Countdown: The Top 20 Jack Ketchum Works of Short Fiction--#13

[For the previous entry on the Countdown, click here.]


#13. "Bully"

Since readers might not be familiar with this 2010 tale (published in the UK anthology Postscripts #22/23 - The Company He Keeps), I won't go into too-specific detail regarding its plot.  But I do want to make note of some of the story's strengths:

First and foremost, "Bully" is a fine slice of American Gothic.  The horrors hidden behind closed doors, the dark side of everyday life in Anytown, U.S.A.: Ketchum captures these perfectly in this narrative concerning a drunkard father with a penchant not just for mean-spirited antics (e.g. knuckle-crushing  handshakes) but also vicious physical abuse of his wife.  Dishing the dirt on his despicable old man, exposing him for the monster he really was, the protagonist Jeff McFee reveals a childhood marked by incidents of terrible violence and emotional scarring (there's a reason Jeff "can't ride a horse to this day").  These events transpired on a family farm in rural Sussex County, New Jersey, leading to some harrowing discoveries both under the front porch and at the bottom of a well.

The story is expertly structured so as to build suspense.  An
unnamed female narrator, Jeff's "third cousin once removed," has the visited the man (now an NYU law professor) in his New York City apartment because she's determined to learn the full story of a family tragedy that none of her closest relatives seem to want to discuss.  Her curiosity is soon coupled by the reader's, as key
elements are hinted at but their full explanation is held in abeyance until later in Jeff's account.  By looking to bring long-past events to light, the narrator also unwittingly sets the adult Jeff down a dark path.

"Bully" features a zinger of a closing line, but this tale of "belated revenge" (to borrow Ketchum's own phrase in the author's note attached to the story) does not present a neat, facilely moralistic wrap-up.  Yes, tables are turned and comeuppance is transacted, but there's less a sense of closure for Jeff's character than an uneasy feeling that this is a truly haunted figure.  Jeff's psychological well-being is called into question by his admitted hearkening to a ghostly voice.  Downing drink after drink in the course of the story, Jeff also appears to be transforming into the very person he has abhorred most.  And perhaps worst of all, based on Jeff's final revelation, the titular pejorative technically applies to him just as well.