Prodigal Blues

"Huh?"

He jerked the wheel to the left to avoid hitting the fattest and slowest raccoon known to existence (who'd just decided that the middle of our lane was the absolute best place to stop and lick his unmentionables) but we were going way too fast; every tire squealed; the bus and trailer both lurched sideways; we damn near sideswiped an SUV that was trying to pass—the driver and passenger both gave us the finger while yelling things we couldn't hear and probably wouldn't have appreciated, but right then I didn't give a damn about them or the raccoon or even the bodies back in the trailer—the only thing I cared about was getting Christopher calmed down and some of his medicine into him; it was either that or knock his ass out and take the wheel myself—he was jumping around in his seat like water on a hot griddle, eyes wide, hands shaking even though they gripped the wheel, knuckles white; there wasn't one part of him that wasn't trembling as he jerked the wheel to the right to get back into our lane—we smashed the raccoon anyway, little fellow was probably depressed and better off—and once we were steady and straight again he started to speak, but I reached over and grabbed his wrist and swear that I felt an electrical shock jump off his skin and shoot up into my shoulder.  "Christopher, you have to slow down, we're going too fast."

"Too fast?  You think this is fast?  This is a Sunday drive with the grandparents, Pretty Boy, this is wussy test-drive speed, this is nothing!  You want fast?  Sincerely?  I'll give you fast."  He shifted gears and floored the accelerator.  I watched as the speedometer climbed past 75, hit 80, got bored in a hurry, and crept toward 85.

"Goddammit, slow down!" I had to shout to be heard over the loud metallic groan-grind of the engine behind us.

"What for?" shouted back Christopher, twice as loudly.  "Thought you were in a hurry to get home to the wife, get away from all this.  I'm just trying to be accommodating, Mark, trying to be the good host, trying to do the right thing for everyone involved.  Rebecca, she fucked Grendel so we could get those keys made, that was accommodating; Thomas claimed that he was just goofing around with the Play-Doh and the key when Grendel came down and asked us what was it with the stuff on his key, that was amazingly accommodating, don't you think, especially since Grendel didn't believe him for one second, said the stuff on his key hadn't been there before and what were we up to, anyway?  And Thomas said it wasn't us, it was just him, and Grendel, he was so disappointed by that and we all just knew what that meant, that meant a visit to Ravenswood—only this time, this time, we all had to go down there, and he strapped Thomas onto the table and got out the blowtorch and the bone saw and gave Thomas a little shot so he wouldn't pass out from the pain—Grendel did not like it when someone passed out from the pain, really put a crimp in his evening—and once he was sure the shot had taken effect—he'd given Thomas just enough to temporarily numb him, not knock him out—then he fired-up the bone saw and the blowtorch and handed the torch to me and he cut off Thomas's right leg and god, God, God, GOD! how Thomas screamed and thrashed against the straps but that didn't mean shit to the Big Ugly One, no, screaming only made him work slower—and that's just what he did, slowed waaaaaaay down with the saw—and Arnold's holding Rebecca so she doesn't try to run over and put a stop to it—I think that's what was going on, I couldn't be sure, because suddenly the leg was off, just like that, all goo and gristle and Grendel grabbed it from the table and tossed it in the corner and I set to work with the blow torch and Thomas is still screaming, still thrashing, and there's all this blood and slivers of bone and chunks of muscle slopping around on the table, but I kept at the stump with the torch until the bleeding stopped—it smelled like a barbecue pit down there—then Grendel gave Thomas another shot, pulled out his favorite pistol—the baby I got right here—and he held the business end against Thomas's temple, looked right at me, and said, just as calm as you please:  "Cut off the other one or I'll kill him right now and make you fuck the exit hole"—he'd've done it, too, we all knew what he was capable of, so I took the saw and then Rebecca broke loose of Arnold—she grabbed the torch—like you say, she's the nurse, a nurse assists—and I cut off Thomas's other leg and Rebecca cauterized the wound and the whole time we were doing this, the whole entire time, Thomas was still conscious—can you believe that?—he's one tough kid—he didn't scream or thrash or nothing—he just lay there looking up at Grendel and saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll be good, I will, I promise"—like he believed he was being punished for doing something bad, he was crying and his face was all red and sweaty and the snot—Christ, the snot was spilling out of his nose and down into his mouth and as soon as I had his leg off and looked at his face I understood then like I'd never understood it before—mostly because I'd stopped letting myself think about it:  I understood for the very first time that Grendel wasn't human, he was a different species, a sub-species, and if you were a good person, if you believed that you were a decent person and that it was wrong to hurt other people, that you sh-sh-should treat all people with respect and compassion, then how could you allow yourself to just…to just stand there and do nothing?—that's all I'd been doing, just standing by all those years and letting him do what he wanted—fuck, I even helped him, I helped him with I-don't-know how many of the other kids, I stood there and handed him whatever he asked for and cleaned up afterwards and acted like it was no big deal to me because that's what he wanted, he wanted me to feel nothing, to be like him, and after a while I didn't know if I was doing this because I was trying to protect the family or if there was some part of me, some sub-species part that was starting to become just like him, and if that was the case, then I'd allowed it to happen, I'd opened the door and let it out and I hated him for that, I hated him so goddamn much and now, now here was Thomas, this great little kid, with a gun at his head and he's apologizing to this sub-species piece of shit like he understood that he'd been bad and deserved to have his legs cut off then something near the base of my neck snapped like a toothpick and I COULDN'T FUCKING TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

He made a fist with his right hand and began hitting the steering wheel, the dashboard, the roof above him.  "NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE NO MOOOOOOOOORE!  And you know what I did?  I took that beautiful bone saw—God it was the most perfect thing under heaven there in my hand—and I stepped forward and swung it up in this smooth arc and just buried it right in Grendel's kneecap, and he screamed and spun around and fired off a shot, but the shot, it went wild—that gave me enough time to cut one of Thomas's straps, and once his hand was free it came up and he grabbed Grendel's nuts and started squeezing like a vice, then Arnold snatched one of the Mason jars—it had a uterus in it—and he heaved that thing straight and hard right into the back of Grendel's head and it shattered but the thing is, Grendel still hadn't dropped the gun, so I went for his hand with the saw and he got off another shot that went right through the meat of Rebecca's right shoulder and she dropped the torch and poor Thomas's pants and shirt caught fire because what none of us had noticed was that the jar with the had been filled with alcohol, and when it shattered, most of it had splattered onto Thomas's face and clothes but we couldn't do anything right then because Grendel had the gun, so I took the saw and hit his collar and then I stripped a chunk out of his bicep and then rammed it right into the middle of his hand and he threw back his head and screamed and dropped the gun and there was blood all over him, all over me, it was on the floor and all over our shoes—we started slipping around like a couple of dancing partners and when we went down, we hit the concrete hard and it hurt—Christ! it hurt—but as soon as we hit he grabbed my throat with his good hand and dug in his nails and tried to crush my windpipe but Rebecca, she had his gun now and she didn't even bother aiming, she just pushed it right between his balls and his asshole and blew the whole works all over the floor—Grendel screamed like I'd never heard anyone scream, he was spitting blood and foam and I swear to Christ, I'll swear on a stack of Bibles, until the day I die I'll swear that his eyes turned into two bright red burning coals right before he shuddered and squittered shit and piss out of what was left down there and then passed out."