“His fingers sure smell a lot like his kregs, ladies and gentlemen.” Kregs was a name Mick had coined for the spaces between toes.
“I did it just like you did the peanut butter.”
“Just because I’m laughing don’t mean I believe you,” I said, breaking up just thinking about it. A few days earlier, while Mick was reading a Mad comic, I’d snuck up on him with a glob of peanut butter on a sheet of toilet paper, smeared it on his arm, and told him it was shit. At first he didn’t believe me, so I told him to smell it. He did and started screaming, “You really did it! You’re crazy! I’m telling Moms!” I tackled him before he could get away and began trying to smear the glob off his arm into his mouth. He was fighting back hard, yelling I’d gone completely crazy, wrenching his face away, spitting it out every time I got it near his lips. I thought once he tasted it he’d see the joke, but I had a hard time getting him to believe that it was only peanut butter.
“You only gave me seventy-five points for not telling about that, so it’s not fair I lose a hundred for this.”
“All right, you want to get a hundred points back?”
“How?”
“Stick your head out the window and tell Kashka you love her.”
“Go to hell! I wouldn’t do that for a million stinking points.”
“I’ll give you fifty if you just admit it to the ladies and gentlemen.”
“Admit what?”
“The truth, just say it out loud: Ladies and gentlemen, I admit it, I love Kashka.”
“No, it’s not fair.”
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, he had his chance. He didn’t want to see the movie anyway.”
I disappeared under the sheet again and began to snore. Suddenly, I felt him land on top of me. He’d jumped from his bed onto mine and was trying to strangle me through the sheets while kneeing me in the back.
“Hey, take it easy,” I said, “or Captain Roopus will hear.” But he wouldn’t stop. “This is gonna cost your scurvy ass another hundred points.”
That made him punch all the harder. He tried to gouge my eyes through the sheet. “I don’t care what you do,” he said.
“Sir’s gonna hear.”
“I don’t care.”
I squirmed loose, grabbed my pillow, and smashed it in his face, sending his head thudding off the wall.
“They’ll hear that for sure. Better get in your own bed.”
Mick was half-crying. “I don’t care. I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell about the Point System. I’ll tell I saw you playing with matches.”
He tried to break away toward the bedroom door. I grabbed him by his undershirt and tried to wrestle him down, but it tore away.
“I’m gonna tell you ripped my T-shirt.”
“No tell, no tell, Mickush,” I pleaded.
“Don’t ush me.”
He managed to open the door and slip out with me still pulling on his arm. “No tell, no tell,” I kept whispering. It was too late to force him back. We were halfway down the dark hallway. The fluorescent light in the kitchen was still on and lit up the end of the hall. Their voices carried to us. Mick stopped.
They were arguing. We could hear them very clearly. Moms was already at that point when her hands shook; we could hear the tremors in her voice. When what she called her “nerves” got bad enough, her lower jaw would tremble, too, as if she was on the verge of a fit. She would continue trying to talk even though she could no longer control her voice, and it sounded as if she was gagging on words stuck in the back of her throat. Her attacks of nerves had begun a couple years earlier. Usually, they’d come on at night. I’d wake to her walking the apartment in the dark, talking to herself, praying, crying. Sometimes, thinking us asleep, she’d enter our room and sit shaking at the foot of my bed. Once, Mick woke, heard her crying, and began crying, too, so now when the attacks came she’d lock herself in the bathroom and turn on the water taps.
“You gotta get ahold of yourself before you’re in the same boat as your brother, Lefty,” Sir was saying. “I’m gonna call that phony-baloney doctor and tell him I’m taking those da-damn pills he’s giving you to the police.”
There was a crash like a dish breaking. “I-yi-yi c-c-can’t stand it,” Moms gagged out.
“He’s turning you into an addict,” Sir said. “You take the pills and act like a zombie, and without them you fall apart.”
“Y-y-you ever t-t-try li-li-living without any sympathy? I-yi-yi can’t stand it.” Something else broke.
“Go on, act like a da-damn nut and break it all so I can work harder to support us.”
“I’ll give you all the points back. I’ll take you to the movie,” I whispered. “Come on back to bed.”
Mick followed me, both of us creeping back to the room. I closed the door, and it was dark again. We climbed into our beds and lay there not saying anything.
I was nearly asleep when the whining started from across the gangway. At first it was just there, a night sound like the crickets, sirens, and freights, but it grew louder and sharper and I realized I was feverish with sweat and sat up.
“It must be their new dog,” Mick said.
“Jesus, what’s the matter with him? I never heard a dog sound like that.”
We tried to look through the screen again, but all we saw was the bulb behind the bedspread. Then we heard Kashka’s voice.
“Janush, stop beating on him.”
The whining went on.
“That sonofabitch, that dirty bastard. He’s torturing that puppy in there.” I threw myself back in bed and started punching the pillow until the whining stopped. In the quiet I could feel my lungs heaving and realized I’d been holding my breath. Then the whining started again.
“Why’s he doing it?” Mick asked.
“I’ll get him for this, the sonofabitch. I’ll steal that dog and burn their goddamn house down. I’m not kidding. I’ll wait till the bastard’s passed out drunk and get him with a brick. I’m going to call the Humane Society tomorrow.”
“For shitsake, Jano, stop beating the goddamn dog,” Kashka yelled. She sounded more irritated by the noise than anything else.
“You said you wanted him mean, not like the other one, didn’t you?” Jano answered. “This is when you gotta get them if you want ’em mean.”
He kept at it as if proving his point. There was an even worse sound, like a choking squeal, and I could imagine Jano holding the dog up by the clothesline they kept tied around his neck while his hind legs danced off the floor.
“Shut up!” Jano shouted, and it was abruptly silent.
“Maybe he killed him,” Mick whispered.
I pulled the nylon stocking from my head and peeled my undershirt off and put it on the radiator. It was soaked through with sweat. I lay back down and waited, my insides braced for the whining to start again. It was quiet, but I couldn’t relax.
“Want to have a Radio Show?”
“Okay, you start,” Mick said.
“Hello again out there, ladies and gentlemen, this is your friendly announcer, Dudley Toes, coming to you live from Dreamsville in the heart of Little Village over station KRAP, brought to you by Kashka Marishka’s dee-licious melt-in-your-fat-mouth Frozen Rat DeLuxe Dinners!”
“And Jano’s Hard-on Pickles. The only pickles especially made for shoving up your nose.”
“Thank you, Mick the Schmuck, and now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get the show on the road with the thing you’ve all been waiting for. Hey, ladies and gentlemen! Wake the hell up! I said the thing you’ve all been waiting for!”
Applause, cheers, boos from Mick’s bed.
“And here it is! The Great Singing Competition between the world’s two greatest singers — Tex Robe and Boston Blackhead!”