Stanley pulled his hands out of his pockets and strode to the door. He opened it, gesturing at Victor that it was time to go. It took Victor a moment to find his legs, then he eased by Stanley and out into the parking lot. He’d barely taken two steps before he felt Stanley's open palm slap him on the back of the head. Victor quit walking, shutting down both mentally and physically in response to the abuse.
"Keep moving, shit bird. If you’re thinking about going back in there and whining to the cops about me abusing you then you can forget it. I fucking own you. Your dumb ass is bought and paid for. All by me. Your momma ain’t even here. So you go plant your ass in my car and you don't say a fucking word unless I ask you something. If I do, I expect you to respond by calling me sir."
Victor followed Stanley to his dark blue Ford Ranger. Stanley let himself in and leaned across the seat to flip open the passenger door lock. Victor reluctantly got in but immediately began powering up his cell phone.
"What are you doing, shit bird?"
"I'm calling my mom."
Stanley smiled as if he expected this. "Go for it, fat boy. Call your fucking mommy."
Victor only had two numbers programmed into the contacts of his phone. One was his mother. The other was the game store where he no longer worked.
The phone rang three times before his mother, sounding like she was at her wits end, answered the phone.
"Yes?" she asked with tired resignation.
"Mom, why is Stanley picking me up?" Victor could not hide the agitation, the distress, in his voice.
"Did you ask Stanley?"
Victor cut a quick glance at the still-smiling Stanley. He’d started the engine and was maneuvering out of the parking space, whistling a cheery little tune. Victor had never seen the man so happy.
"Yes. I asked him. He said he paid my bail and now he owns me."
"I think that about sums it up."
"What's that supposed to mean?" There was a plea of desperation in his voice, the awareness that this could not become his new reality. This was worse than he ever could have imagined. If he had the ability to go back in time and change the last forty-eight hours he would do so just to change this one unimaginable outcome.
"It means I've had enough, Victor. I'm a nervous wreck. I just can't handle this right now. I wasn’t even sure I was going to help you get out. But Stanley, out of the goodness of his heart, agreed to come get you and give you a place to stay for a little while."
"Stay!" Victor roared.
Stanley broke into hysterics, slapping his knee. "I knew you'd love that part."
Victor cut him another quick glance and then looked down at his phone. "Mom, I can't live with Stanley. I have projects going on. I need access to my computers."
"Oh yeah, about that,” Stanley began.
Something in the way he said it stopped Victor in his tracks.
"What?" he asked, facing Stanley. “What?”
Stanley gave Victor the same amused smile. "Let’s just say you’re offline for a while."
"Did you do something to my computers?" Victor demanded of both of them. "Did you!"
His mother cleared her throat. "Stanley thought it would be best if we got you back in the real world for a little while. It will give you some nice manual labor to focus on instead of that silly imaginary world of computer games and the Internet. Stanley says a little sweat would do you good."
Victor howled with rage. He wanted to slam his phone on the dashboard until there was nothing left.
"Look, Victor, I’m going to get off here right now. I feel my blood pressure going up just talking to you. I think we need a little break from each other. This will be good for both of us."
She hung up on him, leaving Victor sitting there with his phone still pressed to his ear. He looked from the phone to Stanley. "If you damaged my computers…"
He left the threat hanging there.
Stanley slammed on the brakes and made Victor lurch in the seat. He turned on his passenger, all traces of amusement gone. "Listen up, shit bird. I'll take you back to damn jail. I’ll get my money back and they can keep your ass. That what you want?"
Victor was silent. He recalled the threats and intimidation of jail. The smells. The sounds of spewing bowels and regurgitation. He did not want to go back. He shoved his phone angrily in his pocket and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Does that mean you're with the program now?" Stanley asked.
Victor nodded.
"I can't hear you," Stanley said in a singsong drill sergeant voice.
"Yes."
"Yes what?" Stanley persisted.
"Yes…sir." It had taken all Victor had to say those words. He wasn't sure how he was going to survive this. Could it get any worse?
"Oh yeah, one more thing. I need your phone." Stanley extended his open palm between them.
Victor looked at the older man with sheer panic. Losing access to his gaming equipment was one thing, but the loss of his primary communication device, his primary means of entertainment, his best friend in the world, was too much to take. Victor didn't know what to do. He was paralyzed.
Before he could decide, Stanley reached out and plucked the phone from his shirt pocket. Victor look down at his empty pocket and then at the phone in Stanley's hand. In a life of isolation and emptiness, he had never before felt so isolated and empty. Was there ever going to be a point where something good happened to him?
"Now, if you’re done fucking around, we’ll get back to the house. We’ve got shit to do. Actually you got shit to do and I’m going to watch. I have a nice long list of chores for you to take care of. But first, just so you have a preview of upcoming attractions, we’re going to get rid of that damn mop on your head. I got some dog clippers from an old collie I used to have and they got your name on them. I’m going to give you a man's haircut. Ain’t no sense in you looking like a cross between a peacock and a sheepdog."
Victor sank down in the seat. He found himself back in the same place he was the other night, sitting on the steps of his mother's basement. He was in that dark place where nothing mattered anymore. It was becoming the closest thing he had to a happy place.
"I would tell you to put on your seatbelt but right now I figure you don't much care if you live or die." Stanley looked over Victor and grinned broadly. “Am I right?”
Victor nodded, returning a completely soulless and empty stare.
26
Victor’s mind ricocheted between two extremes during the ride in Stanley’s cramped truck. On one side, he was in sheer panic mode, having climbed from the frying pan into the fire when he left jail. On the other end of the spectrum, he found himself overtaken by an eerie calm, the safe space of a man-child whose sense of normal was distorted by growing up with an emotionally abusive mother. Somewhere in the middle of those two points, Victor understood that he was going to have to ride this out for now and see where the road led.
It took them nearly a half-hour to reach Stanley’s home. It was out in the country, but located on a main road. There were neighbors within sight, but nobody within rock-throwing distance. Stanley swung the Ford Ranger off the road and centered his vehicle in the paved driveway. The house was an older frame home with aluminum siding and aluminum awnings over all the downstairs windows. The concrete front porch was covered with new indoor-outdoor carpeting. An American flag hung over the front porch and a cast-iron eagle was perfectly centered above the garage door.
“Home sweet home,” Stanley said with a smile that made Victor doubt his experience there would be so sweet.
Victor extricated himself from the vehicle and stood in the driveway. The front yard reminded him of his mother’s house. Everything was designed to create an image of perfection from the street. Chairs were centered on the porch and set at angles that exactly mirrored each other. Flower beds were immaculate and mulched, each plant spaced exactly the same distance apart. Trimmed rose bushes spread against bentwood arbors. A concrete bench sat beside a den
se bed of tiger lilies. On the bench was a concrete figure of a shoeless African American child with a fishing pole.
“This way,” Stanley said, beckoning Victor to follow him.
Victor followed him around a pathway made of small white stones. He found the backyard to be similar to the front in that it was decorated in a manner several decades past. There was less emphasis on perfection and appearance back there but everything was still dated. There was probably nothing in the yard that had been purchased after the mid-1970s.
“Have a sit down,” Stanley said. He grabbed up an aluminum lawn chair with a seat of frayed nylon webbing and placed it at the edge of a flagstone patio.
“Why?” Victor asked.
Stanley raised an eyebrow at him, a hint of menace behind it. A reminder.
“Why, sir?”
“That’s better,” Stanley said. “You may get the hang of this yet.”
“Why do I need to sit down?”
“I told you, shit bird,” Stanley said. “I’m shaving all of that colored shit off your face and head. You ain’t coming in my house looking like that. My late wife would be spinning in her grave like a rotisserie chicken if she knew I let some hairy freak in the door. We didn’t like them in the sixties and we don’t like them now.”
So, this was really happening. The calmer part of Victor, the part who had weathered many unpleasant moments with his mother, told him to sit down. They could only reach the outside of him. They could not reach the inside.
Victor sat.
“You stay right there while I get the clippers and an extension cord,” Stanley said. “I’ll be right back.”
With his first moment to himself in days, Victor thought of CamaroChick19. She didn’t treat him like this. She addressed him like a person. She didn’t call him shit bird, loser, freak, or any of those names. She was the kind of person he needed in his life, not people like Stanley or his mother. He wondered what she was doing right this moment. Was she okay? Was she worried about him?
His thoughts were interrupted by Stanley’s return to the porch. He plugged in a thin orange extension cord then plugged some black hair clippers into it. Stanley had said something about the clippers being used for dogs but Victor didn’t want to ask. It didn’t matter anyway. He didn’t see any way out of this.
Stanley flipped a switch and the clippers buzzed. “Take off your shirt.”
Victor hesitated. He didn’t like removing his clothes in front of people, even if it was just a shirt.
“Take off the damn shirt or I’m ripping it off,” Stanley said. “You got so much fucking hair I can’t get to it unless the shirt is off.”
Victor stood and pulled his t-shirt off, tossing it to the side.
“Damn, you’re one fat shit bird,” Stanley said. “You can say goodbye to that lard too. I’m going to work it off of you over the next couple of weeks.”
Weeks? Victor thought as he sat back down. Weeks? Could he survive that long?
Stanley placed a hand on Victor’s head and roughly shoved it forward. A vibration erupted in his head as the clippers were pressed against his skull. His hair was thick and the clippers were moving too fast, pulling and tearing as much as they were clipping. Victor pinched his eyes shut, scared to move.
“Sucks, don’t it?” Stanley said. “Just like when I joined the Navy.”
Victor didn’t answer. There was more pain, more hair pulling, as Stanley ran the clippers over his head. They jammed frequently, resulting in cursing from Stanley and forcing tears from between Victor’s clenched eyelids. It felt like clumps of hair were being pulled out instead of being cut.
When there was nothing left on his head, Victor sensed Stanley moving to the front. He pulled Victor’s chin up to start work on his beard. Stanley noticed the tears on Victor’s face.
“Look at the damn baby,” Stanley cooed. “Does it hurt ‘ums feelings to have ‘ums hair cut?”
Victor neither replied nor opened his eyes.
Stanley set in on Victor’s bushy beard, producing more pinching and tearing as he tried to quickly shear the coarse hair.
“Like fucking steel wool,” Stanley mumbled, raking the clippers down Victor’s face.
In a few minutes, the whole thing was over and Stanley turned the clippers off. He set them on patio table and regarded Victor, his bald head bleeding from several nicks.
“You ain’t gonna believe how much hair came off that head,” Stanley said. “I could build a dozen ugly ass wigs out of that shit.”
Victor tentatively raised a hand and ran it over his smooth head. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
“Don’t move yet,” Stanley said. “We need to get that loose hair off of you.”
The next thing Victor knew, a blast of cold water hit him in the back of the head. He sprang up from the seat, rubbing at his eyes. He tried to run but he tripped over a concrete planter and fell into the yard. The blast of water followed him, spraying him in the face and chest as he rolled around in the wet grass.
“What’s the matter? Scared of a little water?” Stanley teased. “I’m just rinsing you off.”
Then it was over and Victor lay on his back, surrendered to the indignity. He opened his eyes and watched Stanley carefully coil the hose back onto a metal hanger. When he was done, he faced Victor.
“Now we can get on with our day, shit bird,” he announced. “We got a hell of a lot to do.”
“Like what?” Victor asked.
Stanley raised a warning eyebrow. “Do I need to get the hose back out?”
“Like what, sir?”
“Weeding flower beds, pruning trees, painting fences, all the shit I don’t like doing.”
Victor didn’t respond. How could he respond? None of it was stuff he wanted to do but he was fully aware of the utter futility of his situation. This was his life now. He was a slave to the man he hated the most in the world.
“Oh, but first things first,” Stanley said. “I forgot something.”
Against one outside wall Stanley kept his firewood neatly stacked in a homemade rack. In front of it was an upturned stump with a hatchet stuck into it for splitting kindling. Without preamble or warning, Stanley pulled the hatchet from the stump and fished Victor’s phone from his pocket. He laid it on the stump and drew back the hatchet.
“NOOOOOOOOO!” Victor bellowed.
It was too late. The hatchet cleaved the phone neatly in two.
Stanley left the hatchet sunk between the two pieces of the shattered phone and looked up proudly, his hands landing on his jumpsuit-clad hips. As his eyes leveled on Victor, Stanley found the normally passive young man charging him like a freight train. There was a moment where Stanley realized he’d probably pushed things too far but he didn’t have time to complete the thought.
Victor hit him with nearly four hundred pounds of unstoppable mass, bowling the sixty-eight year old man off his feet and driving him into the stacked firewood. Stanley grunted as his body twisted at odd angles. He felt a rib snap deep inside him and felt muscles tear. Victor had him in a bear hug, crushing him.
Stanley had a single arm free and knew he was in a fight for his life. Despite his pain, he drove his elbows down onto Victor’s head. They were solid blows but the young man did not feel them. His grip didn’t weaken. He didn’t let go.
Victor was grunting and cursing, his sounds an unintelligible mélange of rage, frustration, and two decades of being tread upon. He had no control at this point. He hadn’t planned on attacking Stanley, he’d simply been unable to stop himself and still couldn’t. He would not stop.
Stanley was seeing bursts of light in his darkening vision, aware he was blacking out because he could not draw breath. He would not give up either. He quit dropping elbows and fished around blindly with his free arm, landing on a length of oak firewood about the diameter of a baseball bat. His hand closed around it. It was an awkward swing with Victor’s head nearly pressed against his own but he did it, striking Victor once,
twice, three times with the log. Finally he felt the arms around him weaken.
Victor staggered backward, stunned and holding his throbbing head. The pain was intense and his ears rang. It sounded like a train was driving around in his head.
Stanley tried to stand but sagged sideways, knocking logs out of the stack. He fell to his knees, then onto all fours. Pain wracked his body and he struggled to breathe. Through a war, through shore leave, and through shipboard boxing matches on long deployments, he’d never come so close to having his ass kicked. It didn’t sit well with him.
“You motherfucker,” he gasped. “You are going to regret this day.”
Still reeling from the blows to his head, Victor staggered into the upturned log and nearly fell over it. He reached out to stop his fall and his hand fell on the hatchet handle. His shattered phone lay there inches from his hand. He could hear Stanley talking to him but his vision was blurry. He could see a man on the ground at his feet. There were curses and threats, all directed at him.
Victor felt his arm pull the hatchet from the log of its own accord and lash out blindly. It happened so quickly he could not stop it, as if there were some part of him that wanted the work done before Victor could prevent it. There was a wet impact, the hatchet catching Stanley in the upper temple and sticking there. Victor released the handle and Stanley toppled to the ground.
But he did not die.
Victor rubbed his eyes and looked down. He could focus now and what he saw was not a pleasant sight. Stanley was at his feet experiencing what looked like a seizure. He body went rigid and both legs shook violently. His face went through a range of expressions. The eye below the hatchet looked different than the other, the pupil large and unfocused. The other eye appeared normal and bore fully into Victor.
Accusing.
Threatening.
Victor was paralyzed with fear. He had been unable to stop himself from doing this. He wasn’t even sure he was in control of his body when it happened, but he was in control now and he had to finish this. He couldn’t call the police and tell them what he’d done. He couldn’t call his mother and tell her either. There was no course of action but to see this through to the end.
Random Acts Page 16