“Yeah,” Chubster chimed in. “What do you think you’re the Roach, wearing that?”
I stopped a few feet away. Close enough to smell the body odor of the pubescent punks. Close enough for them to whiff the whiskey on my breath.
“What happened to make you two like this?” I asked. “Mommy didn’t give you enough milk?” My gaze fell toward their nether regions. “Or maybe you inherited something a bit too small from daddy.”
“Bum’s got a mouth on him, huh?” the leader said. “What, you think I won’t hit you cause you’re in a wheelchair?”
“Trust me,” I said. “This chair is the only thing keeping you from being sent home crying. Now, leave the kid alone and beat it.”
“Or you’ll what?” He circled around behind me, cackling. “Run over my foot?” He shoved my wheelchair hard, and his sidekick caught it by the armrests on the other side.
“Yeah, what’re you gonna run over our feet?” the chubby kid said.
“I just said that, moron.”
“The next one of you who touches me is going to need a cast,” I growled.
“Oh yeah?” the chubby one poked me in the side of the head. He beamed ear-to-ear afterward, like he’d just won a gold medal in being an asshole.
All I could muster was a sigh. I used to take down drug lords, pimps, mobsters, and murderers. I used to make front-page news in the Iron City Bulletin.
He tried to poke me again, emphasize his point. He never made contact. Before he knew what hit him, I’d snapped the finger and shoved him into the wall. I went easy on him, made it a clean break. He wouldn’t need surgery or anything, but he’d damn sure learn a lesson.
“You crazy, old asshole!” he howled.
That was usually when things de-escalated these days. It took a special kind of dirtbag to strike a guy in a wheelchair, even in retaliation, but I’d apparently found them. The leader grabbed my chair’s push bars and tipped me over. His foot zoomed toward my gut. I caught it and twisted, flipping him to the ground. But, of course, he flailed like a wounded wildebeest, and his Doc Marten boots cracked me in the jaw.
As the Roach, I was as familiar with getting hit in the head as an NFL linebacker. No longer. Chubby-chubs jumped in while I was dazed. I took a fist to the head. A foot in the ribs—and those Docs were definitely steel-toed. I felt the bruising even through my suit.
I used my forearms, blocking as much as I could, educated by a lifetime of absorbing blows. But fighting isn’t like hopping back on a bike. It doesn’t just come back to you—especially when you’re drunk. The muscles I had that still worked were weak. Untrained.
When the assholes finally backed off, the one I’d injured said, “He ain’t getting back up, man.”
“Good. Old prick.” The leader spat on me, then they ran off. They had something to say to the underclassman they’d beaten on their way by, but my ears rang too loud to hear. All I noticed was the chubby one crunch his glasses, cracking the lenses and bending the frame.
With effort, I rolled onto my back. A bit of blood coated my gums with that all-too-familiar tang of iron. My first instinct was to laugh. It made my sore ribs sting, but I couldn’t help it.
“Thanks…” their victim, Isaac, muttered. His voice still hadn’t dropped despite his height.
My head lolled over, and I saw him kneeling nearby, scrounging up his broken glasses. He winced, then pulled his thumb in and sucked at it. Instead of prostrating himself at my feet, he looked like he wanted to hit me.
“My pleasure,” I replied.
“I was being facetious,” he said, emphasizing the word that was probably on his latest vocab test. “They’re gonna kick my ass even worse next time. Why couldn’t you just stay out of it?”
“I’m wondering the same thing.”
Isaac seemed fine in retrospect. Dog tags hung crookedly from the silver chain around his stringy neck. That was apparently what the bullies were trying to take from him: a memory of a father or someone else who’d died in a war that’d never affect us on this side of the pond. I couldn’t even remember which one was being fought.
He put his hand on my arm to help me up.
“Hands off, kid,” I said, slapping him away.
“You’re hurt.”
“I already got my ass kicked by two runts today. I don’t need a third helping me up like I’m some sort of cripple.”
“But… You are.”
I glared at him, and the color drained from his cheeks. Now that was the reaction I expected when people came face-to-face with me. The one I longed for. Isaac stayed quiet while I crawled across the pavement toward my chair. My head still rang, but I was able to flip it upright and position myself before it.
Then came the hard part: raising my booze-filled body sculpted from withering muscle and worthless legs I wasn’t sure why the doctors hadn’t just cut off. I got about halfway, arms shaking from the strain before Isaac assisted me the rest of the way. I didn’t notice until afterward since he’d grabbed my boots.
“I said not to touch me,” I snarled, giving him a shove. Even as weak as I was, it sent him stumbling and me rolling backwards.
“Fine,” Isaac groaned. “Whatever. I just couldn’t watch that anymore.”
“Yeah? Do me a favor, kid, so I don’t need to swoop in and save you again. Next time those two racist pricks try to steal that thing around your neck, kick ‘em in the nuts and run away. That’s the beauty of having legs.”
He stood tall, soft belly poking out from under a shirt one size too small. “My father told me never to back down.”
I eyed his dog tags. “Yeah? And look where that got him.”
I started to roll away just as Isaac’s eyes got watery, and his cheeks flushed red. I wished I could take it back. Sometimes, I snap, either because I drank too much, or the world is shit or any other of the million reasons. The kid didn’t deserve it, even if he was ungrateful for the help like everyone else in Iron City.
But good advice is good advice. Some people simply aren’t meant to fight, and even though he wasn’t the smallest kid for his age, he may as well have worn a note on his backpack that said BULLY ME. Others, well, I’m still kicking… figuratively speaking.
So much for that lucky reporter who might’ve found me washed up in the river.
CHAPTER
An empty bottle clinked against concrete. My eyes blinked open to see my empty, scarred palm where it had been. I never had many friends, but Jim, Jack, and Johnnie never let me down. The next best thing to ending my miserable life was whiskey—scotch, bourbon, didn’t matter. Getting lost in that amber hue…
I rubbed my face and went to swing my legs off my cot. They didn’t move. It was nothing new, but you’d think after five years, I would be used to it. From time-to-time, my mind would play tricks on me like I could still feel something. Phantom limbs, they call it. Man, the human brain is a fucking cunt.
Rolling off my floor-cot instead, I grabbed a chain hanging from the ceiling and used it to lift myself into my chair. I had no clue what time it was. Somehow, my Roach suit was off and tossed haphazardly on the floor. Fresh, purple bruises covered my ribs, accompanying a smattering of age-old scars.