Rumble Tumble

“You turn that over, I’m gonna leave you there,” Leonard said. “You’ll be damn uncomfortable lying on your side tied to a chair. You settle down there and after a while I’ll let you loose for a pee break, otherwise you’re gonna be miserable. And remember this, you ain’t got no extra clothes with you if you mess yourself. Though, I suppose tomorrow morning I could run over to the children’s department at a thrift store and pick you up some short sets.”

Red quit kicking. His little shoulders slumped.

Leonard turned on the television. There was a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos on. Leonard picked up Red’s chair and sat him right in front of the television set. He took the Western novel Taxi Man had given me and stretched out on the bed and began to read.

“Well, that television show is our cue to depart,” I said.

I glanced at Red: he had his head hung, defeated. On the television the audience was laughing as a toddler fell over the edge of a plastic swimming pool and banged his head against the ground.

Brett and I went to our room, carrying our little bit of luggage.

“I bought him some aspirin, didn’t I? Paid for it out of my own money.”

“Jesus, Brett. You hit him in the head with a gun barrel. A piece of steel. Aspirin doesn’t make it okay.”

“Well, aspirin’s for a headache ain’t it?”

“You gave him the headache. And besides, you gave Leonard a couple dollars and sent him for the aspirin.”

“It don’t matter how the little fucker gets it, does it?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“He’s lucky I didn’t give him a new shape to his head. And don’t be so self-righteous. You were in on it.”

I went quiet. We were lying in bed, the light out. We were both well on our sides of the bed, leaving quite a space between us.

Brett said, “I’m sorry, Hap. Really. I shouldn’t have said that. Wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be involved. But you got to understand. This is my daughter we’re talking about. Whatever it takes, that’s what I’ll do, and it’s not like we’re dealing with the Pope here.”

“I know, Brett, it’s just seeing the little guy take it. Fact is, I kind of admire him.”

“Admire him?”

“Not for who he is. Or what he’s done. But just the way he conducts himself.”

“That prattling?”

“No, that drives me shit-crazy. But he has a sense of honor. Strength. Dignity.”

“Next thing you’ll be asking him to bench-press two hundred pounds and show you his pecker.”

“I didn’t say I liked him. I said I kind of admire him.”

“I’ll have to think about that one, Hap. You’re pitying him, not picking up on a sense of honor. I’ve done the same, so I know. I’m an expert at recognizing the difference between admiring someone and pitying them. You have some of my old personality.”

“How’s that?”

“You see someone that’s down, maybe not even someone you like, someone who’s got a fucked-up life or who’s taken a wrong turn, and you want to set them straight. You think all you got to do is get them on their feet. It’s like the woman who takes up with the sorry man because she thinks she sees something in him, thinks she can change him.”

“I know Red’s worthless,” I said.

“I’m not saying you’re taking him under your wing and feeding him worms, but I’m saying what you feel for him is pity and it comes out of the same urge as the woman who wants to change the sorry man. You feel pity because he’s a midget, or a dwarf, or whatever he is, like being small alone makes him worth a damn. He’d be sorry if he was eight feet tall. He’d be sorry if he had a nub dick and couldn’t pick up five pounds. He’d be sorry if he had a dick long as a rock python and could bench-press a gorilla carrying a sackful of coconuts. He might be sorry in a different way, but he’d be sorry.”

“He was sold to a circus.”

“There’s people been sold to circuses that didn’t grow up to strangle people over money. He admitted to robbing that diner while his partner whipped up on that poor man who cooked the steak ranchero.”

“Boy, that must have been some steak ranchero,” I said. “Way he kept talking about it.”

“Yeah,” Brett said, “and I’ll be honest. I started to ask him where the place was.”

We both laughed.

Brett said, “So you got to accept this guy isn’t worth the powder it would take to blow his ass up. Lice on the end of a dog’s dick have more sense of community than he does. He’s out for himself.”

“I know that.”

“I know you know that, but you got to really know it. Between my husband and you I took up with this guy lived in a shed. I mean that literally. A shed. He conned someone to let him live in their shed. He wasn’t even a particularly interesting, smart, or attractive guy, but he had a way of making you feel sorry for him. Sort of like an ugly mongrel puppy that had caught on fire and wasn’t nothing but bald spots and red meat. You just naturally wanted to help him. He was a piece of shit, and I met him and got hung up with him, and I let him come over to the house cold nights and warm his pecker.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this.”