Charles, Black by Charles Black

Charles, Black by Charles Black

I need to get laid. I wonder what's for dinner? Brisk New England. My fingertips were cold and my nose was running. It was Friday an I had a long shift tomorrow. I was the supervisor of a treatment facility for emotionally and behaviorally challenged boys. I was starting over. I left my old life behind. It scared me.





“Don’t come any closer or I’ll vanquish you.” Walter uttered wielding a brittle branch, a foot longer than him. A disaster waiting to happen. As I waited on him he planted one end in the ground and adjusted his glasses with a finger. He swiped his hand across his nose and pulled his pants over his bare crack. When he sniffled his protruding eye teeth slipped from his lips like tusks. Walter was thirteen and developmentally delayed. A tiny boy who ate his own feces. Well, not just his own. My boss says that he does it when he feels that way. I felt that way. It would have been easy to restrain him but he didn't need that. Not how I wanted to start my day, cleaning up someone else's mess. But that's what I always did. I was good at it. For fifteen years I had been compounding mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake. That's a lot of mess to clean. I was only twenty seven. I hated my life.





Standing beside me with one arm folded across his belly and the other massaging his goatee, was my best friend, Jeffrey. Jeffrey dug techno music and had his penis pierced by his girlfriend. It had a little ball that spun around inside her. They loved it plus it went well with the eleven other piercings, gauges and tattoo’s. He spent hours trying to convince me to get one but I loved my dick too much for that. He was a pre-med major until hard partying and depression made it impossible. He graduated from college with a degree in English. A philosopher and writer, he was my right hand man and together we ran shit.





"What do you want to do it's getting a little chilly?" Jeffrey stuttered and he warmed his arms.


"We could grab him."


"Yeah I think were gonna have to grab him."


"Is Mark still here?"


"He's doing interviews."


"We gotta do it quick."





The voices in the distance drew closer. When I saw Mark giving a tour. The tour meant that you had the job and this girl was HOT. I checked Jeffrey to see if he enjoyed her as much as I did but he was still studying our situation. Me, I was studying the girl.





"You guys need help?" Mark shouted to us. I barely heard it.


"We're good. We just don't want to restrain him." Jeffrey shot back.


"Good Job." and he was off. She tagged by his side.





I watched her strut, down the parking lot, up the hill and into Mark's office which was right beside the timeout room. Right where I was headed. I turned to Walter and said "Well I guess we're just gonna call the cops, they'll just have to take you away. Maybe back home on the ferry."





He hesitated for a moment then asked, "The cops?". It was perfect. He dropped the branch and marched to the timeout room. We tried to keep up. Jeffrey looked over at me. "Really?"


I shrugged. We laughed.





The Timeout room was my favorite spot. The quiet was refreshing. It allowed me to think. The last eight years was a crazy ride. With crazy people. Some very good, and some not so much. The paneling on the wall was perfect. It reminded me of home. Six desks scattered about the room. Three of them empty. Nelson, a very large Wampanoag Indian and a really good friend of mine, guarded the room. He wore two ponytails and the biggest eagle claw necklace. He participated in all the local Indian games, including fireball ( a game where Wampanoag play handball except the ball is on fire, in their underwear.). His hands and forearms bore the scars.


He was my ride. Occasionally, and by occasionally, I mean once a week at least, he would scrape some animal carcass off the road on our way. He would bring it to work and skin it. Most times a crow but the random squirrel and chipmunk would do. With the kind of kids we worked with this was a very very very bad idea. The Bosses told him he couldn't do it anymore, he claimed they were racists. Indian haters. In the military I was surgical tech and I saw a lot of crazy shit but this was gross. The kids loved it. They loved his Indianess. He sat behind a large desk and eyeballed them all.


I inched further down the hall toward the bathroom when I heard her voice. I knew she was getting ready to leave. I snuck into the bathroom when I heard her say goodbye. The hand shake then four steps away. I popped out of the bathroom and right into her path. It worked. It always worked.


"Oh, sorry I didn't see you there."





She kept stepping, "No problem".





No Problem? Not even a Hello? Hey. Where the fuck are you going? HELLO.





As she approached the door she stopped and peaked into the timeout room. "Goodbye Nelson, it was nice meeting you."





I heard him say "You too, when do you start?". In his bullshit voice.


"Monday".





I watched her get into her small grey pickup and didn't notice Mark, my boss, standing behind me. He was waving his finger at me. "Don't". I gave him the "WHAT?" look, but I was busted. He always gave us the "Don't run the girls away" speech but I couldn't help it. Funny, runaway was what I did after a while.





Fuck I'm off Monday.





I relieved Nelson of his post. His parting whisper was "It's on tonight". The last time I heard those words he built a fire on my apartment porch from wood he stored in his pickup. He stomped it out. Stereotypes aside. I never met an Indian that could handle his liquor. Something was amiss. That's when I noticed the camera. Someone was watching over me.