Matt Bell - Scrapper

So grandiose: the killer, the killed .

You didn’t want to hurt the boys. Not until there was no other choice. And with the last boy, the intruder had made sure you hadn’t had to hurt anyone. The intruder saved the boy and also he saved you, because when you were finished with the boy you hadn’t had to hurt the boy to set you both free.

THE PAYCHECKS DIDN’T COME IN the mail. The office was at the front of a warehouse, a small rectangular room with a glass partition over wood paneling, separating the receptionist’s desk from the chairless waiting area. The receptionist was bleached blonde, tanned brown, embraced a certain brand of department-store professionalism. He could stand there grinning all day and still he’d never be invited past the glass, the locked door.

He opened the check in the truck, read the number lower than what he’d expected. The reductive mathematics of taxes, Social Security, Medicare. The bank was closed by the time he arrived but there was an ATM outside. In the dusk and the falling snow he pulled the new card from his wallet, followed the screen’s instructions prompt to prompt. He forgot he needed a pen to sign the check, jammed the cancel button until the screen reset. There was a pen in the truck, clipped to the case notes. He found it in the glove box, then shut the truck door, turned to walk back.

In three separate movements Kelly saw the gun, the hand holding the gun, the man who owned the hand.

He did what the man with the gun said. At his urging Kelly opened his wallet to reveal small bills ordered by denomination, some faded receipts. Back at the machine the man with the gun lurked out of the camera’s eye, told Kelly where he wanted him to stand while he worked the keypad, depositing the check, guessing at his daily limit. The mugger kept a stride’s worth of distance but occasionally he closed it for effect, pressing the barrel of the pistol into Kelly’s back, where Kelly could barely feel it through the thickness of his coat.

Each time the nub of the pistol’s barrel touched him Kelly felt a diminishment of effect. He could get used to anything, even a pistol snug against the small of his back. He withdrew another hundred dollars, watched the worth of his time pass into the mugger’s hands.

Now your keys, the man with the gun said. Hand them over.

No more, Kelly said. You’ve taken what I have for you to take.

Kelly turned. The man with the gun raised the weapon. Kelly wasn’t confused about whether or not the pistol was loaded but he didn’t think the man would fire it. The bank parking lot wasn’t the center of the zone. There were rules here, an expectation of law, punishment. They stood a couple blocks outside the most desperate geography, and maybe distance meant everything. It was dark and snowing but there were cars driving by on the avenue. Someone would witness whatever happened next unless the man timed it right. The police would come. Kelly had to believe this. The girl with the limp would send them, they would come by her voice.

Kelly laughed and the man with the gun started. Kelly remembered the school gymnasium, other incidents in other cities. How once the fight began there might be no stopping him. He took a step forward. The mugger’s face swapped expressions. At closer range Kelly could see the details were shaking.

Kelly said, You’re what I knew you would be.

The mugger spoke, his voice shifting. What are you talking about.

Kelly said, I would rather you were anyone else. Anyone different.

A surprise, said Kelly. That’s what I wish you were.

I’m not giving you my truck, he said. My truck is my life.

Kelly took another step forward and whatever sometimes happened to his heart happened again. All his blood gushing around and he could track every singing pint. Kelly’s face dropped its blankness for another expression, something sporting. He told himself it wasn’t the color of the man that made him feel this way. There were other factors. Dress and speech and something else, something learned. Greater than, less than. The beliefs of the town named like poison.

They were both sweating, breathing hard through the waiting.

Get the fuck out of here, Kelly said, with such force he thought the man with the gun would run. Instead the mugger slowly lowered the weapon, put it back into his pocket. He zipped his jacket, pulled the hood up, put it back down. It was a cold night but not that cold. Kelly waited next to the truck, fingers clenched around the keys, the metal carving his palms. He waited in the falling snow until the man with the gun had walked two blocks, three blocks, then around a corner. The pounding in Kelly’s chest continued, a fist trying to escape its slatted cage. He thought he wanted the feeling to last.

At the bar that night a man called another woman a cunt and the girl with the limp was there to tap the man on the shoulder, to register her complaint. She didn’t mind cursing but she wouldn’t put up with other kinds of comments, certain kinds of objectification. Her rude body had made her an object of curiosity and she had no tolerance for unwelcome comment. What was happening to her was vulgar but it was also hers.

To the man, she said, You can say what you want but don’t say it around me.

When the man called her a cunt too, then Kelly took her by the arm and dragged her from the room, leaving their drinks unfinished, their bar tab unpaid. Some people loved to talk and talk. Kelly didn’t default to the right words but if he talked slow enough he might say fewer of the wrong ones. On the way back to her place he tried to grope after the handle of the day’s story, the place to open it up, let it out. He was embarrassed by his victimhood. He knew he was angry but he was having trouble feeling more than some numb portion of the rage. He could see the man with the gun if he let his eyes close. She caught him blinking too much and asked if he was okay. He shifted his expression into a smile, made small talk about the new job he hated. The worst part about keeping a secret was anything going wrong seemed to be about the secret. But so little revolved around his gravity, held an orbit. The case was his secret, the mugger too. The latest in a long line of things he had done, would do, had had done to him. The confusion of past and present and future. He didn’t have to share. This was their agreement. They believed there was a certain kindness to keeping yourself to yourself.

He hadn’t wanted to reveal his nature in front of her but after she was asleep in her own bed he left the apartment, drove back. He liked the bar and the bartender and wouldn’t do anything within those windowless walls but that didn’t mean he couldn’t wait in the parking lot, huffing steam into the frozen air. When the breather of the insult stepped out toward his car, then Kelly was there — or else not Kelly but the scrapper. The action did not require a weapon. The object of the lesson was instruction and if instruction required infliction it was something he could add with his hands. The language of the bully, put to better uses: the sharp inhales and exhales, the straining lungs following a landed punch, a right hook he’d been missing throwing, the way skull and knuckles split the bruises. How long since he’d last felt this way. The wordless voice of the fistfight, the meaty thudding of flesh on flesh, how even if Kelly had to be hurt too he would never cry out, would keep punching and kicking and dragging the other down into the gravel and the broken concrete and the dust and the dirt.

THE FIRST BOY you watched only for short spans, walking twenty paces behind him on the street along the path from school to home, from three thirty to almost four in the afternoon. A pattern so obvious you waited every day for someone else to notice. You thought you craved the voice of a teacher, a school aide, a concerned parent, the bleep-bleep of a querying siren and the red-and-blue splash of lights. The tight stretch of action, the gathered potential, the desired flush of shame, suspicion: it walked with you, it walked you down the street after the boy.