Dirty Work

  “And you just took it? Without fighting back?”

  I was crying and she was shaking me. I know now that she was ashamed of me. Not my father’s son. Hell, I was ashamed of myself.

  “Did he say anything about your daddy? You tell me. What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say nothing. He just hit me.”

  She turned me loose then. I wouldn’t look at her. She sat down in a chair. I’ll never forget what she told me.

  “Boy, I’m gonna tell you something. If you don’t take up for yourself in this world, there ain’t nobody else that will. If you let him run over you once, he’s gonna run over you again. The next time he sees you, he’s gonna run over you. Cause now he knows he can. So you got to teach him right now that he can’t. Either now or the next time, it don’t matter. Is he bigger than you?”

  I said Yesm, a lot bigger.

  “Well,” she said, and she got up like it was all settled. “I guess you gonna have to just pick you up a stick, ain’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Ain’t you?”

  Yesm.

  “Don’t you never let nobody say anything about your daddy. You hear me? I don’t care what you have to do. Just don’t you let it happen.”

  That was the end of that conversation.

  I went to bed that night and thought about it. I thought about watching Thomas Gandy and wondering about how he felt when Matt Monroe got him down on the ground and shoved that shit in his mouth. And I knew then that he’d felt just like I did right then. Awful.

  I didn’t want to go to school the next day. I laid in the bed and moaned and groaned for a while and made out like I was sick, but one smack of her hand on my little ass got me going in a hurry. And she watched me walk up the road until I was out of sight.

  Picture it if you can. Ten minutes before eight and all of them waiting for you on top of the hill at the schoolhouse, Matt Monroe out in front. You with your little books and tablets, trying to get inside the door before they see you. But of course they’ve already seen you, and they move forward in a group to surround you. There, in the crowd of grinning faces, you spot a former friendly face that has turned rabid and reverted with the rest of them through fear: the smiling, bland, four-eyed face of Thomas Gandy, future brain surgeon.

  “Here he comes,” Matt Monroe said. “The Kotex Kid.”

  He blocked the steps with his body and the rest of them formed a subtle flanking maneuver, barring my way.

  Nobody else will. Let him run over you once, he’s gonna run over you again. Next time he sees you. Cause now he knows he can.

  I think it was at that moment that I realized that the world was not always a nice place to live. And there were no sticks at all. Not one.

  “Y’all let me by,” I said. I’m sure my voice was small and thin and very whiney.

  “What’sa matter?” Matt Monroe said. “You got to go in and git you some Kotex?”

  The girls all giggled, the little darlings. I should have known he’d told everybody.

  Then there came the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard: the bell. And like magic Miss Lusk appeared at the top of the stairs. She told us it was time to get inside. Matt Monroe smiled. They all smiled.

  “Recess,” he said. Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of children?

  I watched that clock like a man getting ready to be stood up against a wall and shot. Each time I looked over at Matt Monroe, he’d be looking at me and grinning. He’d mouth the words silently with his lips, sweetly. Kotex Kid. I knew I had to do one of two things. Stay inside at recess and fake being sick, or rush outside ahead of everybody and find a stick. I didn’t know what he was going to do to me but I knew that I would almost certainly not like whatever it was.

  The buzzer rang at ten o’clock sharp and all the kids left their books and went outside. I stayed in my seat and watched. Matt Monroe was the last one out. He stood in the doorway and looked at me. He pantomined it. Kotex Kid.

  “Walter?” It was Miss Lusk. She was sitting at her desk reading a magazine. “Go outside and play.”

  I immediately got a sick look on my face. I tried to will myself into a fever. She was no dumber than my mother.

  “I don’t want to go outside, Miss Lusk,” I said. “I don’t feel good.”

  She put her magazine down.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I just don’t feel good.”

  “Do you have fever?”

  “I don’t know. I may have.”

  She got up and came back there and laid the back of her hand against my cool clammy forehead.

  “You don’t have fever,” she said. “Now go on outside and play with them. The fresh air will make you feel better.”

  You didn’t argue with Miss Lusk. She didn’t put up with any foolishness. But she didn’t know what she was sending me out into. And I couldn’t tell her. There was still a shred of dignity that kept me from using that most craven of cowardly children’s acts of self-preservation, hiding behind the teacher’s skirts. I couldn’t do that. I was a coward, and I knew it, but I couldn’t do that. So I went out to meet what was waiting for me.

  They were right outside the steps. The whole first grade. Waiting for me.

  They gave me enough room to step into the midst of them and then they closed back around me. Matt Monroe was instantly up in my face.

  “What you trying to do, chickenshit, hide behind Miss Lusk’s skirts?”

  “Leave me alone, Matt,” I said.

  “Leave me alone, Matt,” he whined. He cocked his head. “You come on around here.”

  Matt Monroe had some black rotten teeth in his mouth and his breath smelled like something that had been dead out in the woods for about a week. He had thick lips and long downy hair all over his chin. He had one big brown wart right in the middle of his chin with one long black hair growing out of it.

  “Your mama wears Kotex,” he said. “On her head.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I wish I had me a shirt like that,” he said. “One to shit on and one to cover it up with.”

  I think it’s probably safe to say that Matt Monroe did not grow up in a Christian home.

  “Queer. You dickface.”

  I still hadn’t said anything and I could tell they were disappointed. And for some reason, they backed off and left me alone. Then I turned around and saw Miss Lusk standing behind us, holding out her hand, saying, “I wonder if it’s going to rain?”

  My mother wanted to know what happened at school that day when I got home.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Did that boy say anything to you?”

  “Nome.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yesm.”

  “Don’t worry. He will.”

  That’s the kind of person my mother is.

  I knew it wasn’t over. I knew I’d have to deal with it. That day came finally. Too soon.

  It was just him that day. He walked up to me on the playground. I was still scared, but only of doing what I knew I’d have to do. I knew what he was going to say. I could see it in his eyes. And I was almost glad, because I knew that now we could get it over with, go on and do whatever had to be done.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where’s your daddy?”

  My head got to feeling light. Dizzy.

  Your daddy’s in the pen. He’s a convick. My daddy told me about your daddy. He murdered somebody. He’s a murderer.

  I had the knife that was all I had of my daddy. A Case, the blades worn thin from twenty years of sharpening.

  Killed somebody. Shot him down like a dog. And they ain’t never gonna let him out of the pen.

  More like an ice pick, really.

  Cause he’s in for life. Cause he’s a murderer. And you ain’t never gonna get to see your daddy again long as you live.

  Thin, sharp. Cut your ass off. That he’d left on the washstand beside the cracked white pitcher and the white enamel bowl that held the dir
ty water she would take up and throw out into the back yard. Where the chickens we had kept the yard pecked bare. And the thin flowers tried to grow in the shade where she nursed them.

  Did he say anything about your daddy? Don’t you never. I don’t care what you have to do. Let nobody talk about him.

  It had turquoise handles, and the steel was rusted brown except where it was shiny on the razor edge from the last time he’d sharpened it. I took it. It was mine. He never gave it to me, and she never gave it to me, but it was mine.

  Your daddy’s a lowdown murderin’son of a bitch. That’s what my daddy said. You know what else my daddy said?

  Everybody in London Hill was real surprised when I stabbed Matt Monroe one inch to the left of his heart. Everybody, I think, except my mother. I know Matt Monroe could hardly believe it.

  We were down at one end of the ward by ourselves. There wasn’t anybody else in the place but a few other guys like this guy Braiden. Guys who’d never go home. Guys who’d given all they had and then some. Leftover guys.

  After a while, my head cleared, and I could raise up. I sat up in the bed and looked at him.

  “You want a beer?” he said.

  I guess I looked at him a little funny.

  “Brewskie,” he said. “I got some Bud under my bed, man. Get you one if you want it.”

  I looked at his bed. A long white sheet hung down the side of it, long enough to hide anything that might be under there. There wasn’t any need in asking him if he was serious. I could tell that he was.

  “Get you one if you want one,” he said.

  I looked around. There wasn’t a nurse anywhere around.

  “Reach under this bed here. My little cooler under there. Go on,” he said.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed slowly. I put my feet on the floor. The tiles were cool. My head still felt a little woozy, but I rocked back and forth to make sure I wouldn’t fall when I stood up. I eased off the bed gradually, and didn’t fall. He was pawing at the sheet with one of his nubs. And there it was, a little red-and-white Igloo cooler sitting just inside the frame. I got down on one knee and opened it, and there were four bottles of Bud in some ice that was almost melted. I got one and got back in bed with it and put it under the covers. In a little bit I opened it. And in another little bit I took a drink of it. Somebody had left my cigarettes and lighter on a little table beside the bed, so I got a Marlboro to go with it. Things didn’t seem nearly as bad after I got that cigarette lit. I knew then that there were loopholes. I knew then that if you found the right loop, you could leap. I knew then that eventually I could get my ass out of there, and home. It gave me a little hope.

  I looked at Braiden. He was smiling a little.

  “Thanks, man. That makes me feel about two hundred percent better.”

  “Sure, man. Man got to have something in here.”

  I leaned back on the pillow. The beer was between my legs and it was cold on my equipment down there. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t been using it anyway. Not until I met Beth. And I didn’t really know if I’d gotten to use it then or not. I couldn’t remember a thing about what happened after it started raining. All I remembered was before. I remembered that plenty.

  I looked around at some of the other guys on the far end of the ward. Some were moaning. Some were tranked out. A few in wheelchairs were talking quietly to each other, smoking cigarettes. Twenty-two years. I knew I had to talk to him, hell, I was drinking his beer. He was probably desperate for some conversation. He wasn’t having any fun life. There was no telling how long it had been since somebody had come in and talked to him.

  I looked at him and thought: How would it be to be flat on your back with no arms or legs, unable to blow your nose, turn on a TV, smoke a cigarette, drink a beer, read a book, wipe your ass?

  “Do you wish you were dead?” I said. I held the beer under the covers and looked straight into his eyes. They burned.

  “Not a minute don’t go by,” he said.

  I was afraid of that.

  Could tell he didn’t want to talk. It was something bothering him. He kept looking around at everybody but me. Probably didn’t want to look at me. Couldn’t much blame him. So I closed my eyes. Went somewhere.

  Ookamalawandamanda. Your crocodiles on my side of the river. You get your crocodiles back on your side of the river. I got some warriors down here, whip your ass if I tell em to. Now this a big king from across the river, big fat belly like a pregnant woman. Old big navel hole sticking out. Don’t look like no royalty. Got some leopard skin jockey shorts. And he gonna come over here and tell me like he the game warden. All he wanting is just to rape and pillage my village anyhow. Run off all my elephants. Drink all my rice beer. Might could run this fool off with a show of force. He probably got fifteen or twenty dusky young maidenhead maidens.

  Listen, fool. I ain’t got them crocs on no leash.

  Listen, chump. You got about twenty-four seconds to get them crocs hemmed up and swarmed up over here on your bank. Cause they over here raping my crocs.

  Aw yeah?

  Yeah.

  Say who?

  Say me. How many men you got in your village done killed a lion with a blowgun?

  Man we don’t mess with no blowguns. We lasso em and whip em with sticks and make em tote water for us. And y’all over there gettin your asses eat up by em.

  Aw man you tellin it now. Man you think I’s born yesterday. Man we killed us a elephant yesterday.

  One bout three days old?

  Say what, man this thing was grown! What you mean talking this kinda shit to me?

  Well man you over here talking it to me. Come over here gonna get on my ass over some reptiles I ain’t even got no control over. When all the time what we been needing to do is get us up a village alliance like with some nets and stuff to make it safe for our women to go down to the river and wash clothes and stuff. Man I done lost three wives to them damn crocodiles. Pretty wives. Man, don’t be over here talking no shit to me if you ain’t had a wife eat up yet. Cause I done had three eat up.

  Aw man.

  Well. That what I’m telling you. You over here talking shit, you don’t even know what going on.

  I didn’t know you had three wives eat up, man.

  Cause you don’t never come over here and see me. Unless you want to raise hell about something.

  Well you know I’m busy, man. I mean, you know how it is. You a king too.

  You could come over here and see me once in a while. Have a rice beer or two with me. It ain’t like you no damn three hundred miles away or nothing.

  I know it, man.

  And then come over here wanting to get on my ass. Them damn lions run when they see my boys coming through. Cause they done seen they mamas and they daddies get run through with our spears. And you over here wanting to mess with us. Shit. Man we would strictly nilate y’all. Just nilate y’all.

  He said, “Hey, man,” and I opened my eyes for just a second.

  Well I’m sorry about the misunderstanding over the crocs, man. It won’t happen no more.

  Aw it’s cool, man. Don’t even mention it. Listen here, why don’t y’all come on over tonight, man? Well have us a feast. We’ll kill some of them damn crocodiles and have us some crocodile-tail soup.

  Well. We might. You got anything to drink?

  Shit. Has we got something to drink? Man we got two hundred and forty-two bushels of rice beer over here. You got any young nubiles over there?

  Aw we got the nubiles, man. We got nubiles running around all over the place. We got more nubiles than we got anything. We short on warriors and rice beer is what we short on.

  Well y’all come on over about dark, then. We’ll build us up a big fire and do some dancing around it and all. My son gonna kill him his first lion in a few days and we gonna have a few manhood rites for him.

  Y’all got some big fat ones over here?

  Aw yeah, man, we got some nice big fat ones over here. They done laid ar
ound over here eating my cows up and done got fat and lazy. We done let em get so fat they can’t hardly walk and we gonna hunt em before long. Thin a few of em out. You know lion hunting ain’t what it used to be.

  You can say that again.

  Shoot. My daddy used to use me for bait. Oo and when them summitches was coming after you you could hear their stomachs growling. Them summitches’d hunt you. These boys now don’t know how rough we had it when we was coming up.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “You awake?”

  Aw naw. These younguns now don’t know what it’s like. Man the world going to shit, ain’t it?

  I tell you. It is. Well come on over about dark, then, man.

  What you want us to bring?

  Shit. Just bring yourself. We got everything over here we need. You might bring a few of them nubiles if you got a few extra.

  We got em. How many you want?

  I don’t care. Hell, ten or fifteen, twenty, thirty. However many you want to bring.

  I can bring however many you want.

  Bring fifty.

  “You got another one of these beers I can have?” he said.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Don’t never stay here,” I said. “Got too many places to go.”

  The white man always look so puzzled. Don’t look like he know what to say. Met some good ones, though. Some motherfuckers, too. Man can say that about any race.

  He thought I was crazy, probably. But I meant in here was like prison. Ain’t no bars on the windows, but ain’t many ways to leave.

  I told him to go on and get him another beer. Told him to get all of them if he wanted them. Told him we’d have some more coming later.

  He got out of bed and looked around and got him another one. Got back in the bed with it, lit him a cigarette. Man he had a messed-up face. I was looking at him and thinking about it and wondering what had happened to him. That’s when he started talking to me. And he like to never stopped.

  “I was in a rifle company. Joined the marines when I was eighteen. I had to go. The army was fixing to draft me. Back when they had that lottery system, my birthday was number one. And hell, I’d already had my physical, I was 1-A. So I knew I was gone. The lady who ran the draft board in town called my mama and told her I had about two weeks to join something if I wanted to, because after that the army would get me. So I joined the marines. I figured they were the toughest thing going. My old man, he … he really resisted me going. Both of them did. It was getting worse and worse all the time. I guess you were over there before I was. He was in World War II. He stayed in it for four years. Walked all the way across Europe with the infantry, was wounded once. He knew what it was like to have to fight with a rifle. He taught me how to shoot. We’d hunt squirrels with a .22. Shoot em in the head.