K\u2019s spending the night at mine because this time his pop has beat him real bad. It\u2019s come out that K\u2019s mom had another kid before she ever met him and K\u2019s pop\u2019s furious, been on a helluva bender for days, which only ever leads to one thing.<\/p>\n
Fists.<\/p>\n
K finds out from his mom that this older brother is living in Carmel outside Indianapolis and says he\u2019s going to steal a car, drive out there. I say I\u2019ll go with him because K\u2019s got that look in his eye that means he might do something dumb. Like that time in the 7-Eleven when he thought they\u2019d short-changed him and he went back later on, tried to burn the place down.<\/p>\n
The car K gets is a banger but it has a cassette player and cassettes in the glove compartment. Patti Smith. Lou Reed. The Animals. By the time we get to Carmel we know all the words to House of the Rising Sun, Redondo Beach and the whole of this Velvet Underground album which we play again and again.<\/p>\n
The house is white stucco in a line of other white stucco houses but this one has a sign stuck in the lawn, Keep Off My Ass.<\/em><\/p>\n Funny, says K, his lips in a line.<\/p>\n The door is opened by this little lady, white hair, wire frame glasses. There\u2019s this dog yapping by her feet. She gives it a kick, tells it to pipe down or it\u2019ll get what for too and then she asks us what we want.<\/p>\n K goes shtum and so it\u2019s yours truly who pipes up. Who K is, who K\u2019s mother is, the whole sorry mess of it.<\/p>\n The little lady doesn\u2019t say anything but gives us this mean look she seems to have under copyright and leads us down a corridor and into a room at the back. Royston, she says, there\u2019s some folk to see you.<\/p>\n And this room is flooded with light. The whole back wall is window looking out into a garden. It\u2019s like Jurassic fucking World out there, plants and creepers and trees and so on and so it takes our eyes some time to take in the bed, the metal cylinder on it, the head sticking out of the end of it.<\/p>\n Royston\u2019s in an iron lung, says the woman. Doctor reckons he\u2019ll be out of it next year. The year after. But what do those doofuses know?<\/p>\n Hey, says Royston and then he does this thing with his eyes, flicking them to the top of K\u2019s head, where K\u2019s baseball cap is. You a baseball fan? Whaddya say, when I\u2019m outta this thing, you take me to see the Red Sox play? Dom DiMaggio put in 11 seasons for the Red Sox. .298 batting average. He was my favourite player. Not playing anymore though.<\/p>\n Do you know who I am? says K. I\u2019m your brother. Your mom and my mom. The samearooney.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m kinda relieved that K led with the brother thing, not what he normally says when he gets comments about his cap.<\/p>\n K is not a baseball fan. Not at all. But he has this fantasy where the whole of the Boston Red Sox suck him off. He\u2019s always telling people. Like a challenge. Like, I\u2019m gay, what you going to do about it asshole.<\/p>\n In fact, this was the line he spun to his pop right after his mom told his pop about the other kid. His pop didn\u2019t know he was gay, not until then.<\/p>\n He was trying to deflect his pop\u2019s fists, he said, away from his mom. The black eyes and bust nose are evidence of that. And his mom didn\u2019t get it so bad in the end.<\/p>\n He\u2019s a good son on the quiet, K. Who knows he\u2019ll be a good brother?<\/p>\n Sure, says K to the brother then giving him this big shit for nothing smile. You want to see the Red Sox I\u2019ll get us a box. Best seats in the fucking stadium. Me and you bro, who\u2019s gunna stop us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" K\u2019s spending the night at mine because this time his pop has beat him real bad. It\u2019s come out that K\u2019s mom had another kid before she ever met him and K\u2019s pop\u2019s furious, been on a helluva bender for days, which only ever leads to one thing. Fists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-drew-gummerson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21141,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20670\/revisions\/21141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}