“Keep talking, nimrod,” the knife guy says, “and I’ll have me a woman for free and a bunch of brats to toss off a moving train.”
“Hey now,” the dad says. “Hey now. Is that any way to talk to another human being?”
“Sam,” the mom says, “maybe we should just drop it. Maybe we should drop it and keep the kids on our side of the bales.”
“No, Ellie, I don’t think so,” the dad says. “My family is not something to be treated with disrespect.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” the mom says.
“No trouble at all,” the knife guy says, then picks up the knife and goes for the dad. I make a grab for his hand and the knife flies out the door. He tackles me and rolls me over and starts biting my neck. He’s strong and stinks and I can feel he wants to kill me.
Oh God, I think, now I did it, I’m dead.
“Fellows, fellows,” the dad says. “Violence doesn’t solve problems.”
“Help him, Sam,” the mom yells. “That nut’s going to murder him.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” the dad says. “I can’t have the kids see me contradict my own moral system.”
“Dad,” one kid shouts, “get off your ass!”
“No,” the dad says gravely. “Someday you’ll understand, and respect me all the more for it.”
Meanwhile the loony’s biting deep into my neck and I’m starting to see stars. I panic. I thrash. Then we sail out the door and my head hits something metallic and I’m out like a light.
I wake up strapped to a stretcher propped against a dilapidated wet bar. Out a slit of a window is a duck on a tether near a mildewing empty built-in pool. Across the room a balding little man sits on the edge of a foldout bed, rubbing the feet of a hag sipping broth.
“Kenny,” she screams, “where are you? I said fish! You call this fish? Is this all the thanks I get, you trying to scrimp on my fish?”
“He’s an ass, Ma,” says the man on the edge of the bed. “You’d think with all you’ve done for him.”
In rushes another little balding man, identical to the first.
“Give her the damn fish, Kenny,” says the man on the bed. “She’s our mother, for crissake. Why try and starve her?”
“I doubt she’ll starve, Benny,” Kenny says, flinching. “That’s all you two do is eat. Eat and yell at me.”
From under the bedcover the woman smacks him with a length of wood. When he drops to one knee his brother knees him in the back.
“Benny, look who’s awake,” the mother says. “Our meal ticket.”
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Kenny says kindly from the floor. “You had quite a lump on your noggin when I found you.”
“Good old Kenny,” Benny says dismissively. “Out wandering the tracks like an idiot.”
“We know all about you, mister,” the mother says. “We’ve had occasion to see you shoeless, Kenny and Benny and I.”
“Very ugly claws,” Benny says. “I almost blew chunks first time I saw them.”
“That is, until Ave noticed the dollar signs on them,” the mother says.
“What dollar signs?” Benny says dully.
“I don’t mean literal dollar signs, son,” his mother says. “I mean if we take this freak to Slavetown and sell him, we’ll be on easy street, and we can hire someone competent to care for us instead of Mr. Sieve-Brain here. And Mr. Sieve-Brain can go back to working at the slaughterhouse and we’ll be able to afford a radio and an occasional night out, like every other family on the block. But we won’t invite Mr. Sieve-Brain out with us.”
“Mr. Doofus,” Benny says.
“Mr. Disappointing Son,” the mother says. “No way will we take him with us.”
“Too embarrassing,” Benny says.
Kenny kneels wet-eyed, blinking madly.
“You must be hungry,” he says to me in a quavering voice.
“You’ll rue the day you put some Flawed ahead of your own mother!” the mother bellows. “If your father were dead he’d roll over in his grave. When I think of all the times I let you suck my breast, I’m disgusted. What a waste of milk. Oh, this is so frustrating! Fish, Kenny, fish, damn you! Get off your knees and bring me fish! I wish I could get out of this bed and spank your butt like I used to. Benny, give him one in the ass for me.”
“Okay, Ma,” Benny says, and nails Kenny in the rear with his foot.
“My sweet, obedient Benny,” she says. “If only I would have had two sons as good. Now it’s off to find a buyer for this disquieting mutant. Chair, Kenny, chair!”
Kenny quickly pulls a wheelchair from a cramped closet and awkwardly loads her in while Benny licks her broth bowl. She pulls Kenny’s hair and bites his arm and curses him for being cavalier about her torso soreness. Finally Benny wheels her out while telling her how saintly she is and what a hard life she’s had.
Kenny sits disconsolately on the bed.
“Boy oh boy,” he says. “Am I ever the guy they love to hate. They sure can say mean things. And they sure do want me to go back to the slaughterhouse. But no way. Because I’m too dumb to keep up on bone load-up. Don’t think I don’t know I’m dumb. I’m dumb all right, and no doubt about it. Filbert put me on bloodsweeping, but that was hard, using squeegees and all. After that came killfloor. On killfloor they make you help them kill, and that was sad. Heck, I like collies. I like to pet them, not wave a pork chop in their faces so Terry can cut their throats. No sir, I won’t go back and they can’t make me. I’ll run away. No I won’t. That takes money. And I don’t have any money. I can’t run away without money because then if I get hungry I won’t have any money to buy food with. So I can’t run away until I get some money. And how am I supposed to?”
Then he looks at me and his eyes brighten.
“Hey,” he says, “wait a minute. You’re worth a lot. I could sell you. But that wouldn’t be right. You’re no different from me except for your feet and all. I can’t do something wrong. That would be bad. But maybe I could. I could sell you. Then I’d have money. But then you’d be a slave. And that would be bad. Because I’ve seen them whipping those guys before. That would be mean of me to do that to you. I wonder what I should do. I can’t do something mean and selfish. But if I don’t, I’ll have to stay here with Ma and Benny forever, and that would be bad for me. I’d be being mean to myself. And that wouldn’t be good. I should love me. I should love me at least as much as I love you. And I don’t even really know you. Hmm. I wonder what I should do, anyway?”
“Untie me?” I suggest. “Let me go?”
“No,” he says. “That would be bad because then there’d be no hope for me and I’d get cranky and sad. You’d get sad and cranky too if your mom and brother were as mean as mine. Maybe yours are, though. How should I know? But if they are, I’ll bet they sure make you sad. And when someone’s sad, they want to be happy. I sure do. I sure do want to be happy. And the thing of it is, if I don’t sell you, Ma and Benny will. No lie. So you’re in the same boat either way. And I’m either really happy or really sad. So there you go. So I’ll sell you. Ma and Benny are walking to Slavetown, so we can take the car and beat them easy. Okay? Okay? Does that sound good?”
Before I can answer he hefts my stretcher onto his back and stumbles out of the apartment. In the driveway is a ploughhorse tethered to an ancient roofless Nova. Kenny slides me into the backseat and stuffs an oily rag in my mouth.
“Sorry about the bad taste of this rag and all,” he says. “But we’re still in Illinois and I don’t want you to blow this for me. Do you know I’ve never even kissed a girl? Do you know I’ve never spent a night away from home? Because of Ma. Because of Benny, that turd. I can’t believe I finally got up the nerve to call Benny a turd. What a big day for me! I wish I could call Ma a turd. But maybe that’s asking too much. After all, she did give birth to me and everything. But maybe someday I’ll just call her a turd without thinking, and won’t that be something! I might even call her some other bad things, but I hope not, because that would be mean of me, and there’s no reason to be mean or sad, now that I’m going to be free as the breeze from those two turds, Ma and Benny!”