Shocked and horrified, especially because she feared Buddy would walk in on the sight of his stepfather attacking his mother like this, as if he hadn’t seen or heard enough over the past few years, Retta writhed and wailed and started to pump her thin and sharp elbows against Kenny’s waist and stomach. He fumbled and fell backwards onto the floor, and Retta ran away from him and into the kitchen. Kenny, furious, got up off the floor and went after her, grabbing her skirt by its bottom and tearing it down the side. Retta picked up a butcher knife, which sat in the sink, waiting to be wiped off from lunch earlier.
She stood there in an offensive posture, almost like if someone walked in on them, they would’ve thought she was the crazy one. Her bony hand, white with every vein standing at attention through the skin, grasped the converted weapon with a strength unknown to her before. Her face tight, her dark chocolate brown eyes almost glazed over in a rage reserved for wounded animals in the wild, protecting themselves from the stronger predator.
Kenny crept toward her.
“Give me the damn knife, girl,” he seethed. “What you think you’re gonna do with that thing?”
Retta did not want to lose her edge in this moment. She felt stronger than she had ever felt in her life. The adrenaline was pumping; she believed that if he came one step closer, she would bury the knife in his chest, leave him dying on the floor, and never look back. If anything, that would solve his wartime suffering for good. He would be free of it. And so would she and her son.
“Retta, give me the knife.”
She felt her eye throbbing and tasted blood near the edges of her mouth. There was a cut somewhere on her face, a bad one. She didn’t recall hitting her face on anything, but she reckoned it could’ve been against the sink when she first tried to get away from him.
“Get the hell away from me, Kenny, or so help me God, I will sink this mother fucking thing into you!” she shouted.
Kenny’s eyes were droopy, and his words were slurring. His face was haggard, and the handsome lumberjack look he carried on his frame when she first met him, was long gone. He looked pathetic now, almost like a man given in to defeat, the energy having leaked out of his body, day after day, like an old wrinkled birthday balloon.
“Retta, please just give me the knife. I don’t want you to hurt yourself with that thing. Look at you. You’re bleeding by your eye. We need to clean you up.” He seemed almost concerned with her well-being and had somehow managed to morph into a piece of the Kenny she knew was still in there somewhere. If he could just get some help. If he would just talk to someone. Talk to her, even.
“If you ever touch me again, if you even lay one drunken hand on me again, I swear to God in Heaven, and I swear on my husband’s grave and our son’s grave…I will kill you. And then I will take my son, and we will leave you here dead on the floor in this house. And no one will ever find you.” She was firm. Her voice, unshaking, resolute.
Kenny felt his body tremble, his mind suddenly calming down like a set of slowing ripples in the lake after a boat goes by. He knew that she meant it.
Mama’s Boy
Buddy sat on his bed in his pajamas. His blue blanket and Snoopy sheets were crumpled at the foot, and the lamp on his nightstand was dim. The light bulb would be going out soon.
Earlier, he was outside playing with his friend Gary. They had brought Gary’s huge Matchbox car collection down to the dirt pile area in his backyard. Gary was good at constructing roads and inventing quarries, and Buddy was good at coming up with stories for them to play out with the cars.
First, he wanted them to be cops, like on TV. Then he wanted them to be the bad guys being chased by the cops. Playing bad guys was more fun because there were so many ways they could elude the pursuits. The quarry was deep and had a couple of construction trucks inside of it, so it looked real. There was only one cop car left because Gary lost the others, so he wanted to turn the red Chevelle into a second cop car. The boys had to do a lot of pretending to make the stories work. Buddy agreed but insisted that since the cop was in charge, he was allowed to drive whatever kind of car he wanted while on the job.
His jeans were filthy, his jacket was covered in mud, and he was afraid to go back home without being cleaned off first. Kenny would holler at him for tracking dirt into the house, and he might even slap him if he got mad enough. He used to get spankings, but his mother told Kenny that he was too old for those now.
For a long time, Kenny had been hitting his mother. It wasn’t every day, as far as Buddy knew, but it was often enough that he felt like there was a quiet madness building inside of him and making is stomach feel sour all the time. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the feelings and sickness anymore, and he had started picking at his fingernails ‘til they bled.
Buddy was a calm boy, the kind of kid who rarely got upset about anything. He was “cool headed” according to his teacher, and so she always had him be the student who helped the kids who needed extra assistance with their word problems or had him escort the new student around the school whenever there was one who moved to town and came into his class. Buddy was the kind of boy who was responsible and hardworking, well read, and respectful to authority. But this anger about Kenny was changing him into something else altogether.
The first time he saw Kenny losing his mind, it scared him to death. He heard all the shouting and his mother’s crying and some banging noises. Then he began seeing his mother’s face change. It would have cuts on it from time to time, and she would cover herself in makeup and wear her big sunglasses like that lady in the movie singing “Moon River.” Her arms and neck sometimes had bruises on them. She was always a thin mother, but she looked even thinner, and he rarely saw her eat anything.
Buddy never asked her about any of it because he knew what it was, and he didn’t want to upset her more than she was already. His mother wasn’t the kind of woman who talked about her problems with other people, like Gary’s mother who complained about every little thing she didn’t like to anyone who would listen. Buddy’s mother endured problems; she made do with life’s messes. She never complained.
One time, when he was in his room, his mother shouted, “I am out of here! I can’t take it anymore!” Buddy’s heart flipped, and for a moment, he felt like he was happy. He thought to himself, Finally! No more of this! No more Kenny being so mean and no more being scared!
But she didn’t leave.
Another time, Buddy overheard her on the phone talking to his Uncle Frank. “No, I just can’t, Frank. He needs help. This is not his fault. There is something wrong from the war – something happened to him over there. I know he loves me. I know he loves Buddy. I know he doesn’t mean it.”
Buddy couldn’t understand what could’ve happened in the war that would cause a man to hit his wife. He figured the worst thing that could happen to a man in war is what happened to his own father...die so badly that only parts of you come back in a bag to be buried in a coffin. Kenny only had a shrapnel injury as far as Buddy knew, and that never kept him from doing anything he wanted to do.
He reckoned that Kenny was just a son of a bitch. A mean son of a bitch. And he didn’t care about him or his mother at all. Kenny probably even killed his brother while the baby was still inside of his mother just because he’s a son of a bitch. And Buddy figured that how he felt about Kenny…was what hate felt like. He had never hated anyone before in his life. Until now.
Just then, Buddy was torn from his thoughts as his mother came into his room and laid down on the bed next to him. She was always so pretty, even when she didn’t need to be. At home cleaning, going for a walk outside, running to the store for a carton of milk, cooking dinner – she always looked like she was heading out somewhere important to see someone even more important. Tonight, her dark curls were hanging down, and her makeup seemed fresh. She was wearing a different skirt than she wore earlier, but the shirt was the same. Her thin arms
flopped gently over her head, and she took up half the bed.
“Son, are you gonna go to sleep soon?” she asked, her eyes looking up at the popcorn ceiling.
“I don’t know…I guess so,” Buddy said, using his finger to trace the outline of Snoopy’s doghouse on his sheets.
She sighed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Just tired, son. Real tired, is all.” She moved her arm and covered her eyes. “I wish I knew what to do.”
They never discussed what went on in their home, and they never talked about Kenny’s hollering and drinking. Buddy knew what she meant, even though she didn’t outright say it. Instead, he figured that this was his moment to say what was on his mind.
He began to whisper, “There’s nothin’ you can do but get us out of here. He’s a son of a bitch, and I don’t like him anymore. He’s not a nice man, mother.”
Retta rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in Buddy’s pillow. “But he is, Buddy. That’s the problem. You don’t know him like I know him. There is something wrong with him…and it needs to get fixed…and I just know that he will be himself again. I still see the real him from time to time so I know he’s in there, somewhere, underneath whatever crazy things are mixed up in his head.” She started sobbing. “He was really good to us before. Something’s just broken in him.”
Buddy rubbed his mother’s head. She was such a good woman, a good person, who always saw the best in others. He guessed she must be right – that Kenny is broken. But she couldn’t fix him. And if she tried much longer, Kenny might break her too. He only wished she could see that for herself.
“You know son, I told you once before that you are my whole life?”
Buddy nodded.
“As long as I have you, I think I can stand just about anything in this world. Even Kenny Bellinger’s nightmares and beatings and drinking.”
That made Buddy boil up inside. She shouldn’t have to stand Kenny’s beatings and drinking at all. But he knew he could never run away and leave her here alone with the likes of his stepfather.
Earlier in the evening, after the boys were done playing Matchbox outside, Buddy went inside of Gary’s bathroom to try to wipe off some of the dirt on his clothes before going home. He spotted Gary’s father sitting on his bed in the room across from the bathroom. His bare feet were off the side of the bed, and he wore green shorts and a blue crew neck sweatshirt. He had red hair, the kind of red that’s really the just color orange and makes a grown man look like he is still a little kid – at least on top of his head. He was holding a pistol and rubbing it with a small rag. There was some solution on the rag because the smell was strong as it came through the doorway. Then he saw Gary’s father stand up and slip the pistol into the drawer next to the bed.
Kenny didn’t own a pistol or a rifle like lots of folks around here did, and Buddy had only ever seen them on TV or in movies or the one at Gary’s house. But he felt good knowing that if he ever needed a gun, there was one not too far away. If his mother wouldn’t protect herself, or couldn’t protect herself, maybe it was his job to protect her instead. Even though he had no idea how to use one, he figured that it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to learn. Maybe Gary’s father would teach him.
Han
Kenny sat in a large leather chair at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church across from the Reverend Phillip Jenkins, whose oblong bald head full of age spots, sour facial expression, and horn-rimmed glasses made him look like a bespectacled penis. At least, that was how he would later describe the man’s appearance to Retta.
The sun shone through the tinted window behind him, casting a shadow on his mahogany desk. For the past few weeks, Kenny met with the Reverend, who was recommended to him by his former boss, Hollis, at the warehouse.
One afternoon, Hollis called on Kenny – unannounced – out of concern for his wellbeing. He visited him while Retta was at work and Buddy was at school and told him that if he confessed his sins to the Reverend, the sins would remain in confidence. The Reverend would keep it private and guide him down a spiritual path and directly toward the open arms of God’s love. He would help Kenny heal from his war problems, and then he’d be able to stop his drinking, go back to work, regain his strength, and take care of his family again.
Because Kenny had been so touched by the fact that Hollis cared enough about him to come by and talk with him about his troubles, he reckoned he owed it to the man to go to this “Man of God” (who really did look like a penis with glasses) with his burdens. After all, they were overwhelming him at this point. The drinking sure hadn’t solved anything, and he knew he was going to lose Retta forever if he couldn’t get his act together. Not only that, but he loved her. He didn’t want to hit her anymore. He didn’t want to make her cry anymore.
Kenny tried to explain to the Reverend what had been going on with him and how he had been hurting his wife and family, even though he knew he didn’t want to.
“Are you afraid that you’ll hurt her worse than you have? Meaning, do you think you will hit her or choke her to the point where she’d need to be hospitalized?” Reverend Jenkins asked, as if he were talking about how to properly bread fried chicken.
“Yeah,” Kenny responded. “Sometimes, when I’m drunk, the dumbest things just set me off. And I get mad and can’t stop being mad until I break something or hurt something. It’s like the anger, and then what I do with it…just lets me release something ugly inside of me. Like a bunch of bad air is let out. Then after it’s all over, I feel better.”
He shuffled his feet, took a deep breath and continued. “Other times, I don’t even know I’m doing anything and can’t remember what I just did. I don’t remember a damn thing. Nothing! But Retta’ll be on the floor crying, hiding under something, and then I’ll see that I musta clocked her,” he explained and then stopped. His voice started to quiver. “I don’t mean to. And I know she knows that. But it’s like I can’t control anything when it happens. Like something…maybe a demon or an evil spirit…comes into my body and takes it over and doesn’t leave until I fight it out of me.”
The Reverend leaned back in his chair and ran his finger slowly across the shadow on his desk.
“Do you think you’re ready to tell me about Han today?” he asked deliberately.
The last time he asked Kenny to explain Han, he lost him. Kenny started to cry like a child. In all his years serving God in this capacity, he had never seen anything quite like Kenny’s struggle. Even the grown men whom he had counseled through their wives’ deaths or the deaths of children or their own war stories, didn’t sob like Kenny Bellinger had about this Han person.
Kenny put his head in his big hands. And with a heavy heart and all the courage he could manage, he began to tell the story about Han.
He had seen death in combat, avoided his own several times, and saw fellow soldiers suffer loss of limbs. He saw genuine poverty in the streets of the villages and in pockets of Saigon. He took some shrapnel to his own leg during an ambush. He thought he was going to die that day. Kenny had been through a lot…just like lots of the other guys over there. No one came back the same. There was no way they could, really. And anyone who said the war didn’t affect them were either liars or lacking any kind of conscience.
But no matter what carnage he had witnessed and experienced firsthand as a soldier, he was certain that there was only one thing that had obliterated a part of his soul. And he didn’t know just deeply Han’s story haunted him these years later…until he lost his baby boy in the quiet comfort of his wife’s womb.
It was during the second day in Saigon, when he and his best Army pal, Teddy Edwards from Biloxi, Mississippi, were in the city on a three-day pass. It was August 1969, and he remembered falling onto the street because he had a little too much of the local beer at a popular GI hangout. Kenny and Teddy finally got to have sex with some bar girls the day before, which had b
een way overdue. They ate some of the local cuisine, which was a lot better than they thought it would be. They wore normal clothes, like tan slacks and buttoned up collared shirts and white sneakers. Their haircuts and tall, lean bodies screamed “American GI.” This was the first time they had both been allowed to put the war and all they’d been through while in country out of their heads…and attempt to be two young men in the prime of their lives just enjoying a day out on the town. Even if it couldn’t be in New York or Paris and had to be in Saigon.
Teddy helped Kenny up off the ground. The streets were full of people milling about during their day. Some were on foot, some riding bikes, some on scooters, some in pedi-cabs. Street vendors in conical hats hocking their fruits and vegetables and baked goods and wares were sprawled about. Whenever they’d see Kenny and Teddy, they figured there was some American money to be made. All Americans had money, after all. Certainly, more than the humble folks sitting in Saigon and wading in the rice paddies on the countryside.
As they walked upon a small shop full of beautiful linens and hand crafted bags, a young Vietnamese girl, who looked about twelve or thirteen, sat patiently and clearly in charge of the items. She was delicate – like all the women in Vietnam were – slight and thin with black shiny hair and slanted eyes and flawless olive toned skin. She wore a white dress and traditional sandals. As Kenny looked around the busy streets, it was apparent to him that God took a mold for “Vietnamese female” and pressed a “repeat” button a million times before dropping them all into this dusty and overpopulated city. There was nothing that stood out about this girl on this day and in this place. She looked just like the rest of them.
Kenny felt the linens through his fingers and thought about how his little sister might like one for her trailer. A souvenir from his war days. But then he remembered his sister ran off with some asshole from Tampa. Maybe he’d buy it anyway and give it to her if he ever saw her again.
Good Buddy Page 15