke in our lungs became a secondary priority as the finite oxygen supply in the fridge was instantly rendered useless by the aforementioned act of smoking inside this sealed hot box. Simply, all a person had to do was focus on maintaining a shallow-breath consciousness to achieve the glory: an unexplainable, all consuming high. (The whole process took anywhere from seventy-five seconds to three minutes, always on a sliding scale dependent on the intensity of the participant’s preexisting fix.)

The three of us were moving into our fourth rotation of “The Fucking Fridge Hotbox, Man” when Curtis appeared at the entrance of the garage cradling a large coffee can filled with greyish pink paste. He pushed his greased, sun bleached hair from his face and beamed us a pleased smile before he bent over with a long handled screwdriver and spread some of the substance in a yard long line on the middle of the driveway. He put down the can, wiped his hands on the bottom of his shorts, and then went inside for a box of long neck matches. Foreseeing a fine casualty for the books, the three of us conceded a late afternoon cessation on any more experiments in what now had been dubbed, “Magic Fridge,” and waited, keen and high, for the show to begin.

Curtis came back out and took his place a few feet away from the wet, sticky line on the driveway. He lit a match on the bottom of the box, crouched down, and reached all the way over and slowly lowered the flame. No explosion. No loud crackle. The paste actually took a bit of coaxing to get going, but once lit, it burned long and warm. Napalm.

The lesson here is invention. Curtis explained that he had transcribed the recipe from a scary, lonely kid named Jameson Schreiber, Lamo Jamo. Curtis said Jamo had told him about the homemade napalm a year prior, but he’d never bothered to try it out. The whole idea occurred to him that afternoon.

The sun was just below the rooftops now. All the houses let off orange smoke at dusk. The four of us sat in lawn chairs drinking whiskey chi-chi’s and watched the line of napalm burn before us. Jameson Schreiber, making his family proud as long as that paste burned.

The Schreiber family was nearly extinguished by the Hoover Dam. God and promise abandoned the Schreibers a long time ago. Fear and starvation kept Egan Schreiber, Jameson’s future Grandfather, awake at night. He kept out of the house during the day to avoid seeing his wife make do with a single can of sliced potatoes or a bag of dried beans, whichever he’d stolen or guilted someone into donating to him. This was real plight.

Egan knew about the grand construction in the desert; he was not stirred. With his children, Frankie and Meg, at his side, he had watched neighbor after neighbor leave the small Iowa town of Minuteman to chase down the work. Egan glared at them all in the same way, through the same holes in the thick, metal fly screen that corralled his molding porch. His posture never changed when they proffered their heartfelt goodbyes to his children. Egan’s left hand pet over his empty belly in triumph, while his right always wiped the beginnings of sweat from his balding crown.

“All their ruins look the same,” thought Egan.

Each of the fleeing families had prospered for a time in their respective industries. From the Newsmiths, with their agrarian roots, to the Halsteds’ mills that served more than half the state, even the gin kings and rye boys who staggered through the woods and counted their fortunes in mud sealed walls of blue, green, brown, and clear bottles of rusty change – in the end, they all danced the same sad jig.

Their families’ finances reduced to one fat fold of bills in the back pocket of their father’s or grandfather’s pants. Their faces lost weight in about two weeks. And the first moment Egan noticed their cheeks draw rawbone and lean, he smiled again in triumph and marked the sun’s seat in the sky. He knew by that day’s end, the family, cracked and glassy-eyed, would announce their departure for the great dam in the desert.

Egan never blamed them or cast his decrees just yet. He believed his gospel: The Schreibers would own Minuteman one day. His swelling joints spoke the only truth he needed to know. In his fifty-eight years, he had worked for all of them at one time or another. His collapsing shoulders reminded him of throwing bales on the Newsmith land. His squirrelly jointed right thumb evoked the weight of the grinding whopper stones at the mills, and the unrestful, dead man’s sleep he suffered through every night was a morning keystone to the penny stills in the woods.

All his ailments were his blessings, now. He gave them credence because they all jawed the same word. After this brief lapse in national prosperity was over, when this so-called Great Depression subsided, all these fools that abandoned his beloved Minuteman – that ran into the desert like drunk Jesus – would return only to find Schreibertown or Egantown, Iowa (he hadn’t decided yet.) Renamed by the mayor and refounder himself, The Royal Prince of Limitless Potential, Egan Schreiber. The sky was the limit.

There’d be better laws and more churches in his utopia, Egan thought. Damn an emersonlockeandhume. Basic tasks would get accomplished. Sidestreets paved. Water fountains at the end of every block. The Egan tax code would be ratified, laying a tariff on every other child based on date of birth, cycle of the moon, height, weight, and origin of the family name.

“Regality and the faintest traces of blue blood should still be honored even in America,” thought Egan. “The Schreiber name was once great across the Pacific and should still be recognized as such in the form of lower personal taxes. Here and now. There is cash value to a person’s name, and it should be realized.”

The stars were changing. Egan had put in his time and now was due. He was going to put God back in this town once everyone left, change Minuteman’s fates. This was all just a test. The most intricate, complex examination the Lord had ever set for the Schreiber family. Starvation be damned! Egan would not scar the family name in cowardice. He would stand strong. Be rewarded with a town in his name. That’s the way God saw it, that’s the way Egan believed it. His penchant for apathy would finally be prized so all could see. Egan’s renowned laziness would make the Schreiber name rich.

In the summer of 1933, Egan got his wish. The Harris family who ran Minuteman’s sole feed and supply store closed up shop. They left their shelves stocked, and the back lot of feed and grain to rot. Over the past two years, Harold Harris had watched his business dwindle, and save for two dying farms thirty miles north, his clientele had dried up. He chained and padlocked the store under Egan’s watchful eye. Egan assured him nothing would be touched. He’d keep an eye out for looters and wished the Harris’s all the best as they pulled away to the desert.

“Fucking idiots,” Egan told little Frankie Schreiber, Jameson’s future father. “Let ‘em go, Frankie. Dumb sons of bitches are going to dry up like a widow’s cunt, while we’re here living in the prosperity of the newly founded Schreiber Hole, Iowa.”

Egan walked Frankie to the edge of town and showed the eight-year-old his work. On the sign that once read, “Welcome to Minuteman.” Egan had taken a rock of coal, blacked out Minuteman and rewritten, “Schreiber Hole.” And although he bragged to Frankie that the alteration took him two weeks, blacking out one letter at a time, the handwriting still appeared as if it was written by a toddler with malformed fingers devoid of proper spatial skills to recognize the correct size for each letter for them to be seen from any distance farther than where Egan had crouched each night for the past two weeks. The sign now read, “WeLComE tO SC – scribble – scribble – h . . . !” Frankie didn’t say a word.

That evening, the Schreiber family celebrated. Egan instructed his wife to clean up the children and prepare a feast with the canned goods he had looted from the abandoned general store. Plates of stolen sardines, pilfered canned salmon, and scavenged ham covered the table. Dishes of canned beats garnished with maraschino cherries sat at each place setting. Stewed tomatoes, still in their tap water broth, were served in bowls. And each person was given a pair of baked potatoes sans cheese, as that, along with all other dairy items, had long since spoiled in the store’s former refrigerated room. The Schreibers dined off delicate china left behind by their neighbors. The children drank room temperature bottles of Coke, and Egan drank beer after glorious free beer smiling at his family.

This is how it was supposed to be. This is what God had intended for the Schreibers. Egan’s hands were cut from breaking into homes, but this was an honest treasure willed to him by the Lord. Tomorrow work began. So much work. The children would earn their keep along with his wife. No freeloaders in Schreiber’s Hole. This was utopia. Everyone did their fair share.

A year passed, and in truth, during the first seven weeks, Egan felt accomplished. He fabricated a new welcome sign from an entire wall of an unfinished home in the heart of town. He and his youngest, Meg, cut proper stencils proportionate to her little body. They painted the sign together, father and daughter, with Meg picking out the appropriate hues from the rainbow of deserted paints at the town’s closed up hardware store. Now, at the former Minuteman’s limits, travelers and wanderers alike were greeted by a strikingly large orange and yellow sign that read in kaleidoscopic pastels, “You are in Schreiber’s Hole. Act accordingly,” followed by a set of black cross hairs set over a small figure. Meg had posed for the threatened silhouette.

Dinners at the Schreiber home became the town’s open court, and little Frankie took full advantage of the new egalitarian convention. His first and only proposal was a series of paved, winding, downhill “speedwalks” that all led by scenic route to the swimming hole just below the town. Though the initial vote on Frankie’s proposition was disheartening, after a few minor refinements suggested by his father – namely a brick-laid foot path to the newly christened, Schreiber Rally & Faith Church – the proposal was approved by an enthusiastic, unanimous referendum. Egan and Frankie completed one of the speedwalks and half of the footpath before construction was halted indefinitely because of a nasty spur in the elder’s back.

It had only taken a few days for Egan and his wife to each notice the one deficiency in Egan’s idyllic vision. And, at first, to the surprise of both of them, their lengthy repopulation convocations became a well needed break to anticipate on the Wednesday of each week. With no one in town to steal witness anymore, Egan had no problem kissing his wife on the lips proper, and she found she could enjoy their lovemaking, provided Egan washed and there was slight movement in the surrounding air. A window opened the width of a book; their bedroom door cracked as wide as her palm.

Yes, work had gotten done, but lately, Egan needed rest. Watching and caring for this town was much more than he’d imagined. He had gained and lost a hundred twenty pounds over the final ten months. He’d gorged on canned peaches and yams for five months, gaining fifty pounds, but then proceeded to lose over sixty the next five as the abandoned grocery store’s stock slowly shrank. The sardines were gone as was the salmon and salty canned hams. Sixty cans of generic potted meat sat in the back stock room, but Egan had forgot to tell his children to drag them over to the house.

On one of his last productive days, Egan managed to board up two homes of friends in the span of twelve hours. But that same night, he tore his work down in a drunken fit looking for misplaced bags of money and soiled panties that he was sure the wives and daughters of his long gone neighbors had left behind. The next morning, out of frustration – but more shame, really – Egan tried to access the town’s records using a shotgun and, inadvertently, shot up the file boxes containing all the birth records of Schreiber’s Hole. He decided, then and there, to defecate in the tiny city hall office and urinate over everything else. So if anyone ever asked, he could blame it on shiftless vagrants.

As for little Frankie and his younger sister, Meg, they had eaten through all the town’s candy months ago, and, now, each of their mouths bled constantly from gum infections and cavities. Every daylight hour, the two small citizens circled the empty town in a steady sugar crash with brand new white socks in their mouths to soak up the blood and keep them quiet.

And poor Egan’s wife, her once draping chestnut hair now knotted in foul mats; she had long since forgotten her name. Seven months ago while looking for a set of clean glasses in another neighbor’s abandoned home, the woman had found bottles of what she thought were cough syrup, but were, in fact, an imported French cherry flavored tranquilizer. She’d taken to mixing three tablespoons of the syrup with skunked port or brandy or whatever liquor she found. The constitutional libations, as she called them, constituted her whole day. She drank one after waking up. Another just before noon, and then lost count after that, blaming the next seven or eight on the heat, the cold, the violent shakes she was developing. Schreiber’s Hole was falling short; utopia had arrived.

These days, Egan rarely ventured from the chair he had placed in front of the Harris’ feed and supply store. He had decided it would be best to set up chairs on every porch in town and stash bottles of liquor at each vacant building. This way, he wouldn’t have to lug his booze everywhere, and there’d always be a place to sit, contemplate his next project, and rest. His transformation to a one-man municipality had broken his mettle.

One afternoon, Egan awoke at the town’s gas station. He lay face forward on the ground. Lip busted. Shotgun in arm’s reach. By his estimation, he must have passed out again from his lunch of candied cigarettes and sloe gin.

He pushed himself onto his knees, now noticing he was only in his undershorts. He was startled at first, but then remembered he’d taken his pants off a day prior on account of the evening heat. That night, Egan had told his family they shouldn’t be restricted by clothes anymore as they all had seen each other naked countless times, and, now that they were the royal, lone inhabitants of Schreiber’s Hole, they’d dress or undress as they pleased. The whole family got naked that night except for little Frankie. He ran off scared with a spoon and a potato, because upon seeing his tranquilized mother’s naked body, he became hard.

Egan steadied himself up with his shotgun and set himself back into the steel chair. He pulled a faded cigarette out from his shirt pocket, spat on it, folded it in half, and stuck it inside his cheek – filter and all.

“Better for the lungs,” he thought. “I’ll introduce this as a civilized habit when my town returns.”

He took a sip from the bottle of sloe gin, stinging his busted lip. He yelled for Frankie and Meg and then his wife down the empty street, but the children didn’t hear, and his wife wouldn’t know who Lucille was anyhow. Her condition worsened by the hour. She drank the tranquilizer straight now like a junkie sailor. That morning before breakfast, Egan had caught her having herself with a brand new set of spatulas. He thought to stop her in that early, breaking light; she might hurt herself – the obtuse shape and all. But he decided against it and let her be. She deserved a little bit of joy. The intimacy was no longer something he provided, at least not with her.

Egan pulled on the gin again, chewed slowly on the cigarette, and stared at the gasoline pumps in front of him. He was a foul man. Dirt interrupted his brain. He’d been corrupted and stained by meditated greed. He needed to start fresh, incite a new dialogue with heaven.

He wobbled up, putting all his weight on his shotgun cane. He tripped his way to the front door of the gas station, reached in through the broken window, and let himself in. Egan made his way behind the register and nearly fell over negotiating the counter, but caught himself on empty candy shelves, his children’s year old work. His right hand, cut from the door’s broken glass, dripped blood on the dusty ground. The sloe gin made him numb.

He stood and stared at the leftover stock. He decided a box of Brillo pads, a can of lye, and a four pack of plastic combs would do. Egan grabbed the items, understanding once again he lacked pants and pockets on those pants to put his shopping in. But this bait bucket stowed his purchases just fine, he thought.

He stumbled out of the store with his shotgun over his shoulder, and the barrel threaded through the handle of the pail. He took a large, deep breath and another choker of gin before beginning his procession up to the gas pumps. Egan hummed his drunk hymn, a medley of “A Mighty Fortress” and “Amazing Grace,” as he dropped his undershorts and removed his shirt. He spat the masticated cigarette on the ground and removed the pump’s spout from its holster.

“Glory be to Egan,” he said. “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I have strayed.”

Egan took a Brillo pad from the box and started the pump. Pressure built in the guts of the machine with a long winded whine, and the three small, colored balls inside the glass globe rattled indicating the pump still had pressure.

“I wash myself anew in my town of Schreiber’s Hole.”

Egan pulled the trigger of the spout. The stagnate gasoline trickled

out brown then clear and abundant, spilling out over Egan’s stretch-marked gut and fat haunches.

“I will be a new man today. I baptize myself, the minister – No, the Reverend Egan Schreiber of the royal and holy sect of Schreiberdom.”

He tore at his hair and flesh with the Brillo pad until the blue lather covered his entire body. He reached down and opened the can of lye and package of combs. Egan dug a deep hand into the lye, cupped a handful, then violently rubbed it onto his face and combed it through his hair. His eyes watered with tears.

“Let this burning fill the deepest troughs of my soul, Lord.”

He pulled the trigger full on the spout, soaking himself in petrol. Egan laughed and sang. He was alive and that alone succeeded the Lord’s test; he’d been a saint all along. He danced and sang, naked in the caustic gasoline detergent.

He yelled for his family to bear witness; they all needed to experience this for themselves. No one answered.

“I’m with God, Frankie! Meg! Woman! You are all missing my divine intervention!”

He grabbed the shotgun and aimed it high. He would wake their deaf souls with an explosion from the Lord’s rifle. But lately, the Lord’s rifle had been Egan Schreiber’s drunk walking cane and when Egan pulled that trigger, the burning gun powder met with a year’s worth of caked in dirt, stone, and whatever else Egan pressed that barrel into, sending the backfire straight through the trigger, out of the hilt, and onto the now, very flammable Egan Schreiber. God Bless.

The black, grey paste little Frankie Schreiber found at the burned out gas stand that day was by no means the same stuff his son, Jameson, imparted to Curtis in 1993. Frankie didn’t know what it was. He knew his father was gone as was the gas station. Over his life, Frankie came up with more than a hundred different tragic circumstances to explain his father’s passing. At first, like all, he blamed himself, and then slowly came to terms in his own time, for his own reasons.

No, Jameson and his father, Frankie, discovered their napalm while changing a tire and drinking Shiner beer on their own driveway. Jamo, himself, set the styrofoam cooler of beer next to a leaking gas can, and both him and his father sat and marveled at the paste that appeared. They rolled rags in it and made torches from broken broom handles. They hid them behind sets of old skis in their garage. Big Frankie Schreiber said they’d come in handy some day, if they were ever left alone.