That’s How I Roll

on gas and oil changes,” I’d told him when he came to visit me. “You’re getting money. Regular. In cash. So there’ll be plenty of extra for you to keep on the side. Sooner or later, that car’s going to need work. I don’t care if it needs a new engine, or transmission, or … anything. You have to keep that car working. That’s the car Tory-boy knows. It has to last him his whole life, even if you have to replace every panel on the body and every bolt in the chassis. Fair deal?”

We shook hands.

There was no need for threats. I knew Delbert wouldn’t cheat Tory-boy.

he man Tory-boy knew could never come inside our place had been a huge, powerful monster. I never used his name. I never called him “Dad,” or “Father,” or anything like that. It wasn’t until Mrs. Slater snuck me over to church a few times while he was doing ninety days in the same jail they first put me in that I learned his true name. After that, in my mind, he was always “the Beast.”

I don’t know what names other people had for him, but I suspect they were similar. He was a man who’d stomp you or stab you just for getting in his way. The Beast really liked hurting people, and he didn’t miss many opportunities.

Drunk, he was dangerous. Sober, he was lethal. If you crossed him, he’d kill you right where you stood … unless there were witnesses around.

Then he’d wait. And he wouldn’t touch a drop until he settled up. When he was doing that kind of waiting, the Beast would go as quiet as a snake watching a rat.

In his own way, the Beast was a reliable man. If you did something to him, you could count on him coming for you.

But you’d never know when he was going to make his move. When it came to business, the Beast could bury his own ego in a cake of ice. He was proud of saying that an ambush is better than a gunfight.

Everybody hated him, but the Beast was always safe, because he had his place in the world. People needed him. Sometimes for certain kinds of work. But mostly what they needed was for him to leave them be.

Nobody needed for him to leave us be.

eople don’t take care of you just because it’s the right thing to do. The law might prohibit some things, but a man owns his children same way he owns his livestock. Despite what some said, I never could find anything in the Bible to back that up, but there was no need—the Beast himself had taught me even before I could read.

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.