There was news coverage of Jarvis’s murder, but with the sort of people he represented, nobody felt like they needed to look into it too much. Occam’s Razor told the police that a cartel member wasn’t satisfied with Jarvis’s services — Occam’s Razor has never applied to me.
That’s why, when I signed up for boxing lessons, of course I found the craziest motherfucker in Texas, the land of crazy motherfuckers.
Freddie was standing in front of the Knuckleheads gym, waiting for me, when I got there the next morning. His arms were crossed and he had a mischievous look on his weathered face.
“You ready for the first day of your superhero training, Big Boy?” he said.
“Shit, probably not,” I said. “Whatever you cook up is liable to get me killed.”
“If I can kill you, then those cultists, or whatever the fuck you said, are gonna chew you up and shit you out.”
He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t feel good to hear. Thinking about them too hard made me paranoid. The Iron Granny came out of nowhere; the rest of them could show up at any second.
“Alright, let’s do this.” I said.
He led me the other side of the building, where there was a big patch of land with nothing on it but sand and little tufts of grass, and told me to stand about a hundred feet away from the building. I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but I did what he said. He held up a finger, telling me to wait, and went back around the building. A few seconds later, this fucking lunatic comes driving straight at me in his Ford F-150. I dove out of the way at the absolute last second. My left leg was so close to the tire that dirt flew up into my pants halfway to my ass. He whipped the truck around and faced me like a bull about to charge a matador.
“Are you trying to fuckin’ kill me, Freddie?!” I yelled. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out.
“Yeah!” he said. “I kind of want to see if I can!”
The truck’s tires kicked up a stream of dirt as Freddie came hurtling towards me again. He honked at me repeatedly, whooping and hollering from the driver’s seat. I forced a stream of sludge out of my hands and onto the dirt, but it didn’t travel nearly far enough to stop him before he got to me. I dove out of the way again, but this time he swerved in the same direction and collided with my shoulder, sending me sliding on the ground. I didn’t break anything, but it hurt like hell. There’s a reason people say “I feel like I got hit by a truck” when they feel like absolute shit.
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I got up as quickly as I could, and Freddie was already rearing for the next charge.
“This isn’t funny, asshole!” I shouted as I brushed dirt off my shirt.
“Ain’t s’posed to be!” he shouted back. “I thought you wanted to learn how to fight! The dude’s you’re fighting are closer to a truck than they are to me!”
It was the most batshit insane logic I had ever heard, but I couldn’t argue with it — partially because it made some sort of sense, and partially because the motherfucker was coming at me again.
Fuck this. I never knew how many times I’d let someone charge at me with a truck before I’d destroy their vehicle; turns out it’s two. The third time he floored it in my direction, I stuck a finger into each nostril and stuck a booger bomb onto each one of his headlights. They exploded and the engine went silent. He skidded to a halt a few yards away from me. He got out and put his hands on his head in exasperation.
“What the hell was that?!” he said. “You just blew up my car!”
“That’ll teach you to try to run me over,” I grumbled.
Freddie roared with laughter. His whole body heaved up and down like a dryer with a brick in it.
“Ah, it’s all good. I’ll get another one. That was cool as fuck though. Did those come out of your nose?”
I truly never knew what this man was thinking. I arrive happy to see him, he tries to kill me. I blow up his car, the man laughs. He was truly an anomaly wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a decade of traumatic brain injuries.
“Good work today, Big Boy. You dodge that car better than my punches. Guess you know how to move quickly when you really need to. New lesson, same time tomorrow. See you then.”
He gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. I didn’t know how to respond to that — or anything else that happened that morning — so I just turned around and left.
Anita was in a frenzy when I came back to the apartment. She looked beyond exhausted, and she paced back and forth across the living room, repeating “Holy shit, holy shit,” to herself. When she noticed that I’d come through the door, she looked up at me and cackled like a witch.
“Gus, holy shit,” she said, and started cackling again. I was scared. She was acting like she should be wearing a straight jacket. “Holy shit,” she said again, and she threw her body onto the couch and almost immediately started snoring. Caleb flushed the toilet down the hall and came into the living room and saw her asleep.
“About time,” he said. “She’d been all ‘holy shit holy shit’ for like an hour now.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, bewildered by how casual he was acting about our mother’s psychotic episode.
“Oh, nothing. Not anymore at least,” he said. “She’s barely slept since we got here, looking for traces of that symbol, or of anything related to the marks. You’ve been gone a lot, but trust me: she’s been going a little nuts.”
Caleb seemed more confident than he was when we got here just a week or two ago. His hair was properly washed and brushed, and he looked me in the eyes when he spoke. I don’t know what got into him.
“Nothing’s wrong with her now though?” I asked.
“Nah. She can sleep now that she finally got a lead.”