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No one would have called Jackson Healy a particular man, much less a fussy one. His philosophy of life, if you could say he had one, was something more like live and let live. Well, unless he’d been hired to not let you just live, but even then he made allowances where he could. Which knee you wanted broken and so forth. But he was particular—yeah, he’d even cop to being fussy—on one point, and that was, he didn’t answer to Jacky. Some of the other boys…young men, really, they’d all been 18 and up…had made a point of calling him that back on the avocado farm, and he’d come to hate it as much as those fucking avocados.
So March really needed to cut it out.
“Jacky…Jacky…” he was muttering. “Jacky Jack…” His eyes were closed, but there was a big smile on his face, and he couldn’t pretend to be asleep. Drunk, yes, but what the fuck kind of excuse was that? If being drunk got Holland March off the hook for anything, he’d never be on a hook, ever. He’d be the freest fish in the sea. (Healy made a mental note: Freest? Is that a word? How would you spell it? He’d look it up in the Concise OED March’s daughter Holly had given him as his Christmas gift this year. That girl. Triumph over genetics if there’d ever been one.)
“Jack Jack Bo-Back…”
“Okay, no,” Healy said. “That stops right now.”
A frown creased March’s face, but the eyes didn’t open. “You’re there, man. Thank you. You’re my brother.”
“I’m not your brother.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’m just saying I’m not your brother. I don’t have any brothers.”
“Every man’s your brother.”
“No, see, that would’ve made my mother a very busy woman, and I’m pretty sure she only had the one—”
“Boo-bop, doodly ah!”
“—child. You ready to get up yet?”
“No,” March said, his voice sounding depressed all of a sudden, almost sober. “That’s a no.”
“Arm still hurts?”
“And is going to for quite some time.” March was lying on the couch, in his finest finery, which this Christmas season in the year of our lord 1979 meant a suede vest over an open-collar shirt printed in two shades of chocolate and one of cream. The cream made curlicues, like you’d just poured it into the chocolate. The right sleeve was split up the seam and the arm underneath had been split similarly – that fucker with the Bowie knife, and where in god’s name had that even come from? Healy had already taken two guns off the man and a switchblade, and then out of his ass the man pulls this, this thing, and if March hadn’t swung his arm up in front of it—
Well, there was a reason Jackson Healy was putting his partner up in his own little apartment above the Comedy Store while the March homestead was undergoing let’s call it renovations (the fucker had shot out three windows, and driven a Trans-Am through the side wall to boot). Holly was staying with her friend Renata, which was a whole other story – she was lucky her dad had been unconscious on a hospital gurney when she’d come up with that solution, since Healy had just okayed it without even giving her a lecture about being careful. It’s not like Healy didn’t know who Renata was – her mom had been their client, and was now serving 7-to-10 at San Quentin – but he figured Holly was a strong enough kid that she’d be a positive influence on Renata rather than the other way around. Anyway, he needed to stay at the hospital with March, and Holly had to go somewhere. Renata would have to do.
Healy had offered to give blood. It felt like the least he could give. But the docs declined, so what Healy wound up doing was passing the night in the waiting area outside the emergency room, sitting on a hard plastic seat, watching the picture roll on the crappy black-and-white Zenith they had out there and wondering how March was faring. The man was a survivor – he’d walked away from plenty that would’ve killed a lesser man (or a less lucky one). But everyone’s number comes up someday, and the geyser that had sprayed from his arm when the Bowie knife went in had made Healy think this was that unlucky day – the ides of March, if you will (and yes, thank you very much, Healy did know Julius Caesar, the man had gotten an education, or something like one, courtesy of the State of California). It wasn’t until Healy saw them rolling March out in a wheelchair, 87 stiches to the good, that he stopped thinking in terms of Shakespeare tragedies and, you know, choice of casket, and whether or not he’d need to adopt March’s kid.
So that had been a relief. But the motherfucker had been here on his couch ever since, on a more or less continual bender, with Healy there to get rid of his empties and supply Winstons and Yoo-hoos and Lucky Charms and administer painkillers, aka Dewar’s and Drambuie.
“You know,” Healy said, as gently as a man who used to break knees for a living can, “a little exercise would be good for your arm.”
“Nah,” said March, cracking his eyes at last to look at the long line of stitches in his pink flesh. “I think I’m going to need help a while longer. Unless you’re saying you’re done helping me—”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Good, ’cause I could use some help.”
“Some help?”
March nodded in the direction of the bathroom, whose door was standing wide open. Healy didn’t move. “Unless you think I should just piss myself because I can’t use my arm anymore—”
“You do have another arm, you know. They come in twos.”
“And you know I can’t aim left-handed,” March said.
“I know you say you can’t.”
“I missed the bowl the time I tried,” March said.
“You were standing in the kitchen.”
“And I missed the toilet.”
“You’re saying you need to pee. That what you’re saying?”
“Yeah. Do you mind?”
Healy let out a long sigh, slapped his hands down on his thighs, got to his feet. There are things you only do for your friends. Then there were things you didn’t do even for your friends. This was one of them. Something you only do for a man who’d saved your life, who’d shed his blood for you. And even if you suspect, deep down, that he’s only doing it to make a point, to remind you how much you owe him, that he doesn’t even have the excuse of secretly enjoying it – the way you, if you’re totally honest with yourself, and you sure as fuck are not, but if you were, would have to admit, you kind of do – you still do it, because you owe the man a debt, and if he wants to see that debt paid by having you hold his schlong while he pees, by god, you’ve seen and done worse, on the fucking avocado farm for starters.
But did he have to drink so goddamn much? The stream started strong and just kept coming and coming and coming. It was like holding onto a firehose when there was a five-alarmer to put out. The fucker had his head tilted back, eyes shut again, a big silent ahhhh coming out of his mouth, lame arm dangling by his side. It was almost done, finally, when he muttered, “Jacky-Jack…”
Healy’s hand tightened involuntarily, and March’s eyes bugged out, like one of those little rubber Martians you squeeze and out come the eyes, on little rubber stalks. Like that. And in that awful instant Healy felt torn between apologizing and, like, not. He released the pressure and the endless flow started again, but only for a few seconds before it was just a trickle and then a drip. Meanwhile, March’s face was beet red and his breathing was ragged. “You—you—”
“Sorry, man,” Healy said. “It’s just that name. I’ve always hated it.”
March’s voice was a hoarse whisper: “What name?”
“He means Jacky,” came a different voice, and looking up Healy saw Holly March standing in the doorway to the apartment, a grocery sack in one hand, her spare set of keys in the other. Where had she come from? Was it dinnertime already? Healy quickly released March’s schlong. “Hey,” he said, reaching for a hand towel, “turn around, Holly, you shouldn’t see this.”
“Why? I’ve seen men fuck and stuff,” Holly said, blasé about the whole thing, but she did turn around. “Just next time put the chain on first.”
“We’re not fucking,” Healy said, while March said, “Don’t say ‘and stuff.’ ”
March tucked himself away.
“You see?” Healy said. “Your left arm works fine.”
“For pulling up a zipper, sure.”
“I don’t think I’m helping you pee anymore.”
“Okay, well, maybe I don’t think I’m saving your life anymore,” March said. “ ’Cause I think I kind of got the worse end of the bargain.”
Holly turned around again, faced them both with her hands on her hips. “Should I just go out and give you guys some time? I really don’t mind. The food won't get cold, it’s just sandwiches.”
March trudged back to the couch. “Nah, honey, it’s fine.” He looked back over his shoulder, exchanged a glance with Healy. And what was in that glance? Nothing at all. Nothing at all, and all the world.
“Just, maybe, you know,” March said, and Healy was nodding (was that even a smile? old Jacky Jack smiling), “next time, knock first.”
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