Chapter 1: New in Town

I’ve always considered myself a peaceful man, even though I was a violent boy. I used to fight a lot when I was younger and all full of hormones, but by the time I got to high school I was so much bigger and stronger than the other dudes that I couldn’t fight anymore because I was afraid I might hurt somebody for real. At that point tough, I was getting laid pretty regularly and I wasn’t really angry anymore. I played football in college and learned how to manage my anger a little better. Even now when things get heated at work I can usually just stare people down. It’s one of the advantages of being one of the biggest guys in the mill. I don’t resort to violence anymore is what I’m trying to say. But that was before somebody hurt my kid.

My son Andy is fourteen and he’s bigger than all of the other kids in middle school, so I never had to teach him about bullies. I tried to teach him the self-control that I learned myself. I taught him not to pick on girls, kids with glasses, or kids that are smaller than him. Still, he’s a big kid and he has a temper so I expected to have some angry parents knock on my door sooner or later. That’s why I was so surprised when he came home with a black eye. I’ll never forget the day. Sherry and I had just watched the last episode of The Love Boat. It was kind of a letdown, but it was our favorite show so Sherry got a little misty. Andy’s football practice usually ended about the same time as The Love Boat, so he usually got home about fifteen minutes later. But that night he burst through the door right as the closing credits rolled, crying. Sherry went and checked him out and gasped. Andy had the biggest shiner I’d ever seen.

“Who did this to you?” I asked.

“The new kid,” he sobbed.

“In the pink house?” Sherry asked, grabbing an ice pack out of the freezer. “The Henderson’s old place?

Andy nodded. His eye was completely closed and there was dried blood around a split on the side. Andy calmed down a bit after dinner, and when he went upstairs to do his homework, Sherry and I hugged. He’d been a pretty easy kid to raise and this was the first serious drama that he’d put us through. “It looks like Andy’s not the biggest kid in school anymore,” I told Sherry.

Over the next few weeks, Andy’s eye started to heal up and he started taking his weight training a little more seriously. Getting beat up will have that effect on a boy. I kept an eye on the Henderson’s old place to get a look at the kid that cleaned Andy’s clock, but I only ever saw the mother and daughter. The mother was something else. She was a natural beauty with red hair done up like Farrah Fawcett. She had a tiny waist, but she had a round butt and huge breasts that bounced when she walked. The daughter looked to be about nine or ten, and if I’m being honest she looked to be developing pretty quickly under her ugly pink sweaters. She was going to need big boobs when she got older, though, because she had coke-bottle glasses and frizzy orange hair like a Muppet and looked to be about as wide as she was tall. I sent Sherry over with a casserole to say hello, just out of curiosity, but she only ever me the mom, Rachel. Rachel was apparently a real bitch.

As fall started to take over and the leaves started to change, Andy had more and more football practice. He was getting bigger, and Sherry and I joked that he wouldn’t be getting any more black eyes. At least until he came home early one day with a split lip and three teeth in his hand. “Is this the kid in the Henderson’s house again?” Sherry demanded.

Andy nodded.

“Well did the teachers at least suspend the little bastard?” she demanded.

Andy shook his head. “It was after school in the weight room. I was spending too much time on the bench press, I guess-”

“No, this is not your fault,” Sherry said. “Nick, go talk to those people-”

“Way ahead of you,” I said, because I already had my coat and hat on and was heading for the door.

I knocked firmly but not too forcefully on the door of the Hendersons’ old house. I had never had a discussion like this before, but I tried to remember what I overheard when other kids’ parents came to talk with my old man after I mopped the floor with them. Rachel opened the door. “Hello,” she said sourly. “What do you want?”

I stammered a bit. Rachel looked to be in her early 40’s, she was tanned to perfection, and she was gorgeous. She was wearing a red satin robe, and she was sweating. Little beads of perspiration dotted the enormous gulf of tanned cleavage that rose up out of the scarlet fabric.

“So you just came here to stare at my breasts?” she asked sourly. “How charming. Get the hell off my front porch.”

“Ma’am it’s about your son,” I finally blurted out.

“My ... son?”

“Yes. Look we got off on a bad foot. My name is Rick Parker. I live up the street in the blue house. My wife brought you a tuna casserole last week.”

“I’ll get your dish,” Rachel said coldly.

“Well the thing is I really need to talk to you and your husband about your son,” I said firmly, stepping toward the threshold.

Rachel stood her ground, and locked eyes with me. “I don’t have a husband or-”

“I apologize,” I said quickly. This conversation was getting more awkward by the moment. “Look your son has been getting into fights with my boy Andy, and I need to talk with you about how we’re going to fix this.

“Oh I get it,” Rachel said, laughing. She tossed her hair and her boobs jiggled sending rivulets of sweat running down into the valley of her cleavage. I couldn’t help but stare, and I couldn’t help but notice that she had some muscle holding up those massive funbags, too. I must’ve caught her in the middle of aerobics. “Come on in and close the door behind you,” Rachel said. It was hard not to stare at the shifting of her apple-shaped ass as she walked to the liquor cabinet in the corner of the front room and got out two glasses. “I hope you like Chivas,” she said.

“I would appreciate that Miss...”

“Finklestein,” she said, coming toward me with two glasses of brown liquor and two brown mounds of flesh slowly forcing their way out of her robe. “Dr. Finklestein, actually. But call me Rachel.”

“Thank you, Rachel,” I said.

“I apologize for my appearance,” she said, adjusting her robe to cover her assets, “but I was in the middle of my nightly workout.”

I laughed. I loved Sherry but I’m a big flirt at heart. I casually flexed my bicep as I raised my glass to take a drink. “I’m guessing that your ex-husband didn’t leave you voluntarily.”

Rachel Finklestein smiled a vicious ugly smile. “He couldn’t handle me,” she said.

I smiled back. “I’ll bet not. But really I want to talk about your son.”

“I don’t have a son, Mr. Parker. I have a daughter.”

I wasn’t expecting that. “I think I owe you an apology,” I said, and choked down the Chivas. “My boy told me that the kid who lives here gave him a black eye and split his lip.” I stood to leave.

“She probably did.” I froze and she smiled that vicious ugly smile again. “Becky’s quite the little scrapper.”

I laughed. “Becky? The little nine-year-old fat girl with the frizzy hair?”

Now it was Rachel’s turn to laugh. “No, Mr. Parker. Becky’s twelve and she’s not fat. She’s just developing ... differently than other girls her age.”