Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Earl and I had never been in a fight. That was mostly because I am cowardly, and also partially because we had a pretty good working relationship with well-defined roles. The point is, I had never really gotten angry at him, and also I am terrified of conflict. Especially with Earl, because of the windmill kick to the head that he can do.

But I was pissed that he had told Rachel. So I went over to his house to yell at him.

Even just writing about this is giving me sharp stabbing armpit pains.

The whole time on the walk over I was kind of muttering to myself. Specifically, I was rehearsing the stuff that I was going to say.

“Earl,” I muttered to myself, “the foundation of any good working relationship is trust. And I can no longer trust you in any way. By telling Rachel about this film, which was supposed to be a surprise, you have betrayed my trust.”

I was lurching through the streets of Earl’s not-so-great part of Homewood, moving my lips, making semi-coherent noises, walking faster than is graceful for an overweight person to walk, and emitting maybe a quart of human sweat.

“I don’t know if I can work with you again. You will have to earn my trust back if you want to work with me. I don’t even know how you would go about doing that.”

I was on his block, and the sight of his ramshackle weird house jacked up my heart rate even worse than it had already been jacked up.

“You’re going to need to convince me that I can trust you.” That was another inane thing that I said.

I walked up the walk where I had broken my arm, and stood there, no longer muttering. Somehow I was terrified to ring the bell. Instead, I sent a text.

hey i’m in front of your house

But before Earl came out, Maxwell wandered out onto the porch.

“Fuck you want,” he said, although sort of casually and unthreateningly.

“I’m just waiting for Earl,” I said, in my new loud middle-aged-Jewish-woman voice.

Earl appeared in the doorway.

“Sup,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

We were sort of silent.

“You gonna come in?”

“No, I’m good,” I heard myself say. I had rejected a normal invitation to go into his house. This made it clear that we were about to have an argument.

“O-ho,” crowed Maxwell.

Earl went from Mega-Pissed to Genuinely Mega-Pissed and Not Just in Default Mode.

“The fuck’s your problem,” he spat.

“Uh, I was talking to Rachel, and she told me you told her about the, uh, the film.”

All Earl said to that was “Yeah.” Maybe he was just pretending that he didn’t know this was a big deal. Maybe he was so pissed that he wasn’t even registering it.

“It’s just,” I said, babbling, “you know, I mean, you told Rachel about the films in the first place, and then you brought them over to her, without asking me, and it’s just like, you’ll tell her anything, like, it doesn’t even matter what I want, I’m not saying she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t know, or get to see them, I’m just saying, I wish you had asked me, first, I wish—”

“You know what? Just shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.”

“I just—”

“I’m tired of this shit. I’m really fucking tired of it. You gotta quit with this shit, man. Because I’m about to lose my motherfucking shit with this.”

Briefly I contemplated lecturing Earl about trust. I decided pretty quickly, however, that that was not going to work, and might also bring about the apocalypse. Also, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to say words. Instead, I stood there and—there’s no good way to put this—attempted not to cry.

“Naw, shut the fuck up. You care so fucking much bout what other people think, you gotta be secretive as shit, gotta go round sucking errybody’s dick pretendin like you they friend cuz you care so much bout what they think, lemme fucking tell you: Nobody gives a shit about you. Nobody think shit about you. You ain’t got no friends. You ain’t got nobody who give a fucking shit about you.”

“Oka , kay.”

“Fuckin nobody. Errybody at school could give a shit about you, man. Errybody you all friendly with and shit could give a shit. You all worried bout what they think about you, man, they don’t give a fuck. They don’t give a fuck if you live or die, you pussy-ass bitch. They don’t give a fuck. Look at me. They don’t. Give. A fuck.”

“Oka ay. J Jesu , us.”

“Man, just shut the fuck up, because I can’t be hearing no more of this. Yeah, I fucking told Rachel about the films, I fucking gave her some of them dumb-ass films to watch, because she like the only person that do give a fuck. Yeah. She don’t have big-ass titties, so you don’t fucking care, but that other bitch don’t give a shit about you and, and fucking Rachel do, and you don’t fucking give a shit cuz you’re a dumb little bitch.”

“I d , d do.”

“Stop your fucking crying, bitch-ass.”

“O, Ok kay.”

“Goddammit stop cryin.”

“OK.”

Did I mention Maxwell was there for this? He was enjoying it. I am pretty sure his presence was making Earl more crazy and aggressive than he would have been normally.

“Now go on get the fuck outta here. I’m tired a lookin at your pussy ass. Crying and shit.”

I didn’t say anything or move. This caused Earl to get up in my face.

“God damn I’m sick and fucking tired a watchin you treat this girl like she some kind of, some kinda burden, when she the closest thing you fucking have to a motherfucking friend and she about to die on top of that. You know that, right? You dumb motherfucker. She home now cuz she about to die. That girl lyin there on her goddamn deathbed and you come to my house all whinin and cryin and shit about some irrelevant bullshit. I want . . . to kick your ass. You hear me? I want . . . to beat the fuck out of you right now.”

“Go for it.”

“You want me to?”

“I don’t ca , care.”

“Motherfucker, you want me to?”

I was in the middle of sarcastically but also tearfully saying, “Yeah, Earl, I fucking want you to,” when he punched me in the stomach.

So. There I was, for the second time in a month, lying in the Jackson front yard doubled over in pain, with a diminutive warlike kid standing over me. But this time at least it wasn’t a kid with a socially unacceptable word tattooed on his neck. He also wasn’t repeatedly slapping my face as I attempted to relearn how breathing works.

Instead, he was muttering things like, “Man, get up,” and “I ain’t even hit you for real.”

Maxwell chimed in a few times with “Yeah! Hit him again!” and “BUST HIS CANDY ASS.” But his heart wasn’t really in it. I think he was disappointed that our fight was so lame. In fairness to us, the notion that we would have an interesting fight is absurd. It was like expecting a good fight between a wolverine and, I dunno, an animal made out of marshmallows.

Eventually, Maxwell went inside and it was just the two of us out there, and if Earl was still angry, it didn’t seem to be at me.

“Goddamn, you a pussy. Get hit once in the gut, act like you dyin. Goddamn.”

“Unngh.”

“There you go. Walk it off, son.”

“Jesus.”

“Come on, let’s go to your place. Get to work.”

“Unnnh shit.”

“That’s right. Come on. I’ll help you.”