The Jar and the Juggernaut
by Daniel Ross Goodman
Never in my thirty-one years of life had I imagined that the dimensions
of my existence would be reduced to the miserable six-by-eight feet of
this solitary prison cell.
‘This is not how my life was supposed to end,’ I say to myself during
what I am sure are my last moments on earth. ‘I should by dying sixty
years from now, at home in my bed, surrounded by my family and
friends—not here in this stale, unventilated, windowless prison cell,
with only a single jar of food to eat and this giant steel boot looming
over my head…’
I was arrested on November 1, 2054, and imprisoned the next day for the
crime that everyone seems to be arrested for ever since Prohibition
went into effect five years ago. It was the day after Halloween, the
day when most Prohibition-related arrests tend to occur. I was on high
alert; I was as careful as I could possibly be. I had thoroughly
cleared out my apartment, making sure that there were no traces of
prohibited substances left from the Halloween party that I had hosted
the previous night. I had given away my entire supply—well, almost all
of it—to my friends at the party, knowing that the next day my home
could very well be searched. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to get
rid of my entire supply; I love the forbidden stuff far too much to
have done that. The fact that what I most love is now strictly illegal
to own or consume couldn’t deter me from buying a new batch every week
from the makers of the stuff, all of whom had gone underground ever
since Prohibition went into effect. I would often hear about the new
arrests, the new rounds of roundups every week, and even though I had
begun to worry that they might eventually come for me, and despite my
monthly resolutions to cut myself off from the stuff, I could never
completely bring myself to do so. Simply said, I was addicted; I
couldn’t live without it. And so, after having gotten rid of most of my
supply at the party, I kept a small stash for myself; I hid it inside
an opaque jar of wheat germ and placed the jar inside my refrigerator,
figuring that if my apartment were to be searched, they’d never look in there. I
felt safe—but I should’ve known that these days, during this error of
terror known as Prohibition, no one who loves what I love is ever truly
safe.
At three o’clock in the afternoon the following day, while sitting at
home in my apartment reading a book, I heard a loud knock on my door.
“Police!” shouted a harsh, shrill male voice from behind the door.
“Open up!”
My heart skipped a beat. How had they gotten to me?! Someone at the
party must have tipped them off, I thought; or maybe it was one of my
suppliers who had snitched on me. When my heart resumed beating, it
began to pound franticly, and my breathing became strained; still,
though, I was confident that they would never find my secret stash.
“Police!” the shrill voice rang out again, accompanied by an even
louder knock on my door. “Open up! Open up now or we will break down
this door!”
I tread warily to the door. As soon as I opened it, two tall,
clean-shaven, stoutly built officers, wearing the now-familiar
red-and-white-striped uniforms of the Prohibition police unit marched
into my apartment.
“Raymond Jay,” announced the first officer, a black-haired,
broad-shouldered man, looking at me out of a pair of small, black,
button-shaped eyes. “We have a warrant to search your home. You are
under suspicion of harboring prohibited materials.”
“You can go ahead and search every nook and cranny of my home,” I
responded, thinking that if I maintained a confident appearance they
wouldn’t search for too long, “but you’ll never find anything of that
sort here. I live a completely clean, one-hundred-percent healthy
lifestyle. How you ever got a warrant to search my apartment is beyond
me. Someone must have been telling lies about me, because I haven’t
done anything wrong; everyone who knows me knows that I would never in
a hundred thousand years ever have any of the kind of stuff you think I
have.”
“Be that as it may, Mr. Jay,” said the second officer, a blond-haired,
blue-eyed man with a snub nose and a lantern jaw, brushing me aside and
striding into my kitchen, “we are under orders to search your home. If
what you allege is true, then we’ll be out of your place in no time,
and you can go back to whatever it was you were doing before. But we do
have to search your home, Mr. Jay, so if you will please stand aside…”
“Yes, sir.”
I stood by the wall near the door and watched with a frenziedly
pounding heart as they searched my apartment from top to bottom,
rummaging through my closet, opening up drawers, leafing through
dressers, rifling through my bookshelves, poking through my medicine
cabinet, inspecting my refrigerator and freezer, examining my cupboard,
lifting up my rugs, and even running their hands through the spaces
between my sofa cushions and digging into the pockets of every pair of
pants I own.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Jay,” said the first officer after
a good half hour of searching. “We are satisfied that you are indeed
clean.”
I nodded my head triumphantly, still trying to maintain a façade of
facile self-assurance; internally, though, I felt a boundless sense of
relief.
“We do appreciate your patience,” said the second officer, as both men
moved toward the door, “and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
“Not a problem at all, officers. I hope you have a good rest of your
day.”
“Same to you, Mr. Jay,” said the first officer, tipping his
red-and-white-striped hat.
“Take care, now, Mr. Jay,” said the second officer, walking out of my
apartment and stepping into the hallway.
I nodded my head again and moved toward the door, but before I could
close it all the way, the second officer put his foot between the door
and the doorway.
“Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Jay,” said the officer, reaching into
his left pants pocket and pulling out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper
and plastic cling-wrap. “But I’ve had a really long, busy morning and
haven’t had a chance to eat my lunch yet. I’m usually very careful to
mix flaxseed and wheat germ into my tuna fish, as mandated by the
Government, but I was in such a rush this morning that I completely
forgot to add the wheat germ. I noticed that you have a jar of wheat
germ in your refrigerator. You wouldn’t mind, Mr. Jay, if I sprinkled
some of your wheat germ into my tuna, would you?”
My palms suddenly began to sweat, and my heart began to race.
“Um...uh…well, officer,” I began, swallowing hard, “the thing is that,
uh…you see…my wheat germ is stale….Yes—very stale. In fact, before you
came in, I was just about to go out to the market to pick up a new
jar…you wouldn’t want stale wheat germ, officer, would you?”
“One teaspoon of stale wheat germ never hurt anyone.”
“Well…maybe not…but there’s a grocery store just three blocks away. How
about I go out and pick up some new, fresh, tasty wheat germ for you?
It’ll only take me ten minutes.”
“We have no time to wait, Mr. Jay. We have a very busy schedule today.”
“Five minutes,” I persisted, my heart pounding in my throat.
“Just give me five minutes—I’ll run. And I’ll be back right away with a
whole new jar of fresh, tasty, delicious wheat germ.”
“We don’t have time, Mr. Jay. We have twelve more searches to conduct
before 6 pm. Now if you will please let me have one teaspoon of your
wheat germ, Mr. Jay…” The officer trailed off, looking at me sternly as
if trying to impress upon me that he was an officer of the law and that
if I were to refuse, he’d simply take it anyway; the gnawing
realization set in that I had no choice in the matter. I took the jar
of wheat germ out of the refrigerator and handed it to the officer, my
heart sinking and my face turning ashen.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Jay,” said the officer, taking a teaspoon out
of one of my kitchen drawers. He grasped the jar, and as he opened it
and gazed inside it, he let out a startled gasp and dropped it,
shattering it into a thousand little pieces and scattering my secret
stash of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups across the kitchen floor.
I breathed in deeply, inhaling so hard that I hurt my lungs; the
officers looked at me earnestly but sorrowfully, as if saddened by the
task that the law now required them to carry out.
“Raymond Jay,” declared the first officer, pulling my arms behind my
back as the second officer placed a pair of iron handcuffs around my
trembling wrists, “you are hereby under arrest, pursuant to the
Thirty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which
prohibits the purchase, sale, production, distribution, and consumption
of any junk-food, which includes chocolate, candy, caramel, and
cookies, and any food or beverage item that the United States Food and
Drug Administration has deemed to be unhealthy.”
Then, grabbing my arms and prodding me with a brass baton, the two
candymen pushed me down the hallway and guided me out into the street.
I knew it was pointless to resist; there would be nothing heroic if I
put up a fight. All that was left for me to do, I knew, was to try to
maintain my sanity and composure till the end. They shoved me into the
back of a Prohibition police unit vehicle—a refitted ice cream
truck—turned on the siren (it was still the old, familiar ice cream
truck jingle), and drove off toward the station. I had heard many
reports about the candymen; I had no illusions about who they were or
what they did. I even knew that there were now almost as many candymen
as regular policemen, and that they could come for anyone at any time.
I just never believed that they would actually come for me.
*****
And so here I am, lying prostrate in this solitary cell like a medieval
prisoner being stretched upon the rack. A plastic spout poking through
a slit in the wall is my only source of water; when I’m thirsty, I
twist my head to reach it and drink out of it like a rabbit in a cage.
My only source of food is a clear glass jar filled with Reese’s Peanut
Butter Cups; whenever I finish the jar, a small hole in the wall opens
up and a new batch of Reese’s cups are poured into the jar. I would
have been profoundly grateful to the prison guards for providing me
with my favorite food were it not for the fact that every time I eat a
Reese’s cup, the giant steel boot above my head is lowered an inch. I
have of course tried to restrain myself from eating the Reese’s cups,
but I can only hold out for so long; after two or three days—but much
more often after only two or three hours—the hunger and the desire for
that sweet, chocolatey, peanut-buttery crunch becomes overwhelming, and
I give in. I pluck a cup from the jar, carefully remove that
bright-orange plastic wrapping—how wondrous it was that the good folks
at Reese’s chose my favorite color for my favorite food!—and bite
straight into the rapturous core of the cup, my tongue like a spaceship
penetrating directly into the heart of a pleasure-filled planet; as
soon as I make landfall upon the sphere’s sweet, sugary surface, I
pause, slowly savoring that familiar, irresistible flavor that is the
very definition of gustatory bliss. The boot drops another inch, but I
can never eat just one Reese’s. And so I scoop another cup from out of
the jar, gently remove the round palm-sized piece of joy from its
pumpkin-orange wrapper, and this time begin to bite around its
circumference, my teeth marching like little soldiers around the little
wonder’s jagged edges, parading all the way around its chocolate city
walls before finally bringing down its delicious defenses and
infiltrating into its euphoric peanut-buttery center. The giant boot
above my head drops another inch, but I immediately crave another. I
reach into the jar, unearth another orange-covered treasure, tenderly
take it out of its pumpkin-orange packaging and, as if it is the
chocolate-peanut butter sandwich of my dreams, I break it in two and
eat one glorious half at a time, diminishing my objet de désir
but doubling my pleasure, quel grand plaisir!
The giant boot drops yet another inch, bringing me two-and-a-half
centimeters closer to my death, but I don’t care; I may have hell in my
cell, but I have heaven in my mouth.
No, the greatest torture in this infernal cell comes not from the
gruesome reality of the ever-lowering steel boot above my head, but
from the muffled conversations that I frequently hear on the other side
of this concrete wall. The wall is thick enough to muffle those
conversations, but not thick enough to completely silence them, so all
day long I hear muffled sounds, fragmented voices, and disjointed
statements, but never an entire unbroken conversation. Just yesterday,
I could hear two girls talking to each other; from what I could make
out, it sounded like one of them was on the verge of having a breakdown
because she was afraid that her professor was going to give her a C, and
her friend was trying to talk her off the ledge. "But you met with him,
right?...I don't understand what he wants from me...why don't you just
summarize (inaudible)...wow...he has an ego...that's really
gross...that's nice...I don't know, I think it's your
personality...that's a good thing...yeah, I think so...why?
(laughter)...okay!...she always gives good advice, I'd listen to
her...What'd she say?...Mm-hmm...(laughter)...yes, I do remember...try
and just, like, (inaudible)...it's all gonna be fine...(sigh)..." My
legs were shaking with the annoyance of a scholar working in a library
who keeps getting interrupted by the idle chatter of unchaperoned
children. I couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted to punch through
the wall so that I could beg them to stop talking or whether I wanted
to punch through the wall so that I could actually hear the entire
conversation. But I cannot even make a one-inch dent in these concrete
walls, let alone punch a hole through them; the only way of snuffing
out the god-awfully annoying talking was to snuff myself out. So
desperately did I want to put an end to that particularly torturous
conversation that I swiftly swallowed seven Reese's cups and caused the
boot to drop so low that I am now no longer able to stand in my cell.
But as soon as those Edenic delights were inside my mouth, I
immediately forgot about that most cruel auditory torture, so
completely immersed did I become in the infinite sensory pleasures
playing upon my ecstatic tongue.
*****
I have now been in this cell for ninety-three days, and the giant steel
boot is now within two feet of the cell’s solid cement floor. I lie
flat on the floor like a man being buried alive. I have to contort my
head and neck like a candy-cane to reach the waterspout. The boot has
long since crushed the glass jar, but there are still twenty-two tiny
treats scattered around my head like a halo of orange Easter eggs.
I let out a miserable sigh, but there is barely enough room left to
breathe. The steel boot is now so close to my head that I know that the
next Reese’s cup I eat will be my last. Gingerly, I reach for one last
orange-wrapped bundle of joy—one last sweet, crunchy,
chocolate-peanut-buttery delicacy before all goes black. My deathbed
confession is one last confection, a delicious delight that is
infinitely tastier than any last rite. Slowly—because I want to savor
the experience, but also because I barely have enough energy left to
even blink—I unseal the pumpkin-orange wrapper and take the tasty
morsel out of its warm bed, welcoming it into this cold, cruel world,
but only for a moment. As I chew my final Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, my
mouth fills with bliss and my eyes fill with tears, remembering the
first time all those many Halloweens ago when I had my first
unforgettable taste of that glorious treat, that miraculous synthesis
of chocolate and peanut butter that would be the love of my life and
the agent of my doom.
I chew on the chocolate peanut-buttery pleasure piece for as long as I
can, holding infinity on my taste buds and eternity on the tip of my
tongue. When I finally swallow, I feel my heart rattling and my pulse
slowing, as if my life itself is made of cocoa butter, dextrose,
peanuts, and preservatives; when those hallowed, incomparable
ingredients complete their passageway through my esophagus and finally
dissolve inside the netherworld of my desolate digestive system, I will
cease being, and will melt like the milk chocolate that I have
become—and that I have always truly been—into the ether of eternal
oblivion.
Cold, hard steel now touches my forehead; I close my eyes and grit my
teeth, hoping that it will be over quickly. The steel starts pressing
against my temple, and only one last unswallowed
chocolate-peanut-buttery speck stuck on the roof of my mouth prevents
me from screaming out in agony. I lift my tongue to the roof of my
mouth, vainly trying to peel this one surviving scrap—this scrumptious
ember saved from the fire—off of the ridges of my palate, until—wait!
What it is that? Light? Air? Sound? I see a strange source of light
creeping into my cell, and feel the steel boot beginning to lift from
off of my head. The concrete wall in front of my dust-encrusted face
splits in two, and fresh air floods into my cell.
“Mr. Jay? Mr. Jay? Can you hear me, Mr. Jay?”
It is a woman’s voice—the same voice that I would constantly hear on
the other side of the concrete wall, except now I can hear it in its
full, soothing, blessedly unmuffled state. I swallow a few drops of
saliva that have somehow formed inside my dried out throat; all I can
manage is a startled grunt.
“You can come out now, Mr. Jay.”
I shield my eyes from the light; the sunny glow is too shocking for my
dulled senses, which have become conditioned to the darkness of this
dank, dreary cell.
“You can go home, now, Mr. Jay.”
I labor to pick myself up off of the ground, but I cannot succeed in
standing on my own two feet for more than a few seconds; my wasted
limbs are too weak, my malnourished muscles have entirely atrophied. I
slide back on to the ground like melting ice cream dripping down the
side of the cone.
“Thank you for playing, Mr. Jay. We’ve arranged for a vehicle to
transport you back to your home.”
“Th…th…thank you,” I somehow sputter—my first words in more than three
months—before quickly realizing that something about what she had just
told me seems slightly askew. “Thank you…for playing?”
“Yes, Mr. Jay. Thank you for playing. You’ve been our most successful
contestant in the history of the show.”
“Co…contestant?....Show?...I…I don’t understand…”
“Why, haven’t you ever seen ‘The Jar and the Juggernaut,’ Mr. Jay? It’s
been the highest rated show on television for the past three years.”
“I…I don’t own a television.”
“Really? Then boy have you been missing out, Mr. Jay!”
“I…” I scratch my beard, which now touches the bottom of my chest, and
try to open my eyes, but the light is still too bright; I’m forced to
keep them closed. “I don’t understand…what show…”
“The show that you’ve just been on, Mr. Jay! Oh, silly you, Mr. Jay, I
can’t believe you’ve never even heard of “The Jar and the Juggernaut”!”
“No…I…this? My cell? Inside my cell?...this is a television
show?...but…”
“Don’t you remember that first year after Prohibition, Mr. Jay?”
“You…you mean…after the candymen started coming, and crime
spiked?...when crime levels skyrocketed to never-before-seen
levels?…yes…yes, I remember…all the robberies and assaults, the car
thefts and constant muggings, the rampant vandalism, and much worse…it
was horrible…”
“Well, Mr. Jay, after that first year of Prohibition, the Government
decided that instead of locking up every single violator of Prohibition
in jail forever, it would randomly select one out of every hundred
convicted felons like yourself, place them inside a narrow, solitary
cell like the one you’ve just been in, with nothing to eat but a jar of
the very kind of illegal foodstuff they were found to have been
possessing, and with a giant steel juggernaut perched on top of their
heads—and, as you immediately found out, with every one of the
prohibited foods that they consume, the jar drops another inch. The
Government’s genius was to then place a miniature camera inside the
cells and televise the travails of these random convicted felons like
yourself. Within a year of the premiere of “The Jar and the
Juggernaut,” crime was back down to pre-Prohibition levels; instead of
restless people roaming the streets and making trouble, they were back
sitting in their homes in front of their televisions, riveted by the
spectacle of “The Jar and the Juggernaut.” This show has completely
solved our national crime crisis! You have to admire the Government’s
genius!, don’t you, Mr. Jay? Well, they really fixed it, Mr. Jay, they
really did. And best of all, you, Mr. Jay, have been the most
successful contestant in the history of the show! 93 days, Mr. Jay! Ninety-three!
No prior contestant has ever gone more than sixty days before the
juggernaut has reached their heads! Congratulations, Mr. Jay! We hope
you’ve enjoyed playing. And now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Jay, I need to
go attend to the contestant in the cell next to yours, his jar of
Butterfingers needs to be refilled.”
After she departed, two candymen entered my cell, picked me up off of
my feet, escorted me into a Prohibition vehicle, turned on the siren,
and drove me back to my apartment, which looked exactly the same as on
the day they came to arrest me, save for a flat-screen television which
they installed in my living room—for the purpose, I can only assume, of
keeping me from committing any more crimes.
*****
It has now been seven months since the day I was released from prison.
I now really do live a completely clean, healthy lifestyle—those
terrifying ninety-three days in that dreadful cell left a lasting
impression on me, frightening me from ever trying to violate
Prohibition again. I haven’t gone within three blocks of the corner of
Greenwich Street and Park Drive, the old spot where I used to meet my
Reese’s dealer, for fear of being arrested once again. I wonder
whatever happened to Jordan, my old reliable Reese’s dealer—is he still
in business, still supplying addicts like the outlaw I once was from
his underground stockpile, or have the candymen come for him too?
I can’t bring myself to turn on the television they installed, and I
certainly can’t bring myself to watch “The Jar and the Juggernaut”—the
miserable memories of my own horrifying time inside that cell are still
too vivid, the intermingled feelings of pleasure and horror still too
raw. But every now and then, as I bite into another brussels sprout or
force down yet another mouthful of kale, I remember a better,
friendlier, unhealthier time…a time before Prohibition, a time before
the candymen came, invading our homes and ransacking our cupboards,
extracting the fat from our bodies and the joy from our souls. I
remember those wonderful, lovely, unhealthy days, those carefree days
before the candymen came, and I yearn…I yearn for a return to a
simpler, tastier time; I yearn for just one more taste of that
chocolate, crunchy, peanut-buttery emissary of ecstasy, that
orange-covered avatar of happiness which I still secretly crave with an
unspeakably strong desire. And I think to myself, as the fall pumpkins
begin to decorate the neighborhood doorsteps—as my tantalized eyes once
again come across that bright-orange color that speaks to my soul like
no other color can—maybe, just maybe, when my favorite holiday comes
‘round again, I’ll throw another Halloween party—or venture out to the
corner of Greenwich and Park—I’ll risk it all, the horror of the cell
and the dread of the juggernaut—all for just one more taste of that
love that dare not speak its name. It’s sweeter than any sweet potato,
scarcer than any crown jewel of the queen; it’s all I truly want in
this world—and it’s all I want for Halloween.
THE END
© 2019 Daniel Ross Goodman
Bio: Daniel Ross Goodman is a writer from western Massachusetts.
A former contributor to the Books & Arts section of The Weekly
Standard and current contributor to the National Review, he has
published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and
newspapers, and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen
literary journals, including aaduna, The Cortland Review, Aurora Wolf,
and The Acentos Review. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America in New York and is studying English
& Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
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