Shane tapped his head. “There is no simple math in this dark thing.”
The Juggalo let the beat ride out.
Shane thrashed wildly. The Juggalo tagged him twice in his eye. He stumbled back. The heavyset kid moved in. Got him twice more on the chin. Shane landed on his ass in the dirt and the group cheered. Charlie stepped in. “He’s done. Enough.”
Shane scrambled to his feet. He stalked around the back of his house and came back carrying a giant branch. The bony ends of it scraping against the streetlights.
The Juggalos roared. Charlie held out his hand. “What are you gonna do with that?”
Something left from behind Shane’s dilated eyes. He suddenly looked confused. “I’m gonna kill him with this branch.”
Charlie picked the tree limb from his cousin’s grip. “Go home.”
Shane hesitated.
I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “Come on,” I said.
We stumbled down the street.
Charlie turned to the Juggalos. “Normally I’d say come on home with us and smoke something. But when he gets like this…”
Shane howled and I wrapped him up in my arms and carried him.
Charlie shrugged. “I better get on.”
PIRATE SHIP
The next morning I woke up and Shane looked over at me from where he sat and said, “I’m hungry.”
We walked to the Corner Store and waved hello the man behind the counter. Shane poured himself a slushie and bought some chips and talked to the clerk a bit and we went out front and sat on a picnic table off to the side and he ate his chips. Watched passersby slip on the ice.
A man in a leather jacket came out of the dark and sat between us. He had a pirate ship tattooed across his face.
He pointed at the tattoo under Shane’s eye. “What’s this dagger mean?”
“Nothing.”
He pointed at the “580” across Shane’s chin. “What’s this mean?”
“It’s the area code.”
“Where am I?”
Shane told him.
“Do you have a videogame system?”
“Yeah.”
The man rummaged through his bags. Pulled out a loaf of white bread. “I got this bread. Can I come over and play?”
Shane motioned with the bag of chips. “No.”
The man was quiet for a bit. “What’s these teardrops mean?”
“Means I’m super sad.”
“What’s this on your neck?”
“It’s a Buddha.”
“It’s a Buddha!” the man yelled. He pointed at the giant tattoo on his face. “You know what this pirate ship means?”
“What?”
The man in the leather jacket hopped up and put his hands on his knees and leaned into Shane’s face. “It means I’m a motherfucking PIRATE.”
After that the man sat down, put some sunglasses on, ate his bread, and said not one more word to Shane Tilden. He got up and left.
The snow picked up again.
The clerk came out and lit a cigarette. Offered the pack to Shane.
“No, thanks. I only smoke when I drink.”
The clerk nodded. “Me, too.”
Cars hissed past on the wet road. I took a cigarette.
The clerk said, “You attract them.”
“I seem to.”
“All that shit on your face.”
“Yeah.”
We smoked and sat and after a time we went back to Charlie’s. Shane gathered his things and left without saying a word.
GO BE NORMAL
I signed up for an online dating site. I spent a lot of time picking the right profile picture.
I couldn’t figure what to write in the “About Me” section.
Charlie saw me on the computer and came up and looked over my shoulder.
“OkCupid.”
“Yeah.”
He took a sip of beer. “They make those for queers, too, you know.”
“Shut up.”
“You have a kind of sad need for pussy, don’t you?”
“I just like it.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“I’m not gay.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
I turned back to the computer. “I got a message already.”
“Have fun fucking weird internet people. I’m gonna go be normal and not get laid until I see something I actually like.”
I waited fifteen minutes before I responded to this message. The woman’s name was Hanna.
IF I’D MET YOU WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU
That Sunday, Charlie told me we needed to go to church.
I told him I’d pass. He told me they paid $50 just to show up.
I said, “Okay.”
The preacher paced at the podium. He raised his arm above his head. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”
Dropped his hand on “killed.”
The church was cramped. Christmas tree in the corner. Someone coughed.
The preacher smiled. One gold tooth. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”
Someone said, “I don’t blame you.”
He paced faster. Windpants swishing. Despite the cold in the room, he began to sweat. That mantra, repeated as he ran his fingers through wet curly hair: “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”
Over and over. The room churning a bit. Behind us, someone spoke in tongues.
The congregation said it with him, everyone shouting “killed” with the holy man, his hand chopping the air.
He stopped and so did the crowd.
Took a breath. “My friend Harold was bad. He was bad. If Harold and I met you, back when we were young, we would have killed you.”
Leaned on the podium. “Harold had a stomach, he could never keep it down. Anything he ate was gonna tear him up. Changed with the seasons. In the summer he couldn’t eat hardly anything without getting sick. In the winter, when it got cold like it is, he could eat everything. Never seen someone eat as much. But just in the winter. Didn’t eat more than a sandwich in the summer. He drank a lot of coffee. On top of everything else. His favorite mug had a snake on it. He liked robots and we were roommates and he had to be home to watch his TV with the lasers and I liked them okay, too. I sometimes called him Terminator because he was so tall. In the summer he’d hold his stomach and watch robots. We didn’t go out because it was only a matter of time before someone said something. You know how it is. I know you know how it is.”
The congregation nodded. Men with small eyes. Women in surplus jackets.
“When we were younger, we killed a man just down the road from here. In the bar talking about his new shoes. Got drunk and we followed him out there and took what was in his wallet, but Harold hit him too hard. We killed people who deserved it and we’d watch robots and wonder on it.”
The man behind me amped up the tongues.
The preacher pointed. “That sound, we would have killed you.”
The man behind me scaled back the tongues.
“I ate dinner at Harold’s house as a child. His father was a good man and his mother was good, too. He had brothers and sisters that had children. He couldn’t be that, though. Neither of us could. We were in and out of jail but when we were both out, we were together. I loved Harold. After a time we grew up. I kept a steady job and he did, too. We met women and we moved on and we calmed down. We became men. I had a son. He’s a grown man now himself. Harold had a daughter and we’d joke about them getting married but they never did. He once asked me over the phone if I thought it was wrong, how we were, and I said of course it was. No way you could figure it to not be wrong. We were heathens. Godless heathens.”
Someone said, “Praise Jesus.”