by Chris Lynch
“No. That’s not-”
Another knock. I rush to open it.
Jarrod puts up both hands in that “don’t beat me up” sign.
I drive straight through that sign.
I burst through the doorway, grab him with both hands, drive him into the opposite wall. Then I begin slapping him sloppy. Backhand and forehand, across the mouth, bringing out blood from both sides and spraying it around the wall behind him.
I have so many things to say to him, to ask him, like why the hell did you do this, like what were you thinking, like are you a total mental defective or are you criminally sadistic, but I cannot think of one of those questions or any of its answers that are not going to flip the switch that will turn this beating into something more like violence, until I simply make the carefully reasoned decision to just keep on. So I hit him, belt him, slap, smack-don’t close the fist, Dan, don’t close the fist-until he is just too heavy for me to hold up anymore with Lucy on my back, pounding and even biting at my ear, so I drop him against the baseboard.
Where he slumps, sobbing and bleeding, the hot coffees drooling out of the bag in his left hand, and some manner of fresh-baked goods hotly greasing their way out of the other.
He brought us breakfast.
My whole body is shaking with this.
Look at him.
Dan. Danny. Look at him.
I step back and slam the door shut. Never happened.
“What has happened to you?” Lucy says, opening the door. Jarrod is scrabbling to his feet, the breakfast left as a dying, oozing thing on the floor. He gives up on standing and joins it there, sliding right down the wall with his back.
“Criminal stupidity,” I say in Jarrod’s direction. “Just add it to the list. Because thanks to you, they will be here any minute with a long list of all our crimes and misdemeanors, and a very short list of our futures. For those of us who had them.”
Jarrod leans on the wall for support, tries to hold his blood in with his hand over his mouth, holds his balance with his other hand flat on the floor. Tries to talk to me. “It’s okay, Danny Boy. It’s okay, ’cause I told Lucy to turn off her phone.”
This. This is what Da is trying to warn me about. Be cool, keep your wits about you. Decide what needs to be done and be prepared to do it. Your head rules. Your head is the almighty, your heart is the devil, deceptor.
Stupidity is a crime, punishable and unacceptable, no matter how nice a guy is.
“Lucy?”
She will not trifle with me here, this much I know.
“Did you turn your phone off?”
“No, Dan. In fact, I was talking on it mostly the whole time I followed behind Jarrod’s car.”
I stare flames at Jarrod in front of me, listen to my sister as she walks around behind me to check the death-sleep of the old man. I know his breathing like nobody does. I know he’s fine.
“They did send me for you, Dan,” she says. “Nobody is coming after you yet, because they sent me. It’s me, right? Lucy. Don’t be all paranoid. I’m giving you a chance. To just bring him back. Let it go. He has done wicked things, Dan. More than you even know, I’m sure.”
“Sure? Being sure is for chumps, Lucy.”
“Fine, whatever. But he is dangerous.”
“You know who he’s a danger to? Only to the guys who are just like him. Or just like he used to be. He’s harmless, Luce.”
“He is dangerous. Seems like he’s making you dangerous, too.”
“We are not dangerous. We are misinterpreted.”
“Fine, whatever.”
“Please stop saying that,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Right. The thing is, they have a procedure now that can help him. Because of who he is, he’s lucky. He has friends, he has access. He needs this, and I think you should make it possible.”
She is making me angry. I breathe slowly and think, head over heart.
The stillness is torn by Jarrod’s unexpected contribution.
“Makes a lot of sense to me,” he says, all mush-mouthed.
And it’s like somebody way off, much farther up the pipeline, has just turned a valve and let off about 50 percent of the pressure. I feel the powerful urge to laugh.
It makes a lot of sense.
To Jarrod.
It makes sense, to Jarrod.
I walk up to him, the mess at the base of the wall outside the little room above the porn shop. He cowers like I am there to stomp him into a form of lifelessness different from the one he already inhabits.
“No,” I say, laughing a little, reassuring him. If there is such a thing as a lovable toxic sight, this is it. I reach out and playfully grab each of his ears. I toggle his head around, and around, and he smiles, all blood and innocence.
You’d have to be a beast, I think, looking at the blood.
“Please, Dan,” he says, and I notice he stops smiling, tears are in his eyes. “Please? I won’t… you’re hurting me. Dan-o, it’s me…”
I am squeezing his ears now. Twisting them, pulling them, tearing a little.
Jarrod puts his hands up, but does nothing to stop me hurting him. He lays his hands lightly on top of mine, and I feel it.
“Jesus,” I say, taking my hands off his ears, placing them alongside his cheeks.
He stays frozen there, covering his ears. “Sorry, Dan-o,” he says. “Sorry.”
I nod at him. What I want to do now is to hug him. Instead, I just hold his cheeks, just like that. “I am protecting my grandfather,” I say, pathetically. It feels true. It feels stupid. I am worthless. I can’t protect anybody.
I feel his jaw muscles flex beneath my fingers as he speaks, “Do you think your grandfather might be protected by your pulling my ears off?”
That answer should be easy.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
He nods. “Okay, but if you do, go ahead.”
Lucy is tapping my shoulder. I look up.
“Do you set bunnies on fire these days too, big man?”
She tugs me up away from Jarrod and walks over to where Da lies.
“Hiya, Granddad,” Lucy says, as the Old Boy stirs.
She has sat on the side of his bed and is brushing a sad strand of his yellowed gray hair aside. I have turned in time to see his dawning, blinking, squinting entry into this weird and wondrous world that has bloomed in his absence.
Then I see his eyes go wide with terror and shock, followed by his hand shooting out like a bolt.
He is choking Lucy with such strength they are both instantly blue with the strain.
“Da,” I say, jumping down and prying at his fingers. His has a grip like an eagle’s talon.
“Ella,” he rasps. His wife. Our grandmother.
Lucy gags, tries screaming.
I have to punch him. I do, twice, in the cheek.
She jumps up, clutching at her own throat. He rolls over and cowers, panting, as if she was the one who attacked him.
“It’s the condition, Lucy,” I say. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? He didn’t mean to hurt you. He hasn’t had his meds yet.”
She is whistle-breathing, but certainly it is at least partly an act.
“We are not going with you, Lucy.”
She wheezes.
“You could help us out, though. Just forget you found us. Give us a chance. He deserves a chance. I have to save him.”
She chokes again. Very dramatically.
“Start running, brother,” she says. “I couldn’t care less if you saved him now. I was never really even into him before, frankly. Now… to hell with him.”
She walks to the door, where she walks just about into Matt.
“Well,” he says approvingly, “now we’re getting somewhere. Is this a party?”
She shoves past him, steps over Jarrod. Da squeals something unintelligible behind me, and I feel that urge to laugh again.
That urge goes away very quickly.
“Danny!” Lucy shrieks from the hallway.
&n
bsp; I rush out to find her path blocked by one of the other nightcrawlers Matt has rented a room to. He is almost as burly as the landlord, but a whole lot more oily. He is standing spread across the whole narrow hallway. He has a hand down his sweatpants and the other one is pawing the air in Lucy’s direction.
I run down the hall, practically knocking my sister down on the way to the guy. I crash right into him, and he is soft. He doesn’t move much, but he is backed off.
“Jeez, pal,” he says, like he is unaware of anything unright on his part. Like he is a victim of something.
“Did he touch you?” I ask my sister.
“Only… just, nothing much, no matter.”
“Just get out of here, right?” I say, pointing to his open door and making a stupid little fist with my other hand.
“Whatever, whatever,” he says, still working his pants hand. As he backs away he looks at Lucy with a leer and the most stomach-churning fat-lizard tongue flick imaginable.
Lucy actually makes a retching sound.
“Just get in there, creep,” I say, so tough.
“That’s it?” Da says from just outside our door.
I am surprised to find him there when I turn. “What?” I say.
“That’s your sister,” Da says with naked disgust for me.
“I recognize her, thanks.”
“It’s fine now,” Lucy says. “Leave it.”
“That is your sister.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You can’t figure that out? You get all worked up to smack the crap out of your defenseless little junkie friend, and suddenly you run fresh out of outrage, is that it?”
“All right, leave it, will you? I feel bad enough over-”
“You know what you are supposed to do.”
“No, I don’t, Da. Leave it alone. I did enough.”
“Yes, you do know. What, is little Lucy supposed to defend herself? Or maybe you just want to come back over this way, punch Jarrod around a little more, make yourself feel better, that’ll show ’em, huh?”
“Stop it, Da,” Lucy says.
He speaks, low and direct, like straight into my skull, like she’s not even there anymore. “You know, Young Man.”
“Really? I do? Do I?”
“No!” Lucy shouts.
Jarrod makes a low oh-no sound and disappears into the room. Matt starts making his way toward us, smiling. Da is right behind him.
“Shut the hell up out there, I’m trying to concentrate,” the greasy man calls. I look into the room and he is lying on top of the bed, still looking out our way. And he is working it.
Even his bedspread looks made of bacon fat.
“Oh, no, you are not,” I say and stomp into his room.
The man gets to his feet, but I meet him with two hands clamped hard on his throat. I squeeze his neck and drive him backward, bouncing his head crisp off the wall.
“No,” Lucy shouts, sounding angrier. At me? How’s that work?
“This what you mean, Da?” I say as I choke the guy purple.
“It’s a start,” Da says. “Nobody messes with your nearest and dearest. That cannot happen.”
“Am I a good boy, then?”
“Eh, pretty good,” he says.
“All right, all right,” the guy rasps.
“Funny with those hands, are you, pal? Hey, Matt,” I call. “Have a seat here for a second, wouldja?”
Matt comes over and has a bulky sit-down on the man’s chest. All the wind oofs out of the guy, but he seems happy enough to be breathing. His arm dangles out to the side, and I grab it.
“This is your business hand, is that right?”
“Yes, I noticed that too,” Da says.
“Do I know what to do, Old Boy?”
“I think you do, Young Man.”
I think I do, too. I seize that disgusting paw, and I slam it flat on the squat night table. I pick up the marble cube of a night lamp, like a big, sharp-edge paperweight with a shade, and I slam it down on the hand. I slam it down on the hand. The man screams with horror as once more I slam the lamp down on his pervy, hairy hand.
With the third slam I feel the seam crack in the marble. With the forth, the seam splits completely and the man stops screaming and starts whimpering.
That’s what we wanted. You don’t always know beforehand when you want something, but you know when you get it.
As bad as I felt after smacking Jarrod around, before and after smacking Jarrod around, that is how good I feel now.
What the hell happened?
I don’t remember when I felt better about myself.
As I walk out of the room I hear Matt behind me telling the guy, “You’re going to have to pay for that lamp, Sammy.”
“Where is Lucy?” I ask Da.
He shrugs. “I think she left in the commotion.”
“Luce?” I call.
“Feel the difference?” he says, almost warmly.
I go running after her.
“It had to be done,” Da says as I run. “It had to be done, and you done it, Young Man.”
I catch up with her a hundred yards up the street, almost to her car. I put my arm around her shoulders and walk with her.
“So, have you enjoyed your big day out up here? Be planning another holiday here sometime soon? I never noticed before, but you’re kind of a trouble magnet, you know that?”
She shoves my arm away and practically out of its socket. “This place is a bucket of pus,” she snaps. “You guys should buy a house here, settle down, run for city council.”
“Hey,” I protest, “I was just up there defending your virtue.”
“My virtue does not need you. And anyway, I don’t know what you were doing, but you weren’t doing that, that’s for sure. Being your grandfather’s perverse, violent sock puppet, that’s what it looked like to me.”
She presses the button on her key ring and her car beep-beeps at us.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “It is so much more than that. It is so much more.”
She acts as if I am not even talking. She gets into the car, starts it up, revs the engine a lot more than necessary. She rolls down the window.
“I do hope you come back from this trip, Danny. I’d really love to see you again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighs. “Don’t get in front of my car. Violence runs in families, you know. And I’m in the mood.”
I laugh. I jump out as she pulls from the curb.
She guns it, clips me at the hip, spinning me around and leaving me bouncing on the pavement.
11
“Valhalla.”
That is Da’s answer when I ask him where he wants to go. If he has any thoughts about where to go next, because time is the thing we have the least of, of all the things we have very little of.
Like money, strength, friends, or family support. Very little of all that, but even less of time.
“Valhalla, Da? Isn’t that in New York state?”
He smiles, like I have said something profoundly stupid.
Matt has come and gone, again. Wished us all the best, again. Said to come back, again, anytime. He wasn’t bothered by the acts of not-so-random violence going on in his tidy little cells, as there is no one on this earth with the flaps to challenge his power of unflappability.
He did, however, take just about all of my money.
“All of it?” I asked as he counted my meager stash. “Can I maybe write you a check?” I asked.
“Can I write you this?” he asked, pulling out of his pocket one of those leather covered lead deals for industrial-strength head-cracking.
“Maybe you should just post a ‘no checks accepted’ sign?”
“Nothing says ‘I mean it’ like a blackjack, though.”
Even saying that, he sounded friendly.
“I’m going to have to get one of those,” I said.
“I’m your man,” he said. “Once you have money
, of course.”
So Da and I hit the street with nothing. Less than nothing, even. We are standing in this place in the clothes we wore yesterday, the only clothes we have. No phones, one wallet, mine, which serves no purpose now other than to add four ounces of artificial flesh to my bony self. A few days of medication, which is already showing signs of doing the patient little good. And the certainty that failure of a more severe kind is speeding up the highway toward us as we speak.
I get a nudge. I turn.
“Ugh, jeez, Jarrod, wash your face, at least.”
He is standing there on the sidewalk looking like a scarecrow made from strips of veal, 8-ball eyes, and lips torn off a blobfish.
“Here,” he says, holding out his car keys.
“What?”
“I screwed you up. I ruined everything. You were doing fine. You were going to win, and I blew it. Now look at you, you both look like crap, you’re out on the street and the end is near.”
“Hey, Mr. Sunshine,” I say, smiling at him.
Somehow, incredibly, he manages to return a smile to me. It tears his lip right open and the blood flows, making him now a meat-faced scarecrow with a vivid red chin cleft.
“I thought we killed him already,” Da says.
“Na,” I say. “It was on our to-do list, but we’ve been busy.”
“Come on, take it,” Jarrod says, jangling the keys at me. “I just filled it yesterday. Subarus are brilliant on mileage, so you can go real far on what you have.”
“Subarus suck,” Da says. “Never catch me in one of them.”
I laugh.
“Thing is, Jarrod, man, they know the car now. You showed Lucy, remember?”
“I wish we had more time with Lucy. I hadn’t seen her in ages.”
I do not understand Jarrod at all. It’s not the drug use and the cracks-of-society nature of his relationship to civilization or any of that. That stuff you can work out, in a clinical enough way.
I don’t understand the relentlessness of his heart.
“Listen, Jarrod, I am really, really sorry. For what I did up there. I am shocked, myself, that I reacted like that. I swear to you I never do that.”
He pinches his lip together like a clamp before he smiles. “For somebody who never does that, you’re kind of good at it.”
I laugh, but I blush at the same time. I am ashamed.