“No,” I say, laughing a little, reassuring him. If there is such a thing as a lovable toxic sight, this is it. I reach out and playfully grab each of his ears. I toggle his head around, and around, and he smiles, all blood and innocence.
You’d have to be a beast, I think, looking at the blood.
“Please, Dan,” he says, and I notice he stops smiling, tears are in his eyes. “Please? I won’t… you’re hurting me. Dan-o, it’s me…”
I am squeezing his ears now. Twisting them, pulling them, tearing a little.
Jarrod puts his hands up, but does nothing to stop me hurting him. He lays his hands lightly on top of mine, and I feel it.
“Jesus,” I say, taking my hands off his ears, placing them alongside his cheeks.
He stays frozen there, covering his ears. “Sorry, Dan-o,” he says. “Sorry.”
I nod at him. What I want to do now is to hug him. Instead, I just hold his cheeks, just like that. “I am protecting my grandfather,” I say, pathetically. It feels true. It feels stupid. I am worthless. I can’t protect anybody.
I feel his jaw muscles flex beneath my fingers as he speaks, “Do you think your grandfather might be protected by your pulling my ears off?”
That answer should be easy.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
He nods. “Okay, but if you do, go ahead.”
Lucy is tapping my shoulder. I look up.
“Do you set bunnies on fire these days too, big man?”
She tugs me up away from Jarrod and walks over to where Da lies.
“Hiya, Granddad,” Lucy says, as the Old Boy stirs.
She has sat on the side of his bed and is brushing a sad strand of his yellowed gray hair aside. I have turned in time to see his dawning, blinking, squinting entry into this weird and wondrous world that has bloomed in his absence.
Then I see his eyes go wide with terror and shock, followed by his hand shooting out like a bolt.
He is choking Lucy with such strength they are both instantly blue with the strain.
“Da,” I say, jumping down and prying at his fingers. His has a grip like an eagle’s talon.
“Ella,” he rasps. His wife. Our grandmother.
Lucy gags, tries screaming.
I have to punch him. I do, twice, in the cheek.
She jumps up, clutching at her own throat. He rolls over and cowers, panting, as if she was the one who attacked him.
“It’s the condition, Lucy,” I say. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? He didn’t mean to hurt you. He hasn’t had his meds yet.”
She is whistle-breathing, but certainly it is at least partly an act.
“We are not going with you, Lucy.”
She wheezes.
“You could help us out, though. Just forget you found us. Give us a chance. He deserves a chance. I have to save him.”
She chokes again. Very dramatically.
“Start running, brother,” she says. “I couldn’t care less if you saved him now. I was never really even into him before, frankly. Now… to hell with him.”
She walks to the door, where she walks just about into Matt.
“Well,” he says approvingly, “now we’re getting somewhere. Is this a party?”
She shoves past him, steps over Jarrod. Da squeals something unintelligible behind me, and I feel that urge to laugh again.
That urge goes away very quickly.
“Danny!” Lucy shrieks from the hallway.
I rush out to find her path blocked by one of the other nightcrawlers Matt has rented a room to. He is almost as burly as the landlord, but a whole lot more oily. He is standing spread across the whole narrow hallway. He has a hand down his sweatpants and the other one is pawing the air in Lucy’s direction.
I run down the hall, practically knocking my sister down on the way to the guy. I crash right into him, and he is soft. He doesn’t move much, but he is backed off.
“Jeez, pal,” he says, like he is unaware of anything unright on his part. Like he is a victim of something.
“Did he touch you?” I ask my sister.
“Only… just, nothing much, no matter.”
“Just get out of here, right?” I say, pointing to his open door and making a stupid little fist with my other hand.
“Whatever, whatever,” he says, still working his pants hand. As he backs away he looks at Lucy with a leer and the most stomach-churning fat-lizard tongue flick imaginable.
Lucy actually makes a retching sound.
“Just get in there, creep,” I say, so tough.
“That’s it?” Da says from just outside our door.
I am surprised to find him there when I turn. “What?” I say.
“That’s your sister,” Da says with naked disgust for me.
“I recognize her, thanks.”
“It’s fine now,” Lucy says. “Leave it.”
“That is your sister.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You can’t figure that out? You get all worked up to smack the crap out of your defenseless little junkie friend, and suddenly you run fresh out of outrage, is that it?”
“All right, leave it, will you? I feel bad enough over-”
“You know what you are supposed to do.”
“No, I don’t, Da. Leave it alone. I did enough.”
“Yes, you do know. What, is little Lucy supposed to defend herself? Or maybe you just want to come back over this way, punch Jarrod around a little more, make yourself feel better, that’ll show ’em, huh?”
“Stop it, Da,” Lucy says.
He speaks, low and direct, like straight into my skull, like she’s not even there anymore. “You know, Young Man.”
“Really? I do? Do I?”
“No!” Lucy shouts.
Jarrod makes a low oh-no sound and disappears into the room. Matt starts making his way toward us, smiling. Da is right behind him.
“Shut the hell up out there, I’m trying to concentrate,” the greasy man calls. I look into the room and he is lying on top of the bed, still looking out our way. And he is working it.
Even his bedspread looks made of bacon fat.
“Oh, no, you are not,” I say and stomp into his room.
The man gets to his feet, but I meet him with two hands clamped hard on his throat. I squeeze his neck and drive him backward, bouncing his head crisp off the wall.
“No,” Lucy shouts, sounding angrier. At me? How’s that work?
“This what you mean, Da?” I say as I choke the guy purple.
“It’s a start,” Da says. “Nobody messes with your nearest and dearest. That cannot happen.”
“Am I a good boy, then?”
“Eh, pretty good,” he says.
“All right, all right,” the guy rasps.
“Funny with those hands, are you, pal? Hey, Matt,” I call. “Have a seat here for a second, wouldja?”
Matt comes over and has a bulky sit-down on the man’s chest. All the wind oofs out of the guy, but he seems happy enough to be breathing. His arm dangles out to the side, and I grab it.
“This is your business hand, is that right?”
“Yes, I noticed that too,” Da says.
“Do I know what to do, Old Boy?”
“I think you do, Young Man.”
I think I do, too. I seize that disgusting paw, and I slam it flat on the squat night table. I pick up the marble cube of a night lamp, like a big, sharp-edge paperweight with a shade, and I slam it down on the hand. I slam it down on the hand. The man screams with horror as once more I slam the lamp down on his pervy, hairy hand.
With the third slam I feel the seam crack in the marble. With the forth, the seam splits completely and the man stops screaming and starts whimpering.
That’s what we wanted. You don’t always know beforehand when you want something, but you know when you get it.
As bad as I felt after smacking Jarrod around, before and after smacking Jarrod around, that is how good I feel now.
What the hell happened?
I don’t remember when I felt better about myself.