faller Chapter 7 Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. I put money in every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions, after all I put her through.

I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point.

Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am.

She knows the kinds of things that I do.

She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her.

She knows.

And still she stays.

Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker.

And I am definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker.

Even if he is in jail again.

His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat.

I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there.

I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not.

Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten.

That’s the world.

That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Island to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that one shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day.

Let her have that.

Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense.

And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go.

Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpse of your stupid rules.

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far.

But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, that we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now.

All the casino money.

And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year.

It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats.

But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those people aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me.

It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brandt, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat.

He doesn’t deserve that land.

He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land.

They don’t know what they’ve got.

They don’t know what they’ve been given.

They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no.

Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money.

Somebody’s going to take their land.

Might as well be me as anybody else.

Suckers are born to be suckered.

Prey is born to be eaten.

It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself.

It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him.

He was the sucker.

And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty Island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too.

I keep the peace.

I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them.

Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting off guns when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river while they’re drunk or wasted. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars.

Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts.

Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now.

Maybe a paradise for the winners.

Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers.

Paradise is what you make.

Paradise is what you can take.

Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest.

Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid.

His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk.

Just another sucker.

And that kid.

That kid gives me the creeps.

Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that ugly goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps.

Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole.

That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too.

But maybe the boy could give me some leverage.

Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar.

Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps.

Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway.

There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from the Island.

Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that.

Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway.

Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field.

She’s just standing there.

Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications.

I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy.

I can’t see anything behind that burned up house.

Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen.

Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment.

Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

She’s looking back at me now.

She sees me.

The look on her face.

What is that look on her face?

Fear?

Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications.

I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into.

Only one way to find out, I guess.

One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks.

This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.

Going to need some way bigger jars.

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