The Risk Pool

Maybe if you had to work for a meal, you’d appreciate it more.”
    “Potatoes either got lumps or they don’t.”
    “Stop it, the two of you,” Eileen warned, and she looked to me like she meant business.
    “I tell you what,” my father said. “Just to be nice to your mother and show a little appreciation, you and I will do the dishes. Your mother can go in and watch TV. Relax.”
    “Get
him
to help,” Drew said, indicating me.
    “He can help too.”
    “I’ll help,” I agreed. I would have stood up and started right in if I could.
    “I got someplace to go,” Drew said.
    “I tell you what. Go later,” my father said. “People won’t mind if you’re late. Trust me.”
    “I’ll tell
you
what,” the boy said. Then he cleared a place in the center of the dinette large enough to plant his big elbow. “Loser washes.”
    “Enough,” Eileen said. “In a minute everything’s going to be broken, and guess who’ll get to clean up the mess.”
    My father put his elbow next to Drew’s, but they didn’t lock hands immediately. “You better move those bottles,” my father said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    Where I was sitting, I figured to get the worst of it. Drew had an arm like a leg, and when he slammed my father’s into the table, I’d get the gravy boat and the dregs of the green beans for sure. It took me a split second to prepare for this and even less for my father to slam the back of Drew Littler’s hand onto his mother’s plate, flipping it into the air like a Tiddly-Wink. The boy let out a sharp howl as the chair went out from under him and he disappeared onto his back beneath the table. He never hit the floor though, because my father never let go of his hand, which stayed pinned right where it had been slammed. Drew looked to me liked he’d have given a good deal to just fall, but he couldn’t. Like a big, excited bug, he tried desperately to right himself. His feet had become entangled in the capsized chair and his free hand frantically climbed the smooth wall in search of something to grab on to. With all that weight on his pinned forearm, it was a miracle it didn’t snap, especially the way the boy continued to thrash, kicking the fallen chair violently, but ineffectually, since with every blow it rebounded off the wall and back on top of his feet to be kicked again.
    “You let go, Sammy, you fucker!” Drew bellowed, the blue vein in his forehead wriggling frantically. “So help me, I’ll break it!”
    It took me a moment to realize the unusual nature of this threat—that it was his own arm he was threatening to break. And while its obvious sincerity scared the hell out of me, its comic aspect did not escape my father, who looked willing to risk it. I think it was the knowledge that if the arm broke he’d eaten hislast dinner at Eileen’s that finally caused him to let her son drop. And from the frozen expression on her face, I’d have sworn his decision came too late.
    Drew no sooner hit the floor than he was back on his feet again, and I thought there would be blood now for sure, but here again I was mistaken. Drew looked like he was going to attack, but my father did not get to his feet, and something about the way he just sat there so calmly prevented the boy, and when he saw my father lean back against the wall it was suddenly all over. He grabbed the arm my father had pinned to the table top and sank to his knees. “I wasn’t ready, Sammy, you cheating son of a bitch, you cocksucker,” he wailed.
    “No,” my father admitted, “and twenty years from now you still won’t be. That’s your problem.”
    Drew was sobbing now, but his fury had leaked away almost instantly. “I’m getting stronger every day, Sammy. I am. Every day. My day’s coming, Sammy, you shithead.”
    My father snorted at the idea, but the boy neither heard, nor reacted. I could tell from the lack of focus in his eyes that he was talking inwardly, trying to pump himself up again, not allowing himself to hit bottom, like a boxer talking rematch before his handlers could even stop the bleeding.
    “Be
my
day then. My day,” he said. “All you sons of bitches.
My
day.”
    He was on his knees now, rocking, his wounded arm tucked in to his middle, rocking there in the middle of the broken glass and pickle juice.
    “Good,” my father said, winking at me, his unwilling accomplice. “We’ll call it Dummy Day. We’ll crown you king, Zero.”

17
    At his worst, no human being is