Andrew Vachss - The Weight

Not the gun itself, the whole idea. Like the way those guys in the Sex Offender Treatment Unit would be talking about the stuff they did. Just listening, it was like some of their-I don’t know what to call it-like some of what they were would rub off on you.

I don’t like being around the iron jockeys, either. I never felt right listening to them talk. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I just don’t like most people.

I got shot once, a long time ago. The slug went into my upper arm, never touched bone. The doc in the ER was an Indian. Not one of those guys you see in cowboy movies; from the country India. He said I must have done something very good in another life to have deserved such luck. I was a little fuzzy, but I could tell he believed what he was saying.

Turned out, the bullet just went in one side and out the other. A nick, they called it. That Indian doctor said the only danger would be infection. Not from the bullet, from not keeping it clean.

I remember asking him how come I couldn’t get an infection from a bullet. In prison, some guys would dip the points of their shanks in their own shit, so you could die from the poison after you were stabbed. I didn’t tell the doctor that, but I really did want to know.

“A projectile launched at supersonic speed would generate so much heat that it would be sterilized,” he said.

“What’s ‘supersonic’?”

“Did you hear the shot?”

“Yeah. After I-”

“You heard the shot because it broke the sound barrier. That’s what makes it supersonic.”

“Thanks.”

He gave me a confused kind of look. But maybe it was the drugs they were pumping into me that made me think that.

They didn’t even keep me. Just gave me a couple of more shots, cleaned it all out, and packed stuff inside before they taped me up.

The cops came. I knew they would. The ERs, they’re supposed to call in any gunshot wound, even if you tell them it was an accident. There’s docs you can go to who won’t call it in, but they charge an arm and a leg, even if they don’t have to take one off.

And-who knows?-they could be on some cop’s Rat Rolodex themselves. A doctor who gets nailed for writing scrips by the pound, he’d “cooperate” with the cops in a second-that prescription pad, that’s his moneymaker.

So the rule is, if you got shot doing something that could drop you down a well, that’s when you take the chance. Say you’ve got a cop’s slug in you, no way you can let a hospital take that out.

But with the bullet I took, I knew I was on solid ground.

What I told the cops: I never saw the shooter. I got no beef going with anyone. Broad daylight, probably one of those punks trying out his new nine. Or maybe it came from inside one of the buildings I was walking past.

What they told me: They can’t protect me if I don’t come clean with them. Maybe the next time, the shooter won’t miss.

They were as bored as I was. Without a slug to put under their microscopes, there was nothing they could do, and we all knew it.

Whatever they put in the wound finally dissolved, just like the doctor said. All it left was a little pucker mark, like a vaccination.

But when I went back to the gym, some of the guys looked at the arm and said it was ruined. They were really sorry for me. I didn’t get it at first. I mean, soon I was back lifting the same weight I always had, so what was the big deal?

One of them explained. He said that bullet had spoiled my skin. You could hide some stuff, like the blackheads they were always getting all over their backs and shoulders, but what I had would never look right.

I asked him, look right for what?

“You don’t compete?” He sounded kind of… disgusted, like I told him I didn’t wash my hands after I used the toilet or something. This was the same guy who was always telling me I had great genetics but I’d need some help if I ever wanted to get really big.

I didn’t go back to that gym.

Fuck it. Wasn’t like I was friends with anyone there or anything. I like working out by myself more, anyway.

I guess it depends on what you want it for. These guys, they were more worried about how good a suit of armor looked than how good it worked. Not me.

People think the worst thing about being locked up is that you can’t have the things you had on the outside. But that’s not it. Plenty of guys who hit the joint never had anything on the outside. So what did they lose, really?

Freedom? How much of that do most people have, if you think about it? In prison, they tell you what to do. Outside, they do the same thing. Some people, they hate being told what to do so much that they end up Inside. Again and again. Time after time.

What you really lose are choices. I’ve seen men stabbed over which TV program to watch.

You get to make some choices, but those are only between bad and worse. One of the heavies asks you to do something. Say no, and somebody in there gets told to kill you. Or at least fuck you up so bad that you end up wearing a diaper or breathing through a tube in your throat.

You could ask for PC. Or you could do what you got told to do. Either way, you’d be alive. Protected, even.

You’d also be nothing.

So, if you have to kill somebody, you might as well start with the guy who started your problem.

Having to sit and wait until I could meet with the cop again, that was okay. Truth is, I didn’t even want to go out-I wanted to be where it was safe. I had that apartment. With a TV where I could watch whatever channel I wanted to.

So I worked out. Watched TV. I didn’t cook, just brought home takeout. There were like a hundred different places for that-I never even had to go to the same one twice.

I drank a lot of water. The kind that comes in bottles.

I tried to figure out what the cop would do. Maybe I would have been better off with his partner, the black guy. He was closer to my age, and you could see that the rape stuff had made him angry, like he took it personal.

But it hadn’t been the black guy who’d figured out why my alibi for that rape was no good. That older cop, Tom-the other guy was Earl-Detective Tom Woods, he snapped it right away.

In my whole life, I never gave up a man I worked with. But the guy who owned that jewelry store, I didn’t know him. Never even met him.

I kept thinking about whether that would be enough to make it right. It’s hard when there’s no rules for something you have to do, because you still have to do it.

He was already on the bridge when I showed. Even in the heat, he was wearing an old-style raincoat, had to weigh a few pounds. Probably miked to the max. Which meant I’d have to dance around with every word out of my mouth. Even if the big cop had done the right thing, I knew his kind; if anything happened to the guy who’d actually raped that girl, I’d be good for that one. Extra good.

While I was still deciding how to play it, he got off first: “It’s no go.”

“What d’you mean?”

“That girl, she may have been… say, unsure of herself before. Even after the plea. But now it has to be you. In her mind, I mean.”

“But if I could just-”

“The court gave her a Permanent Order of Protection, okay? You go anywhere near her, and you’re going back in.”

“But if-”

“If you contact her, same thing. Or someone doing you a favor contacts her. She gets a letter, a phone call, a fucking e-mail… it’s gonna be on you.”

“But you know I didn’t do it.”