Chapter 6

"I'll get it," I said.

"No!" she hissed. "Don't answer it. Maybe he'll go away."

"Maybe you should take Timmy to your bedroom," I said. "I'll talk to Jack."

"Nooo," she said again.

The pounding came on the door again. "Open up, bitch!" yelled a male voice.

"Move it!" I snapped.

She grabbed Timmy's arm and headed for her bedroom.

I went to answer the door. I opened it. There was a pretty boy standing there.

In the Army, there is a type of civilian male that is sometimes called a "pretty boy." Another name for them is "Jody." These are the guys who come on to the girlfriends and wives of guys in the military, and take advantage of their circumstances. Like being lonely, or afraid, or in need of money.

We don't think much of pretty boys. They, on the other hand, think their shit doesn't stink. A lot of them are bullies, and they like pushing people around.

"Who the fuck are you?" said this pretty boy.

"We gave at the office," I said, and slammed the door in his face.

He started beating on the door and cursing up a storm, so I opened it again.

"You need to leave," I said. "You're trespassing."

He saw my cane, then.

A man with a cane is assumed, by many people, to be harmless. He is infirm, for one thing ... or looks infirm. His range of motion is limited, which people think means he can't move quickly. All in all, people disregard someone with a cane as being no threat.

He pushed past me, roughly elbowing me to one side. I let him.

"Out of my way, shithead," he said. "I come for my kid. Where is he?"

"Your kid isn't here," I said. "Your kid, assuming you ever actually got any woman pregnant, was aborted as soon as that woman figured out it was your kid."

He turned on me, his face red.

"Nobody wants to have your baby," I said, as if I was explaining it to a five year old.

"I'm going to kick your ass, you fucking cripple," he bragged.

"I don't think so," I said. I smiled. "But I guess you can try."

He came at me and I whacked him upside the head with my cane. He fell hard, and shook his head.

"Sorry," I said. "That's how we cripples roll."

He got up, and as he did so, he reached into his boot and pulled a knife. It looked like it might be a double edged eight inch blade. He waved it low, weaving it back and forth, and I realized he might actually know something about fighting with a knife. I didn't smile, but I felt like it, because now I had at least a minor challenge.

"Stop!" That was Ronnie. Timmy was standing behind her. "Just leave, Jack. I'm not going to sign anything. You can't have my baby."

"I'll deal with you later, after I give this piece of shit a lesson in manners," he said. He looked at me. "What are you doing here anyway, cripple? You her boyfriend? Is some wimp-assed cripple the best she can do?" He grinned with what I'm sure he thought was an evil grin.

"Jack!" wailed Ronnie.

I looked at her. "Ronnie, I sure would like it a whole lot more if you took Timmy into the bedroom, so he doesn't have to see the blood that's about to be spilled."

"No way," crowed Jack. "Let him stay and watch a real man in action."

"Ronnie?" I said, softly. "Trust me, Ronnie."

She froze for a few seconds, and then turned, picked Timmy up and disappeared. I heard a door slam. I looked at Jack.

"Jack, I'm going to tell you a little secret. I'm not nearly as crippled as I look, and if you don't haul your ass back to Georgia right now, and leave Ronnie alone, you're going to find out coming here was a terrible mistake. You hear me, Jack? You've had fair warning."

"Like you're going to do anything to me," he laughed. "I'm gonna cut your fucking dick off, cripple."

"No ... you're not, Jack," I said, shifting my center of balance. I wasn't going to use the cane this time. "You're just going to make the biggest mistake of your life."

He rushed me then. I swiveled on my good leg, and grabbed his knife arm, pulling him through the thrust in a simple Judo move. Then, with my other hand, I crushed his windpipe.

He flopped on the ground, dying, as I took the knife out of his hand.

"Having a hard time breathing, Jack?" I asked, smiling. "Want me to help you?"

His eyes were wild. He knew he was dying, because he knew he couldn't get any air past his crushed larynx.

I got down over him and held him down. "I'm going to have to do a tracheotomy on you, Jack," I said. "If you lie very still, I'll save your life. If you move, you're going to die."

Then I used his own knife to open his windpipe, between his Adam's apple, which was misshapen and already bruising, and the inside ends of his collar bones. I'd never done it myself, but had watched it done in training. It went just like in the film. I didn't have anything to hold it open, so I used my fingers. His chest expanded and the incision whistled as he breathed through it.

"I'm going to go find something to hold that open, Jack," I said. His eyes panicked. "Just take it easy," I said. "I'll be back before you suffocate. Just don't move around and use up all the oxygen in your lungs."

Then I left him there. That slamming door I had heard had apparently been Ronnie closing Timmy up in a bedroom, because she was was standing in the hallway, looking properly horrified, her hand up to her mouth.

"Quick!" I whispered. "Something hollow, like a straw!"

She ran into the kitchen, and I followed her. "I don't know! I don't know!" she moaned, opening and closing drawers. "I don't have anything like that!" she wailed.

I saw a plastic thing used to make melon balls, and grabbed it. It had a handle on it that was half an inch wide and was tapered. I took it back to where Jack was floundering, his fingers pulling at his new wound. I had to hold him down again as I inserted the handle of the melon thing and twisted it sideways. That spread the slit and got him breathing again.

"Hold this just like it is," I said, bringing his fingers to the device. That, he did, and I watched his chest move up and down. His eyes were still rolling, but he could breathe.

I stood over him. Ronnie was standing to one side, her hand up to her mouth again. There wasn't all that much blood, really, but it was more than she was used to dealing with.

"Here's the deal, Jack," I said, looking down at him. "I just got out of the Army. Special Forces." I looked and his eyes met mine. He was listening. "I didn't kill you, Jack. I could have, and nobody would have cared, because you were using a knife to attack an unarmed disabled man. The cops wouldn't even have arrested me. I am, in fact, going to call the police as soon as we're finished with our little talk. Ronnie's going to make a complaint of a home invasion. I'm going to make a complaint of attempted murder. We're going to tell the police about you trying to sell a five year old little boy that was the product of a rape."

His eyes jittered back and forth.

"So I don't expect you to be able to cause Ronnie any more trouble for a good long while," I said. "But they might only put you away for four or five years, Jack. Hell, who knows? They might not even put you in prison at all. So here's what you need to understand about Ronnie, and Timmy, and this house, and me."

I made sure his eyes were on mine, and moved, to see if they followed. They did.

"I love Ronnie," I said. "I love Timmy too. And what you really need to listen to and understand is that if I ever see you again, I'm not just going to crush your windpipe. You won't survive that meeting, Jack, and that's a promise."

I heard Ronnie's gasp, but ignored it.

"Now I'm going to make one exception to what I just said," I told him. "I'm not going to kill you if I see you in court, when I testify against you. I'll only kill you if I think you're a threat to Ronnie or Timmy. So you need to be careful not to ever come back here. If you want to apologize to her, or something like that, then you need to send a video, or use the mail or whatever. But don't come here in person, because that would be fatal, okay?"

He stared at me.

"I need some feedback here, Jack, or I'm going to take that thing away from you, and let you die."

He nodded, frantically, which made him move his hand. His fingers were bloody and slippery, and the movement made him lose his grip. The slit closed on the implement as it twisted. He flopped. I held him down and got him breathing again. When he calmed, I picked up the knife he had attacked me with.

"I need to make dead sure you know I'm serious," I said, calmly. "Don't move, because I'm not fixing your breathing hole again. I'm not actually going to hurt you right now, unless you move. So don't move. And don't lose your grip on that thing that's letting you breathe, because, like I said, I'm not going to fix it again. If it slips again ... you die, Jack."

I cut through the cloth of his pants in a big circle around his zipper. It was difficult because the knife was almost criminally dull. Then I pulled his underwear away from his body and ripped through that too. That left his dick and balls hanging out. He was like a statue as I did this. I stood up.

"You said you were going to cut my dick off, Jack," I said, conversationally. I tested the edge of the blade against my finger. "It's dull, Jack! I can't cut your balls off with this. It would be more like tearing them off with a knife this dull, Jack. But tell you what. If you can convince me that you understand the seriousness of your mistake, today, I'll let you keep them. Can you do that, Jack?"

He tried to speak, but the air just whistled out of the cut in his throat. His eyes got wild again.

"Blink twice if you understand me, Jack," I said.

He blinked a dozen times. He was still blinking when I turned to find Ronnie looking at me like I was an alien from Mars.

"We need to call the police," I said. "I don't have a phone on me."

She got her cell, and extended it to me as if I had the plague, and she was afraid of catching it. I called 911 and told them there had been a home invasion, and that the intruder had been subdued, but needed an ambulance.

Within minutes there were sirens. My mother, of all people, burst through the door when the ambulance pulled up. She took in the scene and went to Jack. She got on a knee and examined him. She looked up at me.

"Who did this?"

"The tracheotomy?" I asked. "We saw a film in training."

Then the police were there, and they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. This was big doings for Hanley. Nothing like this had happened in decades. I told them what had happened, and I assume Ronnie did too. My dad showed up to retrieve my mother. It turned out she was in Ronnie's bedroom, entertaining Timmy. Ronnie had asked her to look in on him. Mom and Dad took him to their house.

Then the State Troopers showed up. It turned out there were a dozen warrants out for Jack in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Three of them were felony warrants. Suddenly, our version of events had a lot more credibility. Arrangements were made for formal statements to be made the next day, down at the courthouse. The state investigators put up yellow tape and said Ronnie would have to go somewhere else that night.

So I took her to our house.

I expected it to take an hour to satisfy my parents as to what had happened and all that. But all that happened was my dad asked, "Are you two okay?"

I told him we were, and he said mom was playing with Timmy, but would have questions in the morning.

"She can't stay at her house tonight," I said. "It's a crime scene."

"So your mother informed me," he said. "Of course she can stay here. If you'll help me get the things I've been storing in your room out and to the basement, you can use your room."

"I can sleep on the couch," I said. "She and Timmy can use my room."

He looked at me with that same look I remembered from when Ronnie had kissed me goodbye, when I was leaving for basic training.

"That's up to you," he said.

Only then did I have time to turn, and see if Ronnie still wanted to have anything at all to do with me.

She looked nervous, to be honest.

"You want to go check on Timmy?" I asked.

She looked towards where my dad had pointed, when he said Mom was with Timmy. Then she looked back at me.

"Just for a second," she said.

"I'll go help my dad," I said.

"Please wash your hands first," she said, looking down at them.

I held them up. They were covered with Jack's blood. I hadn't even noticed.

There was a bathroom right across the hall from my room, so I went there. My dad was carrying a box toward the stairs to the basement. When my hands were clean, I helped him take the rest out. There wasn't as much as his words had led me to believe. The adrenaline had leached out of my system, and as usual I was starving. I went to the kitchen and got an orange. Peeling it got my hands juicy, so I washed them again. As I was drying my hands, Ronnie came in. She looked a little better, but leaned up against the counter ... five feet from me. I looked at her, and leaned against the counter where I was.

"I told you to stay in the bedroom," I said.

"Did you know you were going to do that to him?" she asked. "Hit him there, I mean?"

I nodded. "It was the best way to subdue him without killing him, and make sure he was harmless."

"It looked like you just reached out and touched him," she sighed.

"He was threatening you," I said. "He was threatening me."

"I know," she said. "And I don't blame you. Not really. I know what he can be like. It's just that..."

"You're not used to me being this way," I said.

She took a step closer, and stopped.

"You even scared me, Bobby!" she said. "I mean I knew you meant it. I almost peed my pants!"

"I did mean it," I said. "And I needed him to believe it. Guys like that only understand one language. I had to convince him that I'm badder than he is, and that it isn't worth the risk of messing with me. Fear is the only thing they understand, because that's the only tool in their own tool box."

She was quiet for a while. "Did you mean... all of it?"

"All?"

"What you said about how you felt about ... us."

"About loving you?" I said.

She nodded. She looked nervous again.

"I missed you," I said. "And I know we never talked about this. I didn't want to write about it. And I'm not good with words anyway. But yes. I've loved you for a long time ... longer than I've been gone. And I know I don't have any claim on you, and that I'm too young and all that. So don't worry. I'm not like him. I'm not going to try to force myself on you."

She took another step closer, just looking at me.

"You were too young," she said.

"I know," I admitted.

She took another step.