A Few Bumps with Big G

A Few Bumps with Big G

by Brad Bodeker

“You wanted to see me?” said the Big G as he sat down beside him belly up at the bar.

Rodney looked over at him. The Big G wasn’t at all what he expected. Black curly hair slicked back with pomade. He had on a white dress shirt with a thin black tie, a pinstripe coat with matching pants.

The bartender came over, “What’ll you have, buddy?”

The Big G looked at the liquor selection, “I’ll take a Manhattan, no ice.”

So, the Big G drinks Manhattans? Rodney thinks to himself with a grin and then tells the bartender, “Top me off here, willya?”

The bartender hesitates, knowing how drunk Rodney Delaney is already, and then looks at the Big G.

“Double malt scotch, isn’t it, Mr. Delaney?” the Big G asks.

“Yep.” Rodney answers.

Big G nods and the bartender pours it full.

After his sip, Rodney looks over at Big G, “Are you really…I mean, are you…?”

“I am.” Big G confirms, “Now what is it you needed to talk to me about, Mr. Delaney?”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Rodney laughs, “You’re no more ‘the Big G’ than I’m St. Patrick! Get out…you frickin’ moke!”

The room gets quiet and the bartender tenses up. The Big G looks up at him and winks and everyone returns to business as usual.

“I really don’t have time for these games, Rodney.” the Big G looks at his watch, “I do have other appointments today.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do, you’re like Santa Claus, ain’t ya?”

“You have 30 seconds, Mr. Delaney, otherwise, I need to move on to my next appointment.”

The Big G raised his glass to his lips and Rodney watched the Manhattan drift into his mouth. He wasn’t sure if he had enough liquid courage to speak out to the Big G and say what was on his mind. Not everyone got an audience with the Big G, and he only had a few seconds left.

“Time’s up, Mr. Delaney.” the Big G said as he put his glass down on the bar, “Maybe next time I visit, you won’t beat around the bush with this sideways anger.”

As the Big G stood up from his barstool, Rodney Delaney grabbed him by his pinstriped suit coat.

“Hold on!” He shouted, his face red with rage and liquor, “You gave me 47 years of misery and then give me 30 seconds to talk about it? You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve!”

The Big G stopped as well as everyone else in the bar. A smile came to the corner of his lips and you could hear sighs of relief throughout.

He turned towards Rodney and sat back down. The bartender looked at him, the Big G nodded, and was poured another Manhattan. He pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. Blew out a plume of smoke and stared into Rodney’s face.

“47 years, Mr. Delaney?” he asked with that smile still caught on the corner of his mouth.

“Give or take!” he spat, “I’ve had nothing but hell and misery!”

“Mr. Delaney….Rodney….did you not have good parents?”

“Well….yes, they provided for me, but they used to fight sometimes! Sure, I had a nice home…we did family vacations…but my dad used to hit me and my mother all the time! He had a short fuse and sometimes I thought he would kill my mother! Then when mother found out he was cheating on her….fuck…she lost her mind! She just fucking lost it…and I was just a kid and I didn’t know what to do!”

“In a way, your dad taught you a valuable lesson.” the Big G said calmly.

“A lesson?” Rodney’s anger started to flow again, “How is beating the shit out of me and my mother teaching me a lesson? Spare the rod Spoil the Child? Is that your almighty wisdom?”

“He taught you how not to be a father and how not to be a husband.”

“Well….”

“Because you were a good father, and you were a good husband, weren’t you?”

“That’s the key word there, ain’t it?” anger and calm were playing on the seesaw of his heart, now hurt came to play, “I was a good father! I was a good hus-!”

A lump in his throat coagulated and he started to sob. After a bit, he wiped his eyes and drew his handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. He looked around at the bar and then bitterly at the Big G.

“You fucking bastard.” he said under his breath, “You fucking took them from me!”

“Why is it, Mr. Delaney, that whenever someone around here dies it’s my fault? Whenever something bad happens it is all pinned on me?”

“Because you’ve got your hands in everything!”

“Like people don’t have their own minds? Their own wills to go about and do things against my orders? You want me to rub out everyone that disobeys my direct orders?”

Rodney drank a small sip from his scotch.

“Why not?” he finally answered, “I would.”

“You’re not me, Mr. Delaney, you never could be. If I began to eliminate every single person because they didn’t obey me, there’d be bodies miles high. Because not everyone is perfect, are they? I couldn’t single out a single offender…it would have to be a zero tolerance effort. If that were the case, then I’d have to take you out as well, Rodney.”

Rodney shivered. Started to think that maybe he shouldn’t have called the Big G here. He could rub him out right here in front of everyone and nobody would bat an eyelash.

“What did I do to deserve this?” Rodney asked quietly, “I tried to be a good man. I tried to obey your orders…but I feel like I’ve been kicked in the face for it. Unnoticed.”

The Big G put his neatly manicured hand on his shoulder, “You didn’t ask for this. For any of this. Nobody ever does, Rodney. Things just happen, and you take what you learned from whatever past you came from and try to steer around it. That’s how it works.”

“My Stella….” Rodney began to cry again, “…my baby Janey….”

“They’re with me now, Mr. Delaney, rest assured I’ll take good care of them.”

“That’s bullshit!” anger rose up so quickly from hurt, “I need them!!! What do you need them for?? Don’t you have plenty of people with you already?? Why did you have to take them from me?? You son-of-a-bitch!!”

With that, Rodney cocked his calloused fist back and released it into the Big G’s face. Big G landed on the floor and the bar patrons stood from their tables looking on in horror.

“I’ll kill you, you bastard!!” he landed a kick to the Big G’s ribs.

“You can’t kill me, Mr. Delaney.” the Big G spoke calmly. He did not attempt to fight back, nor did he attempt stop Rodney from his assault.

Rodney grabbed a nearby beer bottle and broke it on the lip of the bar and then started stabbing the Big G in the neck with the jagged edges.

Blood spurted out and a crimson stain bloomed on the neatly starched collar of the Big G’s white shirt.

“Get up!!” Rodney shouted, “Get up, you son-of-a-bitch!!! Fight me!!!”

The Big G only sat up. Dabbed his finger on his collar and assessed the blood on his fingertips.

“I’m not going to fight you, Rodney. Just let it out.”

Rodney grabbed him by his gored shirt collar and stood him up. He went forward with his forehead into the bridge of the Big G’s nose. Over and over again, after the first two his nose snapped and spurted blood from his nostrils. He cocked another haymaker and let it flow right into the jaw of the Big G. A couple teeth jettisoned from his mouth and his jaw looked unhinged.

He grabbed a barstool and pummeled the Big G over the head with it. The Big G went down. The barstool broke apart and Rodney found that all he had was a busted leg of it. He beat the Big G repeatedly with the leg over and over again. He was sobbing as he struck.

It was relentless, the others around only stood there with mouths agape waiting for some sort of retribution from the Big G. But the Big G only laid there still on the ground while being pummeled by this madman who couldn’t seem to stop the bludgeoning insanity that had let loose within him. He was crying out, cursing the air, spitting on the Big G.

Finally, he stopped. He collapsed onto the ground gasping for breath. His knuckles hurt, and his head throbbed. But most of all, guilt welled up inside of him like a wave of stomach flu.

“What have I done?” he finally sobered and realized what he was doing. “Oh shit, oh shit!”

He sat up and looked at the Big G who lay prostrate on the floor. Splinters of wood and glass around, on and in him. A large jagged laceration on his neck which blood was starting slow. Blood decorated his askew jaw as well and his neat clothing. The Big G’s skull was caved in part way from the right ear to the bridge of the nose.

“Oh shit!” he repeated poking the Big G’s body, “I’m sorry….I’m so sorry.”

He looked around and everyone tried to look away from his gaze. He was alone in this one, and he knew he was going  to pay for what he had done.

“Somebody help me!” he yelled to the crowd. No answer came, “Help me, dammit!”

They all just started to walk slowly backwards, towards the door.

“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” he started to sob again, but it seemed like there was no tears left in him. His body started to cool from the layer of angered sweat that coated his body from a few moments ago.

Just then a hand landed on his own bruising throbbing knuckles.

“It’s okay, Mr. Delaney.” said a voice beside him. It was the Big G, “No harm, no foul.”

Rodney Delaney looked up and the Big G was restored whole again as if nothing had ever happened.

“What…..what the hell?”

“It’s out of your system now, Mr. Delaney.” the Big G stood up and helped Rodney to his feet.

“But I….I thought I killed you….you should be dead from what I did to you…this doesn’t….”

“I told you that you couldn’t kill me. I’m the Big G, afterall, I don’t go down easy.”

“But….”

“It was all necessary. To help you heal.”

“I need a drink.”

“That’s one thing you don’t need, Rodney. Not now. C’mon, lets go get some air, shall we?”

Rodney looked into the Big G’s eyes. Looking for something in there that said, step outside, Rodney, because I’m going to make a mess of you before I kill you.

But there was only kindness in those eyes that he couldn’t make out the color of. They both walked out of the bar together without looking back.

When they stepped outside into the fresh St. Paul air, Rodney felt clean again. In fact, there were no more blood spatters on his skin and clothing. That dirty caked sweat was gone and he felt as if he’d taken a nice hot shower. Even the booze induced intoxication was absent.

“I…I’m new again?” he asked the Big G.

“In a way. You’re still Rodney Flint Delaney, with the same life you had before we met, the same absences you had in your life, nothing’s changed on the outside.”

There was still an ache in his heart when he thought about his wife and his daughter. But it wasn’t a cold piercing stab, it was a warm hole in his heart. Even a tear flowed restlessly from his eye.

“You’re a good man, Rodney. It’s good to have a man like you in the family. There aren’t a lot of people like you around.”

“But in there…I….” he felt shame wash over him.

The Big G brushed it off, “We all fall, Rodney, happens to the best of us sometimes. I forgive you, so forgive yourself.”

With that, he produced a fedora that Rodney didn’t notice he had before and put it on top of his own head.

“I’m off to my next appointment, Mr. Delaney. If there isn’t anything else?”

Rodney looked up at the blue cloudless sky and then down at the Big G, “No. I don’t think so…..”

“Are you sure?”

“Well….can you tell Stella and Janey that…I love them and miss them?”

“They already know, Rodney, they can hear you and feel you. But I’ll remind them. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Delaney, tomorrow is another day.”

The Big G walked off into the crowd, disappearing into that ocean of people. Rodney stared at the spot he last saw him for about a half hour. Then he looked around, a small smile formed at the corner of his own mouth, and he walked home.