fic: sixteen tons
the black donnellys. jenny/tommy. ~1700 words. The first time she kills a man he deserves it, no question there. But before the blood has hit the ground she thinks of Tommy.
note: first stab at the fandom so I'm a bit worried. Also, this is what happens when class is canceled, I finish things.
You coulda made a safer bet
But what you break is what you get
You wake up in the bed you make
Lucky You [The National]
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
The Big Sleep [Raymond Chandler]
This city’s belonged to Donnellys so long no one can remember a time when it didn’t, Pa Donnelly would have said had he lived long enough to form the words.
Jenny twists her fingers through her hair. Pulls the strands up, tying them with a clip to the back of her skull, and it’s all going to fall down again; it always does. The first time she kills a man he deserves it, no question there. But before the blood has hit the ground she thinks of Tommy. Thinks that she understands him now because the first time Tommy killed a man he deserved it, no question.
She puts the cigarette back up to her lips, inhales sharp and the night swallows her sigh. Cigarettes were high school. Smoke passing between her and Tommy, forming something almost like a bridge there that neither of them ever bothered to cross. They always thought they’d have time.
But the thing is this city has belonged to Donnellys longer than anyone can remember and in high school Tommy and Jenny were the bad kids. No, that isn’t true; they were the goods kids who were just a little too curious for their own well being.
Funny. You would have thought it’d be Tommy who hung Jenny Reilly eventually, but at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a bit of old fashioned jealousy that drove the final nail into her coffin. But there she goes mixing her metaphors again, whiskey does this to her. Burns a whole in her stomach and she likes it because for once she doesn’t have to think about her heart.
Dad’s asleep upstairs, quietly secure in the knowledge that everything is right with the world. Parents lie to us until we’re old enough to lie to them and there’s a phone ringing somewhere, her hands small against the handle. Somewhere another a Donnelly lies in a hospital.
This city belongs to the Donnellys. The price just happens to be blood.
They bury Ma Donnelly in her favorite dress. The whole neighborhood comes and Tommy’s eyes are red and Jenny circles his wrist with her fingers, feels the bones under his skin but he isn’t there. He isn’t there
“I could have stopped this,” he’ll whisper to her later. On his knees in front of the crucifix, praying praying praying almost like he believes. And Jenny will look up into the face of a man who died for all our sins (yes, even Tommy Donnelly’s. Yes, even Jenny Reilly’s) and she won’t say a single thing.
The word on her tongue is “yes.” Yes you could have, Tommy. Yes, Tommy, you could have stopped this. Yes, Tommy, you can do anything. But that’s a secret she’ll take to the grave. She won’t say a single thing and Tommy will collapse. He’ll cry into her neck, words that don’t mean anything slipping past his lips and someone will walk by and say, “Those two were always good kids.”
The neighborhood will keep saying this decades after it stops being true.
Sometimes she still dreams. Mostly of a past that never existed, kisses that they never shared in a janitor’s closet at school. Tommy’s hands slipping up her skirt, lips against her neck while the principle walked past and she bit her tongue to stop the noise. Mostly she dreams of some approximation of innocence and isn’t that a knife to the heart.
Other nights it’s Samson that haunts her. The way his body barely made a sound when it hit the floor. The dull of thud of the pipe against his skull, blood flying everywhere and how she wasn’t angry. How she wasn’t anything, not in that moment.
Samson haunts her but less than he should, all things considered. Jenny learned to shoot a gun in ninth grade; Jimmy still thought he had a chance with her and she didn’t learn how to say no until the next summer. He put his arm parallel to hers, helped her line up the target and when she pulled the trigger, the recoil didn’t send her tumbling.
Samson doesn’t haunt Jenny nearly as much as he should.
In school she used to play dumb. Used to give the wrong answer even though she always knew the right one. It was a neighborhood thing, women on street corners saying, “You won’t ever catch a man with a mouth like that.” The very same women who were smart enough to run things without anyone noticing, but that was a hypocrisy lost on her for years. Jenny believed their words, not their actions and that would have sunk her eventually but Helen Donnelly put a stop to it.
“What’re you doing, Jenny girl? You’ll stop this. You’ll stop this now.” Helen’s hands tight around her elbows, squeezing too hard and it’d been six years since Bobby had died but she still had something dark in her eyes, something that marked her as a widow to anyone brave enough to look.
Jenny wasn’t brave, still isn’t, but she was headstrong and that served her much better. She picked up books again after that. Victorian romances that Ma liked but hadn’t read and crime novels, dirty stories about dirty men that Pop would’ve thrown out if he’d seen.
Helen Donnelly believed in books, in learning nearly as much as she believed in God on days except for Sunday and it really shouldn’t surprise anyone when Sean goes back to school after the funeral.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone and it’s hard to say if it does. Nobody talks about Sean’s schooling, about where the money came from or anything like that. What nobody really talks about is Tommy. About Tommy whose with the union guys more days than he isn’t. About Tommy who eats lunch with Nicky Cottero and who went to Dokey’s funeral a day after his mother’s and spoke about responsibility like he meant it. Nobody talks about Tommy, not where Jenny can hear, and nobody talks about how Tommy still doesn’t carry a gun.
This is a story about bad men. About bad men who love bad women who love them back. Really this is a story about love but that’s a simplification; a hand-waved explanation, if you will.
This is a story about people and about family and that’s what Joey Ice Cream will say one day, one day coming real soon. But Joey’s what people who read books call an unreliable narrator and what people Jenny knows call an outsider. Joey might have sat front row center but Jenny was up on the screen.
Jenny knows things no one else ever will, and she isn’t telling. Not about the day Jimmy started hating her (tenth grade and he had nice hair and a dangerous rep. Actually, tenth grade and she wasn’t a virgin, not for a while, and she wanted a Donnelly but couldn’t get the right one. Jimmy had nice hair and a dangerous rep and when he pushed inside her he seemed surprised. She laughed around, “don’t be stupid, Jimmy”. He never forgave her), not about the night Huey died and the blood at the Firecracker.
Jenny knows all of Tommy’s secrets because most of them are about her. And Jenny isn’t telling, she isn’t telling anyone.
This is a story about bad people.
She and Tommy have dinner once a week. Once a week for two years and then her father dies and they marry a month later. A civil ceremony, just her and Tommy and the judge, Kevin standing in the back biting his lip until bleeds.
“We shoulda told Jimmy.”
“Let me worry about Jimmy, Kevin.”
Tommy’s still saying the same lines and there’s comfort to that. Years have passed since their childhood, eras even and Tommy is still Tommy. He isn’t really; he’s Tommy Donnelly now said with a particular inflection she can’t master but he’s still there. He still sits across from her every morning, drinks a cup of coffee, fingers itching for a pencil he won’t touch. He’s still Tommy, every Thursday night over dinner for two years and he’s still Tommy, her Tommy, Helen’s Tommy on a cold Tuesday afternoon when the justice of the peace calls them husband and wife.
He has a ring for her. That shouldn’t surprise her but it does and Kevin forgets his worries for a second and whistles from the back as they kiss, laughs when Tommy dips her and all little girls dream of their wedding day. All little girls do and Jenny did and she had that wedding, had the white dress and her hand tied to Dad’s as she went down the aisle and had the church music. Jenny had the dream wedding but it didn’t take, it wasn’t forever.
This isn’t forever either.
(Forever will be on an autumn night, windy and silent, and some young gun a bit too angry and a bit too brash rounding up a gang of stone-cold terrified killers and they’ll put six bullets in Tommy’s heart, not counting the four that wind up in Jenny’s body.
Forever will be the bloodiest war the neighborhood has ever seen, Jimmy’s reign of terror ending lives quicker than even the Italians can keep up with and Tommy silent, for once with no word of advice, six feet under.
Forever will be Joey in a jail cell, ten years into his life sentence, uttering the words, “let me tell you about the Donnelly brothers,” for a final time as the warden comes to deliver the news.
That is what forever will be. Tommy and Jenny Donnelly forever.)
She smokes more as the years pass. Gives up a thousand other habits, biting her nails, drinking too much, too much coffee, too much gin but she smokes more.
Tommy doesn’t like it. Tommy wants her to stop, says with earnest eyes, “I wish you’d quit.”
“Well I wish you wouldn’t-“
That’s the closest she ever comes to saying anything. That’s the closest she ever comes to regretting.
note: first stab at the fandom so I'm a bit worried. Also, this is what happens when class is canceled, I finish things.
You coulda made a safer bet
But what you break is what you get
You wake up in the bed you make
Lucky You [The National]
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
The Big Sleep [Raymond Chandler]
This city’s belonged to Donnellys so long no one can remember a time when it didn’t, Pa Donnelly would have said had he lived long enough to form the words.
Jenny twists her fingers through her hair. Pulls the strands up, tying them with a clip to the back of her skull, and it’s all going to fall down again; it always does. The first time she kills a man he deserves it, no question there. But before the blood has hit the ground she thinks of Tommy. Thinks that she understands him now because the first time Tommy killed a man he deserved it, no question.
She puts the cigarette back up to her lips, inhales sharp and the night swallows her sigh. Cigarettes were high school. Smoke passing between her and Tommy, forming something almost like a bridge there that neither of them ever bothered to cross. They always thought they’d have time.
But the thing is this city has belonged to Donnellys longer than anyone can remember and in high school Tommy and Jenny were the bad kids. No, that isn’t true; they were the goods kids who were just a little too curious for their own well being.
Funny. You would have thought it’d be Tommy who hung Jenny Reilly eventually, but at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a bit of old fashioned jealousy that drove the final nail into her coffin. But there she goes mixing her metaphors again, whiskey does this to her. Burns a whole in her stomach and she likes it because for once she doesn’t have to think about her heart.
Dad’s asleep upstairs, quietly secure in the knowledge that everything is right with the world. Parents lie to us until we’re old enough to lie to them and there’s a phone ringing somewhere, her hands small against the handle. Somewhere another a Donnelly lies in a hospital.
This city belongs to the Donnellys. The price just happens to be blood.
They bury Ma Donnelly in her favorite dress. The whole neighborhood comes and Tommy’s eyes are red and Jenny circles his wrist with her fingers, feels the bones under his skin but he isn’t there. He isn’t there
“I could have stopped this,” he’ll whisper to her later. On his knees in front of the crucifix, praying praying praying almost like he believes. And Jenny will look up into the face of a man who died for all our sins (yes, even Tommy Donnelly’s. Yes, even Jenny Reilly’s) and she won’t say a single thing.
The word on her tongue is “yes.” Yes you could have, Tommy. Yes, Tommy, you could have stopped this. Yes, Tommy, you can do anything. But that’s a secret she’ll take to the grave. She won’t say a single thing and Tommy will collapse. He’ll cry into her neck, words that don’t mean anything slipping past his lips and someone will walk by and say, “Those two were always good kids.”
The neighborhood will keep saying this decades after it stops being true.
Sometimes she still dreams. Mostly of a past that never existed, kisses that they never shared in a janitor’s closet at school. Tommy’s hands slipping up her skirt, lips against her neck while the principle walked past and she bit her tongue to stop the noise. Mostly she dreams of some approximation of innocence and isn’t that a knife to the heart.
Other nights it’s Samson that haunts her. The way his body barely made a sound when it hit the floor. The dull of thud of the pipe against his skull, blood flying everywhere and how she wasn’t angry. How she wasn’t anything, not in that moment.
Samson haunts her but less than he should, all things considered. Jenny learned to shoot a gun in ninth grade; Jimmy still thought he had a chance with her and she didn’t learn how to say no until the next summer. He put his arm parallel to hers, helped her line up the target and when she pulled the trigger, the recoil didn’t send her tumbling.
Samson doesn’t haunt Jenny nearly as much as he should.
In school she used to play dumb. Used to give the wrong answer even though she always knew the right one. It was a neighborhood thing, women on street corners saying, “You won’t ever catch a man with a mouth like that.” The very same women who were smart enough to run things without anyone noticing, but that was a hypocrisy lost on her for years. Jenny believed their words, not their actions and that would have sunk her eventually but Helen Donnelly put a stop to it.
“What’re you doing, Jenny girl? You’ll stop this. You’ll stop this now.” Helen’s hands tight around her elbows, squeezing too hard and it’d been six years since Bobby had died but she still had something dark in her eyes, something that marked her as a widow to anyone brave enough to look.
Jenny wasn’t brave, still isn’t, but she was headstrong and that served her much better. She picked up books again after that. Victorian romances that Ma liked but hadn’t read and crime novels, dirty stories about dirty men that Pop would’ve thrown out if he’d seen.
Helen Donnelly believed in books, in learning nearly as much as she believed in God on days except for Sunday and it really shouldn’t surprise anyone when Sean goes back to school after the funeral.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone and it’s hard to say if it does. Nobody talks about Sean’s schooling, about where the money came from or anything like that. What nobody really talks about is Tommy. About Tommy whose with the union guys more days than he isn’t. About Tommy who eats lunch with Nicky Cottero and who went to Dokey’s funeral a day after his mother’s and spoke about responsibility like he meant it. Nobody talks about Tommy, not where Jenny can hear, and nobody talks about how Tommy still doesn’t carry a gun.
This is a story about bad men. About bad men who love bad women who love them back. Really this is a story about love but that’s a simplification; a hand-waved explanation, if you will.
This is a story about people and about family and that’s what Joey Ice Cream will say one day, one day coming real soon. But Joey’s what people who read books call an unreliable narrator and what people Jenny knows call an outsider. Joey might have sat front row center but Jenny was up on the screen.
Jenny knows things no one else ever will, and she isn’t telling. Not about the day Jimmy started hating her (tenth grade and he had nice hair and a dangerous rep. Actually, tenth grade and she wasn’t a virgin, not for a while, and she wanted a Donnelly but couldn’t get the right one. Jimmy had nice hair and a dangerous rep and when he pushed inside her he seemed surprised. She laughed around, “don’t be stupid, Jimmy”. He never forgave her), not about the night Huey died and the blood at the Firecracker.
Jenny knows all of Tommy’s secrets because most of them are about her. And Jenny isn’t telling, she isn’t telling anyone.
This is a story about bad people.
She and Tommy have dinner once a week. Once a week for two years and then her father dies and they marry a month later. A civil ceremony, just her and Tommy and the judge, Kevin standing in the back biting his lip until bleeds.
“We shoulda told Jimmy.”
“Let me worry about Jimmy, Kevin.”
Tommy’s still saying the same lines and there’s comfort to that. Years have passed since their childhood, eras even and Tommy is still Tommy. He isn’t really; he’s Tommy Donnelly now said with a particular inflection she can’t master but he’s still there. He still sits across from her every morning, drinks a cup of coffee, fingers itching for a pencil he won’t touch. He’s still Tommy, every Thursday night over dinner for two years and he’s still Tommy, her Tommy, Helen’s Tommy on a cold Tuesday afternoon when the justice of the peace calls them husband and wife.
He has a ring for her. That shouldn’t surprise her but it does and Kevin forgets his worries for a second and whistles from the back as they kiss, laughs when Tommy dips her and all little girls dream of their wedding day. All little girls do and Jenny did and she had that wedding, had the white dress and her hand tied to Dad’s as she went down the aisle and had the church music. Jenny had the dream wedding but it didn’t take, it wasn’t forever.
This isn’t forever either.
(Forever will be on an autumn night, windy and silent, and some young gun a bit too angry and a bit too brash rounding up a gang of stone-cold terrified killers and they’ll put six bullets in Tommy’s heart, not counting the four that wind up in Jenny’s body.
Forever will be the bloodiest war the neighborhood has ever seen, Jimmy’s reign of terror ending lives quicker than even the Italians can keep up with and Tommy silent, for once with no word of advice, six feet under.
Forever will be Joey in a jail cell, ten years into his life sentence, uttering the words, “let me tell you about the Donnelly brothers,” for a final time as the warden comes to deliver the news.
That is what forever will be. Tommy and Jenny Donnelly forever.)
She smokes more as the years pass. Gives up a thousand other habits, biting her nails, drinking too much, too much coffee, too much gin but she smokes more.
Tommy doesn’t like it. Tommy wants her to stop, says with earnest eyes, “I wish you’d quit.”
“Well I wish you wouldn’t-“
That’s the closest she ever comes to saying anything. That’s the closest she ever comes to regretting.