Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! Read Online Free PDF Page A

one in the town had the right baby. No one knew who their real brothers and sisters were, or who their real mothers and fathers were, after she made her confession twenty years later.”
    Dinky whistled and hit her forehead with her palm.
    The title of that Stirring Romance story had been “I Made Their Lives a Mockery.”
    Natalia said, “Didn’t she keep track of whose baby she was giving to who?”
    “No,” Tucker said. “She kept no records. She just made their lives a mockery.”
    Dinky said, “Probably something like that happened when I was born. That’s probably why I have a gland problem and no one else in the family does. I’m probably some circus fat lady’s illegitimate child.”
    Dinky got thirsty and the trio made their way toward Flatbush Avenue where Dinky remembered there were street vendors selling orange drinks. For a while they discussed nothing but the awful possibilities which could have resulted from the nurse’s actions, and finally Tucker became aware that he and Dinky had been hogging the conversation.
    “What’s the strangest thing you ever heard?” he asked Natalia.
    She had this funny little faraway smile, and she just shrugged and replied, “I know a lot of strange things.”
    Dinky said, “One strange thing is the fact they don’t sell food or refreshments of any kind in this place. They do in Central Park, in Manhattan. You can buy a whole hot meal at the cafeteria by the zoo.”
    “Let Natalia answer,” Tucker said.
    “She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” Dinky said.
    “That’s all right,” Natalia said.
    Tucker looked from one to the other. It suddenly occurred to him that Dinky had purposely butted in every time he asked Natalia a question about herself. It suddenly dawned on him that Dinky was actually protecting Natalia in some way, and this was a side of Dinky which Tucker had never seen.
    Tucker mulled it over as they walked down past the Rock Garden toward Flatbush Avenue, and he didn’t say anything; no one did for a while.
    Then Natalia said, “There was a boy at our school who always wore his clothes backward. He insisted on it. The teachers would make him change them around, but the minute he was out of their sight, he’d put them on backward again.”
    Tucker didn’t ask why and neither did Dinky. There was something building up, and Tucker could feel it. Tucker’s Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Baird, would have described the feeling as “far-out vibes,” meaning there were certain peculiar vibrations in the air, with no real logical reason for their being there.
    Then Natalia continued, “You see, until he came to our school, he was in a lot of other schools. His parents and a lot of psychologists had always thought he was a slow learner.”
    “Shrinks are all crazy,” Dinky said. “I had to see a shrink once because of my glandular problem, and he said I ate too much because I had anger bottled up in me.”
    “ Some shrinks are all right,” Natalia said.
    Tucker remained silent.
    “I don’t have any anger bottled up in me,” Dinky said. “If anything, I lean the other way. Who else would take in some alley cat advertised for adoption on a tree?”
    Natalia said, “This boy’s name was Tony. Before he came to our school they thought he was retarded. He was going to schools where all the others were really retarded. He stopped talking and he wouldn’t do anything but sit in a chair with his clothes on backward, staring at the wall. His mother was this mean woman who took out all her anger on him. She really did have anger bottled up in her, and she used to beat him black and blue when he was a baby …. Then one day he heard her say he was ‘backward.’ That’s when he began wearing all his clothes backward.”
    Dinky said, “The shrinks should pay more attention to stupid mothers like that, and leave normal people with gland problems alone.”
    “He’s okay now, though,” Natalia said. “He’s not even in our school