Freddy, DDS
That night, the pain got so bad it woke me at 3:00 a.m. The nerve under that incisor was a live wire, crackling deep beneath the surface. Advil couldn’t touch it. This was the kind of pain that made you want to put an elephant gun to your head. The kind of pain that wouldn’t allow you to contemplate or even acknowledge anything but its very existence, that wouldn’t allow you to hope or pray for anything but its termination. I literally could no longer bear it. I would have given both my thumbs to be reclining in a dentist’s chair, with or without anesthesia. And I hate dentists.
Whimpering, I trudged into the darkened house, bumbling like a wounded grizzly down the hallway, where I woke Freddy, startling him.
“What the hell, boy?”
“You got to do it. You gotta pull it.”
“Shhh. You gonna wake up your mama.”
“You gotta get rid of it, Freddy. You gotta.”
“Come back in the mornin’.”
“Now, right now!”
That woke up Mom, who snapped on the lamp to find my wild-eyed, grimacing personage hovering half naked over her bed.
“What is it? What happened?”
“I can’t stand it any longer.”
The three of us convened in the kitchen, where I sat rigid and perspiring in a straight-backed chair, beneath the sickly glare of the overhead light.
“This is a terrible idea,” said Mom.
“If you’re not gonna pull the fucking thing, then please shoot me,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I’m not kidding. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. It’s not worth it.”
“Boy, listen up,” said Freddy. “You cannot move, you hear? You gotta be strong. You gotta be a rock, you hear? You gotta put your pain in a box, okay? A little red box with a lid.”
Shining his Maglite into my mouth, he primed the nearly empty Chloraseptic bottle a few times and managed a meager squirt.
“There, now. You let that settle in, and I’ll prep my instruments,” he said clutching the needle-nose pliers.
I watched on desperately, tears clouding my vision, as he ran scalding water over the pliers, then took the added precaution of dousing the ends in peroxide.
“Now, if this don’t do the trick, we’ll move on to the heavy artillery,” he said, indicating the vice grips, laid out on a dish towel atop the counter.
I actually might have lost consciousness for an instant as Freddy rooted around with the pliers, trying to get a firm purchase on the offender, while Mom steadied my head.
“Now, now,” said Freddy. “Stay with me here, big guy. This is gonna be over real quick.”
Every second felt like an eternity as he worked the pliers around deliberately, Mom shining the flashlight for him. When he finally had a satisfactory grip, he said, “Now, I’m gonna count to three, and then it’s gonna be all over, okay, dog?”
I clenched my eyes shut and moaned by way of consent.
“Okay, now. Ready? One—”
That’s when he pulled it, on one. Immediately, blood started gushing out of my mouth, my mom frantically staunching it with a dish towel.
“Well, lookie here,” said Freddy, holding the pliers up to the light.
There was a tooth in the pliers, all right, cleanly excised, root and all. Freddy had managed a tidy extraction.
“What’d old Freddy tell you: easy as one-two-three.”
Though the evidence was right there in front of me, in the form of a bloody molar, something was terribly wrong. The pain had not relented one iota. If anything it had increased, which seemed hitherto inconceivable. The realization was not long in arriving. The tears came faster and hotter.
“Ong oof!” I hollered through the blood-drenched towel. “Ong ucking oof!”
“Come again, boy?”
I pulled the towel away, and the blood began gushing anew. “You pulled the wrong fucking tooth! It’s the incisor!”
And I bawled unabashedly, chest heaving, blood running down my bare stomach to the waistband of my underwear.
“Goddammit, Freddy!” I shouted, my mouth pooling with blood.
Mom immediately stuffed the dish towel back in my mouth to slow the bleeding. Freddy calmly dropped the tooth in an empty coffee cup and began rinsing the pliers.
“Relax yourself now,” said Freddy. “This here’s gonna make it easier to access the other one.”
“Uck ou!” I yelled, seizing the pliers.
Bloodied and faint, every solitary cell of my body screaming in agony, I harnessed all the strength I had and began groping for the right tooth, fending off Mom.
“Michael, don’t do this! We’ll go to the dentist. We’ll get on a payment plan. I’ll pick up some doubles. We’ll sell the Tercel. Please don’t do this.”
But I had no choice.
“Okay, dog,” encouraged Freddy. “You got this. Keep a good grip now.”
With a firm, steady grip, I pulled with everything I had, then promptly blacked out.
After that, I dimly remember Freddy and Mom putting me in the bathtub and sponging me off.
Burying the Lede
I stayed in bed for two days after that, with a mouthful of gauze and a bottle of peroxide, taking my meals through a straw. Miraculously, I avoided infection. And though I was quite certain that all my bottom teeth were already beginning to shift, I was grateful as hell to be rid of the agony and ready to face the future.
With Chaz’s car repoed, and not a word from the man himself, I had no choice but to admit that I was no longer in a holding pattern. So Tuesday morning, having spent the entirety of both Sunday and Monday in bed convalescing, I ironed my button-down shirt and my baggy slacks and resumed my job search with a still-swollen jaw and a new, considerably more spacious smile.
But first I had to drop by the Verizon store and prepay for minutes in case I got any callbacks or in the increasingly unlikely event that Chaz tried to contact me. My data was dangerously low, which was why I didn’t always answer Remy’s texts.
At the Verizon store, there was a guy with Sheetrock dust in his hair and another guy with paint on his jeans, both in line in front of me. And of course, there was also the obligatory old lady who needed instructions for unlocking her screen. I waited forty-five minutes. When I finally got to the counter, they tried to give me a new phone at “no charge.” But I’m not as stupid as I look. I knew there’d be all kinds of strings and data packages attached, so I told the guy no thanks, I just want minutes. But I was eligible for an upgrade, he said. I don’t want an upgrade, I told him.
“But you’re entitled to one.”
“I don’t want one.”
“But you earned it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s free.”
We volleyed back and forth like that until I finally wore him down, and he reluctantly submitted to selling me thirty minutes, which I paid for entirely in singles and loose change.
My first exercise in pavement pounding was a return to the Subway up on Finn Hill, the one that was formerly filling night shifts. When I asked for the manager, I was expecting the big guy, Jay with the shallow breathing, but it turned out they had a new manager, whom I recognized immediately. He was maybe fifty years old, paunchy, and extremely tired looking. I knew this guy from somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t place him. Was it my woodshop teacher from high school? Somebody from the bus? A regular at Tequila’s?
“Sorry, kid,” he said. “We filled evenings last week.”
“What about days?”
“No dice. You try the store on 305?”
“Are they hiring?”
“No.”
“What do you think? Should I go down there, anyway?”
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
“So why’d you ask?”
“Just curious, I guess. I’ll tell you what, try back next week.”
“You think you might have an opening then?”
“No.”
He shook my hand
, then promptly circled back around the counter, slipped on a pair of plastic gloves, and started dressing some lady’s sandwich. On my way out, he called out, and it wasn’t until then that I finally placed him.
“Oh, and kid. About your writing sample.”
“Did you read it?” I asked.
“I read it,” he said.
“And?”
“Full of split infinitives. Dangling participles, not to mention vague pronoun references, passive forms, fragments, comma splices, you name it. Didn’t you take freshman comp? Kid, you keep dangling participles like that, and somebody’s going to hit their head.”
“Very funny,” I said.
“Worst of all,” he said, “you buried the lede.”
“Bury this,” I said, giving him the finger.
Try Not to Be Black
Nate’s been short of breath the past couple days, and a little lethargic. So Wednesday, I made a three o’clock doctor’s appointment for him. Did I mention Nate doesn’t like doctor appointments? He was like a goddamn silver-backed gorilla in the back of the Tercel, pounding the seatbacks, stomping his feet, pawing at the side window. Thank God, Freddy was along for the ride.
Things were proceeding pretty smoothly until the cop pulled in behind me at Whale Dancer, flashing his red-and-blues.
“Fucking great,” I said, pulling to the shoulder.
I kept my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, like I read somewhere you’re supposed to, so that the cop can see them at all times. That way, maybe he wouldn’t beat the shit out of me or shoot me in the face. One thing became quickly apparent as we waited on the shoulder: the situation did not agree with Nate. Maybe it was the combination of the flashing lights and being stuck in the backseat, but as the cop began walking toward the Tercel, Nate began pounding furiously at the back of my seat.
“Easy now, big dog,” said Freddy.
The officer was a hatchet-faced dude with no discernible forehead. Not that I’m big into Star Wars, but the guy looked a little like Jar Jar Binks. He tapped on the window, peering first and foremost at Freddy’s black personage with apparent suspicion. Only then, with something akin to alarm, did he seem to register the spectacle of my seething three-hundred-pound brother in the rear seat, pounding his fists against the side window.
I indicated that the driver’s window would not roll down, and when the officer didn’t seem to comprehend, I shouted as much, but he couldn’t hear me with Nate going berserk. When I opened the door to explain, he unholstered his pistol in a flash and yelled at me to stay the hell put and get my hands up where he could see them. He circled around the front of the car to Freddy’s side, pistol trained alternately on me, Freddy, and Nate. Mostly on Freddy.
“Roll down your window!” he barked at Freddy.
“It don’t roll down!”
“Step out of the vehicle!”
“Door don’t open!”
“Put your hands on the dash, where I can see them!”
Freddy complied as the cop circled back around to my side of the car, pistol trained, left eye twitching.
“Step out of the vehicle,” he said.
Slowly, I stepped out.
“The rest of you, out.”
Freddy tried to crawl out behind me, but his knee hit the stick, and the Tercel began rolling slowly backward toward the squad car with Freddy and Nate still in it.
“Oh shit,” I said.
Freddy was hanging halfway out of the car when the flustered cop, trying to get a handle on the escalating situation, inexplicably took aim at a rear tire of the Tercel, and pulled the trigger with a pop, missing the tire completely and kicking up some gravel just as Freddy managed to reach between his legs and apply the emergency brake.
The Tercel lurched to a stop on the shoulder, mere inches from the cruiser. The cop rushed forward, pistol aimed at Freddy. “Out of the vehicle, all of you!”
Freddy flopped out onto the shoulder. But Nate, kicking and screaming, was not to be reckoned with.
“He has special needs,” I explained.
“Calm him down,” said the cop, pistol still trained on Freddy.
Even though he was the guy holding the gun, Jar Jar Binks was clearly the most nervous party involved, with the possible exception of Nate, who was going off like an air-raid siren.
“Get up,” the cop said to Freddy.
Freddy stood without dusting off his knees, hands held out in front of him.
“Gotta talk to him, boss,” he said.
“Shut him up, and get him out of the car,” said the cop, twitching. “And keep your hands in the air.”
Deliberately, Freddy leaned slightly into the car, hands up.
“Okay, now, big dog, I know you’re upset. Don’t nobody like to have a gun pointed at them. But the policeman need you to step outside the car.”
It took some coaxing, but Freddy finally managed to calm Nate and persuade him to get out of the car, where the cop lined us up with our hands on the hood.
“You have any idea why I pulled you over?”
“Because he’s black?” I said.
“What did you just say?”
“He didn’t say nothin’,” said Freddy, shooting me a look.
“I pulled you over because your muffler is nearly dragging,” he said with a twitching eye.
“Is a nearly dragging your muffler against the law?” I said.
“I recommend you get it fixed.”
“Are you gonna arrest us?”
“Don’t tempt me,” said the cop.
“Boy, keep quiet,” said Freddy.
The cop looked at Freddy as though he’d spoken out of turn, then looked back at me.
“Consider this a courtesy stop.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” I said.
“Shut up, boy,” said Freddy.
The cop smiled and steadied his twitching eye.
“Disorderly conduct is no joke, I can tell you that,” he said. “You like to get a better look at the station, see what your tax dollars are paying for? Or if you’d rather, I could just hit you with a fine.”
Well, the fine should have shut me up—I certainly couldn’t afford that. I’ll be the first to admit, we were a motley-looking crew, packed into that shit-can Tercel. But last I checked, there was no law against that. The fact is, besides our dangling muffler, we did nothing worthy of suspicion. If we were driving a Lexus, and Freddy were white, I doubt we would’ve been pulled over at all.
My advice: If your window doesn’t roll down, get it fixed, even if you can’t afford to. Also, if you get pulled over, try not to be black.
“Good thing you’re such a crappy shot,” I said to the cop as he walked back to the cruiser.
“What was that?”
“He didn’t say nothin’,” said Freddy.
In the car, Freddy berated me, mostly with silence but with a little mumbling, too. “Pfff . . . plain stupid . . . damn lucky to drive away from that mess. . . .”
Big Mac Attack
We were twenty minutes late to Nate’s doctor’s appointment, but it didn’t matter, they would never have been ready for us, anyway. As ever, the waiting room was packed. I don’t know what medical care looks like for the wealthy, but let’s talk about the waiting room at Nate’s doctor. You never see a guy in a polo shirt or a kid with braces or a girl in ballet shoes in there. No, it’s always the miserable hordes, the morbidly obese, trundling oxygen carts. Diabetics in sweatpants. Bent old ladies with cat hair on the butt of their pants. There’s always at least one person in a surgical mask with a relentless, rattling cough. And usually a kid with Down’s, talking even louder than Nate.
A Mexican girl, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, nursed her dark-haired baby while a toddler lolled around at her feet and a dirty-faced boy of about three perched in the chair next to her, sucking on his finger. He had the dull-eyed, complacent look of somebody who’s undernourished. Sometimes when I see a kid like that, I try to imagine what his lif
e is going to look like in thirty years. Will he shape himself? Will he become a doctor or a lawyer? Or will he be shaped, bent, and molded by the external pressures of poverty and injustice? I think you can probably guess the answer to that one.
After about an hour, a squat lady in purple scrubs called out Nate’s name.
“You want I should take him?” said Freddy.
“I got it,” I said.
Scrubs led us down the corridor. She needed to weigh Nate, so I coaxed him up on the scale, where she had to move the top counterweight as far to the right as it would go. She jimmied the bottom weight until the arm achieved balance. Nate weighed 305—just like the highway. After she marked it down on her clipboard, Scrubs led us to a room down the hall and instructed Nate to sit on the edge of the exam table. Fastening the blood pressure apparatus to his arm, she pumped it up and released the air, looking slightly unnerved as she eyed the gauge. Immediately, she repeated the procedure and marked the results down on her clipboard.
“Any dizziness?” she asked Nate.
“Not that I know of,” I said on Nate’s behalf.
“You said shortness of breath?”
“Yeah, like he’s been exercising or something. Except he hasn’t been exercising.”
She made a note briskly on her pad. “Dr. McFarland will be with you shortly,” she said, hurrying out of the room.
Normally we’d be sitting there for a half hour, with me wishing I’d brought that issue of House Beautiful I was vaguely thumbing through in the waiting room, but today the doctor arrived almost immediately, looking every bit as tired as her patients. You could tell she was once athletic, before she started eating out of a vending machine and keeping bad hours.
“Hello, Nate,” she said, glancing at the chart. “I’m Dr. McFarland.”
“He’s kind of shy,” I said.
“Shallowness of breath?”
“Yeah, a couple of times. And he’s just seemed kind of listless the past week.”
She put a stethoscope to Nate’s chest and a thumb on the inside of his wrist, and staring at a fixed point on the wall, she listened to his pulse, silently counting.
Lawn Boy Page 12
