A beacon to us all. A short story.

When the angels opened the box that contained the body parts that would make Jaycee a recognisable human being, they must have been drunk.

Either that or one of them had told a joke of such hilarious proportions that their concentration had wandered from the Conveyor Belt of Life and instead of fitting Jaycee together in an acceptable fashion, they had giggled uncontrollably and thereby botched the job.

Whatever the reason, there was no doubt that with Jaycee, there had been…mistakes.

Let me put it another way.

If there was such a thing as a shop where you could buy a limp of your choice, then Jaycee had without doubt, bought the best one in the store and that’s not all. On the day Jaycee visited they must have had a promotion going, an offer that included free ugliness with every limp purchased.

I’m sorry and all that but someone has to say it and it might as well be me, poor Jaycee was one of the most hideous men I had ever seen.

So alarming was his visage that handsome lessons for life would have been wasted on him.

Jaycee had it bad.

Someone, and I guess I’m talking God here, someone had dealt him from the bottom of the pack.

However, before I’m accused of being nothing more than a cruel and heartless beast, it really ought to be pointed out that Jaycee made no efforts to help himself.

In my defence I’d like to call as my first witnesses…

Jaycee’s clothes.

I’d like to call them, but they couldn’t come…they ‘re real tied up at the moment.

They’re stuck to his body.

This is what I mean about Jaycee not helping himself, Jaycee’s clothes have been with him for so long that they’d taken root and clung to him like a second skin.

On the whole Jaycee was a sorry specimen and like sorry specimens everywhere, he spent most of his waking hours, as the neighbourhood target.

Jaycee was there to be boffed (my word), bashed and abused whenever it took anyone’s fancy.

It was his lot in life and before you raise your hands and your voice in protest, think about it.

Jaycee’s lot had worth…and was not without some historical context.

If this had been sometime in our not too recent past, Jaycee would have worn the mantle…village idiot.

He would have been revered for his ability to remove the stresses and strains from so-called normal life.

Poor harvest?

Punch Jaycee.

 Wife gone down with boils.

Put Jaycee (scapegoat) in the stocks.

Let’s face it, before the cat was domesticated enough to kick, the likes of Jaycee were seen as a godsend and were, more than likely, the first ever therapies.

Although, in our PC driven society we would like to push such thoughts to the back of our minds, the truth of the matter is, times haven’t changed that much.

People like Jaycee still exist on the edge of most so-called ‘normal/civilised’ communities and are still abused in that good-old time-honoured manner that we accept and have all become familiar with.

People like Jaycee are allowed to become part of the sights, sounds and smells of whatever it is that passes for everyday life.

They’re allowed to wander around displaying their own particular brand of weirdness for all to see and no-one apparently, gives a damn.

They can dribble, talk to themselves and shout at their invisible companions to their hearts content.

However, working on the basis that you have to draw the line somewhere, what they must not do is…rock the boat.

Now.

Rocking the boat consists of a small number of no-noes. Some of the more serious I will attempt to list.

On no account will Jaycee (or the likes of), take part in…

One…The frightening of small children or horses.
Two…The keeping of unreasonable hours.
Three…The consumption of alcohol in the street.
Four…The opening of trouser zippers…and last but not least;
Five…The leering at women’s breasts.

Stick to these rules and for people of Jaycee’s ilk everything will be hunky-dory.

If the weirdly strange like Jaycee can fulfil their set role with the minimum of fuss and bother, then they’re tolerated and free to come and go more-or-less as they please.

In truth of course, Jaycee serves a purpose. ..i.e…

Everyone Loves A Scapegoat.

Enough. I’m supposed to be telling a story here…so…..

When we were kids, Fat Freddy and me would lean out of his mother’s bedroom window and wait for Jaycee to come stumbling past, which he did at four thirty every single day of the year, never late, never early, always smack on time and heading for God knows where.

Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag.

Me and Fat Freddy, upon registering the echoing street acoustics and according to our mood at the time, would run to the window, stick out our heads and yell… ‘Hey…twisted man’ or ‘Look at the freak…look at the freak’.

Thankfully, (if that’s the correct way to put it), ‘Hey twisted man’ and “Look at the freak…look at the freak” was as bad as it got.

At that time in our youth neither Fat Freddy or I had ever heard of Victor Hugo or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so Jaycee was spared, ‘The bells…the bells’.

In short, Fat Freddy and me…we were evil little bastards.

For what we put Jaycee through both of us should have been birched within an inch of our lives or even worse.

However and I promise you that this is not meant as an excuse, we were not the worst.

What it was with the kids on my street and is with kids everywhere even today, is the big B. Boredom.

Idle hands and all that stuff.

Some say what kids need is a hobby…and boy did they find one in our neighbourhood.

You can forget train spotting or stamp collecting.

For hobby come pleasurable pastime and activity…read Jaycee.

I didn’t see it and neither did Fat Freddy.

What we got was the aftermath.

We both missed the actual dirty deed because our attention was taken by other things.

Fat Freddie was busy studying himself in his mother’s full-length mirror.

He was licking his lips and admiring the way her wedding dress highlighted his curves.

While I looked on in amazement at the deftness, skill and speed with which he made his way around the room wearing six-inch stilettos, (a skill that would serve him well in later life-but that’s another story) and listened to him pleading, ‘It’s a little tight under the arms, don’t you think’? I almost missed the terrifying screams that were filtering up from the street below.

It was four thirty…Jaycee time.

Odd, but on that particular occasion we had no mind to abuse him. He could have passed below that window and we couldn’t have cared less. Even little shits like us needed a break.

It was the unearthly scream that did it…

In our headlong rush to get to the window, Fat Freddie’s skill with women’s shoes inexplicably left him and he fell, losing two teeth to the corner of the bed. In normal circumstances Fat Freddy, who in those days was an out and out wimp, would have yelled the house down.

As it was, something much more terrible was going on and Fat Freddie’s pain paled into insignificance.

We took up our usual positions at the window and were stunned into silence at what we saw below us.

Jaycee was burning. Jaycee was a column of red fire.

I don’t know what was worse, Jaycee aflame or the group of mutant children clutching cans of lighter fuel and hair spray, who fell about laughing a few yards behind him.

Apart from my horror and my helplessness, the other thing that will always stay with me was the smell.

The odour of burning human flesh wafted up to our vantage point, causing me to puke violently over Fat Freddy and perhaps more seriously, his mother’s wedding dress.

To this day I can’t eat barbecued food.

Fat Freddy never said a word.

His and my total attention was fixed on poor flaming Jaycee as he clumped…dragged…clumped down that terrible and wicked street, now seemingly oblivious to what must have been searing pain. The scream had faded and had given way to…motion.

Not panic. Not fear. Just this insane desire to do what he always did.

Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag.

What kept him going I don’t know. But whatever it was Jaycee was apparently determined to keep his mystery appointment.

It turns out that the screams we heard were not Jaycee’s.

An unknown woman passing by had witnessed the mayhem, clutched at her ears, drew in enough air to deprive us all of oxygen and made a sound like god knows what, then promptly fainted.

Me too.

When I finally returned to the land of the living, the only thing that remained to remind me of the sheer horror of what little we had actually witnessed, was the impression of Jaycee’s footprints that were melted into the tar at the side of the road.

Anyway, Jaycee didn’t die.

He’s still with us and every now and then, a guilty community remembers that terrible day and gets itself together to raise funds to update his wheelchair.

Jaycee’s motorised now and a beacon to us all.

And it has to be said, I do miss the… Clump…drag….clump…drag. lump…drag…. clump…drag of Jaycee on route to…to…wherever.