The Right Kind of Stupid

by John Oakes

  "And I'm your pimp," Cody thought aloud. He went to catch the words, and somehow stuff them back in his mouth, but his statement was greeted by cheers from his table.

  Cody laughed along with them. If knowing these guys was all that came out of this whole bunch of nonsense, that wasn't so bad.

  "Hey. You understand!" Winton said. "Handicapped whores, no less."

  "I couldn't believe she said that! I ain't fucking handicapped!" Kevin said. "I wanna put my size four shoe right up that lady's ass!"

  "I tell ya, if everything in the world was two foot shorter," Jonathan said, "all you bigs would be handicapped."

  "Two foot shorter! That's it!" Winton guffawed. "All we need for a utopian paradise is low countertops."

  "But if we built one, some reporter would come along and shit all over it," Jonathan said. "Or your one-time City Planner's office would come and tell us our town wasn't zoned properly for utopia."

  "Only to protect us, of course," Kevin said.

  "It's paternalistic nonsense," Winton said. His eyes were squinty, and he pointed a wobbly finger at each one of them. Clearly the boys' drinking was catching up with them, for Winton and Jonathan especially.

  "It's what now?" Cody asked.

  "If you see someone getting beat up in the street, and you get in the fight to help them, you're a hero. People like this reporter, Melissa St. James, they think they look like they're doing the same thing, like some hero. But by protecting us from our own choices they are effectively saying two things: One, that I need protecting and can't be entrusted to look after myself. And two, that she, on her fucking high horse, is the one to do it."

  "Winton, you took the friggin' words right out of my brain," Jonathan said. "But I couldn't say it like that. You're so good at saying stuff." Jonathan brought his beer to his mouth, slopping a little over the rim.

  "And then all the other folks," Winton continued, his head and eyes drooping a little, "they jump on the band wagon with her because of their own paternalistic tendencies."

  "Or because of tall guilt!" Kevin interjected. "You big motherfuckers feeling so fortunate to have been born taller than us. It's all based in pity. Nothing to feel guilty about if we're not lesser."

  "Exactly!" Winton smacked the table, rattling the glassware atop it. "And in order to pity someone, you have to demean them in your mind. There has to be a bit of 'shit, I'm glad I'm not them!'" He pointed a finger to his temple.

  "I didn't ask for your pity," Kevin said to no one in particular.

  "That's why I hate the word 'little people,'" Jonathan said. "Little, teeny, widdle, biddle people. Don't we get infantilized enough as it is?"

  "You guys use a lot of big words when you're drunk," Cody said. "And hold on here, I thought I wasn't supposed to say 'midget'. You're freaking me out, like I'm always saying the wrong word. I can't keep track."

  "I know Cody. It's totally fucked. The whole thing." Winton drained his beer. "It just goes to show that our labels don't always reflect hate or tolerance, sometimes just vapid fashion. I love myself. So call me a midget or a dwarf. Refer to you as a rich kid. Call Jonathan Jewish when necessary. The reason people have a hard time with choosing titles is, in our culture, we force our identities to be comprehensive. If you're a thing, it has to be all that you are. But these facets of identity are not all that we are! That is never the case. Our identities are like prisms. Turn us different directions and different facets and colors show through. So, it's a part of my prism that I'm two feet too short for life in this world. And it's true, and it's obvious. So enough tip-toeing around it. I'm not advocating rudeness. I just don't need anyone, even people like me, to come up with a new word for me, as if that will make us all the same or help us get treated the same."

  "Do some people prefer 'little people' because it's a name y'all came up with, rather than a term others made?" Cody scratched at his head. "Does that make any sense?"

  "For a lot of us that's it," Jonathan said. "And maybe for some folks, it's healing to have a new term. I just wish it weren't little people. I for one would prefer to be a Fun Sized Sapien or maybe a totally new word, like, anything...I dunno...Jimlak! 'Hey check out the biceps on that Jimlak.'" Jonathan flashed his fleshy biceps to the table and flexed for his imaginary audience. "Yeah. I really wish I'd gotten a vote on that."

  "He's right." Winton said. "But is that really what we want? Semantics with no real change? No inertia toward societal change? We aren't P. Diddy. You can't rebrand us back to "Sean Combs" and hope people don't notice the clothes and the music didn't change, that nothing really changed. I want real change, even though I'm not holding my breath."

  "What needs to change?" Cody asked.

  "You know, it has a lot to do with the workplace and our healthcare system. I need footstools and a modified workspace and an insurance scheme that won't penalize me for having a preexisting condition. 'Cause guess what, when you're born different, you're born with pre-existing conditions. It's not just. This dissuades companies from hiring us, because they don't want to have to make workplace accommodations or deal with higher insurance premiums. And that's assuming they aren't just feeling embarrassed by our presence."

  "That can't be legal," Cody said.

  "Cody there's no way of ever proving that you weren't hired because of your stature. I can never prove that I was let go from the City Planner's office because of my height."

  "So," Cody began, "...that makes it doubly shitty when people tell you you're whores for going into show business."

  For once Winton expressed himself without the aid of words. He set his jaw, and squinted an eye. He touched a stubby finger to his crooked nose and then pointed to Cody.

  "The world used to shit on 'midgets' and 'dwarves'," Jonathan said. "Now in 2011, it shits on 'little people'."

  "Yeah like African-American." Kevin said. "I'm not an African kind of American! Why do you gotta associate my citizenship with my race? Enough. I'm an American, bitch. And I'm black! I can handle that! Can you?"

  Cody looked at Winton, expecting him to respond. But Winton's chin was resting on his chest, and his eyes were closed.

  "Goddam pills and booze," Kevin said. "You can't mix that shit."

  "What kind of pills?" Cody asked in alarm. "He takes those all the time."

  "The kind of pills you take when you've had too many surgeries," Jonathan said.

  "Yeah, sure," Kevin said. "Surgeries."

  Kevin reached over and felt for Winton's pulse.

  "He's ok. Just passed out."

  Winton's head came whipping back up, and he snorted a big breath of air. He opened his eyes wide before they drooped again, and he carried on as if he hadn't noticed he'd dropped off.

  "No man but me gets to tell me who or what I am."

  Winton yawned and his eyes closed.

  "I'm a goddam island," he murmured. His head drooped low again.

  "I'm a goddam midget island."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Out the Door

  Cody pulled down his gravel drive and parked in the space left beside a pre-owned Lexus, a Ford Bronco and a BMX bike tipped on its side.

  "So what's the new plan?" TR asked expectantly, before Cody was able to put his car keys down inside the pool house.

  "There is no new plan, TR. Not unless you got one."

  "I just thought you'd a come up with something by now. One of your Cody ideas. Weren't you out with them guys thinking up a new plan?"

  "Cody ideas?"

  "You know, Cody ideas," said TR. "It's like when we don't know where to go to eat, and none of us can decide, you always come up with a solution."

  Cody just stared at TR blankly.

  "No wait, it's like when we were kids, if we didn't know what to do, you would always come up with a game. You know, Cody ideas!"

  "I'd come up with fun games and then you'd find ways to make it involve shooting birds with BB guns. Every goddam time."

  "You do come up with some pretty good games,
" Jason said, "even now."

  "Like shopping cart derby!" TR added.

  "Or shot checkers," Ricky agreed.

  "Okay fine, I make up a decent game. But this is big business we're talking about, not ways to get drunk faster or things to do while drunk."

  Cody saw their hungry expressions.

  "I was off commiserating, not plotting. It's best that we just forget about it. Now someone fire up that Xbox and lets just relax."

  "We'll go to the papers," Jason said. He stood and began pacing he floor. "Who is News 12's biggest rival? We'll go to them and offer them an exclusive! Yeah, and then we'll set the record straight!"

  Cody walked to the kitchen to fetch a beer.

  "We gotta get you some high powered lawyer type who will sue this lady for being the slanderous mudslinger she is! I wonder if your dad would lend you one of his corporate suits to take this lady to the cleaners."

  Cody was fairly certain that the most slanderous things being said about him right now were coming from his father, wherever he was, for bringing shame to the company and the Latour name.

  Cody tossed his bottle cap in the trash and walked back into the living room, where he dropped hard into a seat.

  "Dang old court of public opinion," Ricky said. "Done decided, man."

  Cody looked to where Ricky was seated on the couch, also drinking a beer.

  "What do you mean?" Jason asked.

  Ricky adjusted his sunglasses. He drained the last of his beer, and ran a hand over his Fu Man Chu.

  "You can fight. You can. But that will just keep this in the news longer."

  "Yeah, it will. And maybe we can win that way," Jason said.

  "Win what?" Ricky asked.

  "Well, the...the..." Jason exasperatedly made expansive gestures with his arms. "The damn Alamo bowl!"

  Ricky shook his head. "Too late for that. You can convince some people that no one actually shit in the well, but that don't make 'em drink it."

  "We'll call Kinland, the athletic director. He can't cancel us. We got that guy over a barrel!"

  "He stepped down Jase," Cody said. "He's no help to us now."

  "But you guys, how can we let this conniving reporter get away with this? We gotta hit back!"

  "Yeah, man we gotta do something!" TR said.

  Neither Cody or Ricky responded.

  "You two have gotta be kidding me! Where is your sense of justice?" Jason said.

  "I would love nothing more than to have revenge, Jase! We could throw Molotov cocktails into the studio and have a barbecue on the ashes of her desk. But what would that accomplish?"

  "So what are you gonna do? Nothing?"

  "I'm doing it." Cody raised his bottle in Jason's direction. "The whole world has always thought I was a joke. This just goes to show that there ain't no place for me."

  "You ain't gonna quit are you?" Jason demanded.

  "Quit what? Quit hurting my friends?" Cody was leaning far forward in his chair, waving an arm, finally displaying all the hurt and anger he felt inside. "Quit finding new and exciting ways to disappoint my father?" He threw his nearly full beer bottle over the kitchen counter at the fridge and it exploded in a rain of brown glass. He immediately got up and walked to the fridge, his shoes crunching on broken glass, and opened it up to grab a fresh one. He was somewhat embarrassed by his display, but was too mad to care.

  "I just wanted to help out Raul, and now I'm a god-danged abuser of the disabled! At least to all them people out there. So yeah, Jason," Cody said, defiantly throwing the beer cap into the sink, "I fucking quit this nonsense! And I don't care what you think, or what my dad thinks, or what this reporter thinks or what the lawyer thinks!"

  Jason ran his hands through his hair and continued his pacing in frustrated silence.

  TR piped up. "The point is...the point is...we believed in you."

  Cody bowed his head. The time at Darla's had cheered him a little, but not enough to weather one of TR's self-righteous tirades. "That's just it, TR," Cody said in as calm a voice as he could muster. "It kills me to let you down. And if I keep up this charade, only more people are gonna get hurt. So let's cut our losses. Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." Cody stepped past TR back into the living room. "You gotta listen to Kenny Rogers," he said. "The Gambler has seen some shit. He knows, man."

  TR followed Cody defiantly through the living room but stayed standing.

  "Cody, that's just...that's just loser talk!"

  "The game is over TR." Cody turned and dropped onto the chair next to Ricky. "And I lost. At least I ain't a sore loser. I'm just admitting when I'm beat. Let's face facts. It was a game I shouldn't have been playing to begin with. We had some fun, but it was a fluke. The whole thing. It was too good to be true."

  "You can't say that!" TR said. "You still got 10 months! It ain't even half time."

  "Enough with the football metaphors! Jesus can't anyone in Texas make a point without referencing football?"

  "Well, football is what I got in my brain right now, and I ain't gonna think up anything new right at the moment. So...so, you gotta get back out on that field!" TR pumped an arm out.

  "You ain't seriously gonna pull the football coach routine on me are you pal? I've heard it all before from my dad."

  "Well, maybe he's right. Maybe you are a loser!"

  Cody stood up. "Fine, TR. I'm a loser. Are you happy about that?"

  "What would your mother say if she could see you now?"

  It was as if all the air had been instantly sucked out of the room. Jason and Ricky made to move toward the two of them.

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jason said holding up both hands.

  Cody clenched a fist. He spoke with a slow, smoldering voice.

  "Listen you bull-headed, sanctimonious asshole, if you wanna bring my mother into this, you will regret it." Cody stood inches from TR, looking only an inch or two slightly down into TR's wide bearded face. TR looked unsteady, as if he might wilt under the heat of Cody's thinly veiled fury.

  "You take that back," Cody said. "Now."

  TR's eyes flickered toward Jason and Ricky to his right, perhaps looking for an escape. But instead, TR doubled down.

  "I'll take it back, when you stop acting like such a pussy."

  "What did you just call me, Hoss?"

  TR's eyes flickered for just a moment, as if he knew he was on uncertain ground, but was too stubborn or too dumb to stop himself.

  "I called you a pussy. Because you are one."

  "Yeah? That's big truth talking for a man whose mama still sews his name in his underwear. Big talk for a man who's been saying for a decade how he's gonna move out of his mama's house. How he's gonna open up his own mechanic shop. And you've been gabbing about getting hitched and having kids for just as long. But you haven't done shit about it, any of it. And you, Jason." Cody turned and pointed. "You talk such a big game about all these businesses you're gonna run. But you've been clinging to that mall kiosk like the mast of a sinking ship for 4 years. That's why you talk-talk-talk, because you're shit-scared of actually doing any of it." Then Cody turned back to TR. "You guys are gonna call me a pussy for quitting something that was forced on me? So what does that make you for not having the balls to do what you always said you were gonna do? Look in the mirror, you giant, mashed up assholes."

  TR reached up and shoved Cody violently backward. Cody staggered and slammed a leg into the coffee table, but remained upright. Cody let out a guttural scream as he barreled forward with all his strength, plowing 300 lbs of TR like a tackling dummy into the couch behind him. Cody threw a punch into TR's side with his right fist. TR rolled over onto Cody whose back was now only halfway on the couch. Cody grabbed at TR's orange vest coat with his left hand and kicked his hips to make TR over-rotate. TR hit the ground and Cody fell on top of him. Cody pummeled TR in the ribs. TR threw a punch at Cody's face and missed. Then he grabbed Cody's collar with both hands, trying to push him away to no avail. Eventually, he threw Cody off to the sid
e. Both men disentangled themselves and got to their feet again.

  "Hey you two, cut it out!" Jason yelled.

  Cody and TR circled one another like tigers in a cage. TR lunged forward, and Cody came up with a knee that sunk into his belly. TR kept charging until Cody's back hit the wooden inside edge of the glass-paned double doors. One of the doors had been bolted into the top and bottom of the doorframe, but they both flew open in a shower of glass and splintered wood. Cody hit the concrete patio hard and both men went tumbling. They each came back to their feet slowly, clutching at some part of their anatomy.

  "Go home TR," Cody snarled. "You got no right!"

  "Enough, you two," Ricky said from the doorway, with as stern a voice as one was ever to hear from him.

  "Got a lot of nerve calling ME a loser!" Cody shot at TR again.

  "Cody, shut up," Ricky said. "Jason, you get TR home. I'll bring TR's rig by later. Cody you get inside."

  All three men obeyed.

  Ricky was silent as he examined the damage to the shattered door.

  Cody moved around the living room inspecting himself for damage. His elbow and lower back hurt, and the left side of his back felt scraped up, but he was otherwise fine. He picked up the beer he'd left on the arm of his chair and continued to drink it, waiting for whatever talking to he was about to get from Ricky.

  But Ricky just got a broom and swept up splinters and glass off the patio, threw them out in a stiff paper sack and then did the same in the kitchen. When he finished straightening up the living room, Ricky retrieved a beer for himself, turned off the kitchen light and sat down a little heavily on the couch.

  Light from the patio lamp glowed faintly into the unlit living room. Cody sat beside Ricky and looked out the open, broken doorframe at a corner of the glittering blue pool. Cody looked back at Ricky, expecting words. He saw Ricky lean his head back, pinch the bridge of his nose and rub at his sinuses above and below his eyes. Ricky picked up his trucker cap and ran a hand through his thin dark hair. He placed his cap back on his head and grabbed his beer bottle.

  "Do we need to talk about what just happened?" Ricky asked.