Bronx Noir

Fourth snapshot. We’re in KFC on Gun Hill because the lighting sucks, and we’re eating and fooling around. When he isn’t pissed, or scared, or just in a mood to fuck things up, Gary is the funniest person to be around. And that place, especially in the darker corners round back, is one of those places where he can be himself. He lets out this nervous little laugh and says, “Boy, if some people ever find out, especially me girlfriend them, I don’t know if they’d kill themselves or me first. Then again, they wouldn’t believe it even if they heard it from my own mouth.”

“That you are a faggot?”

“I not no bombo raas claat faggot!” This he says to me even though, for the entire time we have been here, his hand hasn’t left my balls. This is not the kind of situation to get him mad.

“You can call a hardcore gangster faggot?”

“Well, you’re not feeling up a pussy.”

I shouldn’t have said that. He grabs hard, and pain, fucking splitting pain that feels as if something is clawing its way through my stomach, causes me to double over on the table.

“Sorry, sorry…” he says, and he sounds as surprised at what he did as I am. I stomp his foot hard.

“No, you not, you son of a bitch.”

He looks at me long and hard, then lets out a loud laugh. “Well, you certainly go on like a pussy sometimes. Look, how much time you want me to say sorry? Shit, you can gwaan like girl eeh, man? All this intense fuckery. Me can’t deal with that. Look, I have to go do some business, me’ll see you when me see you.”

Three weeks later he shows up at the room we’re staying, almost unconscious, trembling and bleeding. I will never forget the look he had on his face as long as he lets me live. Almost as if he saw God or something much worse. And he’ll never forgive me for seeing him that way. I knew that he barely got away from something. I put him to bed and have to hush him three times when he wakes screaming that they’re out ? get him wid forty-four bullets. You’d think he was reduced to nothing but a little flower in the palm of my hand and all that was left for me to do was to make a fist.

My name is Rockford Goodman. My mother thought she was being cute naming me after The Rockford Files. Even at her most depressed she was superficial that way. Gary calls me Rock and I’m not sure why either. Rockford sounds like shit, I know, so either he can’t be bothered with saying the whole name or maybe he thinks I have some inner strength or something. Right. He’s probably calling me Rock Hudson. I go back home. He’s either waiting for me or coming for me. One or the other.

Fifth Snapshot. I’m alone in this house and can still see the bloodstains. On the living room wall where Andre took the house rifle and shot Daddy in the shoulder. Andre didn’t know all that much about guns so he threw it away and went for a hatchet in the kitchen. By the time he found it, Daddy had already made the mistake to run upstairs. I can bet he was screaming. He must have grabbed the wall to support himself, because it had frantic bloodstains, which have fear written deep in them. Fear written deep. Clever. Man, I should be a writer. A blood trail leads halfway to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. It begins again and continues to Diane’s room. There’s blood in the closet. This strikes me as so damn ironic that he would run for safety into a closet that couldn’t save any of us.

I imagine it happened the same way. He’d be crouched under the musty clothes, so shit-scared that he wouldn’t even realize that his own blood was ratting him. Andre would open the door, and Daddy would see him, and that would be the last thing he saw before his eyes went red. I can imagine the hatchet becoming a part of him with a life of it’s own; taking control of his actions and plunging into flesh like a jackhammer. It feels as if it commands you and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Actually, I didn’t say any of that shit, but the criminal psychologist did, at his trial. Personally, I think that is all bullshit. I don’t think he lost it when he killed my parents. I don’t think he was possessed by some temporary insanity or some Night Stalker bullshit. I think he just had enough. He told the court that he knew how Jane Fonda felt in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? My brother was tried as an adult and is serving two life sentences.

I wonder where Gary is. I wonder why this kinda exhilarates me, and I don’t use that word every day. Maybe he’s doing something that he always wanted, some kinky shit that he’ll take too far. Maybe he’ll enjoy it. He always talks about taking some asshole out in Kingston and how he’ll let him bargain for his life by sucking him off, then kill the guy anyway.