Tenderness Read Online Free PDF

by a jury. A judge heard my case. He didn’t think I was a monster. He was very sympathetic. So were a lot of other people.”
    “Other people? Did you take a close look at them? Who they were, what they were? You killed your mother and father, Eric. In cold blood.” Not sounding tired anymore.
    Eric did not smile but his eyes gleamed. The lieutenant did not know about the others. Nobody knew about them.
    “Harvey was not my father,” Eric said, leaving behind the thoughts of others. “He was my stepfather. I had just cause, Lieutenant. All that pain …”
    “What do you know about pain?” the old cop snorted.
    “You don’t even allow me my pain, do you, Lieutenant?”
    He had stolen three cigarettes from Harvey’s pack of Marlboros. Went to the shed in the backyard, his hideaway, the shed tucked under overgrown maples, branches almost hiding the doorway. A combination lock prevented entry by anyone but himself. His retreat from the world. When he was tired of his mother and Harvey, the mall, school, everything, he went to the shed and just sat there. On the old revolving office chair. “What do you do in there, anyway?” Harvey often asked, suspicious, always suspicious of everybody and everything. “Nothing,” Eric answered. Most times he didn’t bother answering Harvey, which he knew made Harvey furious. He only answered him when he could score points. Actually,
nothing
was an honest answer. Because he did nothing in theshed but simply sit there and think. Or didn’t even think. Let himself become blank. Like sleeping while awake.
    But now he did not simply sit there and think. Instead, he set about doing what he had to do. Opened the only window a bit, to let the smoke out. Lucky the window faced the woods, away from the house. Lit the first cigarette, did not inhale, grimaced at the invasion of smoke in his face and eyes, the taste of it in his mouth. Looked curiously at the glowing tip. Placing the cigarette on the cover of a mayonnaise jar serving as an ashtray, he rolled up his left sleeve. Smooth and pale skin. Tapped the ash from the cigarette, studied the burning end for a moment, then braced himself and pressed the burning tip against his flesh.
    Taken by surprise by the sheer ferocity of the pain, he uttered a single syllable of agony:
Ahhhh
. Then shut his mouth, clamping it tight, pressing his lips together. The burning tip fell off the cigarette and dropped to the floor. He stepped on it, still absorbing the pain in his arm, reluctant to look at it. With trembling fingers, he lit another cigarette, eyes slitted against the enveloping smoke, and through moist eyes watched himself place the burning end of the new cigarette against his flesh, an inch or two from the first spot. Grimacing, he gasped, emitted a muffled screamthrough his lips. Seeing the tip end still glowing red, he pressed it against another spot on his arm, learning that pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it. But, Christ, how it hurt … causing strange things to happen to his body, a wave of nausea sweeping his stomach, his knees turning weak and watery, and his head swimming with sudden dizziness that made the room whirl sickeningly until everything settled into place again. He held his arm stiffly in front of him, making himself look at those three cruel scorched places, could smell his burning flesh—no, not flesh, but the small hairs on his arm, singed and blackened now.
    He suddenly leaped from a flash of more pain, this time unexpected. He’d been holding the second cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand, and the cigarette had burned down to his flesh. He dropped it, stepped on it. Then he extended his arm again and smiled grimly as he inspected the three burned places.
    He had also planned to use the hammer today but decided the burning was enough this time. He would put the hammer to work tomorrow. Looking at the vise fastened