by Keith Nixon
I thought I had it all figured out until that snoring little shit snoring in the back of my van came into the picture.
His old man was some king shit high school football coach or something. A real big deal in town. His mother had gotten my number from a friend of a friend as they often do. We met early one morning under the viaduct that runs over Benton Street, near the railroad depot. The remote location was ideal for hashing out the details of our delicate arrangement. It also set a tone of baleful unease that tilted negotiations in the direction of my favor with most of the parents.
As she walked to my van I noticed a face pressed against the back window of her SUV. Curious eyes peered through the tinted glass, following her every step as she trudged across the patchy expanse of mud and cinder. I couldn’t believe she had actually brought the damn kid with her. Who the fuck does that?
Then again Karen Harlan was nothing like most parents. She was a fairly attractive lady in the general sense of the term, yet there was something cold lurking beneath the shallow surface of those cosmetically enhanced icy blues. The topic of her son invoked a sort of callousness that I hadn’t seen since my time back in the Pen. No desperate tone to her voice begged for my understanding or watery–eyed sad stories about the good boy she knew he could become, given the proper guidance. I wasn’t sure if she even expected me to bring him back at the end of his week.
You see, her boy displayed none of the usual behavioral flaws the other miserable shits I’d dealt with had. He’d never stolen anything in his life. Never given his folks any lip or used drugs and cut class to hang out with his asshole buddies. By her own admission, he was a model child. His only sin was being born with one too many chromosomes. He was a living, breathing token of his parent’s shame. A constant reminder of the some hereditary shortfall manifested in the muddled mind of their only child.
“My girlfriend tells me what you did for her son. Straightened him right up. I need you to do the same for my...” She glanced back at the face pressed against the back glass of her SUV and sighed. “Can you do something with that?”
She spoke of her son the way one would speak to a doctor about a boil they wished to have removed from their ass. I stared at her for a minute before answering. “My methods are rough. Downright brutal. I need you to understand that before you sign off on this.”
She cut me off with a dismissive wave. “I don’t need to know the details. That’s your business, not mine. My husband has the most important game of his career on the line on Friday. He’ll be coaching at the college level this time next year if his boys make the playoffs. Last thing he needs is for Ricky to distract him from that.”
“Look, Mrs. Harlan. I’m not exactly sure you’re getting the gist of what it is I do here,” I tried to explain to her, already knowing it would do no good. I at least needed to try. “I’m good at my job, but a miracle worker I ain’t.”
“Are you saying you can’t help him?” She motioned toward her idling vehicle and the slack–jawed silhouette in the backseat bounced up and down, waving excitedly. She shook her head in disgust and then coldly looked back to me. “Or are you telling me you won’t?”
“Mam, what I’m telling you is that your son doesn’t need the kind of help I have to offer. He isn’t a juvenile delinquent. He’s retarded.”
She let out an exasperated sigh and impatiently fingered her door handle, daring me to call her bluff. “You know? Maybe my friend was wrong about you. Maybe you’re not the right man for the job after all.”
“Maybe not,” I countered. “How about we just cut our losses here and forget we ever had this conversation.”
She let go of the handle and slid her hand into the folds of her bag. A second later a thick envelope was being pushed into my all too willing fingers. “How about I pay you double.”
Naturally, I agreed. Money from a mongoloid’s mother spends just as green as any other. In her twisted rationale, the ten grand she offered me to babysit her halfwit son for a week somehow made up for her obvious lack of maternal qualities. Who was I to argue with that? Besides, it wasn’t like I was committing an actual kidnapping. Seconds after I agreed to the deal Karen Harlan was pulling the kid out of her own vehicle, Power Rangers backpack in tow, and shoving him into mine.
Together we watched her SUV pull away. Ricky waved goodbye until she was completely out of view. He offered me a dopey grin as I tussled the hair on the top of his head, rolling his head to follow my touch until every strand of his severe bowl cut participated. I found myself wondering why parents of the mentally challenged insisted on inflicting that particular humiliation on their offspring. Weren’t they alienated enough without being groomed like Moe Howard?
Ricky’s sloping eyes narrowed as he suddenly realized that he had no clue who I was. I pulled my hand away and let him get used to the idea of being alone in a van with a total stranger. With bated breath I waited as the stare down intensified. Then he nearly scared the shit right out of me when he slapped his palm on the dashboard and squealed, “Go, go Power Rangers!”
His exuberance melted my heart and turned my stomach all at the same time. I started the van and smiled. “Okay, Power Ranger. Let’s get outta here.”
Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure where we were going. I couldn’t take him to the Pimp’s, at least not until the following night. A girl with a penchant for much older men had the spare bedroom tied up until then. Her folks had paid extra for the “Full Treatment”. No way Ricky needed to be there when the silver–haired sadists rolled in with their goody bag of power tools.
I had my own place by then, far away from the transient digs of my homeless brethren. No more cum stained war era army cots for this guy. My lucrative enterprise had afforded me a comfy trailer in a quiet mobile home park close to the river. But I didn’t really feel all that comfortable with the idea of leaving Ricky alone while I was making my daily rounds. The thought of him finger–fucking my personal belongings made my skin crawl. I’d worked too hard for the things I owned to let some teenage simpleton drool all over them. My only option was to take him with me for the evening until the room at the Pimp’s opened up.
I just needed to make one quick stop first. A young punk from the Southeast side whose parents wanted to curb his wannabe gang banger mentality. Normally I would have taken backup for a job like that, but the encounter with Ricky’s mom had left me mentally drained. I just wanted to get the job over with so I could call it a night.
I spotted the aspiring young thug loitering outside of a tobacco shop near the pedestrian mall. Late teens, pimple–faced and stocky as hell. An ICP jersey over sagging jeans bunched up just below the bottom of his ass made him impossible to miss. He glanced up from his smoldering cigarillo as I pulled up to the curb. He flicked his ash in no particular direction and turned his attention back to his iPod, undoubtedly blasting some ghetto rap garbage into his ears.
I patted Ricky’s bowl–shaped mop and told him to stay put before I crawled into the back and steeled myself for the confrontation that would surely ensue. One last glance over my shoulder to make sure the idiot had comprehended what I was telling him and then I was out.
Any hopes of making a quick grab before retiring for the evening evaporated as I let the side door slide open. A miscalculated step sent my ankle rolling under my own weight and ended with me face first on the sidewalk, clutching my foot in agony. The hoodlum instinctively greeted me with a flurry of soccer style kicks. I covered up as much as possible until the edges of my peripheral vision conceded to the grayish haze of unconsciousness. The last thing I heard before checking out was the passenger door of the van clicking open.
“Hey, mister, you okay? Hey, mister.” The voice coaxed me back into reality. A hand that stroked the top of my aching head, just roughly enough to bring tears to my eyes. I pushed the hand away and sat up slowly.
“What the hell happened?”
“Hey, mister, you okay?” Ricky ignored my question and continued his mantr
a. Only then it was directed to the groaning lump beside me. Ricky patted the punk’s forehead just beneath his greasy bangs. “Hey, mister?”
“Ricky, did you do this?” I already knew the answer, but for some reason I needed to hear it from him. Seeking validation from a retard, I thought to myself. Must have taken more of a beating than I had first realized.
“Yep.” Ricky sheepishly nodded his head. He flinched as I stood up. He did an about face and lifted his shirt over his head, exposing a patchwork of fresh and partly healed angry red welts. “But I was offsides. So you can give me my five yards now if you want.”
“Jesus Christ, kid.”
“My dad says if I’m offsides I should get the five yard penalty. That’s five straps to the back,” Ricky replied. He held firm in his stance with his arms stretched above his over–sized head. “Go ahead, mister. It’s okay.”
I stifled a sour burp that tasted of bile with the back of my hand and said, “Put your shirt back down, kid. Nobody’s giving you five yards tonight.”
Ricky lowered his shirt and turned around. “Why? Ain’t you got no belt? You can use mine if you want.”
Somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed its distinctive cry. The hoodlum began to stir, slowly recovering from the shellacking that Ricky had put on him. Ricky looked down at him and grinned from ear to ear. All the while the sirens steadily drew closer. The last thing I wanted was to find myself standing there when the cops rolled up.
“Forget it, kid. Just help me get this turd in the van so we can get out of here.”
The following morning my ankle was swollen twice its normal size and I could barely put any weight on it, let alone drive. Operating the brake and gas hurt so badly that I almost considered letting the kid drive us the twenty or so blocks to the Pimp’s apartment. Ricky practically had to carry me to the door. Once there I was in no shape to make the round trip back without resting my throbbing joint for a while.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?” the Pimp asked, placing a bag of ice on my propped up foot as he sized the kid up. Ricky fidgeted nervously with the straps of his backpack and stared at the floor.
“Hell, I don’t know,” I replied. “Just feed him a few downers and keep the Disney channel on for him I guess. I’ll take him home at the end of the week and tell his mother it didn’t work out. Ain’t like I didn’t try to warn her.”
The Pimp threw his hands up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you know who his old man is? He’s not the kind of guy you just screw out of ten grand. He’s got friends in pretty high places.”
“Yeah, well I got them in some pretty low places. Guess that makes us even. Just sit on him until the end of the week and keep him mellow,” I said. “Who knows? You two might just hit it off. You both like football and I’m guessing your IQ’s are within about ten points of one another.”
The Pimp plopped down on the couch beside me, intentionally hard enough to jostle my foot. He stroked his beard and simultaneously gave me the finger at the same time. “Okay, I’ll watch him for the week but you’re dealing with the parents on your own when he goes home. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I found myself regretting the terms of that agreement as soon as I approached the end of the Harlan’s driveway the following Thursday. The kid’s old man was running tackling drills in the front yard with a pair of teenage boys. Even from a distance he looked to be roughly the size of a bus. I roused Ricky from his drug–induced nap with every intention of shoving him out the door and taking off before his behemoth father noticed the strange van at the end of his lane.
“I wanna go home,” Ricky declared, his wide grin withering as he realized what was happening.
“You are home, buddy. Go on and get out now.”
“Not this home.” He folded his arms and stuck out his lip. “I wanna go back to Donny’s.”
I couldn’t help but to laugh as I let that one sink in, but not so much that I lost sight of the gravity of the situation. It was cute that Ricky found his time at the Pimp’s to his liking, but it wasn’t his ten grand on the table. Or his ass that stood to get severely beaten and tossed back in jail.
“This is your goddamn home, Ricky. Now get your simple ass out of my van!”
I watched the kid slowly trudge up the drive, obviously trying to go unnoticed as he slinked toward the front door. He almost made it before one of the boys called out his name. I don’t know why I didn’t put the van in gear and drive away right then. For once, maybe I actually cared about what happened after the kids I took exited stage left out of my life. I guess I just need to feel human for a change.
I could almost see the anguish in the kid’s body language as his father beckoned him over with the football grasped in his outstretched hand. Ricky set his backpack down and obeyed. I watched as Ricky took the ball and hesitantly placed it on the ground. As he lined up opposite the larger of the two teenagers and snapped the ball into his father’s hands. I watched as the boy twice his size proceeded to knock him backwards as soon as the ball left the turf.
I watched the trickle of blood run down Ricky’s lip after the umpteenth time of running the same drill. Each time he dusted himself off and assumed the position for another chance to be someone else’s living breathing tackling dummy. Then I watched as Ricky jumped offsides.
I can’t say if his father’s belt had even slipped through the last loop before I was out of the van. I don’t really remember getting out let alone grabbing the baseball bat from the front seat as I went. I do remember marching up the driveway. I also remember feeling bad that I wasn’t quick enough to make it to the top before the second lash had already found its mark across Ricky’s backside.
Before the third one hit home the tip of the bat sounded its hollow metallic ring as it settled across the back of Coach Harlan’s left knee. He screamed in surprise and let go of the belt mid–swing. I planted the bat across his other knee as he went down. Then I went to work on his upper body for good measure. The two teenagers stood back in horror as their beloved coach caught the beating of a lifetime before their very eyes.
By the time I was too winded to continue Ricky had lost his status as the most impaired member of his immediate family. Not one inch of his body went unscathed. I found a dry spot on the man’s shirt to wipe my bat and grabbed his son by the hand.
“Change of plans, kid. Let’s get you home.”
ROUTE 66 AND ALL THAT
Paul D Brazill
“Mikey Mike Calloway was so far up his own arse he could give himself an enema. His frequent get rich schemes, for example, were, for the most part, nothing more than pipe dreams – elaborate fantasies that were barely on nodding terms with concepts such as real life and common sense. They were, more often than not, hatched during some drunken and coked–up evening in one of the many overpriced pseudo–yuppie bars that he liked to frequent.
With the dawn of cold light of day, however, those plans usually crumbled to dust. As for his drinking cronies – myself, Howie White, Sean Rogan and various other flotsam and jetsam of life in Seatown – well, if he was buying the drinks, we usually went along with the idea at the time and forgot about it when confronted with the dull thud of reality the next day. But one plan stuck in my mind like a stone in my work boots, and was impossible to shift. So, I decided to do something about it.
“The postman cometh,” said Howie, as I wandered out of the bright afternoon sunlight and into The King John’s Tavern, still wearing my postman’s uniform.
“Howie Shite. You’re a shite for sore eyes,” I said, squinting, adjusting my eyes to the change of light.
The pub looked even gloomier and more wan during the daytime than it did at night. Even though the smoking ban had been enforced for years, The King John’s Tavern still had a nicotine sheen and the beige carpet was more than somewhat frayed, as were most of the customers, who seemed to be old school friends of methuselah.
“Miss me did you?’ I said.
“I wasn’t even aiming, Diggsy,” said Howie. He downed what was left of his pint of Carling Black Label and slid the empty glass over to me.
Howie White was a gangling scarecrow with ratty hair and charity shop clothes. He was as thin as a rake despite the amount of lager and junk food he seemed to put away. He still lived with his widowed much despite teetering on the cusp of middle–age. The last job he’d had was on the production line at the Chunky Chicken factory but that had been in the dim and distant past and he was permanently on the scrounge
“Didn’t I get the last round in at Astros the other night?” I said.
Howie shrugged. “Dunno. It’s my mid–giro crisis, though. I’m brassic until next Wednesday.”
Past–faced Patsy, the permanently bored barmaid, came through from the other room were a bunch of deaf old farts were watching the cricket, if the televisions volume was anything to go by.
“Lager?” she said, wiping the happy talc from her nose.
“Lager than life,” I said. “And the same for him.”
I nodded toward Howie.
Patsy poured the drinks.
“Are you still doing toasties?” I said, looking at the cracked star shaped clock that dangled precariously above the bar. It was just after three and the lunchtime crowd had gone, which usually meant any food that was left over had been scoffed by the cast of Cocoon in the television room.
“Naw, but we’ve some pickled eggs, if you fancy?” said Patsy.
“Naw, ta,” I said. “Just give us a bag of chees and onion crisps.”
Patsy put the drinks and crisps on a tray and I pointed to a small rickety table in the corner, near a broken fruit machine.
“Let’s sit down,” I said to Howie. “I’m cream crackered. Been on my feet all day.”