Prose

Tommy hits her and she goes down.  She doesn’t even scream or yelp or say “help” or “stop” or nothing.  Tommy laughs, says “quiet old bitch” and pushes her head with the bottom of his Nike.  She’s real old, maybe 60 or 80; her face is wrinkled like dried fruit.  Her clothes are old, too, some dull blue material for a skirt, her shirt all pink and flowery, her shoes black and flat and cracked in the leather or pleather or whatever they’re made of.  I wonder for a second if maybe Tommy killed her but then she moans and we both laugh, Tommy and me.
            “Did you see that?” which sounds more like “dijuseedat” and Tommy is marching around her, his arms flexed, his fists by his belt buckle like some body builder.  “She went down faster than your mom, dude.”  I punch his arm for the rip, not as hard as I could but hard enough to let him know he should stop.  He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering, “Sorry dude, I take it back.”
            I nod.  I know Tommy can get carried away since he’s only thirteen and all so I let things slide sometimes.  I’m older, fifteen, so what I say pretty much goes, regardless.  And this is the first time I let Tommy hit a geezer and he’s been bugging me to do it for so long so he’s gotta be buzzing over it.  His mom’s new boyfriend is an asshole, he says, so I guess this way Tommy gets to be tough, too.  One time I found Tommy crying about him, saying the guy was some kinda perv.  I didn’t ask him about it though, I don’t want to hear that shit.  Like having four older sisters and a pissed off single mom, which I do, isn’t bad enough.  I just told him to wipe his fucking nose so we could go.
            I look around, make sure no one saw and we drag her into the empty store, I make sure to grab her purse, too.  The windows are boarded up so no one can see in.  We found out the door was open two days ago when I pushed Tommy into it and it gave way.  He found himself in the middle of the old Rite-Aid that had closed down last year.  It was almost totally empty except for a few shelves, some old cardboard boxes and lots of dust.  We claimed it immediately.  None of the lights worked but the toilet still flushed and the sink water was still running.  Tommy wanted to flood the place but I nixed that, dumb kid didn’t realize we had a palace. 
            When we were checking out the cellar I had the idea about grabbing a geezer.  There were lots of pipes coming out of the walls and, in the back, there was a cage.  Neither of us could figure out why it was there but it was there.  It was big, too.  You could walk in without ducking and you could lie down and stretch out and never touch a side.  That night I told my mom that I lost my padlock for gym.  Sure she ragged on me, saying how I was as useless as my dad, but the next day I had a new one.
            And we’d been clocking geezers for a few months already so stepping things up seemed natural.  Before we would just run up behind some old lady, me in front and Tommy about twenty steps back, and I would smash them in the back of the head with a bottle or a brick or something and keep running.  They would drop and if they weren’t knocked out they were so busy watching me run away they never noticed Tommy until he’d already grabbed their bag and then cut loose in the other direction.  We were smart about it, too.  Jeans, plain t-shirt, baseball hat; we were every kid walking around.  No cop ever even questioned us even though there was always a story about it in the paper the next day.  And each time we did it the story got better and better and Tommy and I were more and more different.  Plus, what’s great about living around here, it’s mostly all old Jews and they’re the most racist geezers ever.  In almost every story Tommy and I were black or Puerto Rican.
            She was heavier than she looked but I’m pretty strong and so is Tommy.  We half carried, half dragged her down into the basement and locked her in the cage.  Tommy had put some cardboard on the floor and I’d found an old bucket that she could use for a toilet.  And like that we had our geezer.
            Once she’s locked up I grab her bag and dump it out.  It’s always the same things; make-up, tissues, pictures, some kind of hard candy, an old billfold or change purse, lots of pennies.  When the gun emerges I’m surprised.  So is Tommy.  I grab it before he can because I just know he’ll fire off a shot and he can be such a spazz he’ll probably shoot me or himself.
            “Is it real?”
            I drop the bag and look it over.  It’s a small revolver and when I crack the cylinder it only holds five shots.  I see the .22 on the shells.  “It’s a twenty-two,” I tell Tommy.
            “Let me see it,” his hand is held out and I act like I’m handing it to him and then pull it away.
            “Yeah, right, like I’m gonna give it to you so you can spazz out and shoot me, no way, Jose.”
            His hand drops and he looks a little pissed but he doesn’t ask again.  Tommy knows I don’t go for that whiney, girl shit.  I consider taking the bullets out and then letting him hold it but the lady’s moan scares us both and we turn back to her. 
            She’s sitting on the cardboard, her legs straight out in front of her, holding the back of her head with one hand and leaning back on the other.  There are tears on her cheeks like she was crying but she isn’t crying now.  She just stares at Tommy and me and her gun in my hand.  Funny thing was, she didn’t look scared.  In fact, she looked sort of bored and maybe a little sad.  When I extended my arm and pointed the gun at her she didn’t cringe or recoil like I thought she would, she just kept staring.
            And then she mumbled “oh” to herself like she just remembered she was making a cake or something and reaches into the pocket of her skirt and pulls out some bills.  She leans towards Tommy and me and pushes them through the mesh of the cage and then leans back.  I look over to Tommy and shake my head, letting him know he should pick it up but he just stands there.
            “Dude, grab the cash.”
            “Huh?  Oh,” and he reaches over and picks it up.  I hear him counting it but I’m looking at the lady again.
            “Sweet, fifty four bucks, man.”  This is, in fact, the best score we’ve had since we starting clocking geezers.  It’d been nice, too, not having to ask mom for money, not having to hear about my deadbeat dad all the time and how I looked just like him.    “Here,” he says.  I look over and he’s holding some bills out to me.  I slip the gun into my pocket and count out twenty five dollars. 
            Nice try, junior. “Another two,” I tell him and hold out my hand.  Usually I take more than Tommy but since he did the hitting I told him we would split it; but no way was I getting less than half.  I watch Tommy’s eyebrows raise and then he’s got this “oh, yeah, right, my bad” look on his face and he hands me the two dollars.  Bad enough I’m bottom rung at home, but out here I’m in charge.          
            Then she talks, “What do you want?” 
We just stare at her.  Truth is, I don’t know.  Tommy and me talked about grabbing a geezer, keeping her in the cage, and then we were so busy planning everything we never really talked about the after.  “Shut the fuck up!”
Her eyes fall and she kind of slumps.  Tommy looks at me, impressed.  I nod a bit and smile like I knew she would do that but really I’m starting to worry because now I’m imagining how this might end.  She’s seen our faces because in all our planning we never thought of masks and suddenly my mom and my sisters are right and I’m just a stupid kid just like my dad must’ve been.
“Let’s go,” I tell Tommy.
We get to the stairs before she says “wait.”
We turn around, “what?” I ask.
“Are you just going to leave me here?”
I point to the brown paper bag in the corner of the cell next to the bucket.  “There’s some food in there,” I tell her.
“And the bucket’s for shit and piss,” adds Tommy with a laugh.
She doesn’t respond, stares back at the floor again, we leave.
 
We find McMurphy sleeping behind the Acme.  He’s homeless and if you give him ten bucks he’ll get you a six pack of sixteen ounce Budweiser tall boys.  The beer costs about six bucks and he pockets the other four which we think is fair, it’s not like we can get it ourselves. 
“Hey, Cuckoo, you awake?”  He always wants us to call him that so we do.
“Hmm?” his eyes open slowly and he blinks the sleep out.  “Boyo’s, good day!” which is what he always says.
I hold up a twenty, “Two, please.”
He smiles showing his green and brown and missing teeth, “yes, sir,” he says, taking the money.  He shambles off and we wait.
He’s back in a few minutes with a brown bag under one arm.  He sets it at our feet, reaches in and takes out a liter of Popov vodka, “here you go, boyo, nice doing business with you.”
I check the bag to make sure its right, pick it up and we go.  Tommy wants to go back to the Rite Aid so we do.
The bag of Twinkies and beef jerky and the bucket are still where we left them and she’s still just sitting on the cardboard.  We sit down outside the cage and each take a beer.  The cracking sound of the pop-top gets her attention.  We both gulp down the first one, it’s kind of a tradition, but today is the first time Tommy finishes before me.  He celebrates with a loud burp that cracks us both up.  We crush the cans and toss them over our shoulder, not watching where they go because “who the fuck cares, anyway” and we open another.
“Excuse me,” she practically whispers.
I look up.
“May I have one?”
I can’t believe she asked for a beer.  And then I can’t believe that Tommy hands her one through the bottom of the mesh.  “That’s one of yours, dude.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
I sip my beer, my other hand resting on the pocket with the gun in it.  I like knowing it’s there. 
She sips her beer, too.  We all sit like that for a while, staring and sipping and I’m feeling the gun in my pocket.
“Are you going to kill me?”
I’m not surprised at the question but I did think she’d be crying or something when she asked.  Truth is she doesn’t seem to care much.  I just stare knowing Tommy will inevitable open his mouth, which he does.
“Maybe, maybe not, just don’t piss us off.”
I nod like that was our plan all along and then ask “why’d you have that gun?”
And then she actually smiles, “to shoot you with.”
“Huh?”
“I was scared about all the attacks so I bought it at a pawn shop to protect myself.  My son said if anything, it will probably just get taken from me and I’ll get shot by it and now I probably will.”   She actually laughs then and says, “ironic, huh?”
“Like rain on your wedding day” Tommy half says, half sings.
“Faggot.”
“Shut up.”
She starts to laugh but stops herself.
“What’s funny?”
She looks around the room and then at me, “this,” she says.
“What this?” I ask.
“After seventy-four years without so much as being pick pocketed I end up here, a hostage to a couple of punk kids.”
“I ain’t no kid,” Tommy says to her, he stands as if to make the point.
She stands then, as if in answer.  He’s at least a foot taller than her but she meets his eye and looks defiantly at him. “You’re just a kid, you both are.”
I upend my beer and finish it.  Then I stand, swagger over to the cage, belch loudly.  “Maybe, bitch, but that don’t change nothing.  You’re in there and we’re out here,” I take the gun out of my pocket and point it at her, “and I got your little pop gun, too.”
She looks at the gun and then sits again.  Before I realize what he’s doing Tommy has unlocked the cage.  She looks up at him and I finally see her fear.
“Kid, huh?  You fucking bitch.”  Tommy kicks her in the stomach and she doubles over, clutching her gut and moaning.  The second kick brings blood from her mouth and now she’s curled up in a ball and crying. 
Some part of me wants to stop him but, mostly, I just want to see how far he’ll go.
He drops to a knee and punches her in the back a few times.  “Take it back,” he orders her, but when she looks up to speak he punches her in the jaw.  Blood leaks from her mouth and then her teeth slip out, all of them, both denture sets pooled in her blood and spit.  Tommy laughs.  I do, too.
He gets out of the cage and locks it again.  We sit down and keep drinking.  We don’t talk about anything but that seems okay.  After about five minutes she starts to move.  Her mouth is all puffed out and her nose and chin are covered in drying blood.  Her left eye looks like its going black.  She winces into a sitting position and picks up her beer which miraculously hasn’t spilled.  She drinks, not sipping this time, and finishes it.  Then she looks up at us, the defiance is back but just barely, and she tosses the can over her shoulder without looking.  Tommy laughs. 
“Tough old bitch,” I say, impressed she’s still got some balls after Tommy wailed on her.  I reach into the sack and hand her another beer.
“Yours,” says Tommy.
I nod.
When we’re down to our last cans we decide to get more beer and maybe some food, too.  Usually I would just send Tommy but when he says “odds” I say “evens” and we thrust out our hands.  I have two fingers showing and Tommy has three.  He wins and I don’t mind leaving for a little while.  I find McMurphy in the same alley and give him the twenty I got from Tommy.  He’s really drunk but still manages to get the beer.  Then I go to the Wa-Wa and grab a few bags of chips, a half dozen hot dogs, and a sack of assorted candy bars.  Trying to figure out the change let’s me know I’m still pretty drunk but I pull it off.  Every now and again my mind starts thinking about what we’ll end up doing with the old lady but I don’t let it go for too long. 
When I get back to the Rite Aid basement I can smell piss almost immediately but that’s not what grosses me out.  Tommy is pressed up against the cage and he obviously has his dick thrust through the grate and she’s on her knees sucking his dick.  They haven’t seen me yet and I hang back till it’s over.  When I do walk in Tommy is still standing over her, the smirk on his face kind of creeps me out but I don’t say anything.  She’s sitting down again and she’s crying but trying not to. 
“Beer,” Tommy says, he doesn’t look at me, just extends his hand like I usually do.  I put a beer in it.  He pops the top and takes a long swig.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Nothing, just hanging with granny.”
“What’d you do, man?”
“No teeth, dude, means no bite.  You should try it.”
“Oh, man, fucking gross!”
Tommy laughs, “don’t knock it, man, it’s like walking a tightrope, pretty cool if you don’t look down.”
“Whatever.” 
She’s staring at me now, looking like she wants something.  I just empty the bags.  I try to hand her a hot dog but she just shakes her head.  Then I think about it for a second and feel bad.
We keep drinking and eat the hot dogs and the chips and the candy.  The old woman doesn’t eat but she does drink the beers we give her.  At one point Tommy says he might puke and then lumbers over to the cage as if he’s going to do it on the lady.  She doesn’t move, just looks up at him and then at me and then back at him.  He makes a sound like he’s puking but doesn’t. He just laughs, spits on her and goes back to his beer.  Then I pass out.
 
I wake up to the sound of two pipes being smashed together but it isn’t two pipes.  Tommy is aiming the gun at the old lady who is now looking terrified and holding her thigh with both hands.  And thin a trickle of blood seeps through her fingers and begins to stain the cardboard beneath her.  A thin trickle of smoke is coming out of the gun.
“Holy shit, dude!  What the fuck are you doing?”  I’m on my feet before I realize it.  I never felt him take the gun.
“Party’s over, man.”  He taps the muzzle of the gun on his watch.  It’s almost twelve, I gotta get home.”
“So you gotta shoot her first?”
“Gotta kill her.”
It’s weird to hear him say it out loud but I guess we’ve both been thinking it.  “You shot her leg, dude, that won’t cut it.”
She begins to whimper and cry.  She’s trying to beg but her voice keeps cutting out.  Tommy tells her to shut up and then he shoots her in the shoulder.  She cries out and falls onto her back.  I have to pee really bad and I almost let it loose when I hear the shot.
“Just do it, man.”
Tommy looks at me, his face seems strange, like I’ve never really seen him before.  I never noticed how his eyes looked too small or how his lips seem to curl up into a sneer.  And he’s taller than me by maybe an inch.  And all of a sudden that seems to matter.
“Check,” he breaths the word instead of saying it and the gun fires again.  A small dot of red appears on her forehead.  Her legs twitch, she makes a kind of gurgling sound, she farts.  When she’s finally still, Tommy begins to laugh.
“Man, did you see that?  Fucking awesome!”
I nod.  I might have said “yeah” but I’m not sure.
Tommy slips the gun into his own pocket and I don’t ask for it.  We walk out, leaving all the garbage wherever it fell, leaving the woman uncovered.  Tommy is still giggling.  He says “see ya tomorrow, dude” and I say “yeah” but I’m thinking maybe not.  Actually, I’m thinking “no.”