Lord of the Ralphs Read online

  Pinching shut my nose, I nodded.

  Vik gave me one last shove that knocked me to the ground. My head bounced once, twice against the sidewalk. When I looked up, I saw Vik and Bobby holding open the double-doors for a couple of senior citizens, who thanked them. And then they disappeared inside.

  I lay on the ground, my head next to the quickly melting Icee blob, my nose still gushing. I was about to sit up when one of the doors opened and my father stepped outside carrying four large Kmart bags, two in each hand. He glanced around, expecting to find me standing upright, but then he looked down to where I lay struggling to right myself.

  “Brain freeze?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “I’d give you a hand,” he said, “but as you can see…” He motioned with his head toward all the bags he was carrying.

  “I’m okay,” I said and pushed myself up. I stood and brushed off my pants, then I caught up to my father, who was already heading toward his pick-up truck.

  “Damned bags are heavy,” he said. He glanced over at me and said, “Must have been a bad one.”

  “What?”

  “Brain freeze,” he said.

  I wiped my nose with the back of my arm. I could feel the side of my head swelling from where it had smacked the sidewalk.

  “I bought your mother a hell of a lot of pantyhose,” he said, laughing as though startled by his own lack of control.

  “She’s going to be mad,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked, stopping abruptly, glaring down at me. “If I want to buy her pantyhose, who’s she to tell me I can’t? Huh?”

  I shrugged, and we started walking again.

  “The worse they are,” he said, “the smarter you are.”

  “Girls?” I asked.

  “No. Brain freezes. Did I ever tell you about the one that sent me to the emergency room?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Really? I haven’t?” He looked over at me, as though I might be lying. He swung all four bags up and over the side of the truck’s bed. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard a few eggs crack when the bags landed. He pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirt pocket, smacked it on the top of his head for a while, like a crazy man, then opened the pack and pulled a cigarette out with his teeth. As my father lit his cigarette, cupping the match and ducking his head, I thought, How many times have I seen him doing this? How many times have I seen him in this exact same position? And then I felt as though I were floating outside my own body, looking down on a scene that had happened to me a dozen times before, playing out exactly as it did today. It was the first time I’d ever felt déjà vu, and for a second or two it might as well have been last summer or the summer before last summer, but then the pain in my nose came back, and the only moment I could possibly have been standing in was this one right here, the summer my father and mother yelled at each other about money and I was in love with a dark-eyebrowed girl with a drifting mole.

  My father, taking a long drag off his cigarette, pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his nose, then began telling me the story of the brain freeze that landed him in the hospital. “It’s a doozy,” he began, blowing an astonishing amount of smoke toward me. I stood there patiently and nodded, covered in my own blood, my eyes filling with tears again, listening to every other word as the blinding sun beat down on us.

  3

  One cold, drizzly day in November, Ralph came springing nonchalantly toward me on the playground.“I finished that list,” he said.

  “What list?”

  “You know,” he said, growing impatient. “The list.”

  And then I remembered. On the last day of seventh grade, all the way back in June, he’d told me about a price-list he was working on, prices he charged to do bodily harm to his fellow classmates. For a fee, he could be hired to take care of someone you didn’t like. And now, as if the sun had set only once since we’d last talked about it, Ralph was telling me that he had finished it.

  I held out my hand, stifling a yawn. I really wanted to see the list, but I didn’t want to act too interested. It was dangerous to act too interested in anything that interested Ralph. As I unfolded the sheet, Ralph said, “You want me to take somebody out for you?”

  “Maybe,” I lied.

  Ralph nodded. “Let me know and I’ll write up an estimate.”

  I grunted.

  Ralph then launched into the history of the list, how his list was the exact same list that the meanest gang in New York City used in the 1880s, a group of thugs who called themselves the Whyo gang. I was about to ask him how he knew all of this when he unfolded another sheet that clearly had been torn from a book.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  “Library.”

  “You tore up a library book?” I asked. Tearing up a library book ranked right up there with flag burning and swearing in church. I loved the library. I would read a book about anything—Kung Fu, the Incas, silent movie stars with names like Fatty and Buster, the Loch Ness monster. We didn’t have any books at home, and so I always felt the stab of anger when, at the library, I found a page scribbled in or a wad of chewing gum holding two pages together. And now here I stood, face to face with the culprit himself. “Don’t tell me you tore up a library book,” I said.

  Ralph shrugged. “I didn’t have a library card. Listen. Forget the library, okay? Why are you always distracting me?”

  “Why didn’t you just get a card?” I asked.

  Ralph stepped up so that the tips of his shoes were touching the tips of my shoes. He said, “I don’t know why I didn’t just get a card, okay? Who cares. Listen. My point is that the leader of that gang had this exact same price-list on him when he was arrested.” He took a step back and said, “I thought about raising the prices, but after thinking about it all summer I finally decided to keep them the same. It’ll be part of my selling point. 1978 service at 1880 prices!”

  For having been held back two grades, Ralph took great care in his own personal projects. His list—the one he’d copied from the now-vandalized library book—had been carefully typed with only a few blobs of Liquid Paper, raised like Braille, covering the typos.

  Punching $2.

  Both eyes blacked 4.

  Nose and jaw broke 10.

  Jacked out (blackjacked) 15.

  Ear chawed off 15.

  Leg and arm broke 19.

  Shot in leg 25.

  Stab 25.

  Doing the big job (murder) 100. and up.

  “Wow!” I said. “Fifteen bucks for a chawed off ear?”

  “Ask around,” Ralph said. “You won’t find it any cheaper.”

  I handed the list back to him. I was impressed with it, but it also gave me the creeps to hold. I didn’t know why Ralph and I were friends. The best I could figure, we were friends because I was taught to be polite. Everyone else was too afraid of Ralph to stand around and listen to what he had to say. But the more I listened to him, the more I liked him. If I were any smarter, though, I should have done what the other kids did—run full-tilt in the opposite direction. For better or worse, it was too late for that.

  “Hey,” Ralph said. “You want to get an ice cream cone later and terrorize some kids?”

  “Nah, I gotta get home,” I said. “I’m supposed to go somewhere with my parents.”

  “Suit yourself,” Ralph said, “but all week long I’ve had a craving.”

  “For ice cream?” I asked.

  “Nuh-uh,” he said. “For terrorizing kids.” I expected him to grin, but he didn’t. He folded the price-list and tucked it away. Then he cracked his knuckles, one at a time, and took his place in line with the rest of the eighth graders.

  Before I could shut the front door behind me, my sister, Kelly, yawned at my arrival, then delivered the news: “Grandma’s been arrested.” She said this without inflection, as if she were merely telling me what was on TV today, a new show called Grandma’s Been Arrested. She was two years old
er than me, a sophomore in high school, and about as exciting as a fuse box.

  In our family, Kelly was always the bearer of bad news. I was starting to think she liked delivering bad news, that bad news traveled through her like an electrical current, and to get too close to her was like sticking your finger into a light socket.

  “Our grandmother?” I asked.

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “Uh, duh,” she said, which had become her new favorite phrase. She’d say this to Mom and Dad, to our aunts and uncles, to our neighbors. I’d heard her say this into phones, into parked cars, to stray dogs and cats, to her stuffed animals, to people on TV. I had heard it through walls, from the floor above and the floor below me, with screen-doors separating us, from the opposite sides of picket fences, around grocery store aisles, and, once, while passing a large bush. Lately, I’d begun to hear it in my dreams, and I was starting to wonder if Kelly was sneaking into my room at night and whispering it into my ear: Uh, duh…Uh, duh…Uh, duh…

  I said, “What for?”

  “What for what?”

  “What was she arrested for?”

  “Oh,” Kelly said. “Stealing shoes.”

  “Shoes?”

  “Yep. Allegedly, she’d go into shoe stores, try on some snazzy shoes, and then when the salesman wasn’t looking, she’d walk out of the store wearing them. She was doing it all over town, so the owners set up a sting operation.”

  “A sting operation?” I said. “For Grandma?”

  Before Kelly could answer, the front door banged open, causing me to jump and clutch my chest. Mom and Dad came in, but without Gramsie.

  Dad said, “We have to wait until she’s arraigned tomorrow morning, and then the judge will set bail. Bail! I can’t believe what I’m saying. Bail! Do we have any beer? Kelly, go check the fridge and see if there’s any beer in there.”

  I said, “Maybe we should get a good lawyer.”

  Dad said, “Is my last name Rockefeller? Do you see me throwing hundred dollar bills into our fireplace to keep the house warm?”

  “What fireplace?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Dad said, cocking his head and squinting while firing up a cigarette.

  Kelly returned with a beer for my father. She popped it open and handed it to him, and my father smiled at her, then poured half the beer down his throat. His eyes turned glassy. He let his knees relax so that he could drop, in one swift motion, into his recliner.

  Kelly was the one who fetched things for Mom and Dad, who didn’t ask questions, and so my parents liked her best. I was the one who interrogated, who was always setting one or the other of my parents off, and I wasn’t so sure what they thought of me. In all of these years I should have learned a thing or two from Kelly, but I didn’t.

  My mother was busy in the kitchen, making Greek chicken. Gas hissed from the oven and I could smell oregano. My father finished the rest of his beer and said, “Your grandmother, she’s really put her you-know-what in a sling this time. She’s up crapola creek without a paddle. That woman’s made her bed and now she’ll have to lie in.”

  I said, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

  Dad and Kelly looked over at me, as if I’d just materialized in the room. Then he cut his eyes over to Kelly and said, “How’s about another beer, sweetheart?” While Kelly played fetch, Dad leaned over and turned on his stereo. With his forefinger he led the record player’s arm to the 45 already on the turntable, Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” a song my father played so often that you could barely hear the music over all the snaps and pops, but before long the two of us were sitting there bobbing our heads. When Kelly came in with Dad’s beer, she started bobbing her head, too, and if someone who didn’t know us happened to walk in at that precise moment, they’d have thought they were looking at three of the happiest people on this side of the planet.

  The next morning at school, I buttonholed Ralph and said, “Get this. My grandmother got arrested for stealing.”

  “Whoa!” Ralph said. “What sort of places does she loot?”

  “Shoe stores,” I said.

  “Shoe stores?” He laughed. “Shoe stores?” He thought about it for a minute. Then, narrowing his eyes and nodding, he said, “Shoe stores,” as if the idea of robbing shoe stores suddenly made perfect sense.

  “She’d get a pair of shoes from the Goodwill for fifty cents, then go over to the shoe store, try on an expensive pair, and when the salesperson wasn’t looking, she’d walk out of the store.”

  “If you’re gonna steal shoes,” he said, “that’s the way to do it—one pair at a time.” He rubbed the half-dozen whiskers on his chin and said, “Methodical. Patient. I bet she’d make a good safe cracker.”

  “I think she’s just a kleptomaniac,” I said.

  “Are you crazy? This woman knows what she’s doing. She wants shoes. She’s got a plan. Kleptos, they steal stuff, they don’t care what. But your grandmother, she’s like Clyde Barrow.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know anyone named Clyde Barrow.

  A black Monte Carlo rolled up alongside the playground, a smoky window rolled down, and a guy in the passenger seat said, “Hey, you. Yeah, you. Are you Ralph?”

  Ralph leaned into me and said, “Looks like business. Wait here, okay?” Ralph walked over to the car, sort of bouncing on his way there. I’d always suspected that one of Ralph’s legs was an inch or two shorter than the other one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d ask a person. Instead, I paid attention to the cuffs of his pants to see if one was higher than the other, but they were both already higher than they should have been, and since Ralph usually wore a different colored sock on each foot, it was difficult to tell what his problem was.

  The guy in the passenger seat looked about my father’s age. I crouched down, trying to get a good peek at the driver, but he was wearing dark sunglasses and staring straight ahead. Ralph pulled his price-list from his shirt pocket and handed it to the passenger. They exchanged a few words, then Ralph took out a tiny spiral pad from his back pocket and wrote something down. He tore the sheet from the spiral and handed it over. The passenger nodded, handed Ralph an envelope, and then the two of them shook hands. As soon as Ralph started walking from the car, the smoky window rolled up and the driver pulled away.

  “What did you give those guys?” I asked when Ralph returned.

  “An estimate,” he said. He sighed. “I wish they hadn’t done that, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Kenny and Norm.” Ralph’s cousins. I liked Kenny better than I liked Norm, but it was like choosing between two cough syrups: they both made the hair on my arms stand up.

  “What did they do?” I asked.

  “They told a few of their friends about my price-list, then those people told more people, and now I’ve got more clients than I know what to do with.”

  “I thought you wanted business.”

  “I do,” Ralph said. “The problem is, I don’t even know these guys.”

  “I thought Norm was in jail.”

  “He copped a plea,” Ralph said.

  “Oh.” This wasn’t news I wanted to hear. “So what did those guys in the car want you to do?” I asked.

  Ralph shrugged. “They want me to chew off somebody’s ear,” he said.

  “Hey, that’s fifteen bucks, isn’t is?” I asked, trying to boost his spirits. “Chawed ear, right?”

  Ralph nodded.

  “So?” I said. “Whose ear?”

  “Roark Pile’s,” he said.

  “Roark Pile?”

  We both looked over at Roark Pile. Roark was one of our own classmates. Short and hunched, wearing bottle-thick eyeglasses, Roark looked more insect-like than ever as he stood alone at the far corner of the playground. We’d had only one class together, a math class, and he’d had an asthma attack and had to be taken to the school nurse. I’d been going to school with him for eight years but hadn’t ever said a word to him, and now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure anyone else
had ever spoken to him, either. He was flipping through his Star Wars collectors’ cards today. He kept the cards rubberbanded together, and whenever there was a break before class, during lunch, or on the playground, he’d take the rubber-band off and shuffle through them. He studied the cards with such intensity that you’d think Princess Leia had just materialized in front of him, whispering, “Oh, Roark Pile. You’re my only hope.” At least three days a week he wore a T-shirt with an iron-on decal of Chewbacca on the front. He also had a Star Wars lunchbox that prominently featured the Wookiee. I didn’t care much for Roark, but I didn’t care for him in the way that people don’t care much for people they don’t talk to, which is to say, I didn’t know why I didn’t care for him. I just didn’t. I’d never had any desire to chew off his ear, though.

  “Roark Pile,” I said. “Why?”

  Ralph huffed, disgusted with me, and said, “I don’t ask why. That’s part of the deal. I get a job, I do the job. Why doesn’t factor into it. I like to think I’m more professional than that.”

  “So,” I said, “are you going to bite his ear off right now?” I didn’t want to admit it, but I was curious to see how it would happen. Would Ralph walk up behind him, bite down onto his ear, and start yanking on it? Or would he pin Roark to the ground first, secure Roark’s hands under his knees, and then try to chew it off?

  “Are you crazy?” Ralph asked. “You don’t just bite off someone’s ear in broad daylight.”

  “Oh. Have you ever bitten somebody’s ear off before?” I asked.

  “Not for money,” Ralph said, “no.”

  The first warning bell rang, and Roark Pile began strapping his Star Wars cards back together. In a few days he’d have only one ear, but for the time being he was probably unaware that he even had ears, let alone that it was a luxury to have two.

  “Jeez,” I said, shaking my head. Ralph and I joined the line heading back into school. “Who’d have thought someone was out to get Roark Pile?” I asked.

  Ralph said, “Don’t fool yourself. There’s always someone out to get you.”