That’s How I Roll: A Novel (15 page)

It just happened, as if its time had come.

If people could look at a videotape of what happened, they’d get sick. And if they liked what they were seeing, they’d
be
sick.

The way it started, I didn’t have any feeling about it at all. It wasn’t new; it was part of my life. But when the Beast turned vulnerable, it was like looking at a beautiful new butterfly, opening its glistening wings as it rested up for its first flight. One of those rare sights, one you knew wouldn’t last but a few seconds.

And something you’d maybe never see again.

I say it just happened because it started the way it always did. Rory-Anne came in real late one night. The Beast was waiting. He
said he could smell it on her, what she’d been doing. Rory-Anne was too messed up to notice his eyes had already turned red.

He made us watch. I was nearly fifteen then; Tory—the child she’d named after herself—he was turning seven. Old enough for school, but nobody ever thought of sending him. He’d watched the Beast hurt Rory-Anne plenty of times, just as I had. He didn’t understand that this time was going to be different. At first, neither did I.

The Beast had done all kinds of things to Rory-Anne before. We were used to it; she was used to it. He always called it “God’s punishment for whores.” First he’d use his belt on her, and then …

That night, when he was finished with the belt, he made her get on her knees. I thought I knew what was coming next—I’d seen that particular punishment a lot of times, even more since Tory-boy had been born.

By then, I knew why the Beast wanted Rory-Anne to get pregnant again. He wanted a baby girl.

The Beast unzipped his pants, but when he pulled his thing out, it just hung there, limp.

Rory-Anne burst out laughing at him. She called him all kinds of dirty stuff. I thought he’d beat her some more for that, but he just zipped up his pants and walked away. I figured he was headed for one of the bottles he always kept in his room.

When he walked back in, Rory-Anne was sitting on the couch. But she wasn’t crying, she was having a good time. Kept calling the Beast all kinds of foul names, pointing at him, laughing like a crazy person.

“Good thing you can’t get that little thing up no more, old man. Nigger cock tastes a lot better than yours, anyway.”

She didn’t stop talking that kind of stuff until she saw the pistol in his hand.

The Beast walked up real close to her and shot her in the face. Pieces of her head flew off behind her.

He looked at what was left of Rory-Anne’s face like he expected her to say something. Seconds passed. Then he put down the pistol,
spun around, and walked over to the kitchen. He came back with the butcher knife in his hand.

When he started to pull Rory-Anne’s body by the hair, I knew what he was going to do. And, sure enough, he told me what to tell the cops if they ever showed up.

“I don’t expect no cops,” he told me. “That whore must’ve run off with someone. Not the first time she did that. But if they do show up …”

The Beast told me that if I didn’t say what I was supposed to, say it exactly the way I was supposed to, the Law would carry him off.

“Then you wouldn’t have nobody to take care of you and that little dummy,” he said. When he saw that wasn’t much of a threat, he told me if they put him in prison the Welfare would come and take me and Tory-boy away.

That didn’t scare me, either. But the Beast knew me better than I thought. When he said the Welfare wouldn’t just take me and Tory-boy away from the house, they’d take Tory-boy away from me, those words stabbed me right in my heart.

“They take me down for this and he’s gonna be put in one of those schools for retards, you understand that? You know what those places are like? You seen those things I always done to that whore for punishment? That’s what they’ll do to him. They’ll fuck him in his ass until he can’t walk. Every day. Every night. But you won’t get to see that for yourself. No, they’ll put you in a place for crips. You’ll never see that soft-in-the-head little freak again.”

aybe the Beast had never read a book, but he knew a lot. He was always sly—crafty in his ways.

It wasn’t just that he knew telling me what was going to happen to Tory-boy would fill me with terror; he also knew the cops wouldn’t believe any story he could make up. He knew most people believed he’d killed Rory-Anne’s mother.

And why he’d done that, too.

Where we lived wasn’t like what you see on TV—nobody was going to be digging up the ground looking for her body. But the Beast knew the cops wouldn’t hesitate to take him away if he didn’t have time to make Rory-Anne disappear. And if he had a pistol in his hand when they showed, they’d cut him down where he stood.

The Beast was a very crafty man. He knew I’d expect the Law to take me and Tory-boy away—with Rory-Anne dead, they’d have no choice. But he also knew the cops would believe anything I told them.

Everyone seemed to feel sorry for me, but kind of proud of me at the same time. They’d say what a shame it was, that spine thing, me being such a genius and all. After I won the State Science Fair, they said things like that even more.

Why would a boy like me tell a lie?

As the Beast talked, I felt the balance-power grow inside me. It became so powerful that it took over my entire spirit. I could feel it telling me that, for the first time in my life, I could put my own hand on the scales.

That feeling, it transformed me. Even my voice came out different. When I spoke to the Beast, he listened real close. It was like I was the one in charge, and he wanted to be sure he did everything I told him correctly.

What I told him was to give me his pistol, so I could put Rory-Anne’s prints on it, too.

He looked at me strange when I said that, but he didn’t argue. When I told him that nobody would believe any story about Rory-Anne running off, not with what they already suspected about his wife, he listened like missing a single word could cost him his life.

I told him how hard the ground would be that time of year; how it was already near four in the morning—it would be getting light too soon. If he tried to dig deep enough to bury Rory-Anne all by himself, he’d probably be caught in the act.

“The only way out for you is self-defense,” I told him. “Now, you listen. I’m going to tell you what happened here, and I need you to memorize it.”

He nodded his head when I spoke. If he’d been a dog, it would have signaled that he was submitting.

“That pistol there?” I told him. “That was Rory-Anne’s. Not yours—hers. Understand? She always carried it around. I saw her put it in her purse myself, plenty of times.

“Now, what happened was, she just walked in the door, sat down on the floor, pulled out that pistol, and said she was going to kill herself.

“Rory-Anne said things like that before, but this time she wasn’t playing. We both saw her pull back the hammer and hold it right to her head. That’s when you jumped up and snatched it away from her.

“Next, you went into the bathroom to find some of her pills. I kept trying to calm her down, but she wouldn’t listen to anything I said.

“Then she kind of staggered up on her feet. Before you could stop her, she ran into the kitchen, grabbed that butcher knife, and charged right at me, screaming and slashing like in that old
Psycho
movie.

“You didn’t have any choice—if you hadn’t shot her, she would have hacked me to death.

“There’s plenty of proof of that. Rory-Anne always hated me. She hurt me before—just look at the back of my hand; they’ve got hospital records on that—but she never actually tried to kill me before.

“Maybe it was the drugs or the liquor—you know the cops are going to find plenty of both in her body when they cut her open.”

I could see the Beast nodding to himself, taking it all in. Tory-boy was wailing. When I whispered to the Beast that I’d take care of the baby, get him to say the right things, too, he believed me.

Why shouldn’t he? He knew Tory-boy would do anything I told him to do.

That was the first time the Beast ever acknowledged me. “You’re a good son, Esau. And you always did have the brains in the family.”

With that, he acknowledged something else: this time, I was driving the car. He was just a passenger.

I told him to go brush his teeth, get that alcohol smell off, clean
himself up. We still had plenty of time. There was no phone in the house, and the Beast would have to walk up the hill to get Mrs. Slater to call the police. This time of night, he’d be waking her up. Wouldn’t do if he showed up looking like he was drunk, would it?

He went right off to do like I told him. But somebody must’ve heard the shot. It had to have been Mrs. Slater, although nobody ever said. The Beast was still in the bathroom when the Law showed.

he Beast heard them pull up. He ran right out of the bathroom, his face still all soapy. He was just in time to hear me tell the cops how he made Rory-Anne get on her knees, then shot her like he was putting down a sick dog.

I had Tory-boy on my lap, holding him while I talked to the police. He was sobbing, and I was rubbing his chest to make him stop, the way I always did. None of the cops asked him any questions.

All the time they were cuffing him up, the Beast kept staring at me. He never said a word, but I could feel his hate. A white-hot arrow lanced out of each eye, seeking my soul.

I used my balance on those arrows. I could feel it working that time, just as I had felt his hate so many times before. But I was losing strength. Somehow, I knew my only chance was to get him
inside
the rings. And, sure enough, the very instant I parted those rings the Beast charged on through—he wanted to get at me so bad nothing else mattered.

That’s when he learned that even his evil power wouldn’t work from inside my balance rings. Every new blast he threw only made the blades spin faster and faster, stabilizing the center post. I was getting stronger, but the Beast kept on coming—it was all he knew.

A black-widow spider can kill a man. But if the man has that spider inside a glass jar, all the spider can do is wait—it’s not his choice to make, not anymore.

t first, the DA was real worried. In fact, he was terrified. People around here don’t pay much attention to what goes on in the court. They’re a lot more interested in close-to-home gossip, like whether it’s true about the pastor’s wife and that guy they send out when your satellite dish needs an adjustment. But get yourself known for losing a big trial—especially one people really wanted you to win—and they
will
remember that.

“No offense, son, but your sister did have herself quite a reputation, if you know what I mean.”

I knew what he meant, all right. But it wasn’t Rory-Anne’s reputation that made the DA’s hands tremble and his voice go thin; it was the Beast’s.

The DA was standing between two men on a dueling ground. He knew if he offered a nice enough deal—say, two, three years in prison—the Beast would not only snatch at it, he’d be beholden to him as well. But then the town would have a new thing to gossip about.

And not the usual petty stuff—rumors of corruption would be flying about. Worse yet, everyone wanted the Beast gone, and they expected the DA to handle that business for them.