Drive Me Crazy (7 page)

“A million dollars.”

I snapped, “Dammit, I’m bleeding to death, Rufus.”

“Just don’t bleed to death on the furniture. Pasquale would have a cow.”

Rufus came down the staircase, medical kit in hand, a bigger box in the other. He handed me the bigger box. Inside was a painted statue of the Green Goblin, not a toy, but the kind for adult collectors. It cost at least two C-notes. I knew because I’d had my eye on it for a while.

I asked, “What’s this?”

“Happy belated birthday.”

“You serious?”

“Four months late. Better late than never. I wanted to get you the Wolverine stat—”

“No, this is cool. Damn. Thanks. This is tight.”

He smiled. “You’re going to have to get the Spider-Man half on your own.”

“Rufus ...”

“I know. You’re bleeding to death.”

He told me to follow him. I held on to my gift as we moved past a library. There was a built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcase.

I asked, “How many books do you have?”

“Close to four thousand. We’re a regular public library.”

“Can’t believe you’ve read that many damn books.”

“Yep. The ones I really like I’ve read at least twice. And I remember almost every word. Oh, last year, did I tell you I went to my therapist? He said that he thinks I have hypermnesia.”

“A few hundred times, Rufus. You told me a few hundred times.”

“Sounds like amnesia, but it’s the opposite.”

“I know what it means.”

“It’s my superpower.”

“Guess you’re ready to join the Avengers.”

“I remember most everything in the books I read. Most, not all. Hypermnesia. There’s a word for you, just in case. Means that I have an abnormally vivid or complete memory or recall of the past. I can see everything that happened to me growing up. I remember everything.”

Thousands of books decorated their library, all either hardcover or leather-bound. And he’d read some of those novels at least twice. That almost got an envious smile out of me.

Then we passed the media room—a space the size of my apartment that had six televisions anchored to the walls, most tuned into different sports channels—and moved into the kitchen. One of the televisions was on some tabloid show. Eric Benet, Kobe, and Bill Clinton were being made poster children and highlighted on a segment called “Why Men Cheat.”

I put my Green Goblin on the floor and posted up at a barstool at the kitchen counter. Rufus put on a pair of thin rubber gloves like doctors wore. He did that more for my protection than his own. He opened a bottle of peroxide and started cleaning my wound.

He didn’t mention the tear in my suit pants or the blood on my shirt and suit coat.

He said, “I’m doing better. Thanks for asking.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “Good.”

“They have some experimental drugs down in Mexico.”

I made an uncomfortable sound, then said, “Uh huh.”

“With the cocktails, the new advances in research, doctors think I might outlive you.”

“Cocktails?”

“They call ‘em cocktails. It’s about fifteen meds mixed up. Like a cocktail.”

“You got insurance?”

He nodded. “Cremation. No funeral.”

“Quit tripping.”

“Not tripping. I’ve buried a lot of my friends. Not as many lately, but I’ve sang at so many funerals. Been to so many.”

“We all have.”

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. We saw gunshots and knife wounds when we grew up. But the people I know ... my friends deteriorated inside-out, looked they had been exposed to plutonium. Tried to blame it on Mother Africa. That shit came from some nuclear experiment.”

“Rufus.”

“What?”

“Don’t like thinking about that kinda shit. You’re my brother, you know.”

“So cremate me. Just e-mail the people on my buddy list and tell them I’ve crossed over to receive my glory. Ridiculous how a funeral and a casket cost twenty thousand.”

“That’s how they get you. You go in all emotional and while you’re crying over your dead momma they stick a vacuum cleaner in your wallet.”

“You know? And if you add in how much money people pay to come see you get put in the ground ... I don’t want to leave people in the same situation Momma left us in.”

I nodded. “Daddy too. He didn’t leave us nothing but a stack of bills. ”

“That cancer ate him up.”

Momma used to say Reverend Daddy’s sins were eating him alive from the inside. Cancer turned his hulking frame into an ashen shell. His will to live was gone long before he made it back to the dirt. No matter how I felt about him, wasn’t easy watching my old man die. Momma used to pray, ask Him why she was being tested. At times I think she thought about killing herself. Sometimes I think she thought it was her fault. People always looked for somebody to blame. She hated my old man. Not because of the lies in the pulpit or the women he had bedded, but because he was dying, and his deterioration was a financial burden on us all. The closer my old man was to death, the less my momma called out to God. And the irony of it all was the closer my old man was to death, the more he called out to God.

Rufus asked, “What about you?”

“Anything happens to me, don’t claim the body. Let them bury me in a pine box.”

“You can be so morbid.”

I told him, “You think I’m joking?”

“Twenty thousand to put somebody in the ground.”

“Rufus, focus on my head wound.”

Rufus didn’t think I’d need stitches, but getting stitches would help it look better when it healed. I didn’t care. With all the scars I’d earned, I didn’t care about one more. He had some kind of special Band-Aids; they were narrow and were used to close up wounds like mine.

When he was done he said, “Time for a game of bones?”

With the pain in my head and the alcohol in my bloodstream, that was the last thing I felt like doing. But I looked at my Green Goblin statue, smiled, yawned, and said, “Sure.”

“One quick game. I know it’s late. Let’s go out back. Warmers are on.”

We went through the sliding glass door and I copped a seat over by the pool. Rufus went inside and came back with a box of dominoes in one hand, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other. He poured me a shot of JD. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t turn it down. Maybe because at the bottom of every bottle of JD lived the truth. I wasn’t born in a house with real morals so I hadn’t been brought up to be a man with many self-disciplined habits. Plus I knew Rufus. Refusing a drink would hurt his feelings. We sat back and played bones like we did when we were kids.

Elbows on the glass patio table, sitting underneath warmers, I steepled my hands, looked across the board and asked, “How’s your money looking?”

He leaned back, pulled his lips in. “I know I owe you my part from Momma’s funeral ...”

“In a bad situation. Could use some financial help right now.”

“All of my money goes toward my medication. Unbelievable how much medicine costs. The shit should be free. We can go to Mars, but healthcare? And between battling Epstein-Barr over the years, and now this damn sciatic nerve flaring up, I’m taking more meds than any one person should. Seems like I take horse pills all day long.”

He vented about the system. I sighed and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds.

He tugged at one his locks, said, “Maybe I could ax Pasquale—”

I made a rugged hand motion. “It’s ask, not ax. Ask. Ask.”

“Ax. Ax.”

“Half a degree in nursing, plus all these books you read, and you still can’t say ask?”

“Well color me imperfect. Don’t get irritated ‘cause I can’t say it like that.”

I shook my head.
“Say ass kicked.
Like you wanna get your ass
kicked.”

“Huh?”

“Just say
ass kicked.”

“Ass kicked.”

“Now say
ass k—.
Leave off the
icked.”

“Better. You’re getting there.”

He laughed and kept repeating. “Assk. Assk.”

A sensor beeped four times. Rufus jumped.

I stood up, Lisa’s threat flickered through my mind. “Somebody breaking in?”

“Four beeps. That means the front gate’s opening. Pasquale’s home.”

Rufus shifted, looked uncomfortable, both pissed off and ashamed. Without a word, I grabbed my coat, put my keys in my hand. He followed me toward the front door.

He said, “Your pant leg is torn. Blood-soaked collar. Your suit is jacked. Totaled.”

“Was waiting for you to say something.”

“You know me.”

“Like I know myself.”

“You know what they used to say. I’m you with all the fucked-up genes. Your doppelganger. You inherited all the good stuff from Momma and Daddy. You have the broad shoulders, the square jaw, the prominent cheekbones. I got what was left over.”

“Shut up, Rufus.”

“Asthma. Allergies. If I had been like you, Momma and Daddy would’ve accepted—”

“Don’t start with that motherfucking bullshit.”

“It’s true.” He laughed like he had accepted his truth, like there was no pain inside him. “I’m the before picture and you’re the after. I’m Bruce Banner and you are the Incredible Hulk.”

The closer we got to the front door, the more Rufus’s shoulders softened, his strut easing back toward being the stroll of a Vegas showgirl. Each step he took broke my heart.

His soft hands and manicured nails never would’ve lasted on the other side of The Wall. I’d hate to think of the things they would’ve done to a fragile and easygoing man like him, how they would’ve passed him around, sold him for the price of a cigarette.

He was my brother, we shared DNA, I loved him, but I wasn’t and never would be cool with the kind of man he was. I didn’t understand and wasn’t wired for that kind of understanding. I never talked about him to the people I knew. We hardly talked. When we did we avoided any big issues. We lived no more than five minutes away from each other, but we lived in different worlds. At least we did in my mind. He knew how I felt about his lifestyle. He knew because when he came out of the closet, I tried to kick his ass back inside.

Reverend Daddy had done the same thing, in his own way.

That was Reverend Daddy. Hearing that voice inside my head made me stop moving.

Then it all came to me in a flash. I saw him in my mind, like he was right before the cancer. Skin the hue of maple syrup. Veins in his thick arms looked like ropes. Moustache credit-card thin. Smelled like Dial soap mixed with sprinkles of Hai Karate. I opened and closed my fists, remembered the pain. I was in an alley standing next to Reverend Daddy, hands hurting from beating a man down. The man in question was around thirty. Six-two. Two-hundred. Hard talk, soft body. His name was Ulysses. Light-skinned. Hair in braids. He’d called Rufus a faggot in front of some of Reverend Daddy’s congregation. Had done that two months before. Long enough for retribution to be served cold. Reverend Daddy’s style.

“Shoot the motherfucker, Rufus.”

Ulysses had been beat down. Reverend Daddy had told me to do that, to tenderize that foolish man the old-school way. His eye was swollen the size of a grapefruit. Jaw broken like Ali’s after that fight with Joe Frazier. Nose twisted, broken. He’d peed his pants. Was begging. Pleading with Reverend Daddy to let him live. Apologizing for slandering his youngest son.

I was fourteen. Rufus, twelve. Rufus was just as tall as our old man. I was taller.

Rufus held the .38, the barrel shaking, each rugged breath telling how terrified he was. Scared to not shoot that man in the head because he’d have to deal with Reverend Daddy.

Ulysses found his God, prayed over and over, his pants drenched at the crotch.

Then my little brother changed. Looked confident.

Rufus pulled the trigger.

It clicked.

Rufus grunted and pulled the trigger over and over and over, frustrated.

The gun was empty.

Reverend Daddy put his hand on Rufus’s shoulder, got him to stop pulling the trigger, looked him dead in his eyes, almost smiled. That was as close to a smile as he ever gave Rufus.

We walked away. Ulysses’s moans and prayers faded with our every step.

After that Reverend Daddy cranked up his Buick, let Rufus ride up front that time, and took us to a place he knew about over on Central Avenue. Miss Thelma’s place. Reverend Daddy picked out the prettiest yellow girl he could find. Had that redbone take Rufus upstairs.

I sat down in the living room, hands aching.

Reverend Daddy put his hands on me. “You did good today. Real good.”

I’d beat down Ulysses the way Marvin Hagler had destroyed Tommy Hearns. My demonic right hand hit him so hard I thought he’d vaporize. Watched that man buckle and go down like a beach umbrella in the wind. Under my daddy’s eyes, I was brutal.

A pretty girl came back and left a glass of lemonade at my side. She winked at me. Reverend Daddy was taking in a glass of Jack, watching television and not watching it at the same time. He leaned my way, seasoned my lemonade with the spirits, then went back to the television. Pretty girls sashayed back and forth, smiling my way, the answer to that smile costing more than I could afford.

We waited for my brother to be transformed into Reverend Daddy’s image of acceptance.

Reverend Daddy said, “Son, I’m just doing what your momma asked me to do.”

I nodded.

He said, “Hate unites people. It’s almost like we need somebody to hate in order to pull together. When we stop hating, we all seem lost, like we have no direction.”

“I don’t hate my brother.”

“Wasn’t talking about your brother. Just going over my sermon.”

“Sure.”