Born Bad

by Andrew Vachss

  People ask me to fix all kinds of things—not just the boiler or a stopped—up toilet. One of the gangs in the neighborhood used to hang out in front of my building, give the people a hard time, scare them, break into the mailboxes, petty stuff like that. I went upstairs and talked to the gang. I had the dog with me. The gang went away. I don't know where they went. It doesn't matter.

  Mrs. Barnes lives in the building. She has a kid, Tommy. He's a sweet—natured boy, maybe ten years old. Tommy's a little slow in the head, goes to a special school and all. Other kids in the building used to bother him. I fixed that.

  Maybe that's why Mrs. Barnes told me about the monsters. Tommy was waking up in the night screaming. He told his mother monsters lived in the room and they came after him when he went to sleep.

  I told her she should talk to someone who knows how to fix what's wrong with the kid. She told me he had somebody. A therapist at his special school—an older guy. Dr. English. Mrs. Barnes couldn't say enough about this guy. He was like a father to the boy, she said. Took him places, bought him stuff. A real distinguished—looking man. She showed me a picture of him standing next to Tommy. He had his hand on the boy's shoulder.

  The boy comes down to the basement himself. Mostly after school. The dog likes him. Tommy watches me do my work. Never says much, just pats the dog and hands me a tool once in a while. One day he told me about the monsters himself. Asked me to fix it. I thought about it. Finally I told him I could do it.

  I went up to his room. Nice big room, painted a pretty blue color. Faces out the back of the building. Lots of light comes in his window. There's a fire escape right off the window. Tommy tells me he likes to sit out there on nice days and watch the other kids play down below. It's only on the second floor, so he can see them good.

  I checked the room for monsters. He told me they only came at night. I told him I could fix it but it would take me a few days. The boy was real happy. You could see it.

  I did some reading, and I thought I had it all figured out. The monsters were in his head. I made a machine in the basement—just a metal box with a row of lights on the top and a toggle switch. I showed him how to turn it on. The lights Hashed in a random sequence. The boy stared at it for a long time.

  I told him this was a machine for monsters. As long as the machine was turned on, monsters couldn't come in his room. I never saw a kid smile like he did.

  His mother tried to slip me a few bucks when I was leaving. I didn't take it. I never do. Fixing things is my job.

  She winked at me, said she'd tell Dr. English about my machine. Maybe he'd use it for all the kids. I told her I only fixed things in my building.

  I saw the boy every day after that. He stopped being scared. His mother told me she had a talk with Dr. English. He told her the machine I made was a placebo, and Tommy would always need therapy.

  I go to the library a lot to learn more about how things work. I looked up "placebo" in the big dictionary they have there. It means a fake, but a fake that somebody believes in. Like giving a sugar pill to a guy in a lot of pain and telling him it's morphine. It doesn't really work by itself—it's all in your mind.

  One night Tommy woke up screaming and he didn't stop. His mother rang my buzzer and I went up to the apartment. The kid was shaking all over, covered with sweat.

  He saw me. He said my machine didn't work anymore.

  He wasn't mad at me, but he said he couldn't go back to sleep. Ever.

  Some guys in white jackets came in an ambulance. They took the boy away. I saw him in the hospital the next day. They gave him something to sleep the night before and he looked dopey.

  The day after that he said he wasn't afraid any more. The pills worked. No monsters came in the night. But he said he could never go home. He asked if I could build him a stronger machine.

  I told him I'd work on it.

  His mother said she called Dr. English at the special school, but they said he was out for a few days. Hurt himself on a ski trip or something. She couldn't wait to tell Dr. English about the special medicine they were giving the boy and ask if it was all right with him.

  I called the school. Said I was with the State Disability Commission. The lady who answered told me Dr. English was at home, recuperating from a broken arm. I got her to tell me his full name, got her to talk. I know how things work.

  She told me they were lucky to have Dr. English. He used to work at some school way up north—in Toronto, Canada—but he left because he hated the cold weather.

  I thought about it a long time. Broken arm. Ski trip. Cold weather.

  The librarian knows me. She says I'm her best customer because I never check books out. I always read them right there. I never write stuff down. I keep it in my head.

  I asked the librarian some questions and she showed me how to use the newspaper index. I checked all the Toronto papers until I found it. A big scandal at a special school for slow kids. Some of the staff were indicted. Dr. English was one of the people they questioned, but he was never charged with anything. Four of the staff people went to prison. A few more were acquitted. Dr. English, he resigned.

  Dr. English was listed in the phone book. He lives in a real nice neighborhood.

  I waited a couple of more days, working it all out in my head.

  Mrs. Barnes told me Dr. English was coming back to the school next week. She was going to talk to him about Tommy, maybe get him to do some of his therapy in the hospital until the boy was ready to come home.

  I told Tommy I knew how to stop the monsters for sure now. I told him I was building a new machine—I'd have it ready for him next week. I told him when he got home I wanted him to walk the dog for me. Out in the back where the other kids played. I told him I'd teach him how.

  Tommy really liked that. He said he'd try and come home if I was sure the new machine would work. I gave him my word.

  I'm working on the new machine in my basement now. I put a hard rubber ball into a vise and clamped it tight. I drilled a tiny hole right through the center. Then I threaded it with a strand of piano wire until about six inches poked through the end. I knotted it real carefully and pulled back against the knot with all my strength. It held. I did the same thing with another ball the same way. Now I have a three—foot piece of piano wire anchored with a little rubber ball at each end. The rubber balls fit perfectly, one in each hand.

  I know how to Ax things.

  When it gets dark tonight, I'll show Dr. English a machine that works.

  Rules of the Road

  I made a mistake with the first two. I didn't think about them being black until the papers said a racist murderer was on the loose. Because they matched the slugs they took out of them, they figured it had to be from the same killer. And because they were black, they did what the media always does.

  I mean, they could have said they were both men. Or both married. Or both employed. Or maybe a hundred other different things the two had in common. But they picked the easiest thing, color.

  Everybody wants to be P.C. Politically correct. They all want to say the right things.

  But they don't do the right things.

  People won't do the right things by themselves. They have to be shown how to act. We have rules. Laws, regulations, codes of conduct. And we have the Scripture.

  But people just won't obey unless you make them.

  That's why we have prisons, to make people obey. But it doesn't make them obey. If you don't believe me, look at all the men on parole who commit crimes.

  I have been thinking about this for a long time. What happens in prison, I think, is that the people learn to obey, but they obey the wrong things.

  Everybody obeys something—if you make them. What happens, after a while, the rules change. The higher laws—the ones made by God—they tell people how to act. But the lower laws—the ones people make up as they go along— they take over.

  It's like pollution. You can make all the laws about it, but it still gets into the air. And we
have to breathe it no matter how obedient we are to the real laws. We all have to breathe.

  See, the big laws, everybody agrees about them. You're not supposed to kill. Or steal. Or commit rapes and stuff like that. But it's the little laws that start the unraveling.

  And pretty soon, it's just threads. Not connected to anything. Just floating in the wind.

  The Bible tells the truth. It says not to spare the rod. This has nothing to do with hitting kids, the way some of those people do.

  I know all about that stuff.

  All of it. The Bible too.

  The rod is the Shepherd's Rod. The staff to guide the Rock.

  People are sheep.

  Sheep need guidance.

  I know I'm not God. I can't make the sheep stop the ugly things they do. Like killing. Or stealing. Or sex stuff.

  My job is smaller—I'm just a messenger.

  One of the ways you can see the threads unravel is the way people talk to you when you ask them a polite question.

  "Drop dead!"

  "Shut up!"

  "Fuck you!"

  Maybe they don't realize how much that hurts. Or maybe they don't care. I tried to ask someone once, but he raised his hand to me. He was going to hurt me just because I wanted to ask him a question.

  You can see the threads unravel. Because the sheep have no rod to guide them, they all follow the herd.

  That's where I got the idea. I was driving in my car. I am a very good driver. I always yield the right–of–way, always stop at stop signs. I never cut people off in traffic. I'm always very careful, a good citizen behind the wheel. I obey the rules of the road.

  But, what happened, this man cut me off. Right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, I would have smashed right into him. There was no point to it—he couldn't get where he was going any faster for treating me like that. When he stopped at a red light, I looked over at him. I shook my head. Not to admonish him, just to show I was sad at his impolite behavior. He shook his fist at me. He was so angry that he got spit all over the inside of his window. His face was bright red. Then he jumped out of his car and ran toward me. I had to go through the red light to get away from him. Sometimes you have to break the law, but only if there's a really good reason for it.

  Anyway, that's what gave me the idea. The sheep are even worse in their cars. They don't act correctly. So what I wanted was to help them. With a message.

  I know all about guns. My father taught me. He was a hunter, my father. And a soldier before that. He said you weren't a man unless you knew all about guns.

  He taught me himself. So I'd understand. When I didn't get it right, he would tell me I was stupid. That hurt worse than the other stuff. Words can really hurt you.

  Most people don't know that.

  The first problem I had to solve was the noise. It's easy enough to make a silencer for a pistol, but they only work on semi–automatics. If you use them on a revolver, they don't work very well. That's because the cartridges are exposed and the gas escapes—that's what makes the bang. But if you use a semiautomatic, the cartridges don't stay in the gun like with a revolver—they fly out all over the place.

  So what I decided was I had to shoot from inside my car. Deep inside, so the cartridges didn't get on the ground.

  But I didn't think about ballistics. I thought the bullets would get all deformed once they went inside the sheep. But I guess they didn't.

  So I use a different gun each time now.

  I have plenty of them.

  I have a very good car for this work. It's a Lexus. A gray Lexus 400 sedan. It looks like every other car, nothing special. But it's very quiet and very fast. And it doesn't make the sheep nervous.

  I have taken eleven sheep so far, but the police still don't get it. Neither does the press. Not the newspapers, not the radio, not even TV.

  I have been very careful. I take people of different races, different ages. Once I even took a woman, but that was a mistake—it will make it even harder for the sheep to understand.

  I only take sheep when they are impolite in their cars. When they cut me off, or make obscene gestures, or run through red lights.

  So far, they don't understand. The press talks about a Highway Killer. And they have all this speculation about why it happens.

  Some of them even think the killer is crazy.

  It's hard, because I only take them when they're alone. The car usually crashes after I take them, and I wouldn't want an innocent sheep to die. I never shoot when there are passengers. So there's nobody left to tell why I took the driver…how impolite he was.

  I wish they would make the connection soon. Once they understand, the rules will change. And people will start to be polite in their cars.

  But it really doesn't matter.

  I have the patience of Job, like in the Bible.

  And plenty of guns and bullets.

  Step an a Crack

  1

  When we were all little kids together, Bobby was the bravest. He was the first to go from one end of the Projects to the other over the rooftops. I remember following him, all of us in a line. The last jump was the worst–the wind was blowing hard and there wasn't room to get a long running start. Bobby lit a cigarette and took a drag. Then he threw the pack over to the other side. He took another drag and snapped the cigarette over the side of the building.

  "I'll have a smoke wherever I land," he said to us.

  "It's too far, Bobby," Rodney said.

  "I don't care," Bobby laughed.

  You could see he didn't. He went over the gap between the rooftops like it was nothing, soaring.

  Everybody cheered. Nobody followed.

  If I knew how to voice such things then, I would have said that I loved him.

  2

  Me and Bobby were ten then. We were born almost on the same day. Bobby would stay at my house sometimes. Sometimes he would even tell other kids we were brothers.

  He was very brave, but he was cruel and ugly too. He threw a cat off the roof once. He liked to set fires too.

  Even when we were real little kids, he was like that. You know how kids have their games…their superstitions? Step on a crack, break your mother's back? Bobby saw Joey skipping down the sidewalk one day and he called him a girl for it. Joey got mad, but he didn't want to fight Bobby. Nobody did. Anyway, he explained it to Bobby…he wasn't skipping like a goddamned girl, he was just making sure his mother was safe.

  Bobby said it was okay. He even said he was sorry for calling Joey a girl.

  3

  My mother was giving me cocoa the next morning like she always does when it's cold.

  "I saw your pal Bobby early this morning, Jason, when I first got up. He was practicing."

  "Practicing what, Mom?"

  "I don't exactly know….It looked like hopscotch to me."

  Bobby hadn't said anything to me about practicing. I knew he wouldn't play hopscotch….Only girls did that.

  I couldn't sleep that night. I know Mom always got up real early. It wasn't even light outside sometimes. She had to do everything in the house before she went to work.

  I was up even before Mom the next morning. I looked out the window but we were up too high to see much of anything. I put on my coat and went downstairs. Bobby was there, alright, just like Mom said. He was running down the sidewalk back and forth, but he was running funny, like he was drunk.

  "What are you doing, Bobby?" I asked him, stepping out.

  His face got all red. For a minute, I thought he was going to come at me.

  "It's a secret, Jason."

  I walked over to him. "Tell me, Bobby. You know I'd never tell. You're my pal."

  "You'd tell," he said.

  I didn't say anything–I just walked away. The wind was cold–it made my eyes water.

  I heard him coming after me but I didn't even turn around. I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, Jace."

  "I never told, Bobby. Not about anything. N
ot even about the cat…"

  "Shut up. I know. I said I was sorry, didn't I? Stop crying."

  "I'm not crying!"

  "You are!"

  I punched him in the face and then he did come at me. I was doing good for a while but he was stronger and finally he got me down.

  "You give?" He held his fist right over my face.

  "No!"

  But the punch never came. He got off me. After a while, I got up.

  "It was a tie," Bobby said. "Even up. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said. "You want to come up for some cocoa?"

  4

  Upstairs, my mother looked at my clothes and asked me what happened. Bobby told her some other kids jumped us and we fought them.

  "I don't like you to fight, Jason," Mom said. "But it's good you and Bobby stick up for each other."

  She washed my face and put orange stuff on the cuts. She washed Bobby's face too. He didn't try to stop her.

  After Mom went to work, we had some cookies and then we went in my room so I could put on my school clothes.

  "Jason…"

  "What?"

  "You know what I was doing this morning?"

  "You don't have to…"

  "I want you to know. I want somebody to know. You're my

  pal, like you said. You know what I was doing out there? Trying

  to step on every single fucking crack in the sidewalk."

  It was the meanest thing I ever heard anyone say.

  5

  Later, I asked my mother. She told me it was just a stupid superstition–it didn't mean anything. "Bobby could step on every sidewalk in the city, honey," she told me, "and it wouldn't break his mother's back. It's just a saying, not a truth."