Eureka Man: A Novel Read Free Page A

estate of Dr. Samuel
Mudd, the man who had set the broken leg of the man who had
assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. “And you should see her
dance, Mrs. Plenty. She can sing and dance like you wouldn't
believe. As for my real father, his name was Ernie Boy and he left
us when I was five. Then we had a no-good stepfather whose name was
Ernie Boy also, so we called him Ernie Boy the Second. We, meaning
my older brother Skip and my older sister Anna. Anyway, to make a
long story short, Ernie Boy the Second liked to argue and fight all
the time. I could be sucking on a fireball and he would swear it
was a cherry bomb.”
    “I read in your file that you assaulted him,”
she said. “Is that true?”
    “Yes, well, I was protecting my mother, Mrs.
Plenty. See, things had been awfully bad at home for quite some
time, so my brother Skip and I were living with our grandfather at
the time. One afternoon I stopped in to check on my mother and
Ernie Boy the Second was there. He had her tied up in the dining
room with her clothes ripped off. He was lying on her back when I
broke a chair over his back. I swear I would have killed that
sucker if I had a gun, Mrs. Plenty.” As he was telling her these
things she let her fingers fall on the back of his neck and so
light was the touch that he let his head rest on her shoulder. He
kept it there until she told him he'd have to be going downstairs
soon and she had more work planned for him the next day.
    If walking out of her apartment at four
o'clock every afternoon was like coming off the lam, the rowdy boys
in the basement lavatory were like the hounds that tracked him
down. Every evening when he went there to shower or relieve
himself, he thought the crisscross of tips and advice he heard
sounded like a bunch of handicappers at a racetrack. Soap and water
removed the ink marks from used postage stamps so you could use
them again and a dab of toothpaste worked as well as a drop of glue
for securing the stamp to another envelope. Covering glass with
masking tape during a midnight burglary stopped the glass from
shattering and cut down on the noise. Pressing a double-edge razor
blade into the heated end of a toothbrush made a fine-ass
weapon.
    And spit worked as well as grease when there
wasn't any grease. The same boy Oliver saw bawling his eyes out the
day the barber plowed off his dreadlocks he saw on the shower floor
one night giving pleasure to the biggest boy in the cottage. Oliver
walked across the shower room as if the scene was something he'd
seen a hundred times before. He took the corner shower and watched
out of the corner of his eye as Jimmy Six spit into the palm of his
hand, stroked himself with it and then lay on the boy's back.
Oliver had heard stories about boys being sodomized, but he had
never witnessed the act before. As he watched Jimmy Six thrust
himself into the boy, he squeezed his own anus tighter than a vise.
For a split second the two exchanged glares and Jimmy's cold grey
eyes and feral grunts reminded Oliver of a junkyard dog he'd once
fought off with a tire iron.
     
    MRS. VIOLA PLENTY CONCEDED nothing but seemed uneasy
at the choice of leaving her sofa where it was or going downstairs
to find help moving it. When she said let's try one more time,
Oliver was all nods and conciliatory grunts. The sofa weighed a ton
and this time when she couldn't lift her end she went downstairs to
find someone to help them. Minutes later she returned with Jimmy
Six who was smiling like a mental patient. He picked up his end
like he was picking up a sock.
    “Over here against the wall, boys. Not too
close. Don't scuff the paint.”
    “How's that, Miss Plenty?” Jimmy Six
asked.
    “Okay, I guess. Now I'll have to figure out
what to do about those circles on the carpet.”
    “They'll go away in no time, Miss,” Jimmy Six
said. “I used to work for a moving company. Have Priddy here go
over them with the vacuum cleaner a few times and they'll disappear
before you know