Six Bad Things

The cabby taps his brakes, halting for a moment as a bus drives past. I run up to his open window and stick the red Christmas envelope inside.

– Here, I need to go here.

He ducks back from me and pushes my hand away.

– Fuck off!

I have my head and right shoulder stuck in the window. He tries to shake me loose, and I stumble alongside the crawling cab. I shove the envelope in his face.

– Here!

He’s looking less pissed and more scared now as he slaps at his armrest, trying to roll up his window, but only succeeding in locking and unlocking the doors over and over. I get my other hand inside the window and shake a handful of cash at him. The taxi stops moving.

– A hundred bucks. I’ll give you a hundred.

He looks at the envelope I’m sticking in his face.

– That address is in California.

What? Oh, Christ.

– The other one, the return.

His eyes move to the return address and then to the money in my other hand.

– Two hundred.

– Two hundred.

I peel off two hundreds and hand them to him along with the card in its envelope, then I pull open the back door and flop across the seat.

– You puke or piss or anything back there and it’s gonna cost you another hundred.

The taxi starts to move. I close my eyes.

I OPEN my eyes.

Fuck me; oh fuck me, what am I doing? I look around. Taxi. Got it, I remember. I scooch up in the seat. The cabby is looking at me in the rearview.

– Too much tonight, buddy?

Way too much.

– Yeah.

He stops at a red light.

– In town for the rodeo?

Rodeo?

– Uh.

– Only guys I see as messed up as you are cowboys. You a cowboy?

I laugh.

– Yeah, yeah, I’m a cowboy.

– I figured. Couldn’t pay me enough. Crazy shit.

– Yeah, crazy-shit cowboy, that’s me.

He’s looking at me again in the mirror.

– It’s about a ten-minute ride. Go ahead and take a nap. I’ll wake you.

A nap. That sounds good. I close my eyes.

SOMEONE IS pulling on me. I open my eyes.

– OK, buddy, here we are.

The cabby is tugging me out of the back of his cab. I jerk free and get out, almost fall, and he catches me.

– I got ya.

He’s leading me toward a rust-streaked, white and turquoise trailer. We’re in a trailer park. He helps me up the steps to a small porch and plops me onto a beat-up couch, setting off an eruption of dust. I cough. He points at the trailer.

– OK, this is the place. Don’t look like anyone’s home.

He’s whispering.

– How can ya tell?

– I knocked.

He’s still whispering.

– Just lie down.

He pushes on my shoulder. I lie back on the couch and close my eyes.

– Here’s your Christmas card back.

Still whispering. I feel his hand shoving the card deep in my hip pocket. His hand grasping.

I grab his wrist and lurch up from the couch. He takes a step back, my hand locked on his wrist, his hand still deep in my pocket. I jerk it out and it comes free; the card and a litter of my cash dropping from his fingers. He yanks his hand away. Both of us standing now, he sees just how big I am, how big he is not. I take another step toward him. His eyes are huge. He’s appalled at what he’s tried to do: roll a crazed drunk.

– Easy, buddy.

But I don’t want to be easy. I’ve been easy, now I want to be hard. Instead, I trip over my own feet and fall onto the porch. The cabby seizes the moment, runs to his taxi, and speeds away toward the entrance of the trailer park.

I lower my head. The Astro Turf that covers the porch scruffs against my ear. I look across the flat plain of the porch at my scattered money, and the Christmas card a few inches from my face. I grab the card and roll onto my back. I take the card from its envelope and hold it up to catch the light from one of the lamps that illuminate the park.

It’s a homemade job, worked up on Photoshop or something. It’s a still from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the part where Lucy is flirting with Schroeder, bent over his piano trying to get him to play “Jingle Bells.” The still has been altered. Charlie Brown is standing next to his director’s chair shouting “Action” into his megaphone. Schroeder is playing the piano, he’s naked except for blinders and a red ball-gag. Snoopy is dancing on the piano in front of Lucy, his big dog dick stuck in her mouth. The caption reads “EUGH! DOG GERMS.” Inside is another altered still that features Charlie and Lucy engaged in an act of coprophilia with the caption “Of all the Charlie Browns, you’re the Charlie Browniest.” Charlie’s face has been removed from this one and T has superimposed his own.

Fucking T.

I close my eyes.

PART THREE DECEMBER 14-17, 2003 Still Two Regular Season Games Remaining

T was a quiet kid in junior high, one of the Dungeons and Dragons crowd that kept their heads down, trying to draw as little attention as possible. In the summer following eighth grade, his mom died, eaten from the inside by stomach cancer. He showed up the first day of freshman year with a brand new mohawk, safety pins in his ears, and a Clash shirt with the sleeves ripped off. The only punk in a school full of jocks, cowboys, and lowriders, he spent the next couple months getting gang-tackled and having his face stuffed in a toilet every time he turned a corner. Until he bit off Sean Baylor’s earlobe. After that, everybody decided the risks of beating on the school freak outweighed the pleasures.

The only group that would have anything to do with him were the burnouts, and that was only after he started selling off his mother’s leftover pain medication. Then Wade’s mom died, and he and T started hanging out.