Kung Fu High School (8 page)

"Is this
G.I. Joe?
" Jimmy asked.

"Sure is." I answered him from the kitchen, where I got the usual supplies. I grabbed a bucket from under the sink, a couple of sterile towelettes, and some soap.

"Man, I haven't seen this in forever!" Jimmy was a smile monkey.

"Well, you still aren't seeing it. But maybe if you're real good and don't get in any fights, I'll let you see it next week." I put my mom voice on just to be silly but Jimmy didn't respond.

He wasn't reclining anymore, he was leaning forward on the couch but then he shifted back to his original position and put his legs up. I hadn't turned any lights on yet and the blinds were still shut so the light of the television threw all kinds of colors across his face as the familiar sound of laser gunfire filtered into the kitchen: blue, green, red, yellow, red, blue. I just stood there for a little bit and watched his face in the different colors. Blue suited him.

"You know nobody ever got shot on this show." I pushed his sprawled legs back toward him so I could sit down on the couch too. I set the bucket on the floor.

"Sure they did." Jimmy nodded toward the television as the sound of laser fire intensified, as if some pseudo-blind guy nodding toward the sounds would confirm what he said was true when all I could see was flashes across the screen and no one ever getting hit: 12, 13, 14, 15 straight with no hits, 16, number 17 hit a tree and blew a branch off.

"No, people got hurt but mostly because they fell and had to be carried. Nobody ever died either."

"You got a problem with that?" He turned toward me as 1 said it and just then I could see his little iris peeping out from underneath the swollen flesh of his right eye socket. He could see.

"Just isn't real, is it?" I pulled the shirt corners to each side of his stomach and leaned down to soak a towelette in the bucket water as I prepared the soap. It was weird. Because Jimmy slept in my bed, I could smell my scent on his skin but I could also smell the different smell both of our scents made together, almost like licorice. The black kind, but more subtle though.

"So what's real?" He was looking at me again.

"Suffering. People get hurt every day. People die, Jimmy, that's real as fuck. What's the use in pretending that it doesn't happen?"

This was one of my pet subjects. I think he knew to back off, but he didn't. He just listened. That didn't happen to me very often so once the momentum was gone I just let it sit. Part of me worried I might've hit a nerve about his dad and all, but for what I'd been through, I was more than qualified to state something like that and not hurt a guy's feelings. I mean, he more than understood that I was right about death.

"So ... how do you feel?" I had to ask the obligatory question before I got started on the stomach cuts.

"Sore," Jimmy said, and right after he said it, the television screamed, "Yo, Joe!"

We both laughed but I wasn't the one who groaned after I was done giggling. There it was. Complaint #1.

"And what did you think of your first beating?" I had to pop up and grab a dry, clean towel from the kitchen.

"It hurt." Jimmy plowed his fingers through his hair when he said it.

It was my turn to listen. I figured there was something else coming.

"I needed to feel it though."

He didn't need to further explain his point. I knew what he meant, especially when it came from a guy who had barely ever been hit in his life. Some things you just got to feel to understand. To be honest, I was just impressed that he didn't take it harder than he did. I mean, getting kicked in is about the most humbling experience there is.

The rest of the day was pretty slow. We just hung out. Dad took his pills on time and read his magazines. Cue made lunch for everybody though, which was good. He cooked up some steaks with his special beer technique and served whatever was left after the cooking on the side. I didn't drink any, just what got soaked into the steak, but Cue had a few and watched the baseball game and talked to Jimmy about Hong Kong.

I strained to listen to the stories but I was bleaching my civics homework in the kitchen sink and couldn't hear them over the ru W
school
announcers talking about a double play. That is a treacherous thing, I'm telling you. To get the blood out but to make sure the ink stays. For the most part, I had to go half and half. So later, after it dried, when I was answering questions about Monroe and "Manifes tiny" I was still dodging light brown stains with my pen. Overall, I guess it was a pretty normal Saturday.

By evening, Jimmy was able to check his stomach and chest by himself. I took care of his face again though. His eyes were looking lots better and even his stitches looked great. The odd bag of ice was doing wonders for the swelling. His new ear hole was starting to knit itself back together. I asked him if his vision was fuzzy and he said no, so that was good too.

One unpleasant thing did happen in the evening though. Dad fell when using the bathroom so I had to pick him up and help him finish doing his business. Had to wipe him too. Stuff like that makes me sad. I mean, the guy used to be able to carry me on his shoulders and there I was, helping his naked rebelling body back onto the toilet and he said, "Thank you," and it didn't feel like an appropriate time to be saying it but I said, "You're welcome," so soft that he didn't hear me and I had to say it a second time, louder.

Jimmy's wounds stopped seeping on Saturday night so I didn't have to get up early. Really, he just had to keep checking the soon-to-be-scabs and swabbing them with the bacitracin zinc Remo gave us and he should be good as new in a couple weeks. I slept on the couch again but I didn't get to sleep late because Dad moved into the front room to watch the early football game. Dad loves his Broncos. Always has, ever since we left Denver. He took it real hard when Elway retired. Apart from Mom dying and his accident, that was the saddest I ever saw him. True.

So I woke to him screaming about a punt return for a touchdown. Not my favorite way to wake up, but it was what it was. Neither of us mentioned what happened in his bathroom the night before. Probably for the best. Underneath my blanket and in a half-sleepy haze, I watched the first quarter but didn't really follow it. I could tell that the Broncos were winning though because Dad was happy.

When I got my breakfast, I grabbed his pills.

"Can I have an extra pill today, mi
angelita?
" When Dad said that, I knew he wanted it pretty badly.

"I need it after my fall," he said.

"Are you bruised?" I asked. Dad went through a pretty rough time just after the accident where he got real dependent on his pills. Percocet mainly.

"Hey, Dad, does it feel like it's inside the bone or inside the muscle?" Cue strolled out from the hallway with just his towel on. Must've just had his shower because his hair was wet. We couldn't afford a blender so he got a special cup and lid thing to mix his protein shakes in and he was fixing one right then. All manual.

"In the bone." Dad had one eye on the television when he said it. The Raiders were punting again.

"Bone, huh? Half an lb extra is probably going to help that best," Cue said. He knew I was soft when it came to Dad. He never minded being the bad guy. The punt was blocked.

Dad didn't argue because he was cheering at the TV. He just took the two and a half pills when I gave them to him with a glass of watered-down orange juice.

At about halftime, Jimmy was still sleeping so Cue and I left to go look for scrap wood. Cue was going to build Jimmy a bed and move it into his room so I didn't have to sleep on the couch anymore. Cue built good beds but it all depended on how good a quality of wood we could salvage.

No snow again that day, which was good, but it was still the coldest it'd been in a while. The sky looked like one big cloud. Unfortunately, the night guy locked up the lumberyard so we couldn't walk off with any prime timber unless we scaled a nine-foot fence with razor wire at the top. Not even worth it. The department store shipping bays were empty and there was nothing left at the church where they were building a new playground. It had already been picked over. Someone even stole the swings, probably for the chains. We did luck out at the old brewery though. They had two stacks of shipping crates that were relatively intact. They were heavy as hell, and it sucked that Cue and I had to carry two of them all the way back to the house. It was about two miles.

We got back in time to see the Raiders kick a last-minutefield goal and lose 42-3. Dad loved it and he mumbled something about the Super Bowl but I didn't respond. Cue cleared a space out behind the couch and we chucked all the wood down there on top of a plastic sheet because it was way too cold to work outside.

When the game was officially over we headed out for the grocery store. It was my day to cook too, so I brought the cookie-jar money that was left over from Dad's monthly disability check and I grabbed the food stamps too. With four people in the house now, I had to remember to get extra toilet paper with the real money because it never was included with the damn food stamps. Don't know why. Cue used to joke that we'd have to wipe our butts with soup can labels, but he doesn't laugh much about that stuff anymore. Sundays were generally a good day to go to the store because everyone else was just like Dad, watching the games, whatever ones were on. Cue got $6.48 for the cans he turned in for recycling. Without hesitation, he spent the money on protein powder.

I cruised the aisles packed with individual items but I mostly just bought stuff in bulk: giant bag of onions, giant bag of potatoes, giant bag of apples, three-pound bag of frozen peas, tons of hot dogs, five pounds of minced beef, multipack of boxed pasta. One of our Waves was running the register we picked so we got double coupons on everything even though we didn't have any coupons. He just opened the drawer and ran a bunch of previously used coupons again, overrode the computer error, then put them back in the drawer. With the money we saved, Cue took half to buy more protein powder and the other half for screws and brackets for Jimmy's bed.

We got back with the groceries and it felt like the heat was off. Dad was still in the front sitting chair, draped in five old afghans. Jimmy was sitting on the couch, wearing Dad's old ski hat and a scarf and the two of them were talking about Hong Kong too and that's when I got kind of jealous because I still hadn't heard anything about that damn city yet. Of course, it was then that I realized it really was just as cold inside as outside. I checked to make sure Cue closed the door behind us.

"Gas got turned off," Dad said.

"You'd think they'd at least turn it off on a Monday. Shit, I can't believe they pay a guy to go in to work on a Sunday and turn people's gas off" Cue moved over to the couch to sit next to Jimmy. "At least the electricity's still on." Yeah, and good thing we had an electric oven too.

As the lone female in the house, it was my job to put away the groceries apparently. I used to think there wasn't much worse than two guys in the house that I had to clean up after, cook for, and medicate but no, three was worse, even if the third was cute, the fact that he was related made it just as bad. The whole thing just gave me empathy for Mom. I pulled down the oven door and turned it on to 450 degrees to get some heat in the house. When it got up to about 300 and the coils turned orange, I turned the fan on so it would blow the heat toward the living room.

I pulled the box of noodles out of the first paper bag to put in the cabinet and then Jimmy was standing next to me. His left eye looked almost normal now. Buried in his discolored socket, it was no longer bloodshot, and the lid only sagged a little. Kind of like mine.

"Need any help?" He gripped the pack of toilet paper football-style. Like he was going to fade back to pass.

"Only if you feel up to it." I didn't put the generic macaroni and cheese back. That was for dinner.

"Yeah."

"Okay then, those go in the hall closet across from the bathroom." I turned to see that Cue was done watching television with Dad and was in the process of lining up the wood we'd put behind the couch. He'd also grabbed the paper bags when I was done with emptying them and he'd slit them up the side so he could lay them out flat underneath the wood but on top of the plastic. Then he started sanding.

"Hey, Daniel-san, while you're at it, sand the floor." I'd put the frozen peas and jumbo-pack hot dogs on the counter too. They both needed to thaw anyway. Milk got set aside as well. We didn't have any butter.

"Ah, Jen, you are about the funniest girl I know—so witty!" Cue plugged in the little electric sander, Dad's old one, circa 1982. It was red-orange and looked like one of the super bikes that left walls trailing behind them in
Tron,
but it worked and that was all that mattered.

"Gee thanks, Cue Ball," I said.

He didn't respond. He was already sanding down the first chunk of wood. It sounded like a squeaky electric razor being powered by a hamster wheel. Thanks to the oven, the house was finally heating up.