Free Retribution by John Fulton Page B

“That feels better, doesn’t it?” It did.
    Benny was looking at the large posters of beautiful women taped to the mirrored wall in front of him—women with blond hair like wings or with roped and braided hair. Their faces were new and smooth and cosmetic. Some of them had men holding on to them. “You like them?” the woman asked. She wet his hair and combed it back twice. She laughed. “Ready for church.” The cloth in her hands was soggy and red with blood now.
    He said yes. He did like them.
    â€œWe’re gonna make your momma just as pretty as that.” Benny watched as the woman clipped his mother’s hair down, cut and combed and arranged it. The blow-dryer was a tubular white handgun that made his mother’s hair fluff into feathery crests. The beauty was happening to his mother now. It was a fragile, warm-looking sheath of fluorescence surrounding her head. “You looking forward to turkey day tomorrow?” she asked Benny. The woman reclined the pink seat a little to do his mother’s makeup. The instruments she used were sharp little brushes, barbed and strange. She said the colors out loud as she applied them. “Now some turquoise around the eyes, with some dusky purple at the edges. We’re giving you the soft evening look, all right, hon? The right colors for autumn. That’s what I’ve got on today. I think you’ll like it.”
    When she sat Benny’s mother up again, he saw that the hairdresser and his mother had the same face now. It was a pretty face, but not his mother’s. The face was hurt and angry around the eyes, which were tender and purple. “You like it?” the woman asked him. He nodded. “Well then, tell her you do, sweetie,” she said. “I don’t think any of them know what we need.” She was speaking to his mother. “You got to tell us some nice things sometimes, sweetie.”
    He said, “I like it.” He hoped that neither woman heard the fear in his voice.
    *   *   *
    When Benny and his mother walked out of the beauty parlor, a gray sky was pushing down on the little town. Black was lifting his leg on parking meters at the end of the street, and Benny wanted to know why the dog was loose. He knocked on Bo’s car window and felt a warm pissy smell hit his face when Bo rolled the window down. The little boy had put his gun away. “Black peed in here. I had to let him out so he wouldn’t pee anymore. It wasn’t his fault.” Bo seemed tired and his voice was small and weak. “Don’t you hurt him, Benny. It wasn’t his fault. He doesn’t need to be punished.”
    Since their father had left, Benny was the only one ever to punish the stupid animal when it needed it. “The car’s not the place for the dog to pee, Bo.” He went after it, calling its name. The animal must have heard the anger in his voice, because it was dodgy and tried to elude Benny’s hand when he grabbed it by the collar. The dog’s mouth let out a stinky smoke of breath in the cold air and its wet eyes begged for mercy. It was Bo’s dirty animal—spoiled, no good anymore. Bo had fed it so much people food that it wouldn’t eat its own dry dog food now. It slept in Bo’s bed with him and lounged on the old couch in their living room and didn’t even know it was a dog. It thought it was human, and its wet eyes were saying that to Benny now. I’m like you. I’m like you, they said. He hit the animal three times with the palm of his hand, then let it go. It tried to come back twice, wagging and penitent, but Benny kicked at it until it ran down the street and stayed away.
    When he got back to the car, he saw a group of men gathering on the other side of the street, talking and looking at the blue Impala. Inside the car, his mother was holding the man’s head in her hands. It was the first time she had touched him.