Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [157]
He stayed in the kitchen staring at me over his shoulder, his biceps tensed, ready to drive in the blade. In Colorado, the kitchen and everything in it had been locked, and why wasn’t this one? The phone was out in the hallway. I was thinking 911. If he does it, I’ll punch those numbers, then stuff a dish towel into the wound.
But now Donny was sniffling and walking toward me, the knife at his side like a tool he carried with him wherever he went. I sat on the edge of the couch, didn’t let myself sink into it. I knew nothing about staying away from a jabbing knife. I knew nothing about talking to someone who wanted to die.
“What’s got you all fucked up, Donny?”
He looked down at me. His chest was small. There was a tuft of black hair along the sternum, and his small gut protruded over his boxers. I could feel the blade there between us but tried not to look at it. Donny sat slowly, carefully, like a man with a broken leg easing into a bath of hot water. He rested the knife across his bare knee. “You just swore. If I swear like that they write me up. Two more a them and I’m back in fuckin’ jail.” He shot me a look. “You gonna write me up for that?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m not worried about your swearing, Donny.”
He looked down at the blade, the floor, the wall. “I can’t breathe no more. They don’t let me do nothin’ I know how to fuckin’ do.”
“Who?”
“The counselors. They don’t like how I talk, they don’t let me get pissed off, and if I do I gotta use words without swearin’ and without fuckin’ yelling. They tell me I can’t fight anymore. You know what would’ve happened to me if I didn’t fight? Take these things away and I should just be dead ’cause I’m not fuckin’ me anymore.” His voice broke and he shook his head like what was rising up in him was a fly buzzing at his face. He wiped the back of his arm across his eyes, the knife flashing dully. He looked over at me as if he was expecting to see nothing at all.
The day counselors were doing what they could; they were trying to turn a pit bull into a collie, and they were probably doing it for him. No one in the safe, clean, and appropriate world wanted a pit bull around. But what happens to the streets that made Donny Donny? The ones that are still inside him, this young body in boxer shorts he now wanted to be free of?
“No disrespect to them, Donny, but I think they’re wrong.”
He turned his face to me. His back was slumped like an old man’s, and I wondered if he looked like his dead mother or his long-gone father.
“No, they’re right. I’m no fuckin’ good.”
“Then I’m no good either.”
I didn’t tell him any stories about myself. I didn’t swear. Part of me felt I was betraying the trained people in this house, the good lady who hired me not to counsel anyone but to keep an eye out. But images were coming to me, and I was putting them into words I began to speak, Donny with a good job making good money, all dressed up and out on a date with a beautiful woman, walking down a city street at night when a man steps from the shadows to give them shit and Donny takes care of business before the man can even get started. Donny began to nod his head at this; I was talking about punching first and punching hard, no talk, no foreplay.
“That’s right. That’s fuckin’ right.” He was tapping his foot, the flat of the blade bouncing on his knee. I began to imagine the wooden toolbox Jeb built once for his block planes and chisels, his handsaws and hammers. I told Donny he had tools he should never lose: the street talk, not taking shit from anybody, the punching and kicking and anything else that had to be done. But now it was time to learn how to use some new tools, that’s all. Not to toss out everything he knew, just add to what he knew.
“You’re learning how to be around other kinds of people, Donny. To be in other kinds of places. But don’t ever lose the old Donny. He got you this far, didn’t he? You can’t leave him behind now.”
Donny’s eyes were on mine and not on mine. He was nodding his head. Then he shook it once. “How come