Mother Puncher

by Gina Ranalli

  On the television, a talk show host was seated next to a young woman who was deathly afraid of pickles. She, in turn, was seated next to a woman who was deathly afraid of kittens. Not cats. Kittens. Ed had to wonder if these loons were putting on an act, just so they could get themselves on television and have their fifteen minutes of fame. He huffed and swallowed tepid coffee. He’d had fame once and didn’t think it was anything to write home about. From where he stood, all fame did was attract a lot of wackos. Sure, he’d met a few cool people back in his boxing days, but most of them were nuttier than a fruit cake and just trying to get something out of him.

  He shook his head at the TV screen and his stomach grumbled. He watched for a while more, until a woman came on the stage who was terrified of tin foil and screamed hysterically when the host showed her a balled-up sheet of it.

  Ed had seen enough. He clicked off the TV and went in search of food, glancing out at the back yard as he passed the slider. Ash was still out there on the bench swing he’d put at the back of the property a few years ago. It was near the tree line and quite a peaceful place to sit and think. He’d originally thought it would be a nice place to cuddle with his wife, but it didn’t turn out that way. It was now just a solitary spot and he couldn’t remember the last time they’d sat on it together.

  With a twinge of sadness, he moved to the refrigerator and began the process of making himself two ham and cheese sandwiches. He dumped half a bag of corn chips on his plate, grabbed a soda from the fridge and was on his way back to the living room when someone rapped on the glass slider. He flinched, ready to shout at Ash for scaring him, but it wasn’t Ash on the other side of the door.

  It was Drizzle.

  Ed looked past him and saw Ash still on the bench swing, smoking and watching Drizzle with a bored expression.

  Gritting his teeth, Ed set his lunch on the counter and went over and opened the slider. “What are you doing here, Drizzle? How did you get inside Envision?”

  Drizzle grinned toothily. “Came all the way through the woods,” he said proudly. “Six miles.”

  “Jesus Christ. What do you want?”

  The young man’s face fell and he pushed his thick glasses back up his nose. “To hang out with you. There’s some new stuff going on with the fan club that I wanted to run by you.”

  Ed groaned. The fan club. Good God.

  Drizzle was a geeky guy of about 23, skinny as a toothpick, with orange-red hair and freckles covering every inch of his skin. He was also teetering on the dangerous edge of being Ed’s one current stalker, in addition to being the founder of the official Ed Means fan club.

  “I don’t want to know anything about the fan club,” Ed said sharply. “I told you that. That’s your thing, not mine.”

  “Yeah, but it’s really cool, Ed. Wait till you hear about it.”

  “There’s nothing cool about a guy your age obsessing over an old boxer like me. You need to get a job. Get a girlfriend. Or boyfriend, sheepfriend, whatever. You need to start leaving me alone.”

  Drizzle looked genuinely wounded. “Ed, you’re gonna like this. I swear!”

  “You interrupted my lunch, Drizzle. Now take a hike.”

  “I just came through six miles of woods to tell you this, since you changed your phone number again. Give me a break here, man. I’m doing this for you.”

  Ed scowled at the kid, but saw the seriousness in Drizzle’s eyes and decided to give him one small, tiny, minuscule, minute break. “Ok,” he said. “Make it quick.”

  Drizzle grinned. “The fans have all agreed to tell me whenever they know a pregnant woman.”

  Waiting for more, Ed folded his arms across his chest. “So?”

  “So….they tell me, I tell you. It’s perfect.”

  Ed resisted the urge to give the kid a shove and slam the door. He felt a headache coming on. “What’s perfect? Why the fuck should I care about pregnant women? You think I don’t get enough of them at work?”

  “Moonlighting,” Drizzle said, eyes wide with excitement. “Don’t you want some extra cash?”

  “I have enough money. I live in Envision, for Christ’s sake. Doesn’t that tell you I have enough money?”

  “Yeah, it’s a lifestyle, I know. But just think about it: the government will slip you some under the table cash for doing the chicks who won’t go to the hospital. You know the ones who decide it’s better just to have the kid at home and never tell a soul that they’re even pregnant.”

  Ed was getting bored with the conversation and let it be known. “That’s not my business, Drizzle, and it shouldn’t be yours either.”

  “But, they put a strain on everyone’s taxes,” Drizzle protested.

  “Bye Drizzle.” Ed put his huge left hand against the kid’s scrawny chest and gently shoved him backwards, further away from the door.

  “If you don’t want it,” Drizzle said quickly. “I can always call Bowie. He’ll even give me a cut. I wasn’t gonna ask you for a cut…but…but…I could, you know!”

  The name Bowie froze Ed where he stood. “You already talked to Bowie?”

  “Not yet,” Drizzle told him. “But if you don’t want the deal, I know he will.”

  The kid was right. Bowie was a notorious scumbag, a bounty hunter for the government, seeking out breeders and doing more than giving them a single punch for their troubles. It was said that Bowie would often beat the shit out of them and sometimes—Ed hoped this part wasn’t true but he didn’t know for sure—sometimes they said he didn’t even wait until after the woman had given birth. He started pounding on them while they were still pregnant. Sometimes in the middle of their labor and sometimes, he wouldn’t do just a head shot. It was said he would pound them in the guts, too.

  Bowie gave all Mother Punchers a bad name and Ed couldn’t stand it. He was an unscrupulous vulture without a single strand of moral fiber in his entire body.

  Ed reached out grabbed Drizzle by the front of his shirt and jerked him forward. “You do any business with that prick and I will personally rip off your balls and feed them to you. You got that, dickhead?”

  Drizzle let out a little squeal of fright, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Then you do business with me, man. Otherwise, I got no choice.”

  “You got a choice!” Ed shook him hard. “Do it and I’ll fuck you up. That’s your choice.”

  “No way, man.” Drizzle shook his head and Ed was amazed and impressed by the kid’s bravery. “You fuck me up and I’ll just go to Bowie that much quicker.”

  “I can’t fucking believe you’re trying to blackmail me,” Ed said wonderingly.

  “I’m not! I’m trying to give you an opportunity. More cash, more kudos from the suits. It’s win-win, man. I’m telling you!”

  Ed released his grip on Drizzle’s shirt and rubbed his face, feeling the sandpaper texture of his cheeks and chin. “Son of a bitch.”

  “It’ll be awesome, man,” Drizzle said, smiling again. “Even better than when I had the troops tag every building and bridge with ‘Ed Means is still the champ of the world’.”

  “Oh, yeah, that was great,” Ed said sarcastically. “I got called into the fucking police station on that one.”

  Ignoring him, Drizzle repeated, “Awesome, man.”

  “What’s awesome?” Ash asked, coming up behind Drizzle.

  “Nothing,” Ed said quickly. He gave Drizzle a look of warning but either the kid didn’t notice it or didn’t care. He turned to Ash and said, “I got a deal with the Dimes.”

  Dimes were what everyone called the folks who would report an undocumented pregnancy.

  “What kind of deal?” Ash asked.

  “You know…they call me, I call the big guy here. We go, wait for the chick to pop out the gremlin, give her a sock in the jaw, take a pic and be on our way. Five hundred bucks per.”

  Ash’s eyes widened. “Five hundred bucks? For a single punch?”

  “Yep.” Drizzle grinned like some of the proud papas Ed had seen now and aga
in and it made his stomach turn.

  “I’m not doing it, Ash. We don’t need the money.”

  “The hell we don’t! I just bought a new car, remember? You think it’s gonna pay for itself?”

  “You said you would pay for it!”

  And you believed me? I work in a fucking gas station, Ed. It’s a fucking Firebird! How exactly am I supposed to pay for a new fucking Firebird?”

  “Take it back!” he shouted.

  “No! I love that car! I’ve always wanted one, my whole life! And now you don’t want me to have it. You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that, Ed?”

  “Fuck!” Ed swung his fist, aiming for the wall beside the door but stopped himself at the last instant. His hand was still hurting after all. “Fuck!”

  “Easy there, big fella,” Drizzle said cheerfully. “That car could be paid off in just a few months.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Ed said. “You know how much that piece of shit cost?”

  “Hey!” Ash shouted, offended.

  “Well,” Drizzle went on. “Maybe not a few months, but pretty soon. And you’d be doing the government a favor.”

  “Fuck the government,” Ed yelled, pacing now.

  “Watch it, Ed!” Ash warned. “They sign your paychecks.”

  Ed said nothing, certain he had steam coming from his ears.

  As a reminder, Drizzle said one word: “Bowie.”

  Ed wanted to kill him and that was saying something. Despite being violent his entire professional life, he’d never wished to actually kill a person. Fuck them up good, yes, but kill them? Never.

  “Fuck,” he said again.

  “Just do it, Ed,” Ash said. “It’s really no different from what you do now.”

  “She has a point,” Drizzle agreed.

  Ed’s cell phone rang and he snatched it off his belt and growled “Hello” into it, while glaring at Ash and Drizzle.

  It was the maternity nurse, Sandy. “Looks like she’s going sooner than we thought,” she said, referring to the pregnant woman they had discussed earlier. “You should get back here asap.”

  “Ok.” Ed pushed ‘end’ and told them, “I have to go to work.”

  Ash reached into her robe for her cigarettes while Drizzle called after him, “Think about it, man! Made in the shade!”

  3

  Back at the hospital, Sandy met him in the maternity ward, just outside room 1210. “She’s at 10 centimeters,” she said. “Contractions are less than a minute apart.”

  Ed nodded and leaned against the wall beside the closed door, thinking about his uneaten sandwich. Within the room, came the sounds of a woman in a lot of pain.

  “Are you ok?” Sandy asked. “Your eyes are red.”

  “I got maced, remember? You ever find out how she got that canister in here?”

  “No, she wouldn’t say. Probably the husband.”

  “The husband? I never saw him.”

  “He came running the second you were gone. Playing Mr.-I-care-so-much about my wife, I just couldn’t stand to watch her get hurt.”

  “Yeah, but he could stand plenty not getting hurt himself.”

  Sandy made a face that said, what’s new?

  Ed liked Sandy. She was petite and cute, but tough as nails and refused to take any guff from anyone, not the patients, not the doctors, not even that miserable Mary Kliss, the hospital’s Chief of Staff. “We got any more after this one?” Ed asked her.

  “Maybe one, but I doubt it. She’s trying to pretend she’s not having contractions, even though she is, but they’re pretty far apart. Won’t be for another twelve hours at least.”

  He nodded. His shift would be over by then and Chuckie would be on duty. Chuckie was a cool guy, just came in did what he was paid for and took off again. Very laid-back, never sweated the small stuff. Ed admired him quite a bit and wished he could be more like him.

  “She’s trying to get us to release her,” Sandy went on about the pregnant woman who was denying her contractions. “Think she’s having second thoughts about being here. Word got around that you broke the last one’s nose.”

  “That was an accident,” Ed cried defensively. “The woman pepper sprayed me!”

  “I know.” Sandy put a consoling hand on his big arm. “But you know how some of them can be. They think they should be able to just breed any old time they like and not have to suffer any repercussions for it.”

  Ed nodded again. “If only that was how the world worked.”

  “If it was, you and I would probably be starving on the street.”

  “True enough.”

  They made small talk a while longer and then Sandy went in to check on the patient. She came out a few minutes later and went in search of the doctor. A moment later, a man rushed out of the room, only to be grabbed around the neck by Ed.

  “Going somewhere, Daddy?” Ed asked.

  The guy struggled to get away. “I’m not the father! I’m her brother!”

  “That so? Well, we’ll just wait for the doc to get here and see if he agrees with that statement. What do you say?”

  The man, chubby and dressed in a sweatsuit for some reason, tried twisting himself out of Ed’s grasp, to no avail. “I’m the brother!” he cried. “I’m calling my lawyer! Let me go!”

  But Ed didn’t let him go and a minute later the doctor and Sandy strode up purposefully, heading for the birthing room. “Yo, Doc,” Ed said as the doctor approached. “This guy the brother?”

  Both the doctor and Sandy rolled their eyes in what appeared to be almost a practiced gesture. Neither of them replied verbally, but they didn’t need to.

  “You know,” Ed told the guy, “pussies like you make me want to puke. You’ll let your wife take a punch while you go cower in a fucking corner somewhere. You weren’t cowering when you took your fucking pants off though, were you?”

  The father whined like a wounded animal, though Ed hadn’t done anything to him yet.

  “I bet you wish you’d wrapped that rascal now, don’t ya?” Ed went on. “Mr. Irresponsibility. Mr. Chivalrous. Mr. Yellow-bellied fucking pussy ass douche bag.”

  “Just get it over with,” the guy screamed, bursting into tears. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

  “Hospital policy, buddy. I gotta wait till the kid comes out, all pink and healthy. If, God forbid, you end up with a still born, the hospital could get sued for punching the expectant parents before the birth. Nope, the kid has to be screaming and get the Doc’s ok before I give you the fat fucking lip you deserve.”

  The man began struggling again, which was becoming annoying to Ed. He switched position, throwing the guy’s back against the wall and holding him there by the throat. “The more you fight, the worse it’s gonna be for you,” Ed said. “Just relax. Christ, you act like you’ve never been punched before.”

  “I haven’t!” the man cried, trying to pry Ed’s fingers from his throat.

  “For real?” Ed was amazed. “Come on. Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I’m not. I’ve never been a fighter.”

  “Wow. Not even in the school yard? Seems like a wimp like you would get his ass kicked every day in school.”

  “They tried,” the guy said. “But I always managed to run away and tell the teacher.”

  “Figures,” Ed huffed with disgust.

  “I got pushed once on the bus though. I was seven.”

  Ed resisted the urge to squeeze the guy’s throat harder and decided to just ignore him. In the room, the mother was screaming now. Tuning it out, Ed began to hum “Ring of Fire” to pass the time. Johnny Cash was the man, as far as Ed was concerned. His voice could always sooth Ed’s frazzled nerves. He was another guy who took no bullshit. Ed wished he was still alive and that he could have met him. Maybe Johnny had been a boxing fan and they could have hung out and talked about how much better the first Rocky movie was compared to all the others.

  Ed was still thinking about kicking Mr. T’s ass when he heard a baby screechi
ng from behind the closed door. He was somewhat sorry to have to let go of his fantasy and come back to reality and the blubbering guy he was holding against the wall.

  “Won’t be long now,” Ed told him, expecting it to comfort the man. Instead, he started wailing. “What the fuck is your problem?” Ed asked. “You just had a baby that you obviously wanted more than you cared about the rest of the world. You and your selfishness. You don’t even care that kid probably won’t even have a future on this fucked up planet. You just wanted a mini-you. You should be jumping for fucking joy.”

  The doctor emerged from the room, gave Ed a nod and strutted on down the hallway.

  Ed grinned at the guy and then pulled him through the doorway. Sandy was stripping bloody gloves off her hands and throwing them in the trash. Nearby on a table a naked baby wailed like the most pissed-off creature on the planet.

  She looked up when Ed came in, the father in tow by the neck. She held up her index finger, a signal to Ed.

  Ed pushed the guy away from himself and said, “Congratulations, buddy. You have a son.” Then he popped him a good one in the eye. The man crumbled to the floor, dazed for a few moments. When he realized he wasn’t dead, he began screaming how Ed had blinded him and he would sue the hospital for every penny it had.

  Ignoring him, Ed waited for the go-ahead to punch the mother. Five minutes later, both mother and father were posing on the bed, their newborn infant wrapped in a blue blanket between them. Both parents grinned into the camera, both sporting the beginnings of matching shiners.

  4

  The next night was Friday and Ed’s turn to host the weekly poker game he had going on with his three best buddies. His only buddies, really.

  They all showed up promptly at eight p.m., Hank and Dale each carrying a case of beer and Bill with three kinds of snack chips.

  Bill was Ed’s oldest friend in the world. They’d met way back in Ed’s boxing days. Though not particularly bright, Bill was nonetheless a good guy and a good friend.