The
RiffRaff keep to themselves, and the Others (you know, the
not-Riffraff) do the same. The paths don't cross, and there's no need
for our worlds to overlap. They don't want a damn thing to do with
us, that's why they call us RiffRaff in the first place. What they
don't know is that we wear that title like a medal of honor.
For the most part, they don't really bother with us. They watch us from the lofty heights of their front porches, backyards, and curbsides and judge us only silently. But then there are the ones that aren't silent about it. There are the Hecklers.
The Hecklers are usually teenagers, typically boys but sometimes girls. Some are older, some are younger, and none of them know how to keep their bloody mouths shut. They throw their heads back, cackling like chickens in a coop, crowing loud enough to be heard across town.
For the most part, they don't really bother with us. They watch us from the lofty heights of their front porches, backyards, and curbsides and judge us only silently. But then there are the ones that aren't silent about it. There are the Hecklers.
The Hecklers are usually teenagers, typically boys but sometimes girls. Some are older, some are younger, and none of them know how to keep their bloody mouths shut. They throw their heads back, cackling like chickens in a coop, crowing loud enough to be heard across town.
Unlike the regular Others that are just confused by us, these guys
have a profound dislike
for
anything they consider out of the ordinary. How very dare we not
conform to their idea of what the world is like? Don't we understand
that the whole world revolves around them?
These nasty little bastards don't have a single care in the world. They say what they want, do what they want, and to hell with you if you don't like it. Once, I caught them mocking Vera Sherwood while her brother was away. “Derrrr...” they said, riffing on her muscle spasms and the way her head rolls side-to-side. They were standing close enough for her to hear them, but far enough away to feign innocence when she turned her head and hollered, “You talking 'bout me, you turds?” They act as though one bad fall or one unfortunate accident on the bikes they love so much couldn't leave them in her condition or worse. When I found Leon and the two of us chased them off, they only let out their chicken-cackles and went off to find someone else to harass.
The Hecklers don't care who yells at them. They don't care who tells them off. They don't care that they're the most rancid pieces of garbage that ever walked the Earth, and that their fathers should've pulled out before they ever got a chance to exist. If you holler at them, they just laugh. Try to use reason with them, and they just plug their ears and make you look like the crazy one. Charmain Dekker, one of the sweetest RiffRaff ladies you ever could meet, has tried to be nice to them. She's offered them leftover cookies from her barbecue and volunteered to buy them ice cream from the truck when they didn't have any money. They gladly accepted the gifts, but still hollered, “Hey, hooknose!” when they passed by her house on their bikes. There's no stopping them.
Even ignoring them has no effect. “Hecklers,” my wife, Emery, once said, “get bored real fast if they don't have anything to heckle.” Well, that may be true for your ordinary run-of-the-mill hecklers. These Hecklers, however, are demons. Anna Ming ignored their cries of, “If your eyes are so squinty, then how do you see?” until they followed her out to her car, squinting their own eyes and yelling, “Ching-chong, ching-chong!” the whole way. She turned on them and told them that if they were going to follow her out to her car, she was going to call the police on them for harassment. They all scattered then, hollering “ching-chong” as they ran off. Sophia Burisov stood her ground when a few of their girls commented on how her makeup makes her look like a whore, but when she reached the safety of her car, she cried where they couldn't heckle her for that too. The one thing you never want to do is let them have any sort of effect on you—after all, they're only kids and you're the grown-up—but poor Sophia's just too tender-hearted for that.
It makes one wonder how and why we're considered the RiffRaff, yet wastes of life like this are simply “the neighborhood kids.” When Arthur Ratliff turned the hose on them when they refused to get away from his fence, the Others had plenty of choice words to say about him: “That man is a nasty piece of work.” “That guy is a brute. Just stay away from him.” “There are some sick people in this world. That guy is one of them.” Arthur wore it as a badge of pride, but it made me furious. They could act like brutes all they wanted and nobody bat an eye, but when they get their asses handed to them by an even bigger brute, only he's the bad guy. Screw that, Arthur had taught them the most valuable lesson that their parents and their schools refused to teach: don't fuck with others if you don't want them to fuck with you.
These nasty little bastards don't have a single care in the world. They say what they want, do what they want, and to hell with you if you don't like it. Once, I caught them mocking Vera Sherwood while her brother was away. “Derrrr...” they said, riffing on her muscle spasms and the way her head rolls side-to-side. They were standing close enough for her to hear them, but far enough away to feign innocence when she turned her head and hollered, “You talking 'bout me, you turds?” They act as though one bad fall or one unfortunate accident on the bikes they love so much couldn't leave them in her condition or worse. When I found Leon and the two of us chased them off, they only let out their chicken-cackles and went off to find someone else to harass.
The Hecklers don't care who yells at them. They don't care who tells them off. They don't care that they're the most rancid pieces of garbage that ever walked the Earth, and that their fathers should've pulled out before they ever got a chance to exist. If you holler at them, they just laugh. Try to use reason with them, and they just plug their ears and make you look like the crazy one. Charmain Dekker, one of the sweetest RiffRaff ladies you ever could meet, has tried to be nice to them. She's offered them leftover cookies from her barbecue and volunteered to buy them ice cream from the truck when they didn't have any money. They gladly accepted the gifts, but still hollered, “Hey, hooknose!” when they passed by her house on their bikes. There's no stopping them.
Even ignoring them has no effect. “Hecklers,” my wife, Emery, once said, “get bored real fast if they don't have anything to heckle.” Well, that may be true for your ordinary run-of-the-mill hecklers. These Hecklers, however, are demons. Anna Ming ignored their cries of, “If your eyes are so squinty, then how do you see?” until they followed her out to her car, squinting their own eyes and yelling, “Ching-chong, ching-chong!” the whole way. She turned on them and told them that if they were going to follow her out to her car, she was going to call the police on them for harassment. They all scattered then, hollering “ching-chong” as they ran off. Sophia Burisov stood her ground when a few of their girls commented on how her makeup makes her look like a whore, but when she reached the safety of her car, she cried where they couldn't heckle her for that too. The one thing you never want to do is let them have any sort of effect on you—after all, they're only kids and you're the grown-up—but poor Sophia's just too tender-hearted for that.
It makes one wonder how and why we're considered the RiffRaff, yet wastes of life like this are simply “the neighborhood kids.” When Arthur Ratliff turned the hose on them when they refused to get away from his fence, the Others had plenty of choice words to say about him: “That man is a nasty piece of work.” “That guy is a brute. Just stay away from him.” “There are some sick people in this world. That guy is one of them.” Arthur wore it as a badge of pride, but it made me furious. They could act like brutes all they wanted and nobody bat an eye, but when they get their asses handed to them by an even bigger brute, only he's the bad guy. Screw that, Arthur had taught them the most valuable lesson that their parents and their schools refused to teach: don't fuck with others if you don't want them to fuck with you.
My
worst incident with the Hecklers involved my beautiful wife.
Emery is the pride and the star of my world, but the two of us are as different as day and night. While I'm a loud-mouthed and profane little shit, Emery is as sweet as the banana cream pie she can bake like a pro. Take one look at her, and you can tell she's just as good at downing pies as she is at baking them. But for all her tendency to overindulge, the woman is built like a tank from weightlifting and rock-climbing and hauling tools and heavy auto parts back and forth. She's an absolute unit, and she could crush you just as easily as squashing a bug. But the most beautiful thing about Emery, to me, is that she would never hurt a soul. She'll pound sheet metal into submission until it begs for mercy, but she would never even think of hurting another person, no matter how much they deserved to be crushed like scraps in a junkyard.
Usually, when the Hecklers came around our neck of the woods, they never got a chance to get as far as our house; Talia Santiago took them out with a few well-aimed stones before they even reached our corner of the street. If our neighbor's methods proved unsuccessful, the sound of Emery's sledgehammer against a sheet of metal would send them scattering. But this time, there was no Talia and no sledgehammer. There was only Emery, outside tending to her flower garden, and me, inside watching reruns of Shark Tank from the comfort of our recliner. I turned the volume down a bit so I could hear Em singing to the flowers. “They like it when you sing to them,” she swears. “They grow taller so they can be closer to the sound of your voice.” This time, she was singing our song:
Emery is the pride and the star of my world, but the two of us are as different as day and night. While I'm a loud-mouthed and profane little shit, Emery is as sweet as the banana cream pie she can bake like a pro. Take one look at her, and you can tell she's just as good at downing pies as she is at baking them. But for all her tendency to overindulge, the woman is built like a tank from weightlifting and rock-climbing and hauling tools and heavy auto parts back and forth. She's an absolute unit, and she could crush you just as easily as squashing a bug. But the most beautiful thing about Emery, to me, is that she would never hurt a soul. She'll pound sheet metal into submission until it begs for mercy, but she would never even think of hurting another person, no matter how much they deserved to be crushed like scraps in a junkyard.
Usually, when the Hecklers came around our neck of the woods, they never got a chance to get as far as our house; Talia Santiago took them out with a few well-aimed stones before they even reached our corner of the street. If our neighbor's methods proved unsuccessful, the sound of Emery's sledgehammer against a sheet of metal would send them scattering. But this time, there was no Talia and no sledgehammer. There was only Emery, outside tending to her flower garden, and me, inside watching reruns of Shark Tank from the comfort of our recliner. I turned the volume down a bit so I could hear Em singing to the flowers. “They like it when you sing to them,” she swears. “They grow taller so they can be closer to the sound of your voice.” This time, she was singing our song:
Emmy
Lane
is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath
the blue surburban skies
is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath
the blue surburban skies
Even
after we married and Emery had taken my last name, Fawke, I still
called her “Emmy Lane” and sang her the modified Beatles song.
We'd both sung it at our wedding, even though I can't sing for shit.
I took a sip from my beer. On Shark Tank, someone was presenting some strange alternative to tape. Emery stopped singing, but I heard something else, an unmistakable chicken-cackle that sent me running for the window.
“That ain't how she walks,” a red-shirted Heckler was saying to his friends. “It's like this.” He puffed out his gut as far as it would go, inflated his cheeks like a chipmunk, spread out his arms, and waddled from side-to-side. “Oh, look,” the little bastard said, “a Snickers bar! Everybody out of my way!” He picked up the imaginary Snickers bar from the ground and pretended to down it in two ugly bites, messily licking up the imaginary chocolate from his fingers, smacking his lips all the while. Get the sledgehammer, Emmy.
But she didn't get the sledgehammer. Instead, she laughed, tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and said, “Careful you don't bite off your fingers. Y'know, that happened once, in a particularly grisly incident with a devil dog.” She held up her right index finger. “It was covered in the cream filling and I couldn't resist! This one's just a fake.”
What the hell was this?! The boys' eyes got real wide, like they believed every word she said. “Is it really?” They moved in closer to the fence to get a closer look. Bloody morons!
Emery wiggled her finger at them. “You tell me,” she said with a smirk, before returning to her verbenas and singing “Emmy Lane” under her breath.
I tried to remember where Emery had left the sledgehammer—was it in the garage or in the shed? I could go look for it, but I didn't want to leave my wife alone, at the mercy of these bastards. They had decided they weren't done having their fun with her. While she sang our song, they walked around in circles outside the fence, chanting, “I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble.”
To my utter horror, Emery sang right along with them! In fact, they had quite the little song-and-dance party going on after a while! My face burned with fury, at them and at her. What the hell was wrong with her? How could she encourage this? Didn't she know that's all she was doing, encouraging it? They didn't give a damn if she made light of it all. They didn't give a damn if she turned it into one big game. They were gonna keep on going anyway, and they'd do it again the next time they saw her, and again, and again, and again. Didn't she know that? Of course she knew that! She should be bending them out of shape like the metal at our shop! She should be crushing them under her heels like the rancid little roaches they were! She should be smashing them up like the pile of bricks in the backyard! Why wasn't she?!
All I had was my beer can, and I was a piss-poor throw, but it would have to do. I grabbed it and poured the rest of the beer into the dirt patch outside the window. I hated that I had to waste good beer on these little shits, but they weren't gonna stand there and mock my girl and not expect to get anything back. I mentally prepared my best possible insults: “Hey, you walking condom commercials!” “You miserable little wastes of life!” “Get the hell away from my wife, you future shit-shovelers of America!”
But when I flung the front door open with my can and my mouth at the ready, they had already taken off down the road. “Bye-bye, kiddos!” Emery called after them as if she was their friendly, pie-baking auntie. “Y'all stay safe and take care of yourselves, all right?”
It was too much. I crushed the can in my fist and chucked it on the ground at my feet. I tried to swallow my tears and I failed. Emery set her watering can down and laid her hand on top of my head. She towered over me.
“How could you?” I asked. I couldn’t look into her beautiful eyes, or else my tears would run out of control. “How could you stand there and let them treat you like that?”
She just gave me a kiss and said, “It's okay, Franz.”
“No it ain't!” I hollered. I had nowhere else to throw my anger except at her. “It's not fucking okay! They don't get to treat you like that, Emery! They don't have the right!” I had to get inside before I completely lost it and somebody saw me going off. I darted into the house and flung myself down on the recliner. I was breaking the number one rule: don’t let the Hecklers have any effect on you. I was too messed up to care.
Emery followed after me. She put her hand on my back, gave me another kiss, and went to the kitchen to get me another beer. She was singing “Emmy Lane” again, and her hips were swinging back and forth. She was smiling like an angel.
I took a sip from my beer. On Shark Tank, someone was presenting some strange alternative to tape. Emery stopped singing, but I heard something else, an unmistakable chicken-cackle that sent me running for the window.
“That ain't how she walks,” a red-shirted Heckler was saying to his friends. “It's like this.” He puffed out his gut as far as it would go, inflated his cheeks like a chipmunk, spread out his arms, and waddled from side-to-side. “Oh, look,” the little bastard said, “a Snickers bar! Everybody out of my way!” He picked up the imaginary Snickers bar from the ground and pretended to down it in two ugly bites, messily licking up the imaginary chocolate from his fingers, smacking his lips all the while. Get the sledgehammer, Emmy.
But she didn't get the sledgehammer. Instead, she laughed, tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and said, “Careful you don't bite off your fingers. Y'know, that happened once, in a particularly grisly incident with a devil dog.” She held up her right index finger. “It was covered in the cream filling and I couldn't resist! This one's just a fake.”
What the hell was this?! The boys' eyes got real wide, like they believed every word she said. “Is it really?” They moved in closer to the fence to get a closer look. Bloody morons!
Emery wiggled her finger at them. “You tell me,” she said with a smirk, before returning to her verbenas and singing “Emmy Lane” under her breath.
I tried to remember where Emery had left the sledgehammer—was it in the garage or in the shed? I could go look for it, but I didn't want to leave my wife alone, at the mercy of these bastards. They had decided they weren't done having their fun with her. While she sang our song, they walked around in circles outside the fence, chanting, “I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble.”
To my utter horror, Emery sang right along with them! In fact, they had quite the little song-and-dance party going on after a while! My face burned with fury, at them and at her. What the hell was wrong with her? How could she encourage this? Didn't she know that's all she was doing, encouraging it? They didn't give a damn if she made light of it all. They didn't give a damn if she turned it into one big game. They were gonna keep on going anyway, and they'd do it again the next time they saw her, and again, and again, and again. Didn't she know that? Of course she knew that! She should be bending them out of shape like the metal at our shop! She should be crushing them under her heels like the rancid little roaches they were! She should be smashing them up like the pile of bricks in the backyard! Why wasn't she?!
All I had was my beer can, and I was a piss-poor throw, but it would have to do. I grabbed it and poured the rest of the beer into the dirt patch outside the window. I hated that I had to waste good beer on these little shits, but they weren't gonna stand there and mock my girl and not expect to get anything back. I mentally prepared my best possible insults: “Hey, you walking condom commercials!” “You miserable little wastes of life!” “Get the hell away from my wife, you future shit-shovelers of America!”
But when I flung the front door open with my can and my mouth at the ready, they had already taken off down the road. “Bye-bye, kiddos!” Emery called after them as if she was their friendly, pie-baking auntie. “Y'all stay safe and take care of yourselves, all right?”
It was too much. I crushed the can in my fist and chucked it on the ground at my feet. I tried to swallow my tears and I failed. Emery set her watering can down and laid her hand on top of my head. She towered over me.
“How could you?” I asked. I couldn’t look into her beautiful eyes, or else my tears would run out of control. “How could you stand there and let them treat you like that?”
She just gave me a kiss and said, “It's okay, Franz.”
“No it ain't!” I hollered. I had nowhere else to throw my anger except at her. “It's not fucking okay! They don't get to treat you like that, Emery! They don't have the right!” I had to get inside before I completely lost it and somebody saw me going off. I darted into the house and flung myself down on the recliner. I was breaking the number one rule: don’t let the Hecklers have any effect on you. I was too messed up to care.
Emery followed after me. She put her hand on my back, gave me another kiss, and went to the kitchen to get me another beer. She was singing “Emmy Lane” again, and her hips were swinging back and forth. She was smiling like an angel.
