Born Bad (26 page)

BOLO: Lyza…

LYZA: Mary. I'm going to be Mary soon. And then I won't know you.

BO(LO: Look, maybe we could—

LYZA:
(Gently)
No, w
e
can't do anything. I'm going to do things by myself. You have things to do too. By yourself.

BOLO: I could, maybe fix it, Lyza. Help you fix it, anyway. If you—

LYZA: I won't. And you can't fix this, Bolo—you don't know how it works. Just forget it, all right? You should maybe get that motorcycle you were talking about. Go west, ride some waves or whatever.

BOLO: Lyza, I—

LYZA:
(Interrupting)
Listen, Bolo. I'm going to tell you the truth. A truth I learned. It's very, very important. Always keep your house safe. No matter what, always keep your house safe. A home has to be safe, do you understand? A home has to be safe. A safe place. There has to be one…

NURSE:
(Entering)
Visiting hours are over, honey. It's time to—

LYZA:
(Interrupting)
I know.
(Turning to
BOLO) Goodbye, Bolo. Remember what I said.

BOLO: I Will.

LYZA: Promise?

BOLO: I swear it.

I don't always get it right the first time, but I keep working until I do.

I've been a lot of places. Some of them pretty bad—some of them where I didn't want to be.

I did a lot of things in my life in some of those places. In the bad places, I did some bad things.

I paid a lot for what I know, but I don't talk about it. Talking doesn't get things fixed.

People call me a lot of different things now. Janitor. Custodian. Repairman. Lots of names for the same thing.

I live in the basement. I take care of the whole building. Something gets broke, they call me. I'm always here.

I live by myself. A dog lives with me. A big Doberman. I heard a noise behind my building one night—it sounded like a kid crying. I found the Doberman. He was a puppy then. Some freak was carving him up for the fun of it. Blood all over the place. I took care of the freak, then I brought the puppy down to my basement and heed him up. I know all about knife wounds.

The freak cut his throat pretty deep. When the stitches came out, he was okay, but he can't bark. He still works, though.

I don't mix much with the people. They pay me to fix things—I fix things. I don't try and fix things for the whole world. I don't care about the whole world. Just what's mine. I just care about doing my work.

People ask me to fix all kinds of things—not just the boiler or a stopped—up toilet. One of the gangs in the neighborhood used to hang out in front of my building, give the people a hard time, scare them, break into the mailboxes, petty stuff like that. I went upstairs and talked to the gang. I had the dog with me. The gang went away. I don't know where they went. It doesn't matter.

Mrs. Barnes lives in the building. She has a kid, Tommy. He's a sweet—natured boy, maybe ten years old. Tommy's a little slow in the head, goes to a special school and all. Other kids in the building used to bother him. I fixed that.

Maybe that's why Mrs. Barnes told me about the monsters. Tommy was waking up in the night screaming. He told his mother monsters lived in the room and they came after him when he went to sleep.

I told her she should talk to someone who knows how to fix what's wrong with the kid. She told me he had somebody. A therapist at his special school—an older guy. Dr. English. Mrs. Barnes couldn't say enough about this guy. He was like a father to the boy, she said. Took him places, bought him stuff. A real distinguished—looking man. She showed me a picture of him standing next to Tommy. He had his hand on the boy's shoulder.

The boy comes down to the basement himself. Mostly after school. The dog likes him. Tommy watches me do my work. Never says much, just pats the dog and hands me a tool once in a while. One day he told me about the monsters himself. Asked me to fix it. I thought about it. Finally I told him I could do it.

I went up to his room. Nice big room, painted a pretty blue color. Faces out the back of the building. Lots of light comes in his window. There's a fire escape right off the window. Tommy tells me he likes to sit out there on nice days and watch the other kids play down below. It's only on the second floor, so he can see them good.

I checked the room for monsters. He told me they only came at night. I told him I could fix it but it would take me a few days. The boy was real happy. You could see it.

I did some reading, and I thought I had it all figured out. The monsters were in his head. I made a machine in the basement—just a metal box with a row of lights on the top and a toggle switch. I showed him how to turn it on. The lights Hashed in a random sequence. The boy stared at it for a long time.

I told him this was a machine for monsters. As long as the machine was turned on, monsters couldn't come in his room. I never saw a kid smile like he did.

His mother tried to slip me a few bucks when I was leaving. I didn't take it. I never do. Fixing things is my job.

She winked at me, said she'd tell Dr. English about my machine. Maybe he'd use it for all the kids. I told her I only fixed things in my building.

I saw the boy every day after that. He stopped being scared. His mother told me she had a talk with Dr. English. He told her the machine I made was a placebo, and Tommy would always need therapy.

I go to the library a lot to learn more about how things work. I looked up "placebo" in the big dictionary they have there. It means a fake, but a fake that somebody believes in. Like giving a sugar pill to a guy in a lot of pain and telling him it's morphine. It doesn't really work by itself—it's all in your mind.

One night Tommy woke up screaming and he didn't stop. His mother rang my buzzer and I went up to the apartment. The kid was shaking all over, covered with sweat.

He saw me. He said my machine didn't work anymore.

He wasn't mad at me, but he said he couldn't go back to sleep. Ever.

Some guys in white jackets came in an ambulance. They took the boy away. I saw him in the hospital the next day. They gave him something to sleep the night before and he looked dopey.

The day after that he said he wasn't afraid any more. The pills worked. No monsters came in the night. But he said he could never go home. He asked if I could build him a stronger machine.

I told him I'd work on it.

His mother said she called Dr. English at the special school, but they said he was out for a few days. Hurt himself on a ski trip or something. She couldn't wait to tell Dr. English about the special medicine they were giving the boy and ask if it was all right with him.

I called the school. Said I was with the State Disability Commission. The lady who answered told me Dr. English was at home, recuperating from a broken arm. I got her to tell me his full name, got her to talk. I know how things work.

She told me they were lucky to have Dr. English. He used to work at some school way up north—in Toronto, Canada—but he left because he hated the cold weather.

I thought about it a long time. Broken arm. Ski trip. Cold weather.

The librarian knows me. She says I'm her best customer because I never check books out. I always read them right there. I never write stuff down. I keep it in my head.

I asked the librarian some questions and she showed me how to use the newspaper index. I checked all the Toronto papers until I found it. A big scandal at a special school for slow kids. Some of the staff were indicted. Dr. English was one of the people they questioned, but he was never charged with anything. Four of the staff people went to prison. A few more were acquitted. Dr. English, he resigned.

Dr. English was listed in the phone book. He lives in a real nice neighborhood.

I waited a couple of more days, working it all out in my head.

Mrs. Barnes told me Dr. English was coming back to the school next week. She was going to talk to him about Tommy, maybe get him to do some of his therapy in the hospital until the boy was ready to come home.

I told Tommy I knew how to stop the monsters for sure now. I told him I was building a new machine—I'd have it ready for him next week. I told him when he got home I wanted him to walk the dog for me. Out in the back where the other kids played. I told him I'd teach him how.

Tommy really liked that. He said he'd try and come home if I was sure the new machine would work. I gave him my word.

I'm working on the new machine in my basement now. I put a hard rubber ball into a vise and clamped it tight. I drilled a tiny hole right through the center. Then I threaded it with a strand of piano wire until about six inches poked through the end. I knotted it real carefully and pulled back against the knot with all my strength. It held. I did the same thing with another ball the same way. Now I have a three—foot piece of piano wire anchored with a little rubber ball at each end. The rubber balls fit perfectly, one in each hand.

I know how to Ax things.

When it gets dark tonight, I'll show Dr. English a machine that works.

I mean, they could have said they were both men. Or both married. Or both employed. Or maybe a hundred other different things the two had in common. But they picked the easiest thing, color.

Everybody wants to be P.C. Politically correct. They all want to say the right things.

But they don't
do
the right things.

People won't do the right things by themselves. They have to be shown how to act. We have rules. Laws, regulations, codes of conduct. And we have the Scripture.

But people just won't obey unless you make them.

That's why we have prisons, to make people obey. But it doesn't make them obey. If you don't believe me, look at all the men on parole who commit crimes.

I have been thinking about this for a long time. What happens in prison, I think, is that the people learn to obey, but they obey the wrong things.

Everybody obeys something—if you make them. What happens, after a while, the rules change. The higher laws—the ones made by God—they tell people how to act. But the lower laws—the ones people make up as they go along— they take over.

It's like pollution. You can make all the laws about it, but it still gets into the air. And we have to breathe it no matter how obedient we are to the real laws. We all have to breathe.

See, the
big
laws, everybody agrees about them. You're not supposed to kill. Or steal. Or commit rapes and stuff like that. But it's the
little
laws that start the unraveling.

And pretty soon, it's just threads. Not connected to anything. Just floating in the wind.

The Bible tells the truth. It says not to spare the rod. This has nothing to do with hitting kids, the way some of those people do.

I know all about that stuff.

All of it. The Bible too.

The rod is the Shepherd's Rod. The staff to guide the Rock.

People are sheep.

Sheep need guidance.

I know I'm not God. I can't make the sheep stop the ugly things they do. Like killing. Or stealing. Or sex stuff.

My job is smaller—I'm just a messenger.

One of the ways you can see the threads unravel is the way people talk to you when you ask them a polite question.

"Drop dead!"

"Shut up!"

"Fuck you!"

Maybe they don't realize how much that hurts. Or maybe they don't care. I tried to ask someone once, but he raised his hand to me. He was going to hurt me just because I wanted to ask him a question.

You can see the threads unravel. Because the sheep have no rod to guide them, they all follow the herd.

That's where I got the idea. I was driving in my car. I am a very good driver. I always yield the right–of–way, always stop at stop signs. I never cut people off in traffic. I'm always very careful, a good citizen behind the wheel. I obey the rules of the road.

But, what happened, this man cut me off. Right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, I would have smashed right into him. There was no point to it—he couldn't get where he was going any faster for treating me like that. When he stopped at a red light, I looked over at him. I shook my head. Not to admonish him, just to show I was sad at his impolite behavior. He shook his fist at me. He was so angry that he got spit all over the inside of his window. His face was bright red. Then he jumped out of his car and ran toward me. I had to go through the red light to get away from him. Sometimes you have to break the law, but only if there's a really good reason for it.

Anyway, that's what gave me the idea. The sheep are even worse in their cars. They don't act correctly. So what I wanted was to help them. With a message.

I know all about guns. My father taught me. He was a hunter, my father. And a soldier before that. He said you weren't a man unless you knew all about guns.

He taught me himself. So I'd understand. When I didn't get it right, he would tell me I was stupid. That hurt worse than the other stuff. Words can really hurt you.