Neal Shusterman - Bruiser

Now there’s nothing between him and me.

I start backing up—I think that maybe I can run out the back door—but Uncle Hoyt’s fast for a drunken man. Before I can make a move, he’s there. He grabs at me—missing mostly, but catching enough of my shirt to get me off balance. I fall, hitting the edge of the TV, and I know that Brew isn’t anywhere close because it hurts!

“You think that was funny, huh?” he growls. “Letting me stand out there? Had yourself a laugh, did ya?”

He gets a good grip on me this time, and I think, Rag doll, rag doll, be the rag doll, just like Brew always tells me; but I can’t do it because Brew isn’t here. Uncle Hoyt tosses me, though, like I really am a rag doll. I think maybe he’s aiming for the sofa; but I miss and hit the table beside it, knocking over a lamp. The bulb blows out, and I wish I woulda been more careful, because Uncle Hoyt’s gonna blame me for that just like his boss blames him for that car hittin’ his steamroller.

“You’re useless,” he shouts. “You’re useless!” because when he’s drunk, Uncle Hoyt says lots of things twice. “You and your brother, both! He thinks he can go out there and do whatever he wants? If it wasn’t for the two a you, I’d have a life! You both owe me! You owe me everything!” And now I know this is my fault, because it’s Brew he’s mad at even more than me, but I’m the one who’s here and Brew’s not, and it’s all because of me.

He moves closer. I can see his right hand clenching into a fist, and I know he’s gonna use it, so I reach for something—anything—and I find a glass ashtray on the table next to me, all square and heavy, and I throw it at Uncle Hoyt. I don’t know what an ashtray is going to do to stop him; all I know is I gotta do something.

It hits him on the forehead with a bonk that I can hear, and in a second there’s blood on his forehead. The way he looks at me now makes me think that maybe I just ended my own life.

“Did you just throw that at me?” he says, all amazed. “Did you just throw that at me?”

And my own mind is such a knot, I shake my head and say, “No, sir,” like denying it might calm him down; but I know it won’t do no good, because Uncle Hoyt had a bad day, and now my day’s gonna be even worse than his.

I scramble away toward that screen door. I can push it open from the inside easy, but he grabs my foot and pulls me back before I get there.

“You are going to be sorry you did that, boy,” he says. “I am going to teach you to respect me. You hear me? You hear me?”

He reaches to pull his belt out of his pants, but his belt isn’t there—and he knows if he goes to find it, I’ll get free, so he doesn’t let go. He picks me up, carrying me like a football. There’s nothing I can do but kick and squirm.

“I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Both of you. Two birds with one stone. He don’t want to be here; he’ll pay the consequences!”

In a second we’re outside, and I can see the screen door banging closed behind us, getting farther away.

“You’ll learn to respect me!”

The way he’s holding me I can see where we been but not where we’re going. But I know without having to see. It’s the same place he always takes me when he goes foul. There’s a shed way back at the edge of our property. It’s the place farthest away from any other homes, so you can’t hear much of what goes on in there. Not that our neighbors would care. Not that our neighbors even know us.

There’s no way out of this, and I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Not even when they told me about Mom dying and all I wasn’t this scared because I didn’t understand that then—I was too little. But this I understand. And although Uncle Hoyt has needed to teach me lessons before, he’s never been this foul—and it never happens without Brew.

Tonight it’s going to be bad.

Uncle Hoyt opens the door to the shed with his free hand and closes it behind him. Then he pulls a string dangling from up above and a light comes on. The first things I see are the tools on the wall: hammers, screwdrivers, shovels. A wild part of me thinks that Uncle Hoyt might use them; but there’s crazy and there’s crazy, and Uncle Hoyt isn’t crazy. He ain’t no murderer. Or if he is, he’s an accidental one, because although I know he means to teach me proper respect, tonight he might teach it too well.

“Please, Uncle Hoyt!” I beg. “Wait till morning— lessons are best in the morning, right?”

“You’ve got it coming,” he says, staggering. “You got it coming now!”

I try to hide underneath the workbench. It’s full of webs and bugs down there, but I don’t care about those, not now. I squeeze all the way into the corner, but he reaches right in and grabs my leg, and drags me out. I feel the concrete floor scraping my elbows; and as he pulls at me, I bite his arm with all the force that I can, figuring it might sober him up. He curses and swings me a backhanded slap across my face. It’s the first time he’s actually hit me tonight; but it won’t be the last, because I know the first one makes all the rest easier. My face stings, and I’m crying now, which is bad because my eyes are all clouded and I can’t see straight enough to move out of the way of his swinging hands. I think if I’m fast enough and he’s drunk enough I can dodge the worst of it, like in dodgeball. I never get hit in dodgeball, but I can’t dodge nothin’ with blurry eyes.

“I never wanted you,” Uncle Hoyt slurs. “Neither of you. Neither of you.”

Hearing it woulda hurt awful if he hadn’t already said that a hundred times—and if I didn’t know that only a part of him means it anyway. “It shouldn’t never have been this way,” he says as he grabs me again. “But if it’s got to be, then you’ve got to learn to treat me the way you woulda treated your own father.”

I push out of his grip again and bounce against the wall. Tools fall around me, clattering to the ground. My back should hurt from hitting the wall so hard, but it doesn’t. Not just that, but the stinging on my face from the slap is fading much faster than it should.

And that’s when I know.

That’s when I know he’s there.

Brew’s come home to save me! I look up to the little window, and I can see him there outside. Just a hint of his face in the darkness, looking in on us.

He doesn’t kick down the door or nothin’. He doesn’t come in to stop Uncle Hoyt. He never does. He says he can’t, but what he can’t do don’t matter. Just what he can do. And he’s doing it now.

But Uncle Hoyt doesn’t know yet.

“Get up!” Uncle Hoyt says to me.

But I don’t. Instead I do what I have to do. I become the rag doll, falling limp on the floor, pretending I got no bones. Pretending I got no flesh—just stuffing sewed up in cloth.

A second more and Uncle Hoyt knows Brew is there, because that little cut on his forehead where the ashtray hit him slowly zips itself closed. It don’t happen as fast as it does for me, because Brew don’t care about Uncle Hoyt as much as he cares about me. But he cares about him enough, because that wound is gone; and Uncle Hoyt knows it, because now his anger moves away from me to Brew, and Uncle Hoyt sees him in the window.

“Finally came back, did ya!” Uncle Hoyt growls like a bear if a bear could speak. “Well, you’re too late! Let the boy take his own due.”

But Brew stands there, stone-faced, and won’t say a word.

“Just as well. This is for both of you then.”

That’s when Uncle Hoyt starts to use his fists, taking everything out on me, but it’s nothing to me cuz I’m the rag doll.

I hear grunts from outside. Not screams, because Brew, he’s good at holdin’ it all in, keepin’ it all to himself. I know how much it must hurt, and it just makes Uncle Hoyt angrier that I’m not getting his lesson. He screams and curses, wishing I was, but knowing I’m not.