That’s How I Roll: A Novel (18 page)

Getting money turned out to be easier than I thought. Once I started really concentrating on doing it, that is.

Every night, after Tory-boy fell asleep, I went back to science. Spina bifida isn’t so rare as you might think. Not everyone who’s born with it has to be in a wheelchair. It depends on what type you have.

Turns out, I had drawn the shortest straw. When the vertebrae don’t form correctly, a little sac filled with fluid extends through an opening in the spine. That’s called “myelomeningocele.” It can hit just about anywhere along your spine, so I guess it was lucky for me that it happened at the lowest point—because anything below that point is never going to work the way it should.

If Rory-Anne hadn’t been convinced they’d give her all kinds of drugs, I probably wouldn’t have been born in a hospital. That’s all that saved me. They even had to put a shunt in my head to drain the fluid buildup. I still have the scar from that, but that’s the only sign I carry. Above the waist, I mean.

I know they’d told Rory-Anne I was what they call an “at-risk” baby, but she never once brought me back to the hospital until that time she burned me and got scared.

Every time I came across something that said aftercare was critical for babies born with spina bifida, I wondered why the County had never sent anyone around to check. But then I remembered the Beast. If those social workers wanted to come and have a look at me, they’d need to bring the cops with them. I guess it wasn’t worth all that trouble. Not for someone like me, anyway.

So I grew up not being able to really use any part of my body from the end of my spine on down. I accepted that. Just like I accepted the jolts of pain that shot the length of my left leg all the way into my central nervous system.

I say “accepted,” but that came slow. The first time, I was about nine years old, and that pain blast filled me with terror. I thought I was dying. Worse, I thought of what would happen to Tory-boy without me to protect him.

But then it stopped.
Snap!
Just like that. As if the very thought of Tory-boy being hurt drove the Devil of that pain right back down to Hell, where it belonged.

It wasn’t until I started looking for ways to get more money for me and Tory-boy to be safe that I read about how some folks with the exact same disease I had could actually feel something below the waist, too.

That comforted me considerably. It confirmed what I knew in my own mind—what I had felt wasn’t this “phantom pain” thing some of the books talked about. It was as real as the disease itself.

I was thankful for that knowledge. I understood how things were always going to be. I knew if I couldn’t control my own mind, I’d never be able to control anything at all.

So my curse wasn’t unique like I’d once thought—others had my exact same condition. I had kin I’d never meet. Brothers and sisters who were sort of semi-paralyzed but could still feel pain, same as me. Born bad, both ways. As if we’d all been at the same table, all rolled the dice together. And thrown snake eyes.

But I didn’t want to “share” in some therapy group. I didn’t need advice on learning to “cope.” I had responsibilities. And now that I knew others with my condition could feel pain, I knew there was a way for me and Tory-boy both.

All I needed was the money to pay what it would cost.

Truth was, most of the time I hardly felt anything at all. And when that pain would spike, I’d just breathe real slow and think about how good a child Tory-boy was. I learned to drop so deep into that thought that when I opened my eyes the pain would be gone.

Dr. Harris never said a word when I kept telling him I needed more and more of those painkillers. All opiates are dose-related, so it was only natural that what blocked the pain would lose its power over time.

It wasn’t any problem at all for me to get a permanent scrip for heavier and heavier hits of OxyContin, with another for morphine-by-injection, and then still another for the Fentanyl transdermals, for when the terrible pain in my withered legs got so unbearable that I had to have some medication going constantly.

Dr. Harris didn’t even blink. No surprise there. That’s what folks said about him—he hated pain like it was his personal enemy. That shouldn’t be an unusual thing, but it is. There are plenty of doctors around here who’re so scared of the DEA that they wouldn’t give Vicodin to a man dying of bone cancer.

The pharmacist never raised an eyebrow at all the scrips I kept handing over. And if the Internet stores had any problem, they never told me about it.

The only pain all that stuff actually killed was the pain of poverty. The drugs brought in a steady supply of cash. People who wanted to get high could crush the OxyC into a powder and snort it, or pour it into a shot of whiskey. The Fentanyl could be boiled right out of the patches. And the morphine even came with its own supply of clean needles.

The way we worked it was like this: anyone who wanted drugs would leave the money in the mailbox at the end of our lane, then push the button inside the plastic box right underneath it. I built that box so the button would stay dry, no matter what the weather.

When I saw the light flash inside our place, I’d send Tory-boy to walk on down, pick up the cash, and bring it back to me.

I could always tell by the amount what was wanted, but some people left notes anyway. Whenever that happened, I’d tell Tory-boy
to take it all back—the money and the note. The way I reasoned it, everybody knew my rates, so I treated any note like it was the Law, trying to trap me.

People knew I had to have a sizable amount of drugs on hand to fill those orders, but even with all the junkies we have around here, none of them even thought about ripping off my stash.

Dope fiends risk their lives every time they stick a needle in their veins or snort something up their noses. A risk, not a certainty—they’re not the same thing. For all I know, risk is part of the jolt addicts are always chasing.

Trying to break into our place wouldn’t be a risk; there was no doubt about the outcome.

Our three pit bulls are brothers from the same litter. We got them from Donna Belle Parsons, down at the shelter. Some piece of trash had thrown a pit bull bitch out the window of a moving car. They probably figured she was all bred out.

Their stupidity is what saved our dogs. That bitch was not only pregnant when they dumped her, she was tough enough to stay alive almost six more weeks. Once she delivered, she closed her eyes and went to sleep, her last fight finally over.

Donna Belle Parsons wouldn’t have let most folks take more than one pup, especially those not even weaned. She harbored a deep, abiding hatred for dogfighters.

There’s a number of bunchers in these parts. That’s what they call men who go around grabbing dogs any way they can, so they can sell them to the dogfighters to use as training meat for their killers. Miss Parsons could smell a buncher at a hundred yards. If one came into her shelter, he was putting his life on the line.

That’s not talk, that’s fact. Donna Belle Parsons kept a pistol behind the counter. Tommy Joe Knowles still walks with a limp because he’d thought she wouldn’t use it.

I’ve noticed that men make that mistake about women all the time. Donna Belle Parsons was a tall, shapely woman, with a real pretty face and a sweet, soft voice. But the only reason Tommy Joe walks with a limp is because she hadn’t aimed that pistol of hers at his thick head.

’d shown Tory-boy how to hold the little bottle for the pups, and he got real good at it. Now they’re almost three years old. And if anybody or anything except me or Tory-boy came near our shack, they’d rip it apart, tearing off pieces like I’d seen those sharks do on TV.

It might be another pit who got loose from one of the dog-fighters’ pens, might be a cat who should have had more sense, might be a sheriff, might be a preacher—to our dogs, it wouldn’t make any difference. Cross their line and you’d end up a shredded corpse.

They didn’t act like that because they were mean—they were just doing their job. Tory-boy loved those dogs. He named them One, Two, and Three.

Tory-boy was always patting them and cuddling them like they were big toys. That was the original reason I wanted to get pit bulls: most people think they’re just plain vicious, like it’s in their blood. It’s true enough that people have been breeding them since forever to
be
vicious, but that’s vicious to other dogs, not to people.

You ever try and get near a dog that’s been hit by a car? Even though all you want is to help that dog, he’ll snap at you like a viper. Not a pit bull. If they were like that, how could people who fight them handle them down in the pit? How could they patch them up in the middle of a fight and send them right back to the scratch line?

Tory-boy didn’t know how strong he was. So, when he started begging me for a puppy, I was afraid that he’d break one in half just petting it. That’s why I got him pups that were real strong themselves. I’d seen other pit bulls around little kids. Watched the kids pull their tails, squeeze them hard enough to crack a rib, even poke them in the eye … but those dogs acted like they didn’t even feel it.

Turns out, I needn’t have bothered. Once I showed Tory-boy
how, he hand-raised those pups. We fed them the best food, made sure they had all their shots, sheepskin blankets to sleep on, rawhide to gnaw on. Everything they wanted in life, it was me and Tory-boy who gave it to them. They reasoned it out the way animals do—anybody who threatened us was threatening them.

Our dogs weren’t the kind you want to threaten. A bully might be dangerous, but a protector is deadly.

We never locked our door. It was only plywood anyway. The dogs always let us know when anyone was near. Just a quiet little growling, deep in their throats, with the hair raised on the backs of their necks. Anytime they’d get like that, we’d all just sit and wait. Me, Tory-boy, and the dogs, all together in the dark.

But after a while, the dogs would lie down and make another little sound. A different one. Probably telling each other how disappointed they were.

t wasn’t only drugs that kept money coming in. Tory-boy just got stronger and stronger. He could work like two mules, so there was always some extra cash anytime we might need it.

And before long, I was doing work for certain people. After that, it was just a matter of building our money until we had all we needed to make my plans come true. All my plans, even the exit one.

ot a day passed but that I didn’t do some kind of work with Tory-boy, and he got pretty good at most things. As long as he didn’t speak up, people usually just took him for quiet. And when he was wheeling me around to see different people, I would do all the talking. Not to disguise anything—to teach Tory-boy more about the kind of answers you give to certain questions.

And manners. I was known for my manners; everyone said what a gentleman I was. I wanted them to say the same about Tory-boy, and I know he copied me every way he could think of.

By the time he was fifteen, Tory-boy was such an outright ox that the high-school football coach paid us a visit. That was right after I won a hundred dollars from Jasper Murdle when Tory-boy lifted the back end of Jasper’s old Chevy right off the ground like it was a box of cereal.