Tom Tucker’s Dead Body

By Terence Patrick Hughes

About the Work

Tom Tucker’s Dead Body drops you straight into a summer evening on a front porch, where the narrator — half-distracted by a fuzzy Red Sox broadcast — gets pulled into the mystery of a dead body that vanishes as soon as Tom claims he saw it. What begins as a bit of casual neighborhood drama pulls wider, revealing the way kids mythologize danger, the way towns bury what they can’t name, and the thin, flickering line between what’s real and what we convince ourselves we saw.

Hughes uses the transistor-radio play-by-play as a counterpoint: a hazy soundtrack of hope, static, and disappointment that mirrors the uncertainty of the boys’ discovery. The piece captures the texture of American childhood — curiosity, boredom, bravado, and the sudden proximity of something darker.

Publication History

• Published in: Ignatian Literary Magazine

• Link: https://ignatianlitmag.com/2023/05/09/tom-tuckers-dead-body/

• Year: 2023

Excerpt

TOM TUCKER SAID HE SAW A DEAD BODY BUT when we got there it was gone. I had been minding my business that early evening outside of the house, transistor radio set against the top riser of the front steps, barely catching the signal of the Red Sox game with enough staticky in-and-out data for me to follow with limited frustration. Except, when there’s a hometown home run because it’s always “there’s a drive! . . . ckshckjk . . . way back, way back! . . . crshjkchchskch . . .” and by the time Coleman or Petrocelli’s call breaks through the garbled web of noise it’s too late, the batter’s rounding the bases, or by the deflated tone of Coleman, who seems to live and die with each blast, you know that it was caught on the warning track or at the wall, another spark of glory falling just short of its heroic potential.

Critical Notes

A sharp, nostalgic, slightly eerie piece that captures childhood bravado and the way danger flickers at the edges of ordinary life.
— Ignatian Literary Magazine Reader Response

Related Works

If you enjoyed Tom Tucker’s Dead Body, you may also like:

• Death Became Them (death + community response to it)

• So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star (nostalgia fronting a sharper ache)

Inquiries

For reprints or rights: admin@terencepatrickhughes.com

Image Credit

Image generated using AI, art-directed to reflect the atmosphere of Tom Tucker’s Dead Body.