Usually, when Rex Tugwell tells me that I'm going to be gutted like a deer, he's just telling one of his "jokes" while he's "playing" with one of his sharp "knives." Therefore, when Rex came up to me the other day and said, "Someone wants to cut all your fingers off," I assumed that someone was him. No harm, no foul. It was after all, a Monday. When Marcel LeFarge told me a little later in the afternoon that, "Someone wants to bite your throat off and chew it on the grave of your ancestors," I was more concerned. I asked Marcel why he would want to do that to me. He said, "I don't want to, friend, but someone does." He then described the large man that had been pacing in the parking lot during the day shift muttering all kinds of horrifying things, and then stopping every man, woman, and child to see if they knew Cyrus Wetherbee.
Marcel asked me if I'd made any enemies lately, and I told him it was my unfortunate habit to make enemies all the time. It's generally not my fault. An involuntary, ill-timed laugh--"Oh my, I thought you were joking about your brother's suicide"--or an impetuous remark--"Sorry to interrupt, but please don't tell your kids the birds are playing. They're fighting to the death to see who gets to mate"--always lands me into trouble. Even when I'm with Sammy and Boyce, I'm the one that the drifter we pick up in Boyce's van always has a problem with.
I asked Marcel to describe the man to me, and he just said "unpleasant." I called Rex and his best description of the man was to laugh really hard into the telephone. I called Sammy and Boyce and told them someone's hanging around the Sleep Center that wants to hurt me very, very badly. Needless to say, they were both excited and promised their full support. Sammy said if I could beat a chimpanzee I could certainly beat a human being.
I always wanted to get into a fight when I was around Rachel. For months I had fantasized about defending her honor that I got so hungry for it, I kind of began instigating it. When a man bumped her at Pizza Hut, I asked him if he wanted to take this outside. Rachel told me to shut up, as the man was not only clearly elderly, but blind, too. It was in fact, not the man who had even brushed up against her, but his seeing eye-dog. When I asked the art museum's cashier if he wanted to fight, Rachel told me she would stop hanging around me if I didn't stop. To be fair, that cashier kept his hand in her palm for way too long when he gave her change. Turns out, no one ever really compromised Rachel's dignity. Sammy said he could hire one of his teenage workers from Arby's to say something horrible, but I said no since none of them were white.
I have tried to think of who I have offended so badly they would wait for me in the Sleep Center's parking lot. I have amassed the following list:
1. Someone hired by the ghost of my mother.
2. Rachel's priest.
3. The Saturday morning city bus driver who refused to take the nearly 10,000 coupons (valued 1/100 cent) that Sammy had spent four years collecting. To be fair, Sammy is more his target, but I did shout over his shoulder, "Can't you read?"
4. Mrs. Marley, my sixth grade teacher, who didn't appreciate that I couldn't stop laughing at the words "upcoming hysterectomy." They just sounded funny to me.
5. One of the guides at the Columbus Zoo's Habitat Hollow, when I demanded him to tell the children in the tour that some birds actually seemed to choose litter to make their nests with.
6. Drifters.
7. Most Brazilians.
8. My aunt's wedding DJ.
9. Whatever corporation owns the brand name Hot-Pockets.
10. The lady at the DMV who provided no real evidence that paramedics wouldn't choose to let me die so they could harvest my organs for oil tycoons and retired athletes.
