Leif Wright - Robby the R-Word

ROBBY THE R-Word

Copyright 2017 by Leif M. Wright

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without prior written permission.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Promontory Press

www.promontorypress.com

ISBN: 978-1-987857-71-9

Cover Design and Typeset by Edge of Water Designs, edgeofwater.com

Printed in Canada

987654321

DEDICATION

For Maddox and Cydney. Would that all such things stayed in fictional worlds.

ROBBY SMILED . THE QUESTION HADN T CALLED FOR A SMILE AND neither had the answerbut smiling was all Robbys face knew how to do. A big, stupid, toothy, gummy smile with his tongue lolling out the left side of his mouth.

Haaaaaa, his voice said against his will as his eyes rolled around.

His left hand, steadied by the new brace on his arm, trembled with several twitches before it lightly touched the no button on his special keyboard.

No appeared on the nineteen-inch screen, black against white, nice serif font.

You dont have any idea who might want to hurt your father?

Detective Bain, Amie, Robbys nurse, interrupted. Its very difficult for Robby to communicate. Please dont make him answer the same question more than once. He tires easily.

Bain blinked. My bad, she said. Old habit, sorry. Robby, did you hear anything the night before last, around, say, two in the morning?

Haaaaa, Robby responded, stupid smile infuriating him. His hand trembled on the no button, then using customized predictive technology, he typed out, I sleep hard.

The whole sentence took two minutes to type.

Did your father mention any debts or someone who had a grudge against him, or maybe didnt like him?

Haaaa, Robby smiled.

Then black-on-white, nice serif: No.

Haaaa, he emphasized.

A bead of saliva dove from his lip, seeming suspended in the air as it stretched ploddingly down for his lap. Amie absentmindedly wiped it away with a folded paper towel. Robby smiledlike always. She smiled back.

Do you have any information at all that might help me find whoever hurt your dad?

I dont think so.

Bain sighed. She hadnt known what to expect, but this poor guy was in much worse shape than the uniforms had led her to believe.

Hes a retard, some beat cop whose name she never could remember had told her. My dog is smarter than that guy.

Biting her tongue, Bains tight, perfunctory smile had let the uniform know that thinking up more examples might be a mistake. But now that she was here with Robby, she thought his social workers might be giving him one hell of an optimistic benefit of the doubt. It was hard to imagine him doing much other than trying to breathe. His body didnt appear to obey him at allexcept for the trembling left arm, which seemed to have only the most tenuous connection to his brain.

She snuck a look around the room, decorated for a little kid, but filled with the debris of medical mountains moving to keep an adult alive against the best efforts of his body to kill him. Breathing apparatus in one corner, monitoring equipment in another, tubes and wires tucked away haphazardly, feeding machine discreetly hidden next to the closet.

Robbys wheelchair periodically uttered a mechanical sigh as some piece of hidden machinery sucked in air and exhaled. His head was supported by a headrest that seemed more claw than rest, and his right wrist was curved under his forearm, his fingers nearly touching his elbow. His thick, black thatch of hair refused to be tamed, sticking out at odd angles all over his head. His legs, concealed by a Spider-Man blanket, periodically made the blanket vibrate as they twitched, seemingly involuntarily.

The room, Bain had decided, smelled like an old persons room; ancient shit and farts, tinged by the scent of urine and mild body odor, carrying with it a faint undertone of Vicks VapoRub.

It was all she could do to not wrinkle her nose.

Robby, she said, mentally reminding herself that his complete lack of acknowledgement was nothing more than his inability to acknowledge her. Thank you for talking to me. I will try my best to find whoever hurt your dad and bring them in.

Haaaaa.

In the front hall of the housewhich might once have been acceptably and obscurely middle class, but was now disintegrating down to the neighborhood average on Valhalla StreetAmie explained more as the two women walked outside and slowly strolled down the cracked sidewalk, past the stump of the deceased oak Robbys dad had haphazardly hacked down with a chainsaw fifteen years earlier after the insurance company had threatened to pull coverage if he didnt get rid of it. With no money to hire an expert, and no Internet on which to look up instructions, he had borrowed a choppy Craftsman saw from a guy at work and done the job himself, nearly knocking the old tree into the roof, then later coming within inches of trimming his hand right off at the wrist.

Now, the lawn was a patchwork of green and brown, more like camouflage than grass. The edges of the lawn had long ago crept over the straight lines of the driveway and the sidewalk, leaving them scrubby and asymmetricalan aesthetic that drove Robby nutty. The grasswhat there was of itwas a week overdue for a visit from the sputtering Briggs and Strattona real push mower, Robbys dad was fond of saying, not the lazy pulls-itself crap todays fatties seemed to favor.

In the driveway sat Robbys dads baby blue Ford Escort, hovering on its cracked tires above a smorgasbord of nondescript stains left by it and several generations of its predecessorsall bought from motivated sellers who had placed ads in the newspaper.

Next to it was the flower box full of weeds that served as a hedgenow littered with shards of glass from the broken window above it. Inside the window lay a bed whose sheets hadnt been washed in God knew how long, a few small bloodstains on the carpet and sheets, and an overturned night stand.

Robby has only been able to communicate for a few months, Amie told the detective as they walked shoulder-to-shoulder along the sidewalk. His entire life, everyone just assumed he was unable to think. If you just look at him, he doesnt seem to understand anything you say. Several years ago, they apparently tried to give him a keyboard, but he doesnt have enough motor control and he ended up just pounding on it, so they gave up.

Bain already had learned all this from the uniforms report, but she let Amie tell her anyway, to be polite.

She felt a twinge of annoyance with herself as she noticed with smugness all the things around the house that could have been fixed with just a little money. The peeling paint, the cracked cement, the wonky doorbell that took two tries to ring.

Political progressive, my ass, she chided herself. Might as well put on jackboots and get a job at Halliburton.

She despised herself when she caught herself having feelings that disagreed with her political and moral views, like peering over the shoulder of a woman shopping with food stamps and mentally shaking her head at the beer she saw in the basketas if people on public assistance should, as punishment for needing help, be denied such simple pleasures as having a can of beer. She