That’s How I Roll: A Novel (13 page)

He didn’t teach me by talking; he showed me.

“Nobody’s coming,” he’d always say. “Nobody’s ever coming here, you crippled little piece of shit. Not without my say-so. Not unless they want to die. It’s my land they’d be stepping on. Ain’t nobody around would do that, not even the Law.”

he Beast knew people would always deal with you if you had something they wanted. He didn’t have a friend in the world, but
certain people always had work for him. “Jobs” is what he called that kind of work.

That’s how I first learned that being safe is all about your place in this world—nothing else matters.

Later on, even when I was still a child, I could have found a place for myself alone easy enough. But had I done that, Tory-boy wouldn’t’ve lasted out the week.

hen Rory-Anne got big in the belly, I told the teachers I wouldn’t be coming to school for a while. I could see they weren’t all that upset, but they were obligated to ask me why that was.

When I told them Rory-Anne had a baby coming and I’d have to help her out, they just shook their heads.

Just like most people around here: they might get sad, but never enough to get helpful.

I read everything I could find about taking care of a baby, but there was no way around the one thing I’d never be able to do. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Slater, Tory-boy never would have made it.

She came over one afternoon. The Beast’s truck was gone, and a whole carful of people had come by and picked up Rory-Anne. I guessed Mrs. Slater had been watching, waiting for the right time.

“You know what every baby needs, son?” she asked me.

“Yes, ma’am. Milk.”

“Is that what you’ve been crying over?”

“I guess so,” I said, even though I didn’t think there were any tears on my face—I had wiped it with my shirt soon as I heard the knock on the door.

“All right,” Mrs. Slater said. “This is what we’re going to do. Can you make it over to the lightning tree by yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am!” I was sure I could do that, because I’d already done it, plenty of times. That tree had been struck by lightning a long time ago—before I was born—and everybody steered clear of it because it’s supposed to be real bad luck to touch such a tree.
The way I figured it, I’d already had about all the bad luck there was, so the lightning tree never spooked me.

And everybody avoiding it made it a perfect place for me to hide whatever I didn’t want to keep in the shack.

Now that I think back on it, I’m sure Mrs. Slater had seen me go back and forth between that tree and our shack. She lived not a hundred yards from us, but way higher on the hill, in a much nicer house.

“God bless you,” I said to her. I had nothing else to offer, and I was still young enough to believe that truly meaning what I said would count for something.

kept reading up on the subject, but mostly I learned just by taking care of the baby.

That was my job. Nobody had to say it; I just knew. I knew nobody else was going to do it if I didn’t. I was bound to do it when I learned that Rory-Anne was going to give birth. But the first time I saw Tory-boy for myself, I
wanted
to do it.

This is the best way to make you understand that feeling I had: I wanted to protect him even more than I wanted to walk.

The wheelchair didn’t stop me. I could roll right over, pick up Tory-boy, and do everything that had to be done. Just like I could pick up the milk Mrs. Slater left for me every day. It was always in actual baby bottles, in a little cooler. I knew how to heat it up, how to test it, and everything.

There was other stuff Mrs. Slater left, too. Mostly little jars of baby food, but there was also a blue blanket, stuff to put on Tory-boy’s gums when his teeth were coming in … so many things I couldn’t even count.

It was like Mrs. Slater had read the same books I had, because, every time a book said a baby would need something, she’d have it waiting for me.

hen I was taking care of the baby, I knew he always had to be in the center of this gyroscope I was building in my mind. Maybe “gyroscope” isn’t the right word: what I saw was all those spinning rings, constantly in motion around a center post. I don’t know how I knew—it wasn’t anything I’d read.

Maybe it was the spirits talking to me. That’s the only way to explain how I was so dead certain about “balance” and “safe” having the same meaning.

I knew the exact nature of my balance. I could see it in my mind: swirling rings of pure black obsidian, every blade sharpened to such an edge that it made a surgeon’s scalpel look like a flat rock.

Like everything of value, that perfect sharpness came at a price. Those “black knives” you can read about in Aztec legends were made from volcanic glass. Such a blade could be used only to slice, never to stab.

Somehow, I knew if I could always keep those rings spinning the center post would never fall over. It might lean—sometimes so far over that I’d be afraid—but it would not fall. No matter what hit against those rings, the center would stay upright.

I knew something else. I knew that, once anyone tried to cross into our side of those rings, me and Tory-boy would be safe from them, no matter what evil might be on their mind to do.

It may have been the only thing a half-person like me could ever manage to put together by himself—I had to do all the work inside my mind. But I knew, I absolutely knew, that if I used the half of me that worked I could get it done.

I never questioned how I knew this.

couldn’t walk, but I could always get around. And I was so smart the teachers didn’t know what to do with me. None of that made me safe. The Beast could unbalance my whole world just by tipping over my wheelchair.

He did that a lot, especially when he was drunk. Which was most of the time. But he did it when he was sober, too. He liked doing things like that. Liked showing you who was holding the whip hand. His favorite thing in life was raising fear in others.

ory-boy might have been slow in the head, but he was fast on his feet. Soon as he could crawl, he would always try to scramble away when he heard the Beast coming. But there was no place to hide inside that miserable little shack, and he got hit on plenty.

Whenever the Beast went into one of his rages, Tory-boy would run to me. He never ran to Rory-Anne. He learned real quick that she wouldn’t do anything. But even though I was only a child, and crippled to boot, Tory-boy developed the belief that I could protect him.

Maybe that was because, lots of times, I actually did. I knew that all I had to do was say the right words to the Beast and he’d forget about beating on Tory-boy and go right after me.

And I knew he’d stop a lot quicker if I didn’t cry or scream. When he whipped Rory-Anne, the more she’d scream the longer he’d keep at it.

I think that’s when I stopped feeling the hurt he put on me. After a while, I could see him doing it but it was like I was hovering above it all.

Every time he was finished with me, I would go find Tory-boy.
I’d cuddle him on my lap, rub his chest, and whisper soft until he stopped being afraid.

Years before he could understand words, I promised him that, one day, I’d make it stop. All of it.

For good and forever, I’d make it stop.

I chanted it like I was calling up a spell.

I didn’t try praying. I had already figured out that God wasn’t listening.

But once my little brother came, if I could have sold my soul to the Devil to make things right, I would have done it on the spot. And spit in the face of Jesus to seal the bargain.

ory-boy believed anything I told him. He always did. And that was only right, because I never once lied to him.