Essay Questions

Who is Jackson?

The main character linking these stories together is Claud Cubbage. He is a man always on the lookout for a scheme or scam or money-making opportunity. He is well-liked by many friends and even shows a mutual affection for a girlfriend in one story. Even so, the closest character to Claud is his beloved greyhound, Jackson, affectionately nicknamed “Jackie.” The story “Rummins” practically begins with a long, heartfelt description of the sublime perfection of canine beauty that is Jackie. In the story about his girlfriend Clarice—“Mr. Hoddy”—his response to learning that her father can’t abide greyhounds is simple, effective, “Oh Christ.” And, of course, Jackie takes front and center in the story “Mr. Feasey” as he becomes the vehicle by which Claud once again vainly pursues a get-rich-quick scheme which relies upon a slower racing lookalike to his one true companion.

Why is the title character running away at the end of “Rummins” while Bert has started to scream?

The story is told partially as a forward-moving narrative and partially as a flashback to an earlier period. Taken together, both the present-day action and the events of the past serve to become a mystery about whatever happened to “Old Jimmy.” Jimmy was a vagabond who used to parcel out his days getting drunk, doing maintenance work for the playground or finding places to snooze among the local farms. Then one day after work began on a hayrick on his farm, the nasty farmer Rummins and Jimmy got into an argument and Jimmy just disappeared. The present day story revolves around Health Officer having sent a ratcatcher out to Rummins’ farm to kill the rodents with the process of collecting now beginning. The two stories meld together by the end when Rummins begins to run for his life knowing that Bert’s screaming is because they have finally located the whereabouts of Jimmy’s rat-ravaged dead body which the farmer can no longer hide.