= Good For Me
  by Hugh Lessig

This has happened twice before. Once in electronics and once in housewares. This guy pretended to browse for something, then he shuffled over and began rubbing against me. Each time I walked away and got the hell out of the store.

Each time he followed as far as the parking lot. He watched me drive away with hungry eyes.

I thought about going to management and saying, "Hey, you got a pervert in your store who's stalking teenaged boys."

Then I thought, fuck it.

My mom says I need to learn responsibility. My dad, when he was around, said I needed to finish what I started.

So now we're in the outdoors section -- camping equipment, to be precise -- and he's right up against me. I'm looking at freeze-dried food and he goes: "Are you an outdoors man?"

I let him reach in front of me and pick up the beef stroganoff. Then he says, "Can you believe the price on that?" I say I sure can't. Then he says again, "So, are you an outdoors man?"

I say I sure am.

So now I'm driving out of the Wal-Mart and he's sitting next to me in the front seat. We leave Cherokee Pass on Route 14, driving the limit, letting other cars pass us on the two-lane. He says to drive the limit because there are a lot of "smoky bears" out there. That's a trucker term, I think. I hear they got young boys up at the truckstop, so maybe he hangs out there, too.

We're going to this place in the woods. His special place.

"It's in the state gamelands" he says. "You'll like it."

He looks straight ahead, focused on his destination, imagining whatever. "It's got a small brook and some trees, and the squirrels come right up to you." he says. "I should've brought some bread, 'cause they'll almost take it from your hand."

Christ, he sounds like Barney. I say I know a back way to the state gamelands.

"That's fine" he says. "Going the back way is real fine. Do you go the back way often?"

A small smile creeps onto his face, like he can hardly contain the joke. For the next fifteen minutes, I drive along back roads and pretend I'm heading toward the gamelands. He looks at the cows in the fields, at the silos full of corn. After a few minutes, he starts tapping his fingers on his knee. He starts asking if I know the way, because we appear to be going in the wrong direction. I try to think of something to say, but I go into brainlock.

Dammit.

I miss my turn. I drove past it yesterday, just to make sure I could find it. I should've done one more dry run. I take the next turn and head into a shaded hollow.

He leans toward me. His breath is short and hot on my shoulder. His hand creeps over and barely touches my knee -- like you wouldn't notice it otherwise. But that's probably enough to get him off.

"If you don't want to go the gamelands," he says, "we could just stop somewhere along here."

I shift my eyes to look at him. His tongue moves between his teeth and he is breathing very fast, through his nose.

I pull the .22 caliber pistol from the side pocket of the car door. I place it on my lap with the barrel pointing at him. He jumps back to his side of the car when he sees it.

"Whoa," he says. "You play rough."

He emits a low, wet laugh that I guess is supposed to be sexy, like maybe this is how he laughs when he watches stag films, or whatever the hell he watches.

Anyway, I pull the trigger.

The gun makes a sharp crack. My dad bought me this gun four years ago, when I turned twelve. He said it was a good "starter firearm." Dad himself had more guns than I knew about. We didn't find out how many until afterwards. Dad knew his guns. Mom gave him that much.

Something smells funny, and I see blood on the dashboard. But I've smelled blood before, and that's not it. I think he's gone and done his business in my car.

He is saying something now -- how he's so sorry, he didn't understand, he would never, ever hurt me, and if I please, please put away the gun he'll walk away and not go to the hospital, because he works as an orderly in the medical clinic and he could fix himself up.

"You work as an orderly in a medical clinic?"

He nods several times, biting down on his lip.

"So you can touch people all the time. How wrong is that? Plus, you have gone and made Number Two on my nice, leather seats."

I pull the trigger again.

The bullet smacks against the car door. He sobs and fails to form words. Maybe I should ask about going the back way, like that's real funny now. I hang a U-turn and head back the way we came. I find the turn I missed five minutes ago -- back when I was scared.

The road narrows and dead-ends in a small clearing between two farmer's fields. My dad used to hunt here, back when he was around, because he knew the guys who owned it.

"This is my special place," I tell him. "You have a special place, but this is mine. So we'll stop here, yes?"

He clutches his leg where the bullet struck, and blood trickles from between his fingers. I stop the car and get out. He stays hunched over like he's going to puke. I come around and grab the back of his collar really hard -- not barely touching, you know what I'm saying? -- and yank him through the open window and onto the ground.

He screams. I point the gun and pull the trigger.

It grazes his ear. A piece of skin or something flies off.

He curls up like a baby and tries to say things. I go back to the car and make a big show of putting away my gun. I take out the ten-pound sledge hammer and hide it behind my back. I come back to him and smile.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Rod. Rodney."

"Give me your hand, Rodney."

"Please, don't help me up. I can't stand. Not with my leg and all."

"Don't worry, Rodney. That's not what I had in mind."

I pull his forearm straight and bring the sledgehammer down upon it. My dad said this would break a man's forearm like a dead branch if you did it right. He said it was a whole different sound when you hit someone and broke the bone, as opposed to just hitting someone. I'll have to admit, my dad scared me when he said that, because I thought he might try something on me. That was six, seven years ago. Back when he was around and whaling on me every day.

Still, my dad experienced great satisfaction when he explained stuff like that. You could see it on his face, like when people are in church and listening to a really good sermon that explains everything. Not that I've been to church a whole lot, although Mom has been trying, now that it's just her and me. I actually enjoy some of it. Once I had a nightmare my dad was in the pulpit, and he was saying "Hit it one way, break the bone. Hit it another way, spare the bone. So sayeth the Lord."

Rodney's leg has stopped bleeding, but now he retches onto the ground. He reminds me of myself just then. Once, when my dad was hitting me, I tried to run away and knocked my head against the wall. I got sick to my stomach and my dad said I must've had a concussion. He said not to tell mom, and I'm like, why would I do that? Then he took me downstairs and poured me some Jim Beam.

I don't think Rodney has a concussion. The day is young.

"Rodney, open your mouth."

His eyes plead with me. He rolls over on his back, holding his arm like a chicken wing. A line of drool hangs out the side of his mouth and he grunts incoherently, the kind of sound when you can't decide what hurts the most.

"You wanted to open your mouth, right? That was your plan all along, correct?"

His quivering lips begin to form a question, but I don't feel like waiting. I kneel down close enough to smell his stink.

"I'm going to put this gun into your mouth and have you suck on it. Eat the gun, Rodney. That's a good boy."

He whimpers like a scolded dog. I force the barrel through his lips. Metal clicks on teeth.

"Good boy, Rodney. That's a good boy."

Once, my dad caught me feeding Bootsie from the table. We were having cabbage or something. After supper, he sat me down in the garage and made me eat a whole box of Milk Bones. He said if the dog could eat from the table then I could eat dog food. The biscuits were thick and hard, and my gums started to bleed after a while, but his logic was inescapable. When we returned to the house, my mom kicked him out, and that was the beginning of the end for them.

"You know, Rodney, you never asked me my name."

Still with the barrel in his mouth, he says, "Namth don ma-er."

"Names don't matter?"

"Yeth."

I consider this point. "My name is Justin Bowles. Does that ring a bell to you?"

Rodney shakes his head no.

"My father was Armand Bowles. Does that ring a bell to you?"

Rodney is thinking. Most of the big headlines came three months ago. My mom and dad had been split up for a while, and they found him behind some junked cars in Scaleri's Auto Yard in Jersey City. The New York Post had it on page three under the headline "Mob Soldier Meets Match." A smaller headline read: "Strongman came from Pocono "Burbs." They had a fuzzy picture of cops combing the junkyard with surgical masks. Dad had been there for a while and they were afraid he might stink.

The detectives questioned mom and me after they found the body. They came over one Sunday after church. I insisted on seeing pictures of the body. They were like, You don't want to see them, and I'm like, Fuck you, it's fucking public record. We went back and forth, but I eventually saw them after I told my therapist it would give me closure. You learn words like that in therapy.

Except those pictures didn't close anything. They opened up a whole new world that smelled of fear and grease and old cars. They found his body in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental. His wrists, bound with twine, were in front of him. He must have tried to push out the trunk, because his hands fell back and came to rest under his chin. He looked like he was praying, and his eyes were open.

He looks at me through my dreams, mocking prayer.

It's been months and that picture still sticks in my head. My therapist says I should "journal it out" and I'm like "journal this." I began roaming the mall to find some Britney Spears look-a-like. I've become popular in an odd sort of way, and I figured that would take my mind off things. Naturally, I meet fucking Rodney.

"Rodney, my man. Will you die with your eyes open or closed? What think?"

I take the gun from his mouth. He looks strangely calm.

"What's the right answer, Rodney?"

He swallows and says: "You're the son of that mobster, aren't you? You poor boy. You don't deserve the hand he dealt you."

I jam the gun in his mouth and tighten my hand. His eyes pop and he starts to scream around the barrel of the gun. He will not close his eyes. He will die with them open. I will see those eyes all the time.

Slowly, I take the gun from Rodney's mouth. I allow him to look at me, but he will not look at me again, not in the department store, not anywhere. I get in the car and drive away.

My father's dead face pops into my brain, but now it's different. All through this, he's been encouraging me, giving me advice. Now he's pissed off because I failed to finish what I started.

Good. Good for me.

HUGH LESSIG is a newspaper reporter who lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Ann Marie. His work has appeared several times in HandHeldCrime, as well as Plots With Guns, Thrilling Detective and Blue Murder magazine.

Copyrights (c) 2002 Hugh Lessig

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