"I've heard, and seen, that you're pretty passionate about gimp rights."
"The way I see it, the world only allows two choices for guys like me. You either spend your Social Security check on porno movies, drugs, and booze, or you do what you can. People think if your body is defective that automatically means your mind is missing. If you can make a life for yourself, they think it's amazing and get impressed and think you're wonderful." He punctuated his words by letting his wheelchair drop down onto the front guide wheels with a bang.
"Uncle Tommy is the best!" Sammy blurted, grabbing onto the bar at the back of his chair.
"Yeah, right. Sometimes I wonder how good a comedian I would be if I didn't have this chair. I avoid faith healers, y'know? I'd lose more than half my material if I started walking!"
"Hey, ready to go?" Franky hurried through the lobby doors, propped open in the warm weather. He carried a backpack over one arm, and slid it over the handlebars on the back of Tommy's chair.
"Sure." Tommy gestured at Natalie. "Mind if we have a passenger?"
"Uh…" He glanced at Natalie, and she wondered if he knew she had overheard his conversation in the comedy club parking lot and had reported it. "Well, it's your van. I'm just the chauffer."
"What's in the backpack?" she asked.
"Survival kit," Tommy said. "Parking card, water, my joke book--"
"You're kidding. You use notes?"
"Hey, even the world's greatest sit-down comic experiences stage fright, as rare as it might be, and needs to refer to his notes to remember what the hey-ha he's supposed to say." He twisted around and reached back for Sammy, tugging her away from the chair. "Tell you're folks I'm out, will you?"
"Out of it," Natalie muttered. She muffled a giggle when Tommy glared at her -- but with laughter sparkling in his eyes, ruining the threatening expression. Then she had to nearly run to keep up with him as he zoomed across the lobby and bumped down the shallow steps in front of the school.
*****
She felt decidedly under-dressed, even a little grungy, when the van pulled up in front of a restaurant with fancy gold script lettering on the sign over the dark, antique-looking wooden double doors. The words looked French, and a rounded awning extended from the doorway to the sidewalk. She fully expected a doorman in a long coat and big brass buttons to hurry out and tell them to go away as Franky lowered the wheelchair lift and helped Tommy get out. Nobody gave them odd looks, and she felt a little better when, while they waited for Franky to park the van and rejoin them, a couple walked into the restaurant and the woman wore jeans under her cream and gold, hip-length sweater. Granted, those were probably designer jeans.
"Nat," Tommy said, reaching up to tug on her sleeve. "Don't look -- at least, don't be obvious about it -- but are those the two jokers from my backyard?" He tipped his head to the right.
Natalie wondered for a moment how she could call herself an investigative reporter when she froze up again. The smile stayed on her face, but it felt stiff and flat. She turned slowly, hoping she looked like she was inspecting the length of the street with all the high-rise office buildings wrapped in bronze glass, interspersed with art deco buildings of weathered stone and decorated with stylized eagles and other modern replacements for gargoyles.
Thanks, God, she thought, as her gaze landed on Simon and Chuck, lounging against a half-wall four buildings down to their right, and she didn't freeze up or react. At least, she thought she didn't.
"Yep," she said, finishing her inspection and looking down at Tommy.
"This is hacking me off."
"What are you going to do?" She caught hold of his arm. "You are not going to face them down, are you?"
"Hey, superheroes in wheelchairs go for the brain over brawn approach."
"Really?" She relaxed, but didn't let go. She could feel those two men staring holes into her and Tommy. "Name one."
"Professor X. Like, duh!"
She wanted to slap him. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to curl up in his lap like Sammy did and feel perfectly safe and confident. What if Franky wasn't coming back? What if he had brought them here, specifically for Simon and Chuck to interrogate them? Meaning all three of them knew she had eavesdropped that first night in town, and they wanted to know what she knew.
"Ready," Franky said, coming up behind her.
"Hey, you know those two?" Tommy said, pointing right at Simon and Chuck.
Natalie changed "slap" to "punch in the mouth" in her mind. What was Tommy doing? This did not qualify as using his brains.
Franky looked, and scowled. Somehow, that was very comforting. Natalie would have worried if he denied knowing the two men, or acted afraid and hurried them into the restaurant.
"They're just two jerks. Ignore them."
"You know them?" she had to ask.
"Unfortunately. Hey, how about you and Tommy go inside? I'll take care of them and be right in."
"Sounds good," Tommy said, and grabbed his wheels, pivoting to face the restaurant door. "Hey, abee, make yourself useful."
"What's an abee? Or shouldn't I ask?" Natalie retorted, and hurried to pull the door open for him.
"Able-bodied, what did you think it meant?" Tommy shook his head and rolled through the door.
*****
Franky waited until they were inside and the door swung closed behind them before he headed down the sidewalk. Chuck and Simon hadn't moved since Tommy pointed at them.
"Hey, buddy. How ya doing?" Chuck said, when Franky stopped five feet away from them.
"A lot better if you'd stop following me around," he said, his tone even.
"Is that any way to talk to your partners?" Simon said with a deceptively gentle smile.
"You're not my partners. You're not my friends. Just stop the games."
"Fine. We got your first job all lined up. Come on over to our office." He gestured down the street to where his car was parked. He sighed loudly when Franky crossed his arms and spread his legs a little, as if for firmer footing. "You know, you gotta trust us. Somebody could get hurt if you don't."
"Yeah, and I just bet you two trust me."
"Matter of fact," Chuck said, "we don't. Who's the girl?"
"Nat is with a magazine," Franky said. "She's covering Tommy."
"Yeah, I bet he just loves that!"
"Look, can we just get this over with? I have to drive Tommy home and we have a lot of work to do to get ready for the walk tomorrow afternoon." Franky glanced over his shoulder once, then followed them to the car. He stiffened as Simon slid an arm around his shoulder, then gripped his upper arm, making it hard for him to move, much less run away -- which was probably the point.
"See, here's the deal. We've been having trouble with our source at the VA. They're catching on to us, so we have to lay low," Simon said as he guided Franky to stand with his back against the car. Then he leaned in with one arm braced against the roof of the car. Chuck stood on the other side, taking a matching posture, effectively blocking Franky in between them.
"They're searching everybody who leaves the place. But they won't check visitors, and they sure won't search a stupid cripple leaving the place," Chuck added.
"Nope. Can't. We don't have any gigs lined up at any hospitals, let alone the VA," Franky said.
"You will. It's all arranged. We just need you to prime the quad so he says yes," Simon said.
"He hates those places!"
"Everybody does. I don't care what you say, get him there. Our guy on the inside is all ready -- just meet him and take it out past the guards. Got it?"
"You know," Chuck said slowly, leaning a little closer to Franky, but addressing Simon. "Doesn't really matter if good old Franky does or not. He's doing it, or we tell the cops about that little trip to Mexico."
"That was four years ago!" Franky protested, his voice cracking. "I only went once."
"Once is all it takes. You smuggled drugs and you don't want anybody to know. You do what we say and we keep our mouths shut.
Got it?"
*****
Five minutes before he rolled out onto the stage in the private dining room for the businessmen's association dinner, Tommy had his audience sized up. They were all older, dressed in expensive suits, complacent and self-satisfied. They needed shaking up.
"When I was a kid," he said slowly, meeting the gazes of at least one person at each table as he looked around the room, "I only had two role models. They only showed two kinds of handicapped people on TV or in the movies. I could either be Tiny Tim Cratchet -- or I could be Igor. I'd roll into the kitchen and Mom would be making dinner and she'd say, 'Tommy, can you help me?' and I'd say, 'Yeth, mathter.'" He took deep, raspy breaths and hunched over, twisting to imitate the classic hunchback, lisping, mad scientist assistant. "'What are your orderth, mathter?'"
Laughter rolled through the room. He waited, soaking up the energy that came from his audience's enjoyment.
"So you can see, folks, I had a really twisted childhood. I didn't know what to think, how to act. But look at me--" He flexed one arm, making his biceps bulge. For just a moment, he hesitated and second-guessed this part of his routine. With the house lights up in the dining room and no spotlight, he couldn't exactly show off his muscle definition for this part of his routine. "Do I really look like Tiny Tim to you? Yeah, God bless us all. God help the guy who gets in my way."
The responding laughter was more of a trickle than a wave, meaning the audience wasn't sure if it was politically correct to laugh. Tommy fought the urge to stick his tongue out at them.
"I mean, can you see me playing a ukulele and singing 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips'?" That got a little stronger laughter. These men were old enough to remember the long-haired singer named Tiny Tim. "Life just isn't fair. For instance -- marriage. That sure isn't fair. Lots of things just don't make sense. Look at the ceremony. You got a priest -- if you were raised Catholic -- and this guy isn't allowed to get married or have kids, but you have to call him 'Father.' And they think he's qualified to be a marriage counselor!" He held onto his horrified expression as the laughter went up a few decibels, even as satisfaction helped relax some of the tense muscles in his shoulders.
"That's like having me for a track coach. It won't work -- I went out for track. High hurdles. I couldn't get a ramp long enough! I kept crashing and burning on re-entry."
*****
Franky was quiet when Tommy finished his half-hour routine and the three of them headed out of the restaurant -- loaded down with takeout boxes of fancy desserts, which added to his high from having a good performance. Natalie remarked that it was almost like he wasn't there.
"Gotta wonder what those two jerks said to him," Tommy said, nodding, and grateful that they had a few moments alone while Franky went to get the van.
"Do we--"
"Nope, we don't ask. But we tell Paul and Brock what we saw, what happened, and they go to Franky's coordinator. Let them handle it the right way."
"What exactly is the right way?" she said with a sigh.
Then Franky pulled up to the sidewalk, and they were too busy with the chair lift and finding their way out of the downtown area to talk -- even if they dared talk about it while Franky was in the van. Tommy realized he was so busy gnawing on the puzzle, and how to handle the fallout if the young man returned to his life of crime, he didn't really listen to what his driver was saying. At first.
"Uh, Tommy, are you sure?" Natalie said. By this time they were on the highway and halfway back to Tabor Heights.
"Sure about what?"
Chapter Eleven
Franky laughed, and that had to be a good sign. "You weren't listening to a thing I said."
"Well, I was listening. Doesn't mean I heard you." Tommy glanced at Natalie, sitting in the passenger seat ahead of him. "Want to go over it and remind me?"
"Franky said he was talking to a guy at the restaurant, and he wants you to come do your routine at the VA tomorrow morning," Natalie said.
"Uh uh. Ain't no way. I do not watch gimp movies or watch animals-are-people-too movies, and I do not do hospital shows."
"Why not?" Franky said, glancing away from the road momentarily.
"I hate those places!"
"Doesn't mean you can't do your routine there, does it?"
"It's a hospital."
"You'll be in the auditorium, twenty miles from the contagion ward," Natalie offered.
Tommy glared at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He had to laugh, despite the roiling in his stomach at the thought of voluntarily wheeling into a hospital. Any hospital. It didn't matter if it was the VA or Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital or a leper ward.
"That isn't what bothers me." The words spilled out, as he fought not to give in to the cold, tangled feeling welling up inside him. "I hate the image those guys give to other gimps. I hate therapists and Pollyanna social workers and all that politically correct label crap. We're not 'challenged,' we're gimps. We're cripples."
"Okay, think about the money you'll make," Franky offered, suspiciously calm.
"Real cute. Make me a mercenary, why don't you?"
"Then consider it part of paying your debt to society," Natalie offered.
Whose side was she on, anyway?
"I didn't know I was running up a tab," Tommy retorted.
"Come on, Tommy. Save the funny stuff for the clubs," Franky said.
"I am."
*****
Tommy argued against doing the VA show, but even Claire and Paul thought it would be a good idea. He thought at least his own sister would understand his antipathy toward hospitals. Even going in voluntarily, with the freedom to leave, it was hard. The lowest blow was when Sammy climbed up onto his lap -- he hadn't even realized she had come downstairs, awakened by their "intense" discussion in the living room -- and asked him why he didn't want to go make hurt soldiers feel good. When he used his last excuse, that the show would interfere with doing the accessibility awareness walk the next day, Franky pointed out that the VA show was in the morning, right after breakfast and before therapy started for the day, and the awareness walk didn't start until just before lunchtime -- one of the first challenges for the volunteers would be dealing with restaurants.
"Traitor," Tommy grumbled, screwing his face into a twisted mask that made Sammy laugh sleepily and hug him.
Saturday, September 19
Bright and early that morning, Franky showed up to haul Tommy back to Cleveland in the van. The only saving grace was that Natalie volunteered to come with them. She claimed she wanted to be able to interview the physically handicapped among the veterans, and get their take on the whole accessibility issue, before and after they needed the adaptations. Tommy chose to believe it was just an excuse to spend more time with him.
Not that he expected her to feel sorry for him. Why should she?
No, he chose to stroke his ego with the fact that Natalie couldn't bear to be away from him more than a few hours.
He laughed at himself when he realized just where his thoughts were going. Sure, he hadn't been so badly damaged that he couldn't function in all physical aspects of marriage, but he knew the hurdle was convincing a nice Christian girl that she wouldn't be spending her life babysitting a man who couldn't make her a mother. And that was if he found a nice Christian girl who wouldn't take one look at him and think "mission field," and "lifetime of sacrificing myself for God." He didn't want to be a mission field. He wanted to be a husband and father and sweetheart and lover. But where was he going to find a girl who didn't see the wheelchair before she saw him?
Maybe… Natalie? Or was she just so fascinated by his sense of humor that his chrome additions hadn't registered yet? Or was he just a story to her, and she was such a professional she knew how to become friends with all her investigative subjects?
He was so caught up in his thoughts, trying to figure out what he wanted, what angle Natalie was coming from, and if he should do anything about it or let her stroll out of his life when the story
was over, he didn't have any time to grumble on the drive to the VA hospital. He watched Natalie when she climbed out of the van and introduced herself to the guard and nurse and hospital executive in a dark brown suit who came out to greet them. But he wasn't too distracted that he didn't give Franky a hard time for forcing him into this situation. Tommy sat back and made Franky do all the work of handling the wheelchair lift, instead of helping get himself down. The hospital administrator was named Boris Welch, and Tommy's brain slipped into third gear, thinking up all sorts of terrible jokes about unfortunate names that he could add to his routine -- but far away from the VA and Dr. Welch, of course. He was having so much fun, he barely noticed when Franky slipped the backpack off the back of his chair as they rolled through the big double doors of the hospital, and forgot about it a moment later.
Tommy relaxed a little as they rolled down the halls to the hospital's auditorium. The décor wasn't what he had expected, even if only subconsciously -- stained, broken tiles, paint that hadn't been refreshed since the first World War, narrow windows that stretched to the ceiling with cage-like grids over them, and the smell of blood and urine and depression thick in the air. This place looked like it had been redesigned or rebuilt within the last five years, with creamy terra cotta-colored floors that looked ceramic rather than institutional, plants everywhere, wide windows, and two-seater sofas at every intersection of halls, inviting people to sit and read the stacks of magazines on the end tables next to them.
The auditorium reminded him of a university lecture hall, with the speaker's platform at the bottom of a half-circle cup. There were doors at three different levels, and room for wheelchairs and patients with rolling IV stands to come in and sit down in comfort on those levels, as well as regular lecture hall seating with long tables and attached chairs that swiveled to let people get in and out. He thought of several quips about not being used to being on this side of a lecture, but decided to save them for later. Maybe he could swing a few gigs in an academic setting and use the lines there. Certainly not here.
Wheels (Tabor Heights Year Two) Page 16