Big Joey was, as his name suggests, enormous. Often when I visited little Joe, his dad would be clad in only a black t-shirt and tighty-whities, lying on the couch with bolts of pale flesh seeping out the cracks and sticking with the taut grip of perspiration to leather upholstery. The homely sight was all the more reason for Joe and me to spend our time in their apartment tucked away in Joe’s room listening to Morrisey, Green Jellö, Tool, or whatever he had recently deemed ‘the next big thing.’
“Hey kid,” big Joey shouted from the living room one sultry summer afternoon. “Come get me a Coke and pour it my frosty mug, will you?”
“Why don’t you get it yourself, you lazy douche?”
“C’mon, kid, get off your duff and get me a drink.”
Joe turned off the stereo, then nodded to me. “Let’s go. I’ll get him his damn drink, and then we can go cruise and smoke a bowl or something.”
After fetching the mug from the freezer, Joe popped open a can of Coke, spraying it all over himself. “Damn it! Why they all shook up?”
“Mama dropped them on the floor when she put away the groceries this morning.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me, you fat piece of shit?”
“C’mon, quit your bellyaching and get me my drink.” Big Joey snickered at the stain on Joe’s shorts when he delivered the mug. “Hey retard, don’t you think it’s time you stopped pissing yourself? I’m tired of having to change you like a baby.”
“Leave me alone, you fat bastard,” Joe volleyed back. “I’ll stop pissing, when you stop shitting yourself. You’re too lazy to get off the couch, so you just shit in your sumo-diaper and roll around in it all day until Mama comes home and cleans it up.”
“Come here, retard,” big Joey laughed, snaring his son into a headlock. “Let’s use those pretty locks of yours to wipe my ass.”
A familiar wrestling match ensued, with little Joe twice crying mercy, only to dive back into the mudslinging and fat-slapping once he’d been unhanded. Cued by both self-preservation and disgust, I stayed well off to the side, betraying my mounting boredom by yawning and blowing my nose whenever they would chance to look my way. Sometimes this brouhaha would continue with sporadic bouts over an entire afternoon, and so I was fortunate that after just a few minutes, Joe got the better of his dad and pushed him off the sofa onto the coffee table, breaking some trinket of Mrs. Kelly’s.
Upon catching his breath and noting the damage, big Joey shed his childish cackle and boomed with a voice befitting his size, “You fucking idiot! Horsing around like a retard and breaking Mama’s shit. That’s coming out of your next paycheck.”
“You started it. All day long, you just lay around in your undies on the couch, starting shit with me.” This earned Joe a slap across the face, and he checked his lip for blood.
“Clean it up, retard! You’re paying for that out of your next paycheck. And you’d better apologize to Mama when she gets home. There better be a great big meal on the table when she walks in the door.”
Little Joe scurried past me to fetch a wastebasket, and as big Joey tracked him, eyes ablaze, he locked onto me and demanded, “What are you looking at, retard? Some kind of fucking friend you are. When you aren’t mooching off my kid, you’re making him sick with that filthy snot rag of yours,” he ranted, referring to my ubiquitous handkerchief. “Terry, keep that fucking hankie out of my house, you hear me?”
Exasperated, I tucked my handkerchief back in a pocket and took my leave, slinking out the front door. I waited for Joe in his car, where, even with the all the windows down, I was soon boiling in my own skin under the late-afternoon sun. Letting my eyes fall closed and my head sink into the seat, I fantasized accosting big Joey with an onslaught of apt and cutting remarks, punctuated by shoving my oh-so-noxious handkerchief down his throat.
“Dude, let’s roll,” Joe said, sliding into the driver’s seat and startling me from my reverie. “You got that bowl packed?”
“What happened, man? You all right?”
“I’m cool, man. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
Joe peeled out of the parking lot, while I packed some bud in my pipe. Before the first puff, however, Joe pulled off to the curb and slowed to a stop, fidgeting with his rearview mirror and peeping over his shoulder.
“What is it?” I asked, sparking up and taking a hefty drag that sent me into a coughing fit.
“I don’t know. This guy’s flashing his lights at me—hey, put the shit away. What if it’s a cop or something?” Still coughing, I turned and saw that a yellow ’75 Skylark had pulled over behind us, but the figure who emerged from the driver’s side a moment later was far more fearsome than a police officer: he was Sal Rebraccio. “Put the shit away! Put the shit away!” Joe ordered.
In my rush to comply, I dumped the smoldering contents of the pipe onto my arm and with my subsequent reflexive jerk, managed to spill half of our cache onto the seat. Long before I had cleaned it up, Sal’s imposing shadow passed over me, and I straightened up, looking as innocent as possible.
“Joe Kelly, you little shit!” the short, bulldog of a man began. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, tearing out of there like that?”
“What? I couldn’t have been going more than—”
“Let me ask you something, punk! Who paid for this car? You or your pop?”
“I did—”
“—Right, with your pop’s money,” Sal retorted. “And what do you think big Joey’d say if he knew you were out driving his car like an asshole?”
“Sal, leave him alone,” I interrupted foolishly. “He wasn’t even going that fast.”
Sal turned to me with a look of repugnance and spouted, “And who asked you, dickhead? Listen, if you think that because you’re hanging out with this punk we’re going to cut you the same slack we do this kid, then you got it all wrong. You understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
There was a quiet moment before Joe spoke up. “Sal, we’re sorry, man. You’re right, I was driving too fast. You were right to call me on it. I won’t do it again, I swear. Can we just leave now?”
This gracious contrition obviously pleased Sal and settled him down. After basking in his power a moment, he squatted down, rested his arms on the car door and spoke reflectively. “I’ve spent ten years working with your pop, kid. My ass would be homeless, living in the goddamned park eating—I don’t know—fucking pigeons if it weren’t for him. He gave me a job, a place to stay, and hooked me up with the right fellas to make a career for myself. And I was a disrespectful, ungrateful bastard in spite of it, and he had to bust my ass sometimes to get me to straighten up and learn my place. And I love him for it. And someday you pudwackers are going to learn respect and you’ll thank me for this.”
Relieved, I exhaled for the first time in about a minute, but perhaps a second too soon. Rather than return to his car, Sal sniffed the air, then turned his glance to the seat cushion, where I had laid my hand in a hopeless effort to conceal the marijuana.
“Oh what the hell is this?” he demanded, his voice ripe to rise in anger again. “You little punk, you’re smoking grass, aren’t you?”
“No, Sal, it’s not what you think. I’m just holding it for a friend—” I stammered.
“—Don’t lie to me. I can smell it on you. Joe, is he pushing this shit on you?”
“Uhh...no.”
“You are, aren’t you, you little cocksucker,” Sal yelled, lunging halfway into the car to get into my face. “Blowing your nose all day like you got hay fever or something, but it’s really from all the coke you been doing, isn’t it?”
“No, man, I swear.”
“I’m on to you. Joe, you watch out for this fucker. It’ll be weed today, coke tomorrow, smack the next, until you’re lying on a gurney in the fucking morgue. Well, big Joey’s gonna hear about this. And Terry, you little shit, if I find out you’re trying to push this shit on him, then we’ll dance, you get it? Your life might not mean shit, but his does, and if he gets hurt, you get hurt. You understand?” Petrified, I didn’t respond. “I said, do you fucking understand?” Sal reiterated, raising his windbreaker to reveal the butt of a magnum tucked into his jeans.
“Yeah, I understand. I’m sorry, Sal. I’m sorry.”
“Now get out of the car. We’ll all of us go back and have a nice chat with big Joey. See what he has to say about it.” Here Sal reached across the wheel to pull the keys from the ignition, but couldn’t get the angle. “Joe, give me the keys.”
Joe toggled his Led Zeppelin key chain in his fingers, then shot me a sideways glance. I looked straight back at him and said, “Gun it.” With Sal still half in the car, Joe turned the ignition and floored the accelerator, leaving our unwelcome visitor rolling on the macadam. Ignoring the stop sign, we pulled onto the main road. It wasn’t until we were a mile away that either of us spoke.
“That was fucked up, huh?” Joe laughed.
“Tell me about it,” I replied, again exhaling for the first time in a while. “What the hell is his problem, pulling a gun on me? He’s insane.“
“He’s a tough guy. Thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips.”
“Why does your dad hang out with that loser?”
“He’s a gumba with the Santangelos, man. How you think my dad and his little shit construction company won the bid on the new highway? Charm and good looks?”
“Long johns and bear claws more like,” I muttered. “Maybe some noogies, Indian burns, and a bitch slap to seal the deal, huh?”
Joe shot me a sour look telling me I’d crossed a line. Even though I’d heard him defame his father with far more derogatory remarks, I should have known that this is a privilege of the oppressed and they alone. I opened my mouth to attempt an apology, but was rescued by Joe’s beeper. He checked the number, but showed no intention of responding to the call. Though he didn’t mention who it was, I knew it was his dad calling to summon him home.
We were both quiet for a while, and I, for one, spent the time rehearsing shrewd comebacks and mentally flailing Sal Rebraccio like a rag doll. Joe appeared distracted, gnawing on his lip, and forgetting to yield at stop signs as we wove our way through town. I didn’t bother to ask where we were going; the water tower had been growing in the windshield ever since we left. Since Joe had started working fifty hours per week with his dad, we had returned there with increasing frequency.
§
It was a steep hike from our parking spot to the perimeter fence of the water station, and we were panting by the top. After recovering, we snatched two cinderblocks from behind the shed and spaced them a few feet apart alongside the barrier. We heaved together on the base of the fence, hoisting it upward and propping it on the blocks so that we could slither beneath and into the enclosure. Once reaching the base of the tower, Joe boosted me high enough to grasp the ladder, at which point I did a bit of an acrobatic routine until in a position to unfasten and lower the extension to my partner. From there, our only obstacle was the fear of heights as we ascended the sixty feet to the summit.
“It doesn’t get any damn easier with time, does it?” I noted, collapsing atop the 500,000 gallon drum.
Joe didn’t reply at first, looking out over the hills where on a clear day you could see mid-town Manhattan. At length, he turned and mumbled, “No, it doesn’t.”
Not sure what to say or do, I pulled our stash from my pocket and packed another bowl. I gestured to Joe, who joined me until the bowl was cashed. After a while the silence become uncomfortable. “So, your dad gonna freak when Sal tells him?”
Still gazing out over the valley, Joe just snorted in reply.
“Goddamn,” I laughed, “I still can’t believe we did that. Driving away with Sal hanging out the window like that. That’s action-hero shit.”
Joe stood and began to pace around the edge of the cylindrical tower. “Dude, we ran away. It wasn’t heroic.”
“Still, that was pretty wild shit. That’s the kind of thing we always say that we should have done, like, ten minutes after the time when we could have done it. Right now we could be sitting in your living room getting our asses grilled about doing drugs, and instead we’re sitting out on top of a water tower, talking about something that we did do. That’s something, isn’t it?”
Joe stopped and was staring straight down over the edge to the pumping station below. “You got a point there,” he responded. Turning abruptly from the edge, Joe strode across the platform and lifted open an access hatch which led into the holding tank below us. “Feel like taking a dip?”
“No, man. That freaks me out, going in there. I mean, what if it starts draining or something? We would drown in a second.”
“Pussy.”
“No, I’m just not stupid.”
After a minute or so of squatting over the aperture, hocking loogies into the water below, Joe turned to me and asked, “Can I stay at your place?”
“Sure, but Dad’ll make us go to church in the morning.”
“No, no. Not just tonight. Like for a year or so. Until we graduate.”
“Oh. Uhh...maybe,” I replied with feigned hope. “I’ll have to ask my dad.”
“Forget it. I’ve got a shit-load of money saved up. I’ll just rent a place. How cool will that be? We can come home after school and spark up on the living room couch…throw parties and shit. It’ll be classic.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure, why not? I’ll quit my job, move out, and be done with that son of a bitch forever. I can do it. Seriously. I’ve got a shit-load of money in the bank—” His beeper sounded again, and after checking the number, he stretched out an arm and dangled the device over the hatch. “Dare me?”
“Go for it,” I prodded. “Don’t need him to page you to work anymore, right?”
He left it out there a long moment until his hand was trembling, but ultimately the impish smile fell from his face, and he replaced the beeper to his belt. “Better not. You guys might still need to page me for rides and whatnot.”
I picked a stone out of the sole of my boot and tossed it at him. “Pussy.”
“I’m a pussy? You’re the one who shit your pants when you saw Sal’s gun.”
“Screw you, man,” I snapped back, chucking another rock at him. “You were scared, too.”
“Not like you. You turned white, man. White as your mama’s panties,” Joe chuckled, “aside from all the skid marks, I mean.”
“You jackass.” I tackled him and, after a brief tussle, produced my secret weapon—my snot-ridden handkerchief—and brandished it in his face. Before I could make contact, Joe snatched it away and tossed it down into the tank. “Fuck! What did you do that for? You know, that8217;s not like your toilet or something. People drink that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t of come at me with that filthy thing. My dad’s got a point about that shit. It’s dirty.”
I backed off and left Joe staring sourly over the hills. After a long while, I asked, “You think I gotta worry about Sal, man? I mean, we really pissed him off. You think he’s gonna try to whack me or something?”
“No,” Joe replied, spitting a final time into the tank before closing the hatch. “He’s all bark. Just don’t come around for a few weeks. I’ll work on chilling him out.”
“What you talking about? I thought you were moving out, getting your own place.”
Joe looked away off into the valley and shook his head. His pager beeped a third time, and upon checking it, he stood and returned to the ladder. “C’mon, man. It’s getting late. I’ll drop you off.”
“Sure you don’t want to at least spend the night at my place?” I offered. “Let things cool off a little?”
“No, I’ve got to get ready for work. It’s time to go home.”
§
Ever wander uninvited into a stranger’s yard to pick every last dandelion from their lawn? How about lodging a finger into your belly button for days on end, for fear it would otherwise grow and consume your entire body? Tim Franklyn has. And frighteningly enough, when he’s not milking his warped mind to corrupt current generations with his writing, he’s responsible for raising the next—his son, Joel—with the help of his wife, Noelle, at their Whitehall, Michigan home.
