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w hw w h e n r y ww
by w Mark Spencer & Shawn Chuisano w w w back part one part two part three part four part five
w I was in the woods at the park, playing paintball with these guys that were supposed to be my friends, but what happened was what always happened. All of a sudden the four of them were blasting me point-blank, the paint balls smacking all over me like wasp stings. I didn’t know why exactly they ganged up on me. Maybe it was because I was short. Or because my sister was a slut. Or because my mom was. Or because my dad was a cop.
Brandon, this kid with real orangey hair and big blotches of freckles
all over his face, was shooting me in the neck where my mask gave me no
protection and saying, “Die, mother freaker!” He really said
“freaker” because his parents used to beat him all the time for
swearing until he got so that he never said anything but “freaker”
and “friggin.”
I was yelling, “Stop it!”, but he wouldn’t stop, so I
went postal on him.
My fist landed right in the middle of his mouth, cut my
damn knuckles, and he started bawling, his eyes shut tight, his freckled
hand over his mouth, and everybody stopped shooting.
Josh held me so that I couldn’t hit Brandon again and
said in my ear, “It’s just a game, dude.” Then Weston was suddenly hopping around just like a monkey and pointing at something he saw through the trees. “Dudes! Dudes!”
Seth said, “Man, look at that!
Look! It’s a girl! A damn near naked girl!”
Of course, we all wanted to see, even Brandon, so he opened
his eyes and gawked with the rest of us, his mouth hanging open and
these strings of blood in the spaces between his teeth.
And there she was--a skinny girl wearing nothing but a
bikini. Some fat, gray-headed guy in army fatigues was chasing her
with a paintball gun. I was hoping nobody knew who she was, but
almost right away Josh said, “Hey, Henry, isn’t that your sister?”
Brandi was seventeen and had no sense.
I was fourteen and figured somebody
had to take care of her.
So I took off running. The fat guy was Krebs. Brandi
worked for him at a Mexican fast-food place called Taco Yummy.
I heard Josh yell, “Hey, Henry, what you doing?”
Brandon hollered, “Wales is a total psycho!”
It felt good to blindside Kerbs, just plow right into his
lard and watch him spill all over the ground and quiver.
He worked his mouth for a minute before any real words
could come out. “Jesus . . . Jesus Christ, kid! What’s your
problem? You trying to kill me?”
I was still holding my paintball gun and stuck it in his
red face. “What are doing chasing my sister?”
Brandi had turned back and came running up. “Henry,
you idiot!”
“You’re welcome.”
She bent down to Krebs like he was some little puppy that had gotten run
over by a car. “Are you all right, Mr. Krebs. I’m so sorry
about my stupid brother.” She took his arm to help him up.
She really was almost naked. Krebs’ hand brushed the blonde fuzz
on her thigh, and I almost pulled the trigger in his face.
“Are
you all right, Mr. Krebs?” Brandi said again.
I said, “Put some clothes on, Brandi, and go home.”
Krebs stared at me like I was nuts. “You’re in big trouble . . .
.”
“Asshole.”
“What? What did you say to me?”
Brandi got between us. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr.
Krebs. Henry has a condition real bad. It makes him cuss
uncontrollably.”
“What the hell, Brandy?”
“See? He can’t stop himself. He needs to be in a special
home or hospital or something probably.”
I shot Brandi in the leg, and then I bolted, left Brandi howling and
Krebs cussing me out. I jumped on my bike and peddled like crazy
to get home, my paintball gun swinging from my belt like I was an
outlaw.
Brandi
pulled up in the driveway in her Chevette same time I did, and we busted
through the front door together. Somewhere along the way, she put
on some shorts and a t-shirt, thank god. And she got her big mouth
open before I could get mine.
“Mona!”
I yelled, “Mom!”
Like
always, Mom was drunk in her bedroom, watching Jerry Springer.
“Mona, this lame ass excuse for a brother screwed up a special job I
was doing for Mr. Krebs.”
On Jerry Springer, a dwarf picked up a folding chair and hit
another dwarf with it, and some female dwarf with really big boobs and
really short arms was screaming at them. I was short but not like
these dwarves. I was just smaller than everybody else in my grade
at school, but not by much.
Mom stared at the TV and didn’t even look at me or Brandi.
“Yeah, a real special job,” I said. “She was running around
the park, naked.”
Mom perked up a little. “Yeah?”
“I had a bikini on. Mr. Krebs was going to pay me fifty bucks to
let him chase me with a paintball gun.”
I said, “What was he going to do when he caught you?”
Brandi had gone into Mom’s bathroom and came back out with a washcloth
and was trying to scrub the paint stains off the leg I shot.
“Mr. Krebs just wanted to shoot me.”
Mom nodded. “Fifty bucks not bad, girl.”
“I
know.” Brandi glared at me like she was the winner. “I
have to slave away for like ten hours at that stupid Taco Yummy to make
fifty bucks.”
Mom
waved toward the dwarves. “Men are bastards, Brandi. Get
used to it.”
“He’s
actually kind of nice when he’s not stressing out over broken taco
shells. He says I remind him of Paris Hilton.”
“What’s next, Brandy?” I said. “Porn movies?”
Brandi
paused in her scrubbing and looked at me, her mouth open.
“You really mean that?”
“Yeah.”
“You really think I’m hot enough to get hired for a porn movie?”
I just stared at her. And I was still in that process when the
doorbell rang.
Nobody made a move. Mom was watching the pissed off dwarves, and
Brandi was scrubbing at the paint stains.
“I’ll
get it,” I said.
It
was Dad, all decked out in his Nazi cop costume.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
Mom hollered from her bedroom. “Who is it?”
I hesitated, said nothing, a little scared about what would happen with
the two of them face to face.
Dad called, “It’s me, Mona.”
“What do you want? The kids don’t want to see you.”
“I’m here on police business.”
Mom
staggered through the living room to the front door, looked him up and
down, smiled a little. “Hey, Big Henry. Since you’re here, I
wanta ask if you could give
me an extra three hundred dollars this month.”
“I’m
here about Henry,” he said.
Brandi
came to the front door. She couldn’t stand to miss anything.
Dad had not been invited in and stood on the stoop.
“Mom
really needs that three hundred bucks. Help her out for once.”
“Brandi, honey, I pay plenty of child support every month. I’m
here about Henry. Can I come in?”
Mom sneered. “No. If you don’t got a warrant or
“Listen. A Louis Krebs has filed a complaint against Henry.
He says Henry assaulted him in the woods at the public park.”
“That asshole!” I blurted out.
“This little twerp deserves whatever he gets. He lost me fifty
bucks.”
“Brandi was whorin’ herself out to the guy.”
Dad blinked a couple of times. He blinks real fast when things
surprise him or confuse him. “What?”
Brandi rolled her eyes like it was the biggest pain to have to explain
things. “I work for him at Taco Yummy. He asked me to play
a paintball game with him at the park.”
“Maybe I’ll play with him,” Mom said. “Get my three
hundred dollars.”
“I’m sure you would, Mona,” Dad said.
She stared at him a minute, then said, “Why hasn’t some crook shot
you yet?”
Dad looked down at me. He was pretty tall. I got my
shortness from Mom. “I’m sorry your mother talks this way in
front of you.”
I hated it that he looked so far down at me. “Well, what do you
expect? You basically just called her a whore.”
Brandi gave a big nod like she was a filly at the race track ready to
go. “You tell him, kid.”
“Henry, I’m sorry. All right? Listen, you’ve been
banned from the park.”
“What?” I wanted to find a folding chair and slam the thing
over my dad’s head. “Why?”
“Mr. Krebs wanted to file charges. The desk sergeant called me
in as a favor to you and me, and I convinced this Kerbs guy to simply
allow the city to use its authority to ban you from the park.”
“But
where the hell am I going to go paintballing?”
“You’re lucky you’re not on your way to Juvenile Court. I
did you a favor.”
“Oh,
thanks a lot. I’m royally screwed. Thanks for the favor.
Thanks for not giving Mom the money she needs, too.”
I bolted. Dad hollered, “Henry!”
I
locked the door to my room, slipped the dead bolt, put on the chains.
Our
house was pretty small, and they were talking loud.
Mom
said, “You still know how to bring the shit in on your shoes.”
“Brandy,
talk some sense to your mother, will you?”
“Okay.
Sure. Hey, Mona, you know what you oughta do? Go back to
court and get more child support.”
“Yeah.
I oughta get extra since you and Henry never go over to your father’s
on the weekends.”
“They know they can come over whenever they want.”
“Fact is, big man, they never want to.”
I could actually hear the door whoosh as mom or Brandi swung it. The slam of it shook the walls. I flopped down on my bed and buried my face in the pillow. I was starting to hurt all over from being shot by all those paint balls. w
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