Dear Life, You Suck (13 page)

My biological sperm worm wasn’t any better. Didn’t just do drugs. Sold ’em too. The bad ones. He’s still on the inside too if he hasn’t made parole. I hope he’s getting beat to a pulp every day so the asshole knows what it feels like.

I’ve thought about looking them up through one of them Find Your Lost Parents websites. Not for a teary-eyed hugfest. More like a cheery-bye plugfest. Yeah, I’ve considered tracking them down for the sole purpose of planting lead slugs in their soulless hearts. See what color their blood is. Black, probably. Black heart, black blood.

You probably think I’m kidding, but I ain’t. Grubs can get me an untraceable hunting rifle. I’ve already asked him. I’d do it, too. Walk right up to them and blow their fugly heads off. I wouldn’t even ask for an explanation. They’d just lie anyway. I bet I’d get away with it too. Who’s gonna waste their time tracking down the killer of those two wastoids? I’d be doing society a favor. Plus, even if I got caught, all I’d have to do is weep up an Academy Award–winning sob story for the jury. They’d eat it up like soap opera spongecake.

I mean, if you hate kids, don’t have ’em. That’s all I’m saying. I ain’t saying kids are anything great, and I can see how they can be a royal pain in the ass and the wallet. But shit, don’t have ’em then. Ruin your own life if you want. Who gives a shit? But why drag down some helpless little son-of-a-biscuit with you?

I finish scribbling Reason Number One at ten o’clock. Just in time to sneak down the fire escape and rendezvous with Grubs.

Grubs musta dumped me on my fire escape sometime during the night, because I wake up to Mother Mary Megamiffed walloping me in the head with a broom like I’m a rascally raccoon. I don’t realize what she’s so pissed about until I sit up and see the dozen empty beer cans on the fire escape.
Good one, Grubs
. He likes to pull pranks like that. One morning, Mother Mary found me in boxer shorts, a bra, high heels, and a priest collar. An instant Grubs Dillar classic.

Mother Mary climbs onto her broom and flies away, so I head inside.

I can’t remember how last night ended. After collecting, we went to this dive bar in Penobscot called Duckies where the bartenders don’t check IDs, and the rest of the night’s a blur.

I change into my workout duds and check out the inspirational literature Mother Mary Micromanage has left on my pillow. She’s like Felix Ungar in
The Odd Couple.
“I told you a hundred and fifty-eight times, I cannot stand little notes on my pillow. ‘We are all out of Corn Flakes. F.U.’ It took me three hours to figure out that ‘F.U.’ was Felix Ungar
.
”

She’s always leaving crap in my room about college or technical schools or job opportunities in the local area. Today it’s a brochure for Saint Alban’s Seminary on Grand Manan Island.
Holy cow!
Sister Sarah must have slipped some LSD into Mother Mary’s BLT.

Mother Mary Missionary likes to torture me on a regular basis with discussions about my future. Adults call it “career,” but nuns call it “calling.” The only difference is that normal blokes with parenting folks pick their own careers, whereas God picks paths for Prison inmates. I can see Him now, skull-thumping futuristic follies for my dirtbag ass. His long white beard and squinty eyes poking through a poofy cloud with a Burger King hair net in one hand and a greasy spatula in the other, belting out a hymnalicious
yodleaayheehooooo
.

After stealing a few aspirin from Sister Sarah’s private stash in the kitchen pantry, I head to the boathouse. I usually work out at six A.M., but I wristed too much silly cider last night. No regrets. I’ll sweat the booze out in no time. I start on the heavy bag.

Caretaker shows up at his usual time, 6:55 A.M. Sometimes he’s early, like 6:45. Sometimes he’s late, like 6:58. Never later than 6:59, though. His hours are seven to three, six days a week, and he’s never late. And he never misses a day. Flu, blizzards, holidays, nothing. Caretaker’s a worker. He’s wicked responsible.

Work is like religion to Caretaker. He worships it and fears it and all that other voodoo bullshit. I know it’s not about money, even though he talks like it is.
No bacon from the man means no bacon in the pan
. That’s one of his favorites. He’s proud of what he does. Talks about it like he’s a hunk of clay and work is the hand that molded him into the crooked flowerpot he is today. Like he wouldn’t exist without it, or he’d exist but not in the same way. Not as a man. A real man. Instead, he’d be like one of those dried-out hunks of clay we see standing in line at the welfare office when we drive to the hardware store. Caretaker shakes his head and
tssssk
s every time we pass the place, like the folks are standing in line to purchase one-way tickets to Hell. He talks like he’d die without work, and I know he ain’t talking about body dying. Work is deep in him like blood.

“Drop your chin, slackass.” Caretaker’s raspy growl interrupts my proletaratious musings.

I glance at him through stinging sweat beads. As usual, he’s not looking at me.
Can’t interrupt work for a damn fool kid like you
. He’s wiping tools and hanging them on the wall. He must have borrowed them to fix something at the shithole shack he lives in down on the Papadingo River. I’ve been there a bunch of times. Just him and his old lady. He has a bunch of kids, but they’re grown and scattered all over the country.

He turns halfway to me. He can hear my hangover. “Damn it, Sally, snap the jab. You leave it hangin’ out like that, you’re gonna get your head squashed like a melon.” He punches his fist into his palm. “Snap. Snap. Snap.” He shakes his head and waves his hand at me like I’m an annoying housefly. “You think you ain’t gonna be brain-dead and sore in the tenth round, you drunk slacker?”

I grit my teeth and slam the bag with all my might, but my balance is off and the bag spins.

“Holy Moses, look at you. Put your body into it, Nancy. Shoulder, hip, heel, all together. Step, spin, throw.”

I’m so tired, I can barely lift my arms.

“For the love of Pete, my momma hits harder than you, and she’s been dead twenty years.” Caretaker buckles over and slaps his thighs.

I try to throw my body into my punches, but it’s not cooperating.

“Good Lord, Lucy, I know you weigh less than my left nut, but power that shot, you lazy bastard.”

I fall into an old lawn chair and pull my gloves off. The gauze on my finger is red and sticky.

“Finished so soon, Mabel?” Caretaker’s tinkering with something at the bench.

“I’ve been awake and here since six thirty, asshole.”

“Yeah, sure. You probably ain’t even been to bed yet.” He snuffles at his joke.

“Yeah, I have. With your wife.”

Caretaker turns and raises his left eyebrow, which he always does right before saying something he thinks is clever. “Yeah, the missus did mention a nightmare she had ’bout a visit from a pale, dickless alien.” He cackles and turns back to his work. “You should probably drink less during the week, Crick. You wouldn’t have such crazy hallucinations.”

I hop onto the bench next to Caretaker. He’s wire-brushing some rusty mooring bolts. “Whatcha cleaning them for? Nuns ain’t had boats out in years.”

He answers without looking up. “Well, they was rusty, and you never know. Maybe Mother Superior’s thinking ’bout taking up water skiing.”

I grab one of the bolts. “Imagine her in a bikini?”

“No, thank you.” He takes the bolt back and sprays it with WD-40. It gets all over his hand, but he doesn’t care. His hands are like beat-up leather gloves. “I heard you laid out Pitbull pretty solid yesterday.”

“Yup.”

“So the strategy worked.”

“Like a charm.”

“I knew it would.” He bangs the U-joint on the bench, and rust and oil fly everywhere.

I don’t say anything.

“No need to thank me.”

“Okay.”

“Asshole.”

I skip breakfast and go to Home Depot with Caretaker as a way of saying thanks, and he knows it, but he’s cool enough not to say anything or rub it in my face. He got permission for me to go by calling Mother Mary and saying he needed help loading the van. We shoot the bull about a bunch of stupid stuff. I like talking to Caretaker ’cause he talks to me like I’m a real person. He never preaches, either. He’s got opinions, and he’ll bullhorn me a righteous keister-kicking when he thinks I’m being an idiot, but it’s never preachy. Imagine a real preacher trying that.
Stop sinning, ya stupid asshole!
Hell, it’d probably work, but the congregation wouldn’t stick around long enough to hear it. Churchies don’t like getting bogged down with spiritual trifles like truth. They just wanna pop in for a quick fix of holy-ass wafer and blood-curdled wine. Rip off a quick forgiveness certificate like they’re snagging a number at the deli. Something to give them the strength to asshole their way through the upcoming week with a clear conscience.

“How many days you get?” Caretaker hands me a bundle of roofing shingles.

“What makes you think I got any?”

“Don’t gotta be no fortuneteller to know you’re gonna get days for putting a kid in the hospital with your fists.”

“Pitbull never went to the hospital.”

“Yeah he did. Last night. My niece seen him. Said that fat head of his wouldn’t stop gushing, so they had to stitch it up with ’bout a hundred stitches.”

Shit. The cobblestones
. My gut spasms like Caretaker’s dropped a ten-pound box of roofing nails on it. A week suspension might be the least of my worries.

“So how many did you get?”

“Five.”

“Shit, that ain’t nothing. You can help me while you’re off.”

“I think Mother Scary’s booking me solid with Prison chores.”

“Well, you can work for me when you ain’t working for her. Idle hands is the devil’s playground.”

“Principal LaChance thinks
my
hands are the devil’s playground.”

Caretaker chuckles and hands me another bundle. “Did you start it?”

“What the fuck kinda question is that?”

“Just making sure. If you didn’t start it, then as far as I’m concerned every son-of-a-bitch in that backward-ass school can pucker up and smooch my hairy black ass.”

“I’ll tell them you said so when I return.”

“I don’t give a damn. Tell ’em what you want. Ignorant sons-of-bitches think they’re doing you slack-ass Willies favors by teaching you how it ain’t. The spoiled givemesomes they graduate from that baloney factory ain’t got a goddamn clue how to get along in the real world. Gimme, gimme, gimme, that’s all them lazy corndogs know.”

Caretaker’s fun to listen to when he’s on a roll. You don’t need to wind him up or spur him on or nothing. Once he gets going, he’s like a boulder tumbling down a mountainside. He just gets louder and faster.

“What the hot damn kinda example are they teaching them kids when they punish the only one in the whole flippin’ place that got the sack to do right by them kiddlins who can’t defend themselves and teach that gorilla son-of-a-bitch a lesson ’bout bullying? They shoulda dragged your skinny ass onto that leaky gymnasium floor and jammed a ten-foot trophy in your bruised-up hands for laying that fat SOB out. That place is upside down and inside out, if you ask me.”

Caretaker shifts into mumbling mode, so I can’t make head or tail of what he’s saying, but it doesn’t matter ’cause it’s always the same thing.

On the way home we take a detour and Caretaker pulls down a skinny side street, parking beside an overloaded dumpster.

“What are we doing here?”

“C’mon, I wanna show you something.”

I follow Caretaker through a dinged-up steel door into a brick building that smells musty, like the laundry room at the Prison. As we walk toward a set of red swinging doors, I hear men yelling and rap music blaring. Caretaker pushes the doors open.

It’s a boxing gym. There’s a bunch of guys slamming heavy bags, jumping rope, and shadowboxing in front of a long wall of mirrors. There’s two rings with guys boxing in them and trainers hanging on the ropes shouting instructions.

Caretaker ambles up to one of the trainers and smacks him on the shin. The guy’s old, pale, and wrinkly like a bleached raisin. He nods at Caretaker, scowls at me, and turns back to the fighters. He yells nonstop until the bell dings. He reminds me of Mickey from
Rocky.
“Get out of here! Don’t ya ever interrupt me while I’m conductin’ business. Move your little chicken asses out.”

After the boxers finish their fight, the trainer climbs down from the ring and shakes Caretaker’s hand with two hands, like a politician. He smiles, big and toothless.

Caretaker turns and points at me. “Bolo, this is Cricket.”

Bolo crinkles his already crinkled face. “Cricket? What the fuck kinda nickname is Cricket? That ain’t gonna scare no one. Only gonna make guys wanna squish him under their boot.”

Caretaker laughs. “It ain’t a nickname, Bolo. That’s his real name. Cricket Cherpin.”

Bolo lifts his rumpled eyelids. “What’s the deal, kid? Folks didn’t like ya?”

I stare into his gray pebble eyes. “Guess not,
Bolo
.”

Bolo snaps a slap to my cheek so fast, I don’t see it coming. “Watch your mouth, son. I’m King Kickass around here.”

I don’t say nothing, but I don’t move. I don’t want him to know I’m scared he’ll throw something more powerful that I don’t see coming.

Caretaker puts his arm around Bolo’s shoulder. “Bolo, this is the kid I was telling you ’bout.”

Bolo glares at Caretaker like he just blew in his ear. “This beanpole is the powerhouse? Bullshit.”

“I’m telling you. I trained him myself.”

“Well, let’s see what he’s got.”

Caretaker steers Bolo away and whispers in his ear so I can’t hear. He comes back alone a few minutes later. “You wouldn’t think it looking at him now, but Bolo was a champion featherweight when he was younger. Guy’s got lightning hands.”

No shit, Sherlock.
“So what’s the deal? How come you’re talking to this guy about me?”