RUDY got too relaxed, which means he got careless. He had convinced Laura’s father that he would be fine cutting up the lumber that had fallen after Sandy blew through Massachusetts. A gnarled white birch lay entangled with a fifteen year old maple. It was simple work to cut them up and no matter how much Rudy’s future father-in-law repeated the phrase, “you sure,” Rudy didn’t want any help.
“I’ve cut up my share of fallen timber, Greg,” he said.
Earning the use of the first name had been hard fought. It was “Mister Carter” for sixteen months, and “sir” for two months before that. Rudy spent almost two years of earning the trust of his fiancée’s father. Greg was old school, like Rudy’s dad. But Rudy put in the time. People are people, and Rudy knew that if you showed enough effort, you could win someone over.
“Make sure you wear the hardhat and glasses, son,” Greg said. “Laura can’t be a widow if you never get married.”
“This is new growth,” Rudy said. “We’re good.”
Rudy respected Laura’s old man. Greg had spent years doing contracting and repair jobs around Cambridge and Roxbury, taking on the jobs that white contractors would charge an arm and leg for while filling their talent pool with Latino labor. Greg lived in the community and worked for the community. He might take longer, but he did things right. Rudy liked that about him. Greg and Rudy agreed on the illegal labor issue, but Rudy learned that there were some things best not agreed upon out loud. Somehow, the elder black man’s words repeated from a white mouth wouldn’t work. Rudy could accept that.
Laura was in New York, visiting college friends. When the storm came through, she asked Rudy to check on Greg’s place. The old man took care of neighbors, but he left his own property on the back burner. That was another thing they had in common. When Rudy’s dad was a plumber, their sinks were leaky. When his father went to jail and Rudy’s mom had to work as a maid, their house was a sty. Grabbing the brand new chainsaw off of Greg’s picnic table, he was happy that he and Greg weren’t lumberjacks.
“I’m going to grab a beer,” Greg said. “You want one?”
“Two,” Rudy said.
“How’re you going to hold the saw?” Greg asked.
The smell of the neighbor’s wood stove made Rudy think of winters up north, where his mother made weekly batches of cookies leading up to Christmas. Cookies he hoped to eat again one day if Laura was welcome up with him. Pulling the cord of the saw, he smelled gas before he felt it roar to life. The yellow hardhat Greg had left on the steps was fifteen steps away. Rudy slipped his safety glasses out of his shirt pocket with his right hand and decided to just get to work.
The first few cuts were the easiest. He carved through the birch’s trunk, a third of the way from the top, then a third from underneath. The sawdust and papery bark spat up into his glasses. He enjoyed the rumble in his arms as the saw whined its way into the wood. He started humming and then singing to himself over the saw’s roar, “Young skinhead, they call you hooligan,” before remembering where he was. He looked over his shoulder, the saw still in the tree, hoping Greg wasn’t already back. There was a lot wrong with that move. The shift in his stance twisted the chain toward a knot in the wood he didn’t see.
The chain snapped into a toothy whip that slapped the side of his skull and pulled the safety glasses off his face. His right hand tensed, and the aggrieved saw wailed before it stalled. The sudden lack of vibration caused him to drop it. He didn’t scream. Rudy wasn’t in pain yet, just aware of the impact. That caused him to panic and inspect his head. His hand came back warm and wet.
“Rudy!” Greg was suddenly next to him. The pain came upon him then and he shrieked like a kettle. Greg had taken a blue bandana out of his pocket and had Rudy hold it on the wound.
“Laura,” Rudy said. “She’s going to be mad.”
“Just hold that rag on your head,” said Greg. “I’m going to get the truck.”
As they raced to Mass General, Rudy’s left eye was blurry. Greg made him recite the last three presidents’ names. Getting to the current one was easy.
“You’re goddamn right,” Greg said. Which made Rudy laugh for a second, but that hurt. “Hang in there, son. We don’t have far to go.”
Rudy didn’t have to wait to give his name in the emergency room. The orderlies and nurses rushing to take him into the triage kept asking him if he was all right, but Rudy didn’t think they cared about his answer, only if he could answer. The look of concern on Greg’s face embarrassed Rudy.
“Is this your boss?” someone asked Rudy.
“He’s my father-in-law,” Rudy said.
When he was put on the gurney and hidden behind curtains, Rudy thought it was to give him privacy. The green curtains kept parting as they threw a neck brace on him and several hands poked at his head.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
“Do you know the year?” someone asked.
He did. “I even know the who the current president is, too.”
“On a scale of one to ten,” someone started to say.
“You’re putting fingers in my head,” Rudy said. “Ten.”
Whatever they injected into his scalp worked. Rudy couldn’t feel the cut anymore, nothing but a dull ache in his jaw and fingers. It was similar to the one he had whenever he’d been tattooed, especially during the cover-ups. Drawing over old ink, “cleaning the real estate,” he called it. The doctor, an Indian woman, had clippers in her hand.
“You’re shaving my head?”
“It’s okay, it will grow back,” she said.
“I know,” he said, “It’s just—“
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Your hair’s really thick, we need to make sure we can see what we’re doing.”
“Wait,” he said.
The buzz of the clippers was barely audible. He thought of Laura. Her beautiful, brown skin. The way she had looked past old photos of him and his old crew drinking and saluting the camera, mementos of his youth, of friends he had to leave behind, and he started to groan loudly.
“You’re going to be okay,” the doctor said. But when he heard the Hispanic nurse tsk behind his head, he knew why. The room became tense, but the ER staff kept working on him.
“Do you want your father-in-law?” She asked.
“Can you put something over my head?” He asked.
“We’re stapling it up,” she said. “It won’t look so bad.”
“Not the cut,” he said. “The Swastika.”
The sudden silence of the little curtained-off alcove unnerved him. He thought of movies where a hole is blown out of the side of plane and the cabin de-pressurizes. But none of the people had been sucked away.
The doctor nodded and said, “I will see what I can do.”
The one white med student in the room wrapped gauze around Rudy’s head tightly. Whatever the young guy was muttering was unclear, but Rudy wasn’t going to call him out. He had stopped apologizing to people for what he used to be years ago. The slow shedding of the old identity and the trappings of an angry white kid from Hooksett, New Hampshire had been a process. Still, people wanted a revelation, or a religious tale of redemption. One better than, “It’s easy to say nigger out loud, when you’ve never even talked to a black person.”
Greg came through the curtains. His shoulders slumped in his brown work jacket. His future-father-in-law coming into the room was the only anchor Rudy had to his current life.
“You could of just told me you didn’t want to cut down the tree,” Greg said.
“If I laugh,” Rudy said, “I might pass out.”
“I’m sorry,” Greg said.
“I turned my head,” Rudy said. “I was an idiot and should have watched where I was cutting. I should have worn the helmet.”
“What the hell are they doing?” Greg pointed to the bandage. “The cut’s on the top of your head.”
“Different wound,” Rudy said.
“Laura’s coming home,” Greg said.
“Oh, God,” Rudy said, “Did you tell her I’m okay?”
“Let’s see if they let you out tonight.”
“They won’t,” Rudy said. “It’s a head wound. Even with staples in, I’m a mess.”
“How do you know?”
“My dad,” Rudy said. “He was hit in the head with a bat, once.”
“Shit.”
“He lived,” Rudy said.
“That’s a story,” Greg said. “Boys will be boys.”
“He was thirty-six,” Rudy said. “Too dumb to die.”
“Hey,” Greg said, “Your dad’s part of what you are, son.”
Rudy pointed to his head.
“Yes,” he said. “Stupidity.”
The doctor came back in and shined a penlight in Rudy’s pupils. Rudy breathed in the stink of her blue latex gloves. The staples in his head were tight. He felt woozy.
“You’re his father-in-law?” she asked Greg.
“Yes, ma’am,” Greg said.
“You’re a good man,” she said. She left them there.
Greg sat down in the chair next to Rudy’s bed and held Rudy’s hand. His strong chin trembled.
“I hope my kids have your family’s chin,” Rudy said.
“You and Laura expecting?” Greg asked.
“No,” Rudy said. “You know I love her, right?”
“Like the doctor said, you’re a good man,” Greg said.
“That was about you. I was a shitty kid.”
“Rudy,” Greg said. “Who wasn’t?”
Rudy wanted to scratch underneath the bandage.
• • •
They moved him to his own room where he was kept under observation. The white med student from before checked in periodically on Greg and Rudy. After an hour, Rudy began fading in out of sleep. When it took him, he had no dreams. He awoke the next morning, alone in his hospital bed with the gauze wrap loose around his neck. Greg was not there. The white student came in and noticed he was awake. To Rudy, there was something about the man’s appearance, trimmed beard and shaved head, which angered him.
“Where’s my father-in-law?” Rudy asked.
“Went home hours ago,” he said.
“You talked to him,” Rudy said. He reached up and scratched the stubble.
“You’ve got a lot of tests to go through today,” he said. “MRI being one of them.”
“Is he coming back?” Rudy asked.
“He’s coming back with your fiancée,” the med student said.
“Did he see it?” Rudy pointed to his head.
“You know,” the student said, “there was a part of me that wanted you to think he did, but no. You pulled the bandage off after he left.”
“Good,” he said.
“He will see it, though,” the student said. “What you are.”
“And what’s that?”
After ten heartbeats, they broke eye contact.
When he was finally left alone, Rudy let himself cry. His head was on fire. He wanted to push the “call nurse” button, but he had no idea who else would come through the door, administering medication along with lectures about a past that he would continue to answer for no matter what he did to clean up and cover it up. It was a lazy move, just growing hair out, like raking dead leaves and branches over a blighted patch of grass until one had time to re-seed the lawn. But the discomfort he had avoided in covering up or removing the tattoo seemed almost cakewalk to what was coming. Every white man’s said racist things, few become walking billboards for white nationalism as part of their “rebellious youth.” The tattoo hadn’t even bothered Rudy’s parents when he got it.
Even as the pain increased and nearly drove him blind, he decided to wait until Laura arrived before he called anyone to his bedside. He hoped they could figure this out together. He hoped that he could remain Rudy, and Greg would still be Greg and not Mister Carter. Instead of a sprawl of yard waste, Rudy imagined a clean backyard where there could be young children who’d never have to know who Daddy was before. And he hoped all of this while hating himself for liking the way his fingernails felt on his shaved head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven LaFond is a writer who lives in Arlington, MA. His work has also appeared in the Drum, The Good Men Project, apt, and others. He received his MFA in Fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. He always wears proper headgear.
LF #056 © Steven LaFond. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, February 2014.
