This Kind of Man, page 7
My father’s an efficiency expert, he would explain, even though he had no idea what his dad actually did. He knew it was something important, something that would impress. Even as a sixth grader, he understood you couldn’t call yourself an expert; that’s something other people called you.
He was, which he’d come to appreciate on some instinctive level, normal in all the required ways (not dumb, not too smart, able to go steady with the girls he liked), still too young to understand these were the ways males without paychecks measured themselves.
Cognizant of these things, he was disappointed when no one offered him a seat in the cafeteria. But he was not completely surprised. Somehow, his mother had predicted this. She was usually the one most excited about the next location, the new adventure, but this time it was different, and he’d noticed. When she noticed that he’d noticed, she tried to act the way she usually did, but it was too late and that made it worse.
“It might take a while longer,” she said the night before. “These kids may not be quite what you’re used to.”
Unsatisfied, and vaguely unsettled, he asked her to explain.
“Well, there probably aren’t a lot of new students each year, like at those other schools you’ve been to.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I think most of these kids have known each other...they’ve lived here all their lives.”
Isn’t everywhere like that, he’d wanted to ask, but noticed again that she was acting different.
Before bed, he tried again with his father.
“Isn’t that the way it would be for me if we’d never moved?”
“Just remember what we talked about,” his dad said. “Be polite and don’t look for any trouble. But don’t be afraid to assert yourself.”
His dad had never said anything like this, and it confused him. It made him want to talk about it more, ask questions he couldn’t quite articulate. His father changed the subject.
“I wonder what kind of basketball team the high school has,” he said.
As D.J.’s father stepped out of the shower that morning, he had seen his wife was already awake and dressed. She was worried.
“It’s just business,” he’d said, for the hundredth time, the night before.
“Thank god the unions are dying,” he said, hanging the towel on the door.
“It’s still going to be bad,” she said.
“Yes. But layoffs are unavoidable, even at companies that have been around forever.”
“I know, but here it’s just...I mean, what else are these people going to do?”
“There’s training, there are programs...”
“There’s unemployment.”
“Yes, there’s always that.”
The playground, at recess, was his chance, and D.J. was happy to take part in the football game. Basketball was his best sport, mostly due to his recent growth spurt, which his mother had called a “pre-empty strike on puberty,” whatever that meant.
Somehow, his father had guessed the kids would favor football. Of course, basketball was more of a cold weather, indoor sport.
Still, he knew this was his opportunity to make an impression, to introduce himself, without words. It was touch football, but his classmates were rough, some of them coming at him particularly hard. No problem, he was prepared for that. But even when the action was elsewhere, they were relentless. There was one he identified right away as a problem; there was always one, every time. A smaller boy, aggressive, who kept shadowing him, making contact even after the plays. It was obvious he was the leader, and none of the kids were calling penalties, so D.J. started taking it to him. No choice but to give as good as he got, like his father always said to do.
It didn’t work. The kid was tough, quick, determined. D.J. was used to being able to impose his will, using his size to his advantage. This kid kept coming back, his hands flying everywhere, way too close to D.J.’s face. He waited until the kid caught a pass, then tagged him up high, accidentally on purpose forcing him to the ground. The kid landed hard, but was immediately back on his feet, fists raised.
“Okay, you motherfucker,” he hissed.
“Kick his ass, Breece!” someone shouted.
D.J. was taken aback, not only by the language (there were bad words, there were bad words, and then there were off-limits words), but the eagerness with which the other kids formed a circle.
“Not here, boys,” the P.E. teacher said, walking over. “You’ll settle this after school, if you want.”
Again, D.J. was taken aback. While grateful for the intervention, it was the first time he’d ever heard a teacher condone, even encourage, a fight.
D.J.’s father had done his best to reassure his wife.
“You think growing up an Army brat was a picnic for me?”
“I know,” she said.
“This is part of becoming a man,” he said.
But he’s not a man, she wanted to say.
“I know,” she said.
“Plus, D.J. can hold his own.”
“I know.”
“And one thing is the same: boys will be boys, wherever they are.”
“I know.”
D.J.’s father had taught him the fundamentals of boxing, which had come in handy on a couple of occasions. But during the last year, being a few inches taller, refusing to be bullied, and simply being willing to stand up, had been enough.
This time was different, and he accepted it. Get it over with right up front, and then see which kids he’d be able to connect with. Heck, in third grade, he’d even become best friends with the kid he had to beat up.
Back in the classroom, he kept wondering how his parents had known: his father not wanting to talk about it, his mother talking about it too much. They knew, somehow, and he, of course, had picked up on it.
He’d gone to bed earlier than usual but was unable to fall asleep. First day jitters, same as usual. But still. He’d heard his parents talking, their whispered words easier to hear than if they’d been shouting.
“Yes, it’s going to be a challenge for him,” his father said. “It’s going to be hard for all of us, for a while.”
“I don’t understand why everyone seems so angry,” his mother said.
“Can you blame them, really? They keep electing idiots who make sure everything gets worse. What can you do with people like that?”
“The coal mines are never coming back, that’s for sure.”
“That’s exactly what I spend my days talking about. Learn new skills, adapt. But nobody wants to listen.”
“It’s red state sewer side,” his mother said, whatever that meant.
In D.J.’s experience, girls usually showed up at fights, which was a good chance to make another impression. Today, there was not a single girl amongst the dozen or so kids who walked outside after school, past the playground and toward the woods.
Suddenly, two other boys, either overly excited or with their own beef, started jawing at each other, then pushing. To D.J.’s amazement, within a few seconds they were rolling around in the dirt, a dust cloud of fists and curses. The scuffle was surprisingly intense and went on for what seemed a long time. He began to feel an odd relief; maybe this unexpected bout would offer distraction, if not get him off the hook.
But once the boys were separated, one of them wiping his nose on his muddy sleeve, D.J.’s adversary stepped forward. D.J. understood that what everyone had just witnessed was a warm-up for the main event.
Before every fight he’d been in, there was a sort of ritual: bravado, bold words, some shoving, and occasionally the opportunity for the other kid to back down.
“Get him, Breece,” the boy who’d just won his scrap yelled, and D.J. stepped back from the oncoming barrage of punches.
Being taller, he used his jabs to keep the other boy away, able to handle his opponent without difficulty. But just as he’d seen at recess, the boy was wiry and relentless: he kept coming, and it took a lot to put him down. And he wouldn’t stay down.
In D.J.’s experience, after a while—usually quickly—the other kid would want to shake hands, or say “uncle,” or cry. This one, he understood, wouldn’t be shaking hands or saying “uncle,” and looked like he’d never shed a tear in his entire life. In fact, it appeared as though he was genuinely enjoying this.
It unnerved D.J., and even as he kept landing blows, he began to feel afraid. The faces all around him, at once eager and scornful, made it seem like someone might jump in at any moment. Then the P.E. teacher appeared, like before, as if by magic.
“Get ‘em apart. You had enough, Breece? Look like he busted you up pretty good.”
“Shit no,” the boy said, hawking a mixture of snot and blood at D.J.’s feet. “I can take this fucker.”
D.J. didn’t have time to fully register—or process—his disbelief. The teacher simply nodded, and D.J. retreated into a defensive crouch to fend off another flurry.
On his way to the hospital, D.J.’s father avoided thinking about what awaited him by replaying what he’d just seen.
***
When he oversaw his first group layoff, the idea of armed security was ludicrous, like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. A great deal had changed during the last two decades, in his profession and everywhere else. Now, most offices had some type of security employed around the clock. Certain things remained the same, naturally. He had been called every name imaginable, been threatened, invited to step outside, spit on (twice—once by a man, once by a woman), and, on one memorable occasion, harassed at home—back in the days before caller ID and cell phones. And, unfortunately, he’d seen grown men cry, too many times to count.
Until today, however, he’d never seen a dismissed employee threaten to take his own life, on the spot.
“Of course we don’t have metal detectors here,” the shift manager said after, nonplussed but also slightly indignant. “How we gonna keep people bringing they guns? That’s their right...”
It was unbelievable. It was almost as though this halfwit was defending the practice of packing heat, on the job, during working hours. No, he was defending it.
But this wasn’t the worst thing. The man’s swearing, surrendering his pistol, his uncontrollable bawling followed by a kind of furious begging, none of these were the worst. The worst wasn’t even that the police officer knew the man—was clearly, on some level, friends with him, and kept calling him by an obvious nickname.
“It’s okay, Cakes,” and “It’ll be all right, Cakes.”
The worst thing was his suspicion, no certainty, that it was only his security badge—his status of being in charge of the people in charge—more than any laws, or customs, or unforeseeable circumstances, that ensured he wasn’t the one being forced off the premises, and not on his feet either.
He had been comforted to get his wife’s call, at first. After what he’d just seen go down, he needed to tell her, to talk about it with someone who might understand. Actually, with someone who definitely wouldn’t understand. Just like him.
But then she said two things that confused and frightened him: emergency room and bitten.
***
Even here, he thought, as the young-looking (too young-looking) woman approached him in the parking lot.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said softly.
He knew the script, had been hearing it more regularly: outside grocery stores, coffee shops, movie theaters, anywhere. Now, even hospitals. Typically, he had a dollar or two to give; it was the least he could do.
“I’m just trying to get something to eat, and...”
“It’s okay,” he said, handing her the first bill he pulled out. “I don’t need the story. Here you go...”
The woman looked at him as though he were a god or some kind of alien, and then back at her hand, like she’d never held twenty dollars before.
In the elevator he repeated the short, unsettling conversation he’d had with his wife.
“Unconscious? How’s D.J. going to get knocked out from being bitten?”
“No,” his wife said, her voice unsteady with fear, but also something like awe. “After he bit him, the other boy kept punching him, over and over.”
He looked down at his son and felt ill. Ill at what had happened. Ill at everything that would happen next, starting here in the hospital. And especially ill about the ragged wound on his son’s cheek: the stitches it would require; all the possible infections attacking his system.
He felt ill.
“It was a fair fight,” the P.E. teacher had apparently said, once the paramedics arrived.
Who teaches their kid to fight like that? To bite, like some rabid dog? And who knew what types of germs were in that boy’s mouth, trapped between his teeth. Did that boy even brush his teeth? How often? And what was the quality of the meat his family ate?
How much do we become like the animals we feed on?
He looked at his son’s bruised and beaten face, awake now but in another state altogether on account of the IV drip.
The surgeon had been speaking for some time, but he hadn’t heard anything.
He was sick, with a sudden dread that the doctor was going to remove his mask and reveal himself as the man he’d just been paid to terminate. Or the one who’d similarly been escorted off another site the year before. Or a stranger he’d insulted at some point in his career, wherever his travels had taken him. Or maybe the nameless kid whose ass he’d kicked, behind another forgotten school. Or else—he imagined, as he half-fell, half-fainted into the reclining chair, at once toward and away from his son—some unfortunate soul who hadn’t even been born yet.
Scars
Jack can tell right away that Richard is already drunk. Good. Usually, they had to work up to it, one beer at a time. Or lately, in Richard’s case, one vodka tonic, easy on the tonic, at a time. It just goes right to my gut, he said, when Jack finally asked what’s with the pussy drinks. Beer just sits in your belly, Richard said. And it’s not like I’m gonna jog it off, right? They both laughed.
There it was, distilled to its essence: a relationship primarily consisting of laughing and drinking. And sports, well, at least until that was no longer a possibility. Jack had long since stopped going to the gym and his outside shot was for shit anymore. Also, he’d learned, the only people who can jog on a regular basis are born into it, like an inheritance. Or else they’re insane. Which is also like an inheritance, he thought one time, smiling to himself.
Apart from Richard, he was the funniest person he knew. Always had been. Being impartial, he knew he’d be able to make himself laugh even if he wasn’t, you know, himself. Both of them class clowns, always getting in trouble, their popularity getting them right out of it. You play ball in high school you’re like a made man in the mob, at least where they were from. Basketball was a big deal here. So was laughing, and drinking. Probably like that anywhere else worth living, but Jack had never been anyplace else and wasn’t especially looking to.
“How was work, honey,” Richard says.
“I called in sick, actually.”
“Allergies acting up?”
“Always are. I think I’m allergic to work.”
Richard laughs, thank God. Last time they hung out, Jack found himself complaining about work, maybe a bit too much, and Richard had surprised him, saying how lucky he was. Must be nice, he’d said. Nice to have a job to hate.
But you don’t have to work, Jack hadn’t said. Would never say. But really, work is overrated, he would say, if he could. And not just to make himself feel better.
“The thing about hating something everyone else hates? It makes you normal.”
When Richard had said that, Jack hadn’t known how to respond, so he didn’t.
I do hate my job, he could have said.
If you think I should be grateful because I hate my job like anyone else, to hell with being normal, he’d said. To himself.
“If I could trade places with you,” he’d said, looking at his friend’s wheelchair.
“You wouldn’t,” Richard said, laughing for both of them.
Truth was, he didn’t remember any of it. The before and after, obviously, but the actual thing, what would actually be referred to, in court, as the scene of the crime? Nothing. Besides, his lawyer agreed that it was best to say as little as possible. Don’t provide any detail until they ask for it, he said.
The first thing he saw, after impact and before the professionals arrived, was the blood. He’d never seen so much in his life, not even in a movie. When he saw it, everywhere—on his shirt, on the steering wheel, on the windshield, on Richard—he knew his friend was dead. Or, more specifically, that he had killed his friend. And then, this: how was he unhurt? Must be in shock, he thought, the way a zebra supposedly doesn’t feel anything, even as the lion’s teeth tighten around its neck. At least that’s what he’d heard on some nature show one time. But no, he literally did not have a scratch, which made things much worse, when the extent of Richard’s injuries were cataloged.
And then all the questions, few of which he could answer to anyone’s satisfaction, then or now.
Why?
Why didn’t his airbag work, and was that some kind of miracle, considering? Richard’s did, and since the idiot wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, as usual, it’s hard to argue that this wasn’t for the better, despite the damage it did. Maybe if he didn’t have his feet on the dashboard, as always, Richard could have walked to the ambulance. Instead, his heels went through the windshield (at 200 miles per hour, they learned), like two tire irons. Since he wasn’t buckled in, the airbag bounced him back into his seat, and then forward, shattering his nose against his knees (that’s where most of the blood came from). To add insult to injury, or injury to injury, Richard thought he’d been blinded (“I can’t see!” he kept screaming), but it was on account of the chemicals the airbag released. They would later hear all about airbags, how they operate (or don’t, in some cases), along with too-detailed descriptions of femurs, pelvises, fibulas, deviated septums, thermal burns, and partial paralysis.
