I tried. I really tried to leave him out of my story. I wanted to keep his crimes to myself and my wife and the therapist. But Uncle Ball attacked me yesterday. He reached out and tried to hit me as hard as he could. And I would have let it go, but he made my cousin deliver the message. My cousins can’t see me as weak. If I am attacked and I pull back and any of my enemies win even one battle, rumors and tales can be spoken about how I regret everything that I did. It’s the very heart of what Guardian did during his war. Never back down from an attack. Never walk away when a bad word is shouted at you. Never show fear. Never give them an inch. I tried to leave him out. But I think in doing so, I empowered him somehow, made him think he could come at me. Anyway, here’s the story. Here’s the story of the most influential person in my life, and the story of how he taught me the exact opposite of everything he was trying to teach me. And in doing so, turned me into the man I am. This is The Sin Eater, the story of Uncle Ball.
I’m not going to be doing a blog blast this time. There will not be a new blog every two and a half to three hours. The way I’ll be working it this time is, there will be a new blog posted every day at 7:30 p.m. Central until the story has been told. I warned him that I was going to be writing this. I warned him and I told him where and what website my blog was set on. So it’s possible he will be reading along with you. I doubt it, but it is possible. If you are there, Uncle Ball, I want you to know I tried to show you mercy, because I realized what you were trying to do as I was becoming a man. But every story in its heart wants to be told. And ours just would not stay hidden any longer.
It was obvious Grandpa Mocking loved me. Rose’s father handed me a quarter every time I came to his house, and me and Less would run to the corner store where we could buy penny candy and tiny ice cream cups for ten cents. He sat me on his lap while he drank his whiskey and smoked his cigarettes, and when I was on that lap, no one could touch me. Grandpa used to press his cigarettes out very deliberately and line them up in his ashtray side by side, then on top of each other, until he had a plateau of butts. He wore a white wife beater, a set of perfect work shoes, pants that were never jeans, never dress pants, and he whispered to me and told me jokes while the rest of the room laughed and the smoke clouds rolled across the table.
It was obvious Uncle Wrath Mocking loved me. Well not obvious, but it was understood. He gave me my first shot of whiskey when I was five. He told me a dirty joke for the first time when I was four, and made me memorize it and tell it to my mom. I didn’t understand it, but Rose did, and though she wanted to beat my ass raw, Bramble was there and he got her laughing.
“Can you see, Bramble? Can you see what that no good bastard of a best friend of yours is doing to our boy?” she said that night.
“Wrath has his way. He loves Jesse more than you think. He is just turning him into a man is all,” Bramble said. “He’ll be a fine man when we are all through with him.”
Rose gathered me up in her arms and hugged me to her chest. She looked at Bramble and shook her head. “Maybe one day, but for now he is my little boy. It is fine for him to be a boy right now.” She grabbed my chubby face, looked me in the eye. She smoothed my hair and shook her head. “Don’t you ever say anything that your Uncle Wrath ever says again to anyone. You got me?”
“Yes, mama.”
That was how my mother got me to keep Uncle Wrath’s secrets. To this day I have kept his sins hidden from the world. Even through all of these books, and every time I have said his name, I still have not spoken of the true darkness of his heart. It is just built in me to keep his secrets.
Grandma Mocking loved me. That part was obvious. She had stories for me every time I saw her. Told me about the things she was doing, things happening at her work, and she talked about every bit of the corners of the house where things collect. Soft dust of a wicked word, or the echo of a hand smacking a face. All of those things were told to me when I was spending time with my Grandma Mocking. She gave me stories. I listened in rapt attention, and when Char took me to his parents’ house, I told his mother every tale that Grandma Mocking had spun.
It wasn’t that I was trying to be a spy. It wasn’t that I was doing anything purposely at all. It was just the story. Char’s mother was teaching me to be a storyteller, meticulously and very purposefully. It wasn’t only the stories of the Mocking house that I told to Char’s mother, but stories of all kinds. Everything I was doing. Everything my friends were doing. She encouraged me to tell the story. She corrected me when my telling was weak. I was supposed to be a Romani history keeper, the teller of tales. Sometimes, but not often, I wonder if every book I write and every post I make on Facebook is not in some way directed at her.
Grandma Mocking was not only good for stories but for Hostess Cakes and candy and cookies that they didn’t sell anywhere else and, and, and, the list goes on. Grandma Mocking was a woman you could count on. And as I was growing and learning the world, I was slowly coming to realize there were few of those.
The Queen of Cats loved me.
Bramble.
All of Uncle Wrath’s crew.
Even sometimes Less.
But without doubt, the one person that I knew loved me more than anyone alive was my Uncle Ball. Uncle Ball was obsessed with me, and I was equally obsessed with him. He was Rose’s youngest brother. Tall, but to a four-year-old everyone is tall. Lean, muscled. Feathered bright red hair parted down the middle and just long enough to show he was young. He wore high top tennis shoes. And I am sure everyone here can agree that high tops are the coolest form of foot wear you can find.
He played basketball in Mitchell Park. He played basketball for his school. Often we would go to his games, but the sound of the cheering and screaming scared me. He played baseball with his friends and he loved to collect baseball cards and talk about baseball incessantly. But of all the things he did, he loved me best.
That is the tragedy of this book. Uncle Ball loved me better than he did almost anything. And in his way, he was good at it. He reached out to me yesterday through his daughter Smily. He yelled at me with a weak message that did very little. It did not scare me, hurt me, or give me any type of regret. All it did was break my heart and piss me off. I had written all of Teardrop Road, Normal Street, and The Keep. I had written a few of the Burnt Ends stories, and in all of it I had kept my dealings with Uncle Ball as quiet as I could. I said only what I absolutely had to say and left the man himself shrouded in mystery.
I can’t do that anymore. I can’t keep this quiet any longer, because if I do, then he will never understand. I left for a reason. I fought his family for a reason. I hate him for a reason. In his message to me yesterday I heard him begging for me to come back in the sternest and most violent way he could think of. Shoving me away with one hand while that hand gripped tight to my arm.
When I was a boy I could count on two hands the number of people I knew loved me. On the first finger was Uncle Ball. That is why the things he did to me and the horrors he shoved upon me were so devastating. As he reads this, he has no idea what I am talking about. I wanted to keep him out of the center of the stage in Reality of the Unreal Mind, but now I see that I can’t.
If Uncle Ball does not see and understand what he did to me to cause me to cut him out of my life, then I owe it to him to tell him.
As much as this is the damnation of Uncle Ball, this is also his salvation. Here and after these pages, he can find peace. He can stop asking himself why I cut him from my life, and finally understand.
Uncle Ball, I cannot come back. I cannot change my name to Mocking. I cannot have you in my life. I cannot do these things because you are a monster. A monster that I have taught myself how to forgive. You do not really understand your life. I do. I can show you where all of it went wrong. So as I tell the world what it is that you did to me, I hope I can also make you see what you are.
Here is our story, Uncle Ball. The one I would have told you on the Porch.
Jesse Teller 
Leave a comment