From the back seat I could see Preppy’s entire body go completely stiff as we rolled past one dilapidated trailer after another.
Junk was piled high in front of almost every site. A middle aged couple stood in the middle of the road between a section of four trailers parked at angled facing one another. They didn’t budge when they saw us coming so Billy turned the wheel and maneuvered around them. The man was shirtless, wearing nothing but light colored jeans that were folded open at the fly as he chugged from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He flicked us off as we passed. The woman, who was wearing a stained lavender tank top and a pair of cotton underwear, scowled although I wasn’t sure if it was meant for us or the man she was arguing with. When we’d passed them by I continued to watch out the back window. The man had turned his back on the woman and that’s when she leapt onto him, wrapping her arms and legs around him tightly and screaming in a high pitch tone that made me grateful the windows were rolled up. The bottle fell from the man’s hand and rolled across the street as he stumbled for balance, it was the last I saw of them before we rounded the corner and they disappeared from view.
Bo was looking out the window as well although he seemed unfazed by the couple. It was when we turned that he reached for my hand and squeezed tightly, his little fingernails pressing down hard into the skin of my palm. He leaned against me and snuggled his face into my arm as he weren’t cutting off my circulation where our hands were joined.
He could squeeze as hard as he wanted. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to pull away.
Not then.
Not ever.
I had silently questioned why Billy was tagging along with us until we pulled up to our destination, a dimly lit trailer in the back of the park, and it dawned on me that Billy must have been there to keep an eye on Bo because there was no fucking way he was going to come inside with us. I wasn’t going to ever let him back inside that thing.
Ever.
Preppy hopped out of the van and I gave Bo’s hand a squeeze when the door was rolled open. “We’ll be right back. Stay with Billy, okay?” Preppy asked, holding out his fist for Bo to bump, which he did.
I got out and we rolled the door closed. Billy saluted Preppy as we turned toward the crumbling pile of aluminum in front of us. It looked like a junkyard and smelled like an open sewer. Pizza boxes, eggshells, fast food wrappers with flies buzzing over it littered the small sidewalk to the front steps. The smell of urine burned my nostrils as we approached the door.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked Preppy as he took my hand and raised it to his lips to give it a quick kiss.
“Fuck no.” He opened the door without knocking and stepped inside.
****
Bo’s mother, for lack of a better term, was named Trish. She didn’t stand up when we’d entered and I wasn’t sure if it was because she couldn’t or just didn’t want to. She was tiny and frail, perched on a tattered recliner with a knitted blanket with so many holes in it there was no way it served any kind of purpose. “Hope you two know that you’d be the ones getting a bum deal. Kid don’t even talk. Might even be a retard,” she said, looking from me to Preppy like we were the crazy ones.
I was FUMING in a way I’d never felt before. Preppy must have sensed my anger because he reached out and grabbed my arm like I was going to lunge at her and I can honestly say that I was definitely thinking about it. I answered her through my teeth, “Have you ever thought that unlike some people who just run their fucking mouths without a single thought behind their words, that maybe Bo’s just waiting for something important to say?”
“Whatever, as long as you know what you’re getting into,” she said, scratching at the scabs on her arm, a drop of blood bubbled to the surface and trickled down to her wrist and then into the lines of her palm but she didn’t seem to notice. “So how much?”
“You want us to BUY him from you?” Preppy asked in complete disbelief, although something told me that he wasn’t as surprised as his voice led on. "You've got to be fucking kidding me?" It was his turn to be angry. The chords in his neck tightened. He reached into the waistband of his pants and pulled his gun, holding it with two shaky hands as if it were physically hurting him not to pull the trigger.
Trish barely flinched when she looked up and saw the silver barrel pointed down at the top of her greasy grey head. He cocked the gun, the click echoed throughout the small room. He stepped forward, glaring hatred down at the ghost of a woman as he pressed the gun to her forehead. “You give him a shitty fucking life in this open sewer of a home. You starve him. Neglect him. And do God-knows fucking WHAT to him and now you want to SELL him?” An evil sounding laugh escaped him. “Fuck, I’ve seen some evil shit in my life but right up there with the likes of my own fucking mother.”
“And why shouldn’t I get paid?” Trish asked, ignoring everything Preppy said that wasn’t in line with what she wanted to hear. “You want something that’s mine. In my world you gotta pay for what you want, supply and demand.” She lit a cigarette butt with shaky hands and inhaled once before the cherry fell off into her lap, she brushed it off her blanket and it fell to the floor where she stubbed it out with her dirty bare foot.
“You treat him like a fucking nuisance dog and when we tell you that we’re gonna take him off your hands for you all you can respond with is how much?” Preppy licked his lips like he could taste the kill in front of him. “I tell you what you stupid cunt, how about you sign those papers and I pay you by not blowing your motherfucking head off right now,” he seethed.
“Prep,” I said, using the calmest tone of voice I could muster. I knew that Preppy identified with Bo and the way he was raised and neglected, but looking down at this frail woman in the throes of heavy addiction I couldn’t help but think that if things hadn’t happened exactly the way they had I could so easily have ended up just like her. “Let me talk to her.”
“Doc,” Preppy started to argue, but he must have seen the determination written all over my face. “Three minutes, I’ll be right outside,” he said, with a look that said he didn’t like the idea at all. With one last glare down at Bo’s mother he lowered his gun to his side but didn’t put it away before leaving, slamming the trailer door shut behind him.
“Trish, right?” I asked, taking a step into the living room over a pile of rags. I side stepped the couch and tried not to let the disgust show on my face as I saw thousands fleas jumping up from the rug as I maneuvered around the garbage, my ankles under instant attack as they landed bite after bite. I pushed on.
“That’s right. It’s Tricia but everyone calls me Trish.”