Andrew Shaw - Sin Hellcat

And now I felt much the same sort of feeling toward little Rhett. I looked upon the physical father to whom I was delivering this child, and the slut who would mother him, and I felt that guilt and shame and embarrassment again, and it was almost as though I could square things with both Rhett and the Brockheimer child at one.

There was only one course of action I could, in all dignity and self-respect, allow myself to take. And so I made my decision, and my course of action was chosen.

To begin with, just sort of as an opening gun, you might say, I stepped forward and punched the troll smack in the nose.

I am not a violent man by nature. My earliest memories are memories of acute physical cowardice, and I have been known to go to great lengths to avoid a fight. And that is one of the tragedies of the modern world. All our brain-workers (for this is the term they persistently apply to us boys who make the yokels buy things they don’t need) have gone physically soft. We are vicious enough, and we will twist a verbal knife as deftly as Cyrano ever wielded a blade, but the physical sends us scrambling for the exits. We have but one sword, and it is a poor thing used only upon women, and our hands are better at holding pencils than making fists.

A sad affair.

Which makes it all the more amazing. Because, while my fist was in the air and on the way to the nose of Dixon Whittington, a most unseemly thought raced through my feverish brain. I won’t hit him hard enough, I thought sickly. I haven’t hit anyone in years, I don’t know how anymore, and I was never much good at it to begin with. I watch Kirk Douglas movies and an occasional prize fight, but I haven’t hit anybody and I am about to mess it up. I’ll pull the punch or something. Or, oh, God, I’ll miss him. I’ll just flail at empty air and seem like a total fool.

A lot of thinking while throwing a punch. But my thoughts stopped suddenly, you see, because my hand ached. And my hand ached because my fist had just collided quite magnificently with the nose of Dixon Whittington. The punch, by God, had landed. I hadn’t, by George, pulled it.

Not a wee bit.

I stood there for a moment and merely watched things. I watched Dixon Whittington, the troll, with his thick veined nose more misshapen than ever. Blood streamed from those black hair-filled nostrils. The color combination at least was passable — like red leather seats in a black Jaguar. And I watched him reel backward, ever so slightly, until he was sitting on the floor and covering his revolting nose with a hairy paw.

I watched. And out of the corner of one eye I saw Jodi gaping and smiling at once, and reaching to take my arm. And out of the corner of my other eye I saw Rhett, laughing like an Indian and slapping his hands to his knees. And out of the corner of my third eye—

No, that’s wrong.

“You socked him,” Jodi was saying, hysterically.

“You socked him,” Rhett was saying, jubilantly.

“Socked the old bastard,” Jodi squealed.

“What’s a bastard?” Rhett asked, undaunted.

The old bastard, speak of the devil, was getting to his feet. He pawed at the air with his hands, and that was a mistake because it let the blood come pouring through those black holes of Calcutta once again. There was blood on his fingers, too. I looked down at my hands, and there was blood on the knuckles of the hand I had hit him with.

“Now what the hell,” the troll grunted. “Now what the hell.”

“Old bastard,” Rhett chirped. “Old bastard old bastard old bastard old bastard—”

Jodi covered his mouth with her hand, demonstrating again that she had a way with children. And the slut appeared in the doorway, looking thoroughly puzzled, and Dixon Whittington swung a heavy hand to the side of her face, demonstrating that he had a way with women. The slut went back, presumably, to her bottle. And the troll fixed two uncertain eyes upon me.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

I probably should have hit him again. But picture please the scene in its entirety. Picture driving a furious fist into the nose of a total stranger, and imagine him getting up bloody and bowed, and staring at you, and telling you he doesn’t get it. Would you have hit him again? Would Kirk Douglas?

I didn’t. I placed hands upon hips and played a waiting game, and he looked from me to Jodi to Rhett to Jodi to me. And then he looked at Jodi, and he seemed to be concentrating on her ample bust, and I’ll be damned before I’ll let a troll look at my unlawful wife that way. So I hit him.

I got that poor old nose again, and he sat down again, and there was more of that red stuff. He tried to hold it in with his hands and the damned blood leaked through his fingers. I thought of a few speeches from Macbeth. I tried to decide whether a person could have a fatal hemorrhage through his nostrils. And the troll stayed right where he was again, which was on the floor.

He looked up at me. Not at Jodi now. Not at Rhett.

At me.

“Listen,” he said, “just tell me what it’s all about. That’s all.”

I’d heard that question at least once before. I quite possibly had heard it on many an occasion, since a desire to know what it’s all about is universal in human experience and particularly prevalent in my circle of friends, but there was one time that sprang at once to mind.

It happened at our house.

Remember the house? I’ve mentioned it, haven’t I? The suburban hide-a-wee, the Rockland County Split-Level Colonial with wall-to-wall carpets and floor-to-ceiling walls? I’m sure I have. Our hate nest amongst the crabgrass, where Helen and I lived a life of mutual animosity in rustic splendor.

I’ve mentioned it, all right. But I haven’t told you how we acquired it, or when. We acquired it shortly after the wedding, and we acquired it because Helen wanted it. I had wanted it myself, during those moments when visions of domestic bliss had not yet been washed away entirely by the realization that Helen was colder than a well-digger’s ass in Little America. But after we left Bermuda I would have been as happy to remain in Manhattan forever.

Not so with Helen. She wanted charge accounts and heavy furniture, and she wanted a massive life insurance policy with herself as beneficiary, and above all she wanted a house.

Why, you ask, do women want houses? Why did this woman, who had no children and seemed totally uninterested in accumulating any, want a big house instead of a tidy little apartment? That house, my friend, was security. That house, holding a pair of the most secure souls who ever should have graced a psychiatrist’s waiting room, was warmth and stability and everything nice, as far as my icebound bride was concerned.

You see, it’s easy to run out on your wife when you live in an apartment. You pack a suitcase and you go. There’s no car, because you don’t own one, and there’s no money tied up in the house, and you just get on a plane and don’t come back. But once that breezy broad has conned you into buying a house, you’re stuck with her for life. You can’t put the house on your back and go away. You either leave her the house when you run or you get a divorce and divide the house down the middle. And either way she wins.

Anyway, we bought this house. We bought it during one of my relatively rare I-married-this-bitch-and-maybe-if-I-make-nice-she-won’t-be-so-hard-to-live-with moods, and I would have done anything then to make her happy, so I bought a house. We went out looking for houses. We saw majestic old pre-revolutionary homes in upper Westchester with high ceilings and a view of the Hudson, and I liked them. We saw Franklloydwrightish contemporaries with planes and angles and zip level colonial with an attached carport, and we bought it. I’ll leave you to guess who liked it.