Lord of the Ralphs

by John McNally

  I was beginning to focus too intensely on the bulb, a dim yellow hole burning into my field of vision, when I caught Kelly, my sister, glaring at me from the kitchen. She slid open the glass door, glared harder, and said, “Hank, is that you?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s John Gacy, serial killer!”

  Kelly stared blankly in my direction. She never laughed at my jokes, never thought what I said was funny. Dad called her a literalist. A dog’s dog, I thought. She stepped outside, leaving Mom alone at the kitchen table, and shut the door behind her.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “Vamoose,” she said.

  “Bowling?”

  “Sure,” she said, as if she knew things about Dad that I didn’t, but I decided not to press. Kelly walked over to where I was sitting, and without looking at me, she said, “I’m depressed.”

  “Me, too,” I said, smiling.

  “No you’re not,” she said. “I’m depressed.” From her back pocket she pulled a folded, soggy sheet of paper. She handed it to me and said, “I’m manic-depressive.”

  What she’d given me was a photocopy of a page from the dictionary, the definition for manic-depressive.

  “Wow,” I said, impressed by the size of the words, the jumbo letters blurry on the paper.

  “It’s chemical,” she said.

  “So,” I said. “You’re a depressed maniac.”

  “A manic-depressive, you clod.”

  “Who knows,” I said. “Maybe I’m a manic-depressive, too.”

  She rolled her eyes and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “How would you know?”

  She sighed and took back her definition. She folded it carefully and stuck it into her back pocket. “A manic-depressive can always spot another manic-depressive,” she said. “And you’re not a manic-depressive.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m double-jointed.” I showed her my knuckles and began popping one in and out of place.

  She groaned and said, “Goodbye,” though it had come to mean something far more than goodbye—a word so weighted, it was meant to send me off somewhere far away from her.

  “Adios,” I whispered, and Tex, collector of bones, walked into the semicircle of light, another one clamped in his jaws, his eyes glowing red like the sole demon from a bad family snapshot.

  Ralph hopped a fence whose gate he could’ve simply opened. He walked over to the chaise and nudged me with his foot. He was starting to grow wispy sideburns. The shadow of a weak mustache clung to his upper lip. Today he was wearing a skintight lime-green T-shirt that said South Side Irish, though technically we lived on the southwest side of Chicago and Ralph was Lithuanian.

  “Ralph,” I said. “The fence has a latch.”

  “Latch snatch,” he said, speaking a language I knew and didn’t know at the same time. He walked over to the sliding glass door to peek in on my mother who was staring at the table. Whenever she did this, she reminded me of Superman boring holes through steel with his eyes.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Ralph asked, serious now, backing slowly away from the house.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s probably a manic-depressive or something.”

  Ralph nodded as though he’d heard of such things before. He shut his eyes and let the full impact of my mother’s life soak into him like a hot breeze. Then he pulled a fluffer-nutter sandwich wrapped in cellophane from his back pocket, peeled back the plastic, and stuffed half of it into his mouth.

  “My sister is a manic-depressive,” I said. “Do you believe that?”

  Ralph’s jaw went slack, and in the dark hollow of his mouth, I saw swirls of marshmallow fluff and peanut butter and long strings of spit connected like cobwebs from his tongue to his teeth.

  “Unless she’s pulling my leg,” I added.

  “Oh,” Ralph said and shut his mouth, as if amazement and disappointment were the pulleys working his jaw. “You want to know something?” he said. “I wouldn’t mind getting to know your sister better.”

  Ralph was always talking about getting to know my sister better—this was old news—so I yawned and said, “What’s the game-plan tonight, Ralph?”

  “Well,” Ralph said, “my aunt and uncle and their idiot kid are on vacation, and they asked me to feed their dog.”

  “They asked you?”

  He stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth, wiped his palms onto his jeans, and said, “Yeah. They asked me. What’re you sayin’?” He pushed me hard with both palms.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with somebody askin’ me to take care of their ugly, mangy, flea-infested pet, huh?” He pushed me again.

  “Cut it out, Ralph.”

  Ralph smiled now and winked at me. He was like that. He’d beat you up one minute, buy you an ice cream cone the next.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  It was seven o’clock and dark, the last splotch of light disappearing even as we spoke. Ralph and I headed down Menard, walking fast as always, hands jammed deep into our pockets.

  We walked to the part of town where people left junk all over their yards and porches—washers and dryers, Big Wheels with broken handlebars or cracked seats, roofing shingles piled against houses—a part of town where things were either missing or broken.

  Ralph bent over and picked up two rusty nuts and a screw. He gave me one of the nuts, and I began rubbing it between my two palms.

  A small boy approached on a Schwinn Continental, his legs barely long enough to reach the pedals. When he got close enough, Ralph stepped in front of him and raised his palm up, the way a traffic cop would. Then he took hold of the kid’s handlebars and said, “Hey. Where’d you get this bike?”

  The boy said, “It’s my brother’s.”

  “Uh-uh,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “It’s mine, and I think it’s time you give it back.” Ralph walked behind the boy, looped his arms under the boy’s armpits, pressing his palms firmly against the boy’s neck, then lifted him off the bike. It was a smooth move, and though I didn’t think Ralph should have done it, it was as impressive as anything I’d seen lately on Sunday afternoon wrestling.

  Ralph sat on the bike, squeezed the brakes twice, and said, “Hey, Hank. Watch this.” He pedaled hard up and down the street, yelling, “Look! I’m Evel Knievel!” He popped a wheelie, rode it high for a long time, then fell completely backwards, off the bike, cracking his head against the asphalt. The Schwinn wobbled a ways before smashing into a parked car.

  “I think I’ve got a concussion,” Ralph said. He stood and brushed himself off. His hair was matted to the back of his head. Silently, without any warning, he started walking away.

  The boy, still on the ground, kept sobbing. I wasn’t sure why, but I gave him the nut I’d been holding.

  Ralph scratched his head several times where a dark stain had begun to grow. I kept up with him, in case he died. Ten blocks later, I said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Done what?”

  “Scared that kid.”

  “What kid?” Ralph asked. “I don’t remember any kid.”

  “No one likes a bully,” I said.

  Ralph said, “Are you still talking about that kid?”

  We walked until we ended up in the alley behind Lucky’s Tavern. Lucky’s was on the far edge of town—“a dive,” my mother called it, “a dive where nothing but a bunch of ignorant rednecks go.” Whenever Mom said this, Dad laughed. Dad spent a lot of time at Lucky’s, and the idea of rednecks going there apparently cracked him up. I’d never been inside Lucky’s, but every time we drove by I stared through the dark-tinted windows, beyond the beer advertisements, hoping to see what a bunch of ignorant rednecks looked like. The few times I could see—hot nights when the door was propped open—what I saw were two old men sitting at opposite ends of the bar along with the bartender perched on a wooden stool next to the cash register, his head tilting back to watch the TV suspended above him, nobody mov
ing. It reminded me of something I might have seen behind glass at the Field Museum downtown, a moment in history frozen in time and place: Lucky’s Tavern, the sign would have read. A bunch of ignorant rednecks. 1979.

  When Ralph and I arrived at Lucky’s tonight, the alley was empty.

  “Not much happening,” I said.

  “Take a load off,” Ralph said, and he sat next to the Dumpster, hiding behind a stack of flattened boxes and a large wire rack of some sort, a magazine rack, probably.

  Ralph said, “Give me the lowdown on your sister. We’re practically the same age, you know.” Ralph shifted on the gravel, stretching his legs, trying to get comfortable. When it came to Kelly, Ralph believed anything I told him, and normally I told him the truth. Today, however, I decided to make things up, saying whatever came to mind.

  “She’s got only one kidney,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “She wet her bed until my mother bought her a rubber blanket.”

  Ralph said nothing, savoring the thought.

  “She sleeps on her back and snores like a pig.”

  “I wouldn’t mind listening to that sometime, if you can arrange it,” Ralph said.

  I said, “She’s really only my half-sister. We’ve got different fathers. Mom married some other guy first. Then she fooled around with my dad, and whammo, she got knocked up.”

  Ralph said, “So what happened to Kelly’s dad?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows. He was a drifter.”

  Ralph said, “Now that you mention it, I can see your mother with some drifter freak. No offense, but she’s the type.”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow, Hank,” Ralph said. “Your family’s more twisted than mine.”

  But then I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t keep the lie inside, smothered where it belonged. So I told Ralph that I was lying, smiling as I confessed. He reached over and grabbed my neck. He choked me harder than I expected, pushing his thumb into my windpipe, blocking the passage of air. When he let go, he said, “You shouldn’t lie about your mom.” And that was all he said.

  My throat kept throbbing, phantom fingers squeezing my neck between heartbeats, giving me the creeps. Then, at long last, the back door to Lucky’s creaked open, though all that appeared at first were four fingertips clutching the door’s edge.

  “I should go over there and bite them,” Ralph whispered. He bared his teeth like a werewolf and moved toward my forehead. I yelled, and the man stepped around the door, a beer bottle dangling next to his leg from the tips of his fingers, a cigarette bent upward from his lips, the way FDR smoked. It was my dad. He stood there in the light, squinting at us, until he recognized us and smiled.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  Ralph said, “Hey, Mr. Boyd.”

  Dad didn’t seem a bit surprised to see us there, all the way across town, half underneath a Dumpster. He said, “How’re you boys doin’?”

  Ralph said, “Just hanging out. Looking for drifters.”

  Dad chuckled, but I doubt he knew what Ralph meant. No one ever seemed to know what Ralph meant.

  Dad shook his head and flicked away his cigarette butt—a long, high arc, soaring like a bug on fire, landing in somebody’s backyard. Whenever Dad did this, I was afraid he was going to set the whole city on fire, the way Mrs. O’Leary’s cow had set the city on fire a hundred years ago. Dad said, “Petey pulled a straight out of nowhere. Do you believe that? Out of nowhere. And to think, I dealt it to him.”

  I didn’t know anyone named Petey. In fact, I never knew any of the people Dad mentioned.

  “Snake-eyes!” Ralph yelled. “The doctor! Bingo!”

  “A straight!” my father said, wagging his head.

  “Yowza!” Ralph said. He raised his palm into the air, as if to high-five, and said, “My main most man!”

  My father pointed his forefinger at Ralph and fired it like a gun. Then he looked at me and said, “Are you gonna be home later tonight?”

  It was a stupid question: I’d never not come home for the night. But I nodded and said, “Yeah. Sure.”

  “We need to talk, son,” he said. He raised his arm to wave goodbye and said, “We’ll talk tonight,” then stepped back into the bar, the heavy door slamming hard behind him.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Everyone wants to talk to me.”

  “You’re like Ann Landers or something,” Ralph said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think they want my advice.”

  We took alleys to Ralph’s aunt and uncle’s house, and when we reached it, we approached from behind. At the back door Ralph tried the doorknob, then jerked a screwdriver from his pants.

  “What’s that for?”

  “They forgot to give me a key,” Ralph said. He jammed the screwdriver between the door frame and the door, and started prying.

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t do that. You’ll bust up the woodwork.”

  “Listen, Einstein,” he said. “What do you think they’ll be more upset about—a broken door or a dead dog? Huh?” Ralph continued wiggling the screwdriver back and forth, pushing with all his weight, until the door finally popped open. He stepped inside and said, “Voila!”

  Ralph switched on a light and began searching the house. I stood in the kitchen, looking around for the dog food bowls, the dog food, and the dog. I checked the kitchen countertop for a note, directions on dog maintenance, but couldn’t find one. I went to the living room and said, “Here, pooch. Here, poochy pooch.”

  The house looked exactly like all of my Italian friends’ houses—furniture covered in see-through plastic; bisque figurines decorating the end-tables; a three-dimensional Last Supper hanging above a humongous TV console.

  “You sure we’re in the right house?” I yelled. “Nothing personal, Ralph, but this doesn’t look like the sort of place where one of your relatives would live. It’s too clean.”

  I stepped into the bedroom to keep giving Ralph a hard time, but he wasn’t listening: he was rifling through drawers, pulling everything out, and throwing it over his shoulder. He stood up and said, “What a dump.”

  “You’re the one messing it up,” I said.

  Ralph walked back into the living room, picked up a figurine of an old man wearing a straw hat and holding a fishing rod, and said, “Look at this crap. A house full of junk. And how much does this TV weigh? A gazillion pounds, probably. At least a gazillion.”

  “I can’t find the dog,” I said. “What kind of dog is it?”

  Ralph pulled a newspaper clipping from his pocket, uncrumpled it, and said, “Hey. Go out front and tell me what the address is. We might be in the wrong house.”

  “You’re kidding. Wrong house?” My heart began pounding.

  “Hank,” he said, looking at me for the first time since we’d entered the house. “You see anything that looks good?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cassette deck, turntable, ham radio?”

  “Ham radio? What’s a ham radio?”

  “Forget it,” Ralph said. “Just go check the address, okay?”

  “Ralph,” I said. “Where’s the dog?”

  “What dog?”

  I pointed to his newspaper clipping and said, “What’s this?”

  He handed it to me and said, “Here. I’m gonna look around some more. Now, go outside and see if this address matches the address outside. Is that too hard for you? Jeesh.”

  Ralph walked away, and I smoothed out the clipping. It was an obituary for a woman named Nadine Lorenz. I studied the dead woman’s address, looking for a mistake, but there was no mistake: we were inside her house. If the clock on the wall could be trusted, visitation hours were in full-swing this very second.

  When Ralph returned, he said, “So what’s the verdict?”

  I waved the clipping at him. “This is her house?”

  Ralph said, “Technically, no. Not anymore.”

 
; “Ralph,” I said. “We should leave.”

  He let out a long, disappointed sigh, the kind of sigh my father liked to make, and said, “You’re right. There’s nothing here but a bunch of old lady crap.” On his way out, he picked up a waffle iron and said, “How much you think these things go for?” He lifted it high into the air, over his head, and said, “This would make a great weapon. Someone screws with you, you pull this baby out and say, ‘Hey. You want a waffle?’ Then boom. You smash the dork in the face with it.”

  We stepped into the fresh air, and Ralph shut the now-busted door.

  “She was dead,” I said. “You broke into a dead woman’s house. That’s the lowest thing I ever heard of.”

  “I’ve heard of lower,” Ralph said.

  The waffle iron dangled beside Ralph’s leg, and every so often he chuckled, but I didn’t feel much like talking anymore. Each time he chuckled, I had a gut feeling Ralph wasn’t long for this world. Soon, I would have to make a decision: keep hanging out with Ralph or cut my losses. There were pluses to both sides. With Ralph, no one would mess with me; they’d know better. Without Ralph, I might stay alive longer, and my chances of doing any serious jail time would be kept to a minimum. These were the benefits, short- and long-term, and though it should have been an easy decision, I knew it wasn’t going to be. I liked Ralph. That was the sad part.

  Ralph stopped in the middle of the street, as though he’d read my mind, sensing his own mortality, and he touched his hair, sticky now from the blood where he’d fallen off the Schwinn. He said, “I got hit on the head once with a sledgehammer.”

  “Really,” I said. “Did it hurt?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  When we got to Ralph’s house, he opened the gate and shut it without offering to let me come inside. I’d never been any closer than where I stood today, and I’d never seen his mother, though I always suspected she was peeking out from between the thick crushed velvet curtains, watching our every move. He lived in a small house with gray, pebbly shingles covering the sides, and black shingles on the roof. The lawn was mostly dirt.