Listening to Charlie

I had been listening to Charlie tell me what to do all my life. As a child he prompted me to steal cookies, late at night, from the boxes my parents kept on the upper cupboard shelves; to grab cat's tails and to yank 'em hard just to make him laugh; to shoot paper clips with a rubber band at kids in my homeroom class because he knew paper clips stung more than spitballs.

As a teen he tormented me until I stole packs of smokes for him from Tolson's grocery back in New Castle where we lived up until I was thirteen. He had me egg and key my father's car when my dad took to hiding the car keys in his boxer pockets when he slept each night. It was my face that bore the sting of Kelly Morgan's slap when she objected to me groping her C-cupped breasts and after Charlie insisted I squeeze them harder to see if they'd squirt milk during our last date. I told him girls' boobs don't do that unless the girl was pregnant, but Charlie didn't believe me. He never
listened.

It's no wonder I had trouble finding and keeping friends whenever my family moved into a new town. Charlie always caused trouble. He was a pest, mean and sullen, always had to have his way with everything. He never could just let me live my life the way I wanted to.

He was the reason I bailed from school for good, at sixteen, and why I left my folks.

Now at twenty, homeless and jobless again -- without wheels, I was tired of listening to Charlie.

I ignored him as I stuck my thumb out, standing along the ramp to Interstate 70. I tuned out his protests when I hitched a ride west with a man named Henry Jivers. Charlie tagged along naturally. Said I couldn't just leave him out there alone in the dark, with no place else to go. With no one to hang around with. I ignored him.

Jivers helped shut Charlie up for awhile. He let me swig on his bottle of Segram's. I ended up downing half the bottle, and that knocked me out for about 250 miles. Couldn't hear Charlie then. Not until after Jivers insisted I share a motel room with him. I warned the guy Charlie'd take offense at that, that he'd feel snubbed. Warned him Charlie could get madder than a WWF wrestler getting stiffed out a hefty paycheck.

And Charlie did take offense.

I heard him yelling outside the motel door, wanting in. Jivers let him in. Don't think he meant to.

I tried to swab up as much of the blood as I could, but them cheap motel bedspreads don't absorb much. The room still looked like a slaughter house when I left it. So as not to freak out the maid too much when she came the
next morning, I had slipped the bigger pieces of Jivers into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed. It was the best I could do.

Charlie reminded me to take Jivers' car keys and wallet money. Even though I was mad at Charlie, both seemed like a good idea, so I took 'em. I took Jivers' Visa too. Charlie seemed like he was apologizing.

Outside, getting into Jivers' Impala, I told Charlie he needed to do something about his anger management problem. He promptly told me to shut up.

Jivers had gotten me as far as Indianapolis. His car, his two hundred and eleven dollars, and his Visa, got me outside of Ogden, Utah. Charlie, of course, came along for the ride. He sulked most of the way, occasionally whistled Shania Twain songs, and commented on the passing countryside. I didn't mind him much, but the incident with Henry Jivers bugged me. I knew I'd never be rid of Charlie.

-----

Outside of Ogden, Charlie got me arrested. He wanted a Snickers bar and a bag of Ranch flavored Doritos. The Impala needed gas, so I stopped at a Mini Mart just off Interstate 84. When I came out the Mini Mart with a bag of
munchies in tow, I noticed two state troopers checking out the Impala. Charlie must've been taking a leak cause the car sat empty.

The cops asked me about the Impala. I told them I was borrowing it. They clamped hand-cuffs on me and hauled me off to Ogden. I stared out at the back window of the patrol car, watching the Impala and the bag of spilled munchies laying on its side in the Mini Mart parking lot, but I didn't see Charlie. Part of me was Glad. Part of me wondered how I'd avoid going to prison.

In Ogden, I tried to tell the police about Charlie. They said they knew all they cared to about him, and they booked me for auto theft, robbery, and the murder of Henry Jivers. I told them to go back to the Mini Mart and look for Charlie. That he killed Jivers. A couple cops chuckled.

The wait for extradition papers from Indianapolis would keep me in Ogden for a week. I settled in for the long haul of explaining Charlie's behavior over and over again, and wasn't looking forward to it. On the bright side, I had
a cell and a bunk all to myself, got fed.

Three nights later, Charlie showed up.

I couldn't see much beyond my cell, but I knew it was him. I heard his angry roar, louder than thunder, rumble through the big adjoining room where the cops processed me. I heard shouting, then screams, lots of gunfire. The drunks, the firebug, and the thug who beat some kid into a coma, in the cells across and to the left of mine, started yelling. The firebug across from me grabbed the bars of his cell and pressed against them so tight, looked like he was trying to squeeze through them too see what was happening. He looked scared, eyes were all wide. He kept making this squeaky noise when he opened his mouth, like he lost his voice or like he was trying to scream but couldn't.

"Hey, don't worry man." I told him, "It's only Charlie. I'll see if he'll agree to spring you too."

The firebug just looked at me, made that squeaky noise again, and backed away from the bars, retreated into the shadows of the lower bunk in his cell. I heard furniture crash against a wall, crunch, and splinter. Something made of glass broke. One skinny, lady cop actually fled down the corridor past our cells. I heard a door open and close somewhere down the way she went, but I couldn't tell if the door was an exit to the building or not. I doubted it. Who'd put an exit to a police station near holding cells?

Then I saw Charlie. He stomped down the corridor, and stopped by my cell. He reached between the bars and ruffed me on the head with one of his meaty, clawed paws, like he hadn't seen me in weeks. Big ol' grin grew wide on his
warty face, made him look kinda stupid. I didn't tell him that or that he had blood and guts splattered all over him. Nor did I complain that he'd just smeared a gob of gore on top my head.

I just pointed down the hall.

"One went that way." I told him.

The other guys were as quiet as mice in their cells. No one seemed to be breathing. But I knew Charlie could be an intimidating sight, and couldn't blame them for being so quiet.

When he ran off after the lady cop, I wiped the bloody goo off my head with my shirt sleeve.

I listened, but didn't hear any sounds coming from anywhere else in the building. I heard sirens. Lots of them. From outside, growing louder.

Then I heard a muffled, feminine scream.

Three minutes later, Charlie stood in front of my cell again. He put his fur covered muscles to work, big gnarly paws tugged at my cell door until the lock bolt snapped on the door.

The drunks, thug, and fire bug were all sitting quietly on their bunks and cowering in the far corner of their cells when Charlie led me past them.

The sirens were getting closer.

Charlie did something then that he never did before. He picked me up.  To him, I must've weighted next to nothing, not that I was fat or anything. He held me against him, one strong, furry arm wrapping around my head and upper back, squishing my face in to his blood-wet, hairy chest. The other snugging me together, as he cradled me like a baby.  I couldn't see a thing as he carried me out into the adjoining room which he had previously destroyed.
Don't think I wanted to anyway.

I heard Charlie's feet crunch on broken furniture and glass. The sirens were loud now. I heard shouts. Someone was using a bullhorn, asking for anyone inside the police station to respond.

Charlie told me to be real quiet.

I heard a police whistle, felt the heat of the sun on portions of my back which were not covered by Charlie's thick-armed embrace. I expected to feel a hundred bullets sting my flesh, rendering me a bloody, oozing sack of dead weight in Charlie's arms. Bullets irritated Charlie. They didn't seem to penetrate his thick hide. But since Charlie tended to keep himself invisible around most folks, not many got the opportunity to shoot at him.

The cops didn't either -- shoot at him that is. They didn't shoot at me either. I couldn't see why 'cause of Charlie was bear-hugging me, but I could still hear that bullhorn.

Guess the cops couldn't see Charlie, or me for that matter. Don't know how that worked. How ever it did was fine by me.

The cops stomped up the steps. I heard them rush past us.

It was getting hard for me to breath, and Charlie didn't smell so good this close. It was then that I must've passed out.

---

When I came to I was in a meadow, laying in tall blue grass, beneath a red tinged sky. Birds chirp in a huge bamboo grove nearby.

Charlie had washed me up. I had on new clothes, baggy pants and nice, blue and gray, Abercrombie & Fitch tee shirt, with a new pair of Nikes. I smelled good too. Spicy.

Charlie looked clean. I sat up and watched him as he chewed on the end of long blade of blue grass. He was squinting up at the cloudless sky.

"We safe now?" I asked him.

Charlie turned and looked at me. "You wid me," he said. "On my side of world now. What you think?"

I think I kinda liked it, and I told him so.

Smiling, I laid back down on the cool grass, relieved. Maybe Charlie would change. Calm down some, now that we on his turf. On his world. Maybe if I asked him to, he'd listen to me for a change.