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They Call Me “The Bully”

Mike Schneider

    The cops finally let me out of lockup Wednesday night about 6:30, following two days of interrogation, trying to squeeze a murder confession out of me. It was like a 48-hour Law & Order first-half marathon.
    They tried all the tricks—lying, physical harassment like holding my head down against the table and yelling in my ear, pushing my shoulder not quite hard enough to knock me off the chair, drawing a fist back as if they were going to plaster me, good cop bad cop, offering a deal if I’d own up, and overall constant badgering. I calmly handled everything they threw at me.
    “We have your DNA,” they said, but of course they didn’t.
    “Your fingerprints were all over the place under there.”
    “You know they weren’t because you didn’t find them. I know they weren’t because I wasn’t there.”
    “You did it to avenge him.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “You always protected him.”
    “He’s been dead three years. What was I protecting him from?”
    “You had to get even!”
    “Jesus, man! For what purpose? I’m going to screw up my life because he lost his? Get real!”
    “When we get your cellphone records it’ll show you were there.”
    “When was I supposed to have been there?”
    “Between 9 pm Friday and 10 am Saturday.”
    “Sorry. I was in town all that time. Had a beer or two at Pretty Polly’s after work, then went home for the night, slept until noon Saturday.
    “Pretty Polly’s?”
    “New place on Third. They have a green parrot on a perch with a short tether.
    “And then you went straight home?”
    “First to the library to drop a couple books in the book bin.”
    “What books?”
    “‘How to Get Away with Murder,’ and, ‘Beating the Police at Their Own Game.’”
    “You son-of-a-bitch!”
    I suppose I should start at the beginning.
    You see, they say I’m a bully. If I am, I’m a proud bully, a bully with a purpose—Matt, my kid brother. I was seven when Matt was born. They realized quite early he was developmentally challenged. About medium if it can be described that way. While he was a slow learner he eventually caught up with everyone, as long as the subjects didn’t get too tough. Kind of a readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic type fellow. He managed all those, but forget algebra, foreign languages, the sciences to any great extent, or diagraming sentences. And he stuttered but got over that a couple years before he hit his teens. He was also somewhat socially challenged, making him an easy mark for older kids to mock.
    Because I’m a pretty big guy, 6-3, 235 now, always good sized and strong growing up, I never had any trouble getting bullies to stop picking on Matt until one time when he was 7, I was 14, and a 17-year old, Steve Hicks, was giving him a hard time about his stuttering, I told him to knock it off.
    “Fuck you!” he said.
    I didn’t wait, gave no warning, brought my fist up the front of his chest and landed an upper cut that broke his jaw. My parents had to pay the doctor who wired him up, which was unfortunate, but it set my reputation in stone. After that everyone in our village referred to me as “the bully,” and from then on all I had to do when anyone messed with Matt was catch their eye and it ended, like right now. The whole thing was rather odd because I hadn’t hit anyone, or even been in a fight, since 4^th grade when Ricky Bates stole and killed a toad I found during recess. Not to mention that Hicks was a senior and I was a freshman. Actually, I haven’t been in a fight since.
    Matt’s best friend was Jayden Johnson, JJ, a kid I, and many others, had no use for. He was always getting in trouble, like joy riding in his dad’s car without a license or insurance and wrapping it around a tree, being kicked out of several stores for life for shoplifting, and habitually borrowing money from other kids, then never paying it back. He also used drugs. Nasty, too. Every girl he ever dated he slandered after they broke up. I never understood what Matt saw in him because they were total opposites. Matt obeyed the law, paid his debts, never used drugs, and was nice to girls, was nice to everybody, a kid with high morals and a good heart, but for some reason he picked JJ to be his best friend.
    Sadly, that’s why Matt is no longer with us.
    When they were 20 JJ got his girlfriend pregnant and she insisted they get married. He obliged.
    At the time, Matt had a good job at the box factory as a setup man and finisher, made enough to save for a house while still living with mom and dad.
    “I’m going to have my own home by the time I’m 25,” he told me, and after he showed me his savings account balance, I believed him.
     JJ, on the other hand, went from one job to another—Arby’s, McDonald’s, Lowe’s, Walmart, mini mart, waiter, dishwasher—whatever he could get. He always either knew more than the boss or flunked the piss test, never lasted more than three or four months, if that.
    In the very early spring of 2018, JJ and Ed Starnes were both between jobs so they barrel fished, as folks around here call it. The river is wide and navigable from clear the other side of the state line all the way downstream to the port, more than 90 miles. Every year when the ice goes out it destroys hundreds of docks, releasing thousands of the 55-gallon barrels that keep them afloat. At $15.00 per usable barrel it’s a lucrative sideline for folks who are already employed, a temporary bonanza for those who aren’t, and enjoyment for others who love getting out on the water as early in the year as possible, despite the weather.
    People who have them use power boats. The rest rely on rowboats or canoes, and row or paddle out to the edge of the flotilla to harvest as many of those steel and plastic fifteen dollar bills as they can. Everyone stakes out a claim on shore, stacks their barrels, then semis come on Wednesday afternoon for a couple weeks to take them away.
    JJ and Starnes used a canoe. Canoes are ok on quiet water but risky when choppy and windy, especially smaller ones pulling barrels.
    That’s how it was the evening they found JJ’s nine-footer washed up at the head of Cattail Island with two barrels in tow. Toby Kirk called Matt as soon as he heard it on the police scanner. Toby knew it was JJ’s because the dispatcher said the people who called it in reported it having Aerosmith logos on the bow, and “Sweet Emotion” on the sides in psychedelic calligraphy, something JJ’s mother-in-law added years ago before diabetes claimed her right leg, and she handed the craft down to Sandi and JJ.
    Matt immediately loaded up his johnboat and headed for the river. Mom and dad tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.
    “JJ could still be alive,” he said. “I’ve got to look for him.”
    The next morning they discovered Matt’s body, face down on shore, three miles downstream from Cattail, near the Hakesville Bridge. One of the nicest guys who ever lived died trying to save his friend who was nothing but an oxygen thief. It seemed so unfair.
    We buried Matt the following week, over 150 people attended his funeral. They never did find JJ or Starnes. Best anyone could figure, the current carried them, perhaps underwater, out into the bay, then out to sea.
    And that was the end of it, until a couple months ago when who comes driving back into town after almost three years but JJ and Starnes. Turns out JJ didn’t cotton to married life, talked Starnes into riding the rails with him to southern California to get away from Sandi. He couldn’t afford a divorce, Starnes owed a drug dealer a lot of money. They solved their problems by letting folks assume they drowned. I heard they worked as pool cleaners, window washers, and a variety of other self-employment ventures, but the expenses of living out there, coupled with having to compete with all the undocumented workers who would do jobs for a fraction of what others charged, got to them and they opted to come home.
    So, Matt died for nothing. What a tragic waste of a life for a POS like JJ.
    People around said he told them he worried about me coming after him but hoped I wouldn’t do anything, being as Matt was already dead. I stayed away from him because I didn’t want any trouble. I knew if anything happened to JJ, the cops would look to me, “the bully,” first.
    That’s why I wasn’t surprised when JJ bought the farm driving down Cobbler’s Hill on the way into town from his parents’ house, that the cops picked me up as soon as they discovered his brake lines had been cut.
    “Am I under arrest?” I asked when they put me in zip cuffs and deposited me in the back of their cruiser.
    “Right now, no, but we will arrest you if we have to. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer.”
    “Well I’ll answer them all, ‘no,’ because I didn’t do anything.”
    When my cell phone report didn’t show me anywhere near JJ’s parents’ house, they let me go.
    “Just because it doesn’t show you were there, doesn’t mean you weren’t. You could have left it home.”
    “Blah, blah, blah,” I said as the door shut behind me.
    As soon as I was out of there I drove to River Brewing Company, ordered some river chips and a Bay Ale, sat at a table in the corner, reflecting on the loss of Matt. Everyone who took the time to know him, loved him. I’m going to miss him the rest of my life.
    As for JJ, he got exactly what he had coming.
    If he hadn’t, my reputation would have been in serious jeopardy and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

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