by Richard Long
Every time he asked Sarah to tell him about his dad, she said something like, “He was really…funny,” and changed the subject. When Michael was a teenager, he finally got her to admit they were never married. When he kept nagging her, she said he died in a car accident while she was still pregnant. She cried when she said it, but there was something about her tone that made him wonder if she was lying. He was never able to get her to talk more about his dad, because she died in a car accident the next week. With Michael driving. On angel dust. He slammed into a telephone pole at sixty miles an hour. He barely had a scratch on him. His mother wasn’t so lucky.
When Michael looked over, her chin was slumped against her chest. “Mom?” he cried out for the first time in years. “Mom?”
When he lifted her head, it was easy to see why she hadn’t answered. Her neck was broken so cleanly that her head fell backwards…and backwards…until it finally came to rest between her shoulder blades. Michael stared at his mother’s dead open eyes as she stared upside down at the seat behind her.
He ran. And never stopped. He thought he was running from the cops, that he would have been thrown in jail for murdering his own mother, for driving into that fucking pole while he was so fucked up. He needn’t have worried. They wouldn’t have found any booze on his breath, let alone any angel dust in his bloodstream. They wouldn’t have even tested him for it. But Michael ran and ran, stealing food out of trashcans, hiding from a non-existent manhunt, sleeping under trees, collecting emergency food stamps and trading them for cash at fifty cents on the dollar. Alone. Always alone.
Paul watched the young man’s eyes glaze, waiting for them to refocus before asking, “What’s the matter, son? Did I strike a nerve? Did your dear old daddy let you down?”
“I never knew him,” Michael sniffled, turning away. “My mom died last year.”
“An orphan…” Paul gasped. “Oh, you poor dear lad. That’s just awful.”
“Yeah,” Michael nodded, oblivious to Paul’s sarcastic overtones. “It totally sucks.”
“Bet it makes you angry too.”
“Yeah, I guess it does,” Bean replied, the old memories nudged aside from the elbow and the surging anger that accompanied Paul’s question.
“It should,” Paul shouted, slapping him on the back, happy to be back on track again. “Anger is the best emotion for focusing your awareness. Considering our topic today, I can’t think of a better way for us to begin your lessons.”
“Huh?” What had they been talking about?
“Being a man. A tough guy. That’s our theme! What do you think being a man is all about, Michael?”
Bean looked at Paul’s face blankly, unable to get his brain engaged enough to even think about an answer. He squirmed instead and shook his head dumbly.
“Courage,” Paul said softly. “That’s what separates the boys from the men. Isn’t that why you came here, lad? Isn’t that what you wanted to learn?”
Michael moved his head silently again, this time up and down.
“Good. Then we’re ready to begin. Like all good lessons, the first one begins with a question: Do you notice anything unusual about my hands?”
Holy shit! He hadn’t even noticed them before. “You don’t have any fingernails,” Michael stammered, looking at the huge mitts Paul was holding in front of his face.
Paul grinned so widely that it looked like his cheeks might split in half. “Can you imagine how painful it would be to have someone pull out all your fingernails?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Paul really wanted him to think about it.
“No,” Bean blurted out, much too quickly for Paul’s taste.
He breathed a long, heavy sigh to give Michael more time to fully consider the horror of what he was seeing. “Would you like to?” Paul asked after a twenty-second pause.
“No!” Michael shouted, squirming in fear.
“Ha! I can’t imagine that you would, my boy. But let me tell you two little secrets.…”
He paused and the grin fell from his face like a blanket of snow swiped off a windshield. “Once you’ve experienced that level of pain, it changes you forever. You’ll never be afraid again…at least not in the same way you’ve always experienced fear. That’s the first secret.”
“What’s the other one?” Michael asked, the perfect straight man.
Paul smiled and said, “It hurts a little less when you do it yourself.”
I started with my back. I was still a little tentative in those days, so if I really couldn’t stand to look at it afterwards, I wouldn’t have to.
It’s hard for me to remember how scary it was at the time. Now it makes me laugh just to think about it. Of course, the fear couldn’t begin to contend with my newfound enthusiasm. I was so inspired by everything I’d seen. Those pictures. Those people. Real people. Not being tortured or forced in any way. People with the courage and daring to do it themselves.
Now it was my turn. I knew where I’d be going for my tattoos, but first I had to find a decent enough electrolysis person to get the hair out of my back. Where does that hair come from? On your shoulders, for Chrissakes! Anyway, it all had to go.
The pain from the electrolysis was a good warm-up for all the fun that followed.
When that big fat Russian woman bent over to zap the first wiry cocksucker out of my life, I smiled. I’m not a pain freak, mind you. Not exactly. I definitely wasn’t back then. But I was proud that I could endure so much of it.
Then there’s The Zing, that corkscrew windup like all your senses are turning inside out. Where your body screams from the attack and another part screams back even louder. And in between each poke and stab and burn, I said my little prayer:
I am the Hammer and the Nail.
The Hammer and the Nail!
And I am something more than both.
I am the Wood.
“Ouch!” Michael cried.
“Ouch?” Paul sneered incredulously while Michael’s face turned red with shame. “Is that how you squeal at the tattoo parlor while everybody’s watching?”
Paul was giving a demonstration in what he called “temporary piercings.” As usual, his lesson began with a speech: “The secret to being a tough guy…is to be really tough. Being proficient in the deadly art of combat helps ensure your safety and builds your confidence—and it’s always a comfort to know that if you get in a little scrap, you’re the one who walks out of the bar with the greatest number of teeth in your head. But the real secret to being tough, being a man, lies more in your ability to receive pain than inflict it. Any punk can sneak up behind you and pull a trigger. But only a real man can take the shot, turn around without a whimper or a sniffle, rip the pistol from his hand and beat him over the head with it until his brains spill onto the sidewalk in a wrinkled pile of pink slush. You get my point?”
Michael laughed. He did. This guy was totally wacko…but was he cool or what?
Paul laughed with him, then cut it short. “If you want to be a real man, the first enemy you must conquer isn’t pain—it’s your fear of pain. How do you think we do that?”
Michael didn’t bother answering. Even the question was scaring him.
“Practice, practice, practice!” Paul shouted, laughing till he coughed. “You’ve already begun that journey, with all your piercings. It can’t feel too good when that needle goes in.”
“Fuck no!” Michael said proudly. “But once you get used to it, it’s not that bad.”
“And the more you practice, the easier it gets, until the pain changes into something that doesn’t really hurt.”
“Yeah!” Michael chimed in. “Like, when I had my nipples done. It hurt like hell, but it also felt kinda good in a weird way too.”
“And when the pain feels good, you feel stronger, until you realize you’re not afraid of going back for another poke of the needle—you want to!”
“No doubt, dude,” Michael agreed, giggling again. “You really know your shit!”
Paul laughed. He liked this one. What a kook. “So, are you ready for some practice?”
“Uh…okay,” Michael sputtered. Then he saw what Paul was holding.
“Go ahead, pick it up,” Paul told him. It was a long steel rod, about an eighth of an inch thick at the base, tapering to an extremely sharp point. Michael lifted it and gulped. It was really sharp. Paul smiled, took it from his hands and held it an inch from Bean’s left eye. Michael turned away involuntarily, but Paul grabbed his chin and yanked it front and center.
God, this fucker is strong! Bean panicked, his warm and fuzzy feelings about his new father figure galloping off down a dusty road. What’s he going to do to me?
“I’m not going to do anything,” Paul said, like he could read his mind. “You are.”
“What the fuck?” Michael gasped, unsure if it was a question or an answer.
“Like this,” Paul said, spreading his fingers apart. He pointed the metal tip at the web of skin connecting his thumb and index finger. On Paul, it looked like the pocket of a baseball mitt. “You should be good at this,” he said. Then he pushed the tip through the web of skin as easily as a hot knife cuts through butter. No hesitation. No groaning. No nothing.
“Whoa, dude!” Michael shouted as Paul kept pushing and then pulling from the other side until the rod came all the way out again. There wasn’t even any blood.
“Pretty cool, eh?” Paul said with a wink, relishing the boy’s admiration.
“Way cool!” It was like watching Moses on the mountaintop.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Paul said with a bow. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Ouch!” Michael shouted on his first attempt. After Paul’s response, he did better on the second try. He wasn’t able to pull it all the way through, but managed to push it in far enough for Paul to give him a nod of approval. To Michael, it was better than an Oscar. He was about to push it in again when Paul stopped his hand.
“That’s enough for now. There’s more fun to be had, but first you have a decision to make. You can leave right now, or you can stay. If you stay, you’ll do everything I tell you, no matter what, without question or debate. In return, I’ll teach you things you never dreamed were even possible…and give you my complete protection.”
Michael mouthed the words “complete protection” as he stared at the darkened doorway leading to his dingy room downstairs. Of all the boasts Paul tossed around, this one seemed the most plausible and desired. “I could use some fucking protection,” Michael replied, making his second mistake of the day and the biggest one of his life.
“Good!” Paul shouted, shaking Michael’s hand way too hard. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much time, lad. Normally I’d spend years training a promising lad like yourself, but I’m afraid providence demands a much more abbreviated schedule.”
Training? Providence? Schedule? What the fuck was he talking about?
“Let me cut right to the point,” Paul said, sweeping his arm like he was erasing a cluttered blackboard. “Have you ever wanted to kill someone?”
Michael’s mouth hung open, but nothing came out.
“C’mon, lad. Like I said, we don’t have much time, and no time at all for bull crap.”
“Yes,” Michael said, not believing he admitted it.
“Good boy. That’s the only honest answer any man could give, because there’s not a single breathing one of us that hasn’t thought about killing someone at least once in his life. Now here’s the more important question: Why didn’t you?”
Michael laughed. He thought Paul was joking. Until he looked in his eyes. “Fuck, dude! Because I don’t want to go jail!”
“Of course not!” Paul roared back. He seemed so happy that Michael smiled along with him. “But what if you couldn’t be caught? What would stop you then?”
“Because it’s wrong, dude! You don’t go around killing everybody you’re pissed at!”
“I do,” Paul said quietly. Then he corrected himself. “Well, not everyone. I’ll need a nuclear arsenal for that. Everyone I really want to.”
“Dude, I’m out of here,” Bean said, jumping from the couch.
Paul slammed him back down to the couch like he was swatting a fly. “Could it be you’ve abandoned your pledge so quickly? In my clan we take our vows with the utmost solemnity. To break an oath is unthinkable, and those that do suffer the harshest of reprisals, dealt by the very hand of destiny itself.”
“But I can’t…I don’t want to kill anyone,” Michael sputtered.
“Of course you do,” Paul said with a finality that left no room for further argument. “You just need to give yourself permission. I told you we don’t have any time for nonsense, Michael. So sit, listen and learn.”
Michael sat, freaked out of his gourd at the direction their conversation had taken—and the vow that loomed over his head like a gleaming guillotine blade. He hadn’t thought that one out too carefully, had he?
“Here’s another way to look at it…” Paul continued, his smile back in full bloom as he rose from the couch, pacing in long strides as he spoke. “Let’s say you were drafted into the army and sent halfway around the world to shoot, stab and drop huge, fiery bombs on people you didn’t even know, much less have any grudge against. Worse yet, let’s say your virtuous government actually made up a great big pack of lies to justify why it was so necessary for you to risk your life and claim the souls of all those completely innocent victims. Even with all that bullshit, it would still be okay for you to march over there, point your rifle at someone’s unlucky head, pull the trigger and blow his brains out, right? And why? Because you’re a soldier. You’re under orders. It isn’t just okay for you to kill those people. It’s your duty!”
“Yeah, that’s some pretty fucked-up shit,” Michael agreed, his smile slowly returning, though much shakier with the reminder of his promise still ringing in his ears.
“Fucked up, indeed. What gives your not-so-freely-elected government the right to tell you when it’s your duty to kill someone…and then, using the same false claim of authority, command you to die in the electric chair for having the gall to pick your own battles, to wage wars of your own choosing, against your own enemies, against the people who threaten your life directly, not in some abstract sense, veiled with obscene notions of honor and righteousness—real people—who mean real harm to yourself, your family, and the noble principles of your own calling. What if you had a new country, with its own rules and regulations, its own mandate of authority? What if you were a soldier in your own war—and not a foot soldier either—a general? Would it be okay for you to take a life in the due course of achieving your own strategic objectives? Or would it be even more than okay? Perhaps it would it be your divine right…your duty!”
Michael sat mesmerized, more terrified and excited than he’d ever felt before. What Paul was saying spat in the face of every conventional notion of morality that had been stuffed into his brain since he was old enough to think. Yet it made so much sense!
“Aye, son. Freedom is a terrible responsibility,” Paul said kindly. “But don’t be afraid. Least not of me. I’m here to help in a way that no one else in this awful world can.”
“What are you saying, man?” Michael implored, his anxiety mounting by the second.
“What I’m saying is this: The world is a very scary place for all of the sheep. But for the wolves…it’s paradise.”
Something clicked in Bean’s head the instant those words snaked into his ears. He looked at Paul and a change came over him he couldn’t have explained in a thousand years. He felt full to the brim with all the seething adolescent rage he’d been suppressing since puberty. He conjured up visions of all the schoolyard bullies who teased him for being too pretty, the girls who hosed him and the stupid teachers who didn’t know shit about shit.
Then he imagined what he really wanted to do to them. One of his oldest, darkest, hidden fantasies involved coming in to school for “show and tell” with an AK-47
and demonstrating how efficiently it put holes into all of his mean, shitty, stuck-up classmates’ heads. He thought about the shooting in Summerville High School when he was a teenager. He felt sad when he heard the news, but he also felt weird that he didn’t feel as sad as everybody else in school seemed to feel. What he mostly felt was jealous. Now here was this man, this crazy man, who admitted he was a stone-cold killer right to his face, looking at him like he was proud of it. Proud!
Paul watched Michael’s face like a giant leering pumpkin. He could see the gears turning in his head and gave them plenty of time to grind before continuing. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, Michael, but once upon a time I was a shy, skinny, frightened boy…no bigger or braver than yourself.”
“No way,” Michael said emphatically, shaking his head.
“Yes way,” Paul nodded just as vigorously. “But I had an advantage you didn’t.”
“What’s that?” Michael asked, trying to imagine Paul as a shy, skinny kid.
“I had a father,” Paul replied softly.
Michael felt the tears well up. It was so unexpected that he was as shocked as he was ashamed. He covered his sobbing red face with both his hands and hung his head.
“There, there, dear boy,” said Paul, scooping up his chin with those blunt fingers. “There’s no shame in crying. Once. Go ahead and let all the pain out, so you can fill that old aching hole with your newfound gift.”
“What gift?” Michael blubbered, trying to hide his tears from Paul’s unwavering gaze.
“You’re not alone anymore. And you’ll never be alone again.”
