I haven’t read every article on The Spearhead, so I don’t know if there have been any offerings of fiction before. If not, this will be the first one, though I am guessing that for some Spearhead readers this will read more like a screenplay for a documentary than a piece of short fiction. The original version of this was first published at The Oddville Press, a source of edgy and often quirky fiction that I highly recommend to fans of the craft.
The following is based on a true story. Actually, it’s based on many of them.
Tobi Pitts leaned forward in her seat, clasping her hands together with forearms resting on her knees. She looked at Howard with tired green eyes that were sunken into a patchwork of premature wrinkles and thin make-up. Her hair was a mass of bleached, neglected curls that hung to the sides like twists of tattered rope.
“I can’t make you say a word, Mr. Franks,” she said. “But the court did order you to come here, and I do think it’s in your best interest to talk about why that happened.”
Howard scanned the room. There were eight other men in the circle, some watching him, others with eyes to the floor. All of them silent; waiting. He looked back at Tobi and found her unblinking gaze still on him, patient as alabaster.
“I see,” he said. “My best interest.” And the room sank into silence again. Tobi remained fixed.
A man to Howard’s left, three seats down, cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. He had the meticulous look of a newscaster, complete with handsome profile. His hair was a highly styled crown of silver-gray perfection. He regarded Howard with eyes that were two striking pools of azure resting behind glasses that that had an executive sparkle.
“Howard,” he said, in highly practiced tenor, “Tom Watson here, and believe you me I feel for you. I didn‘t want to talk when I got here either. But once I got over that I learned a great deal. Today‘s my last day.”
Tom glanced over to Tobi and seemed annoyed to find her still looking at Howard.
“Anyway, I don’t mind telling you I used to be a real bastard. I gave my wife so many beatings I couldn’t even begin to count them. In here I learned where it was coming from. Power, man, and I am just flat addicted to it. It gave me a rush, a sick rush, to do what I did to her. I’ll bet you can identify with that a little.”
Howard studied the other men in the group. He noted some smirks and the look of disgust on the faces of others that seemed to deepen with each one of Tom’s passing words. Suddenly, without warning, he was rocked by the familiar cascade of grief that seemed to pour from core of his chest. He closed his eyes and braced himself as the other man continued to speak.
“So I hope you open up a little, buddy. Remember, we’re all the same here,” Tom concluded. He then pointed at Howard with his hand formed into a mock pistol, winked and clicked his tongue.
“Forget that asshole,” said a heavyset man. He had a cheerless face, shadows of stubble spread across his cheeks like a dark mood. “If you don’t talk they will keep you here longer, and they’ll use it against you in court.”
Howard pondered that for a moment and finally spoke again.
“They?” he asked, “Don’t you mean, her?” And he tilted his head in Tobi’s direction.
The large man grinned without even slightly diminishing the sadness in his eyes. “It’s all the same.” he said.
“No, it’s not,” Tobi interjected. “Mr. Franks, I am a therapist, not a judge. I don’t tell the court anything you say in here. That’s held in confidence. All I do is report whether you have attended and whether you are cooperative. Believe it or not, I am here to help you.”
Howard considered her words briefly.
“And what is cooperative, Ms. Pitts?” Howard asked. “Am I uncooperative if I don’t spill my guts to you, perhaps put on a little dog and pony show?” he said, cocking a thumb back at Tom, whose brow scrunched, as though in feigned indignity .
Tobi swallowed. Her fingers, once woven loosely together tightened and began a slight tremble. A rose hue painted itself across the skin of her face and her eyes hardened. Howard looked at the big man, whose expression now simply pled caution. And silence again filled the room. This time a silence as taut and bloodless as Tobi’s fingers.
Howard raised his hand and bowed his head pensively. The grief passed through him again like a great wave, stirring up the sediment of a thousand other feelings, all of which he was trying desperately to keep in check. He choked it all back down and drew in a great, settling breath. Then he lifted his eyes to meet Tobi’s and spoke.
“Six weeks ago I was a happily married man. Sixteen years with the same woman, Kate, and two beautiful daughters. I had a good business, a decent enough business partner and everything to look forward to.”
“Then my father died. It was not unexpected; he’d been fighting cancer for three years. Kate convinced me that it wouldn’t be best to pull the kids out of school and fly them to Baltimore for the funeral. I agreed and went on my own.”
Howard didn’t notice, but at this point none of the other men were looking at the floor. Each of them leaned forward, studying his face as they listened.
“When I got back I stopped on the way home to pick up some flowers. Just something for Kate, for carrying the weight while I was gone. But my credit card was declined. I called the bank and was informed that all my accounts were closed. All the money was gone.”
Tom interrupted. “Oh man, here come the excuses. I can see it already.”
“Shut the fuck up!” the big man boomed, and Tom shrank back in his chair.
Howard shook it off and continued. “I went home and nobody was there. I found the kids with her mother. And she, she was…” Howard raked his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. “She was with my business partner. They had taken it all. The money, the business; everything. All gone.”
I caught up to them at his place. She came to the door wearing a silk robe I gave her last Christmas. I just stood there dumbfounded for, I dunno, what seemed like forever. When I could finally make myself speak all I could do was ask her why. Why had she done this? She told me it was because I was a loser. She told me she was a woman with needs and that I never, from the day we were married, met them. She told me the kids would be better off without me and that any more contact with her or them would have to be through a lawyer.”
“Then she told me something else.”
Howard closed his eyes and seemed adrift for a moment in the vacuum of the soundless room. He opened them again and found the group transfixed, as though mesmerized and teetering toward whatever he would say next.
“She told me that she would kiss me goodbye but she didn’t think I’d like the taste of another man’s cock on her lips.”
A single tear slid from Howard’s eye and tracked down his cheek.
“I lost it,” he said, clinching his hand into a fist and beating it against his knee. “I punched her in the face and broke her nose. I just stood there afterward, looking at her on the ground with her face full of blood. It was like I was watching a movie with the sound off. Her mouth was moving and I knew she was crying and saying something, but I couldn’t hear any of it.”
“Of course I went to jail and that’s how I ended up here, as your new assignment, Ms. Pitts. Another statistic of domestic violence.”
Tobi adjusted herself in her seat and gently cleared her throat, as though sensing her opportunity to speak and announcing that she was taking it. She spoke in a soft, rehearsed whisper, beaconing Howard to consider her question.
“Are you saying she deserved to be battered, Howard? That she deserved a broken nose?”
Howard seemed to think for a moment and then replied.
“No, Ms. Pitts. I am saying she deserved the ass kicking of a lifetime.” The entire room seemed to animate in a flash as the men shifted around in their chairs. The circle filled with nodding heads. One of the men muttered “Fucking A right,” under his breath but Howard heard it, and apparently so did Tobi. Her eyes narrowed to slits and she looked around the room at the men, as though wanting to identify who said it.
Nonplussed, she turned back to Howard and started to speak again, this time awkwardly, but he cut her off. “I’m not done.” he said, His tone was final and unyielding. “You wanted me to talk and I am talking. You just listen.” He settled himself for a moment, and then said, “Please.”
Tobi gently bit her lower lip, and then gave Howard a reluctant, almost unperceivable nod.
“You’d think this was the worst of it, but it’s not. After doing flips for weeks to try to see my daughters, last week I was allowed to talk to my oldest, Lisa, on the telephone. I was thinking the whole time that as bad as things were that I could live with it, that I could manage a way to move forward if I could just be with my children. I was so happy to have Lisa on the phone. I couldn’t wait to tell her how much I missed her and that I couldn’t wait to see her.”
“But you know what she said when I told her that?” he said, and then whatever composure Howard had faltered. His will and strength buckled and folded under the brutal pressure of one last cataclysmic wave of wrenching pain. The tears poured forth like two rivers and his breathing came in great heaving hitches as he cupped his hands over his face and sobbed. He had to force out every word, one at a time, to finish his story.
“She said, ‘I can’t see you till you’re better Daddy. Mommy told me that you’re sick.’ ”
___________
An hour later, Tobi Pitts sat in her office at a desk that was a sea of open charts. A dusty picture of two blond haired boys, one a toddler and the other about kindergarten age was taped on the side of her computer screen. There was no father in the snapshot.
She cradled the phone against one ear and drug a chart into her lap as she talked. “The last one here, Howard Franks. First show today. Pretty typical. His wife had an affair so he thought it would be fine to rearrange her face. Totally in denial.”
She paused for a moment and reached for a pen.
“He could be a problem, though. Smooth talker, that one, and calculated. In his first session the sick bastard had most of my group thinking he was the victim. Not that those morons know the difference. Luckily, I know the CPS worker assigned to his kids. I’ll be giving her a call on this tomorrow.”
A moment later, Pitts hung up the phone and turned to a blank page in Howard Franks chart. She wrote with the steady and dispassionate hand of a surgeon.
Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief for Men’s News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men, the host website of MRm! Magazine.
