Flux by Orson Scott Card Page B

for a lot of people who are a hundred percent zoo inside their head.
    Dogwalker comes to me one day at Carolina Circle, where I’m playing pinball standing on a stool. He didn’t say nothing, just gave me a shove, so naturally he got my elbow in his balls. I get a lot of twelve-year-olds trying to shove me around at the arcades, so I’m used to teaching them lessons. Jack the Giant Killer. Hero of the fourth graders. I usually go for the stomach, only Dogwalker wasn’t a twelve-year-old, so my elbow hit low.
    I knew the second I hit him that this wasn’t no kid. I didn’t know Dogwalker from God, but he gots the look, you know, like he been hungry before, and he don’t care what he eats these days.
    Only he got no ice and he got no slice, just sits there on the floor with his back up against the Eat Shi’ite game, holding his boodle and looking at me like I was a baby he had to diaper. “I hope you’re Goo Boy,” he says, “cause if you ain’t, I’m gonna give you back to your mama in three little tupperware bowls.” He doesn’t sound like he’s making a threat, though. He sounds like he’s chief weeper at his own funeral.
    â€œYou want to do business, use your mouth, not your hands,” I says. Only I say it real apoplectic, which is the same as apologetic except you are also still pissed.
    â€œCome with me,” he says. “I got to go buy me a truss. You pay the tax out of your allowance.”
    So we went to Ivey’s and stood around in children’s wear while he made his pitch. “One P-word,” he says, “only there can’t be no mistake. If there’s a mistake, a guy loses his job and maybe goes to jail.”
    So I told him no. Three chances in ten, that’s the best I can do. No guarantees. My record speaks for itself, but nobody’s perfect, and I ain’t even close.
    â€œCome on,” he says, “you got to have ways to make sure, right? If you can do three times out of ten, what if you find out more about the guy? What if you meet him?”
    â€œOK, maybe fifty-fifty.”
    â€œLook, we can’t go back for seconds. So maybe you can’t get it. But do you know when you ain’t got it?”
    â€œMaybe half the time when I’m wrong, I know I’m wrong.”
    â€œSo we got three out of four that you’ll know whether you got it?”
    â€œNo,” says I. “Cause half the time when I’m right, I don’t know I’m right.”
    â€œShee-it,” he says. “This is like doing business with my baby brother.”
    â€œYou can’t afford me anyway,” I says. “I pull two dimes minimum, and you barely got breakfast on your gold card.”
    â€œI’m offering a cut.”
    â€œI don’t want a cut. I want cash.”
    â€œSure thing,” he says. He looks around, real careful. As if they wired the sign that said Boys Briefs Sizes 10–12. “I got an inside man at Federal Coding,” he says.
    â€œThat’s nothing,” I says. “I got a bug up the First Lady’s ass, and forty hours on tape of her breaking wind.”
    I got a mouth. I know I got a mouth. I especially know it when he jams my face into a pile of shorts and says, “Suck on this, Goo Boy.”
    I hate it when people push me around. And I know ways to make them stop. This time all I had to do was cry. Real loud, like he was hurting me. Everybody looks when a kid starts crying. “I’ll be good.” I kept saying it. “Don’t hurt me no more! I’ll be good.”
    â€œShut up,” he says. “Everybody’s looking.”
    â€œDon’t you ever shove me around again,” I says. “I’m at least ten years older than you, and a hell of a lot more than ten years smarter. Now I’m leaving this store, and if I see you coming after me, I’ll start screaming about how you zipped down and