I’d been at the motel for about a month when Grunt told me everything that happened the night Johnny Tillman was brought to the motel. Even I felt sorry for him after hearing what happened.
It was simple and completely awful. Johnny Tillman was basically relieved of every projecting body part. His ears, his lips, his nose, even his testicles. Grizz slowly cut him to pieces until, like Grizz told me earlier, he was begging for death. Grunt wasn’t sure if he was dead or passed out from the pain. Grizz gave the order for him to be tossed into the swamp and the alligators did the rest. That was the end of Johnny Tillman.
When Grunt finished telling me the story I was numb with shock. I couldn’t believe it. Who was this person who could hack a man to pieces one day and save a kitten the next?
I’d been sitting on Grunt’s bed talking to him. He had invited me in to listen to his albums. I was a little surprised that Grizz said it was okay. He’d seemed so jealous when he asked me about Matthew and told me what he did to Johnny Tillman. I don’t know, maybe I read him wrong. Or maybe he just trusted Grunt. Nevertheless, I sat on Grunt’s bed, cross-legged, drinking the soda he had offered me. In the background The Moody Blues serenaded us with “Nights In White Satin.” It was the first time I’d been in his room, and I was really surprised. It wasn’t as fancy as Grizz’s. It actually looked like a motel room, but it was neat and clean.
The most surprising thing of all, though, was the books. Where a normal motel room might have two double beds, Grunt’s room only had the one bed, and the wall that separated the room from the bathroom had a massive bookshelf that was so full of books, you couldn’t see the wall behind it. Books took up every available space on the shelf. And they weren’t crammed in randomly, either. When he noticed I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the bookshelf, he explained they were sectioned off by genre and then alphabetized by author last name within each genre. I turned to look at him, surprised. Who was this young motorcycle guy? He told me I could borrow any book I wanted.
I noticed a chess set on a TV tray in the corner.
“You play chess?” I asked.
“Yeah, do you?”
“No, but I’d like to learn. Who do you play with?”
“I play Grizz. Sometimes Fess. But it takes too long between Fess’s visits for us to play a regular game. I have a game going now with Grizz. You want me to teach you?”
“Definitely.” Why not? I thought to myself. It could help pass the days until I could get away from here. Grunt eventually did teach me to play chess. I became good enough to occasionally beat Grizz. Grizz was a good player, and I think chess may have been his only passion aside from the gang and me. I never did beat Grunt, though.
Grunt told me all about himself that night, including how he came to be part of the gang. He told me everything I wanted to know except for one thing. His real name. It was the gang’s code: no real names.
Grunt was the youngest of three children. He was born in Miami in 1959. He was only a year older than me. He was raised in what now would be called a dysfunctional family. His father died after he was born. It was an accidental drowning. Up until that point, his mother was a housewife, and according to Grunt she was a useless waste. She resented being left with three kids to raise. Actually, two kids, since Blue wasn’t really home all that much.
She worked as a waitress at a local hot dog joint. They were famous for steaming their hot dogs in beer. After she was finished with her shift, she would hang out at the restaurant all night with her divorced girlfriends and spend her tips on beer.
She left the raising of baby Grunt to his older brother and sister. It wasn’t long before Blue was getting in trouble with the law, mostly for stealing. His sister, Karen, wasn’t much better. He remembers her locking him in his room while she had boyfriends over. She was supposed to be watching him, and he was lucky if he got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every other day.
If it wasn’t for school lunches, he probably would’ve starved to death. His neglect didn’t go unnoticed by the neighbors, and child welfare was called in several times over the years. Sometimes they removed him from the home and placed him with a foster family.
He didn’t have a horrible experience with the foster childcare system. The problem was being pulled in and out of the system and being placed with families in different school districts. His life was constantly being uprooted.
Karen married her twenty-two-year-old boyfriend practically the day she turned eighteen and immediately applied for sole custody of Grunt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because of her kindness and love for her little brother. He was only nine. She was under the impression she was going to get paid to keep him. What she didn’t know was that she was not applying as a foster mother; therefore, the state was not going to give her child support.
After she realized this, she tried to force him back on their mother. But by now, his mother had skipped town with an abusive alcoholic trucker she’d met at work. They never heard from her again.
Grunt didn’t know then that Blue was still very much in his life. He didn’t realize Blue was coming around and giving Karen and her husband money to provide for Grunt. Blue always came at night when Grunt was sleeping. Blue thought Karen and her husband, Nate, were nurturing their little brother, and Blue didn’t want to interfere.
It was just by chance that one night, when Blue was there with some cash for his sister, a then-ten-year-old Grunt woke up and came out to the kitchen for a drink of water.
Grunt told me he remembered the look on his big brother’s face that night. What Blue saw was a ten-year-old who looked like he was seven. Grunt was wearing only his pajama pants, and he was so thin he had to hold them up by the waistband so they wouldn’t fall off his scrawny body. But that wasn’t what Blue noticed first. Grunt’s body was covered in bruises and blisters from cigarette burns. This was clearly a child who had been abused on a regular basis.
Karen’s first reaction was to defend herself. She said Nate was the one who hit on the kid. She never hit him. That didn’t matter to Blue. What mattered was that she never stopped Nate.
Just then, Nate got home from work. If he had been just ten minutes late it might have saved his life. That was the night Grunt witnessed his first murder. Two murders, actually. Without saying a word, Blue took out a gun and put a bullet between his sister’s eyes. Nate had turned in an attempt to run out the front door, but Blue was too quick. He put one in the back of Nate’s head before he took two steps.
He looked at his little brother and told him not to be afraid. He was going to take care of him from now on. Grunt told him he wasn’t afraid. Blue smiled and took his jacket off. He wrapped it around his little brother’s broken body and carried him out the front door.
Grunt had been with the gang at the Glades Motel since that night.
As I sat there on Grunt’s motel bed, I couldn’t believe he had shared this with me. It dawned on me that I wouldn’t be leaving here after hearing these stories of brutality, and I instantly pushed that thought to the back of my mind.
“So did you get your name, Grunt, because you were the youngest and had to do all the crappy work, the grunt jobs?”
Grunt laughed. “No. The name is a shorter version of my original nickname, when I first got here. I was little for my age, so some of the gang started calling me runt. Like the runt of the litter. As time went by, the group started noticing my smarts. Some said I was the most grown-up runt they’d ever known. I guess I wasn’t an average ten-year-old. Grown-up runt was eventually shortened to ‘Grunt.’”
I laughed at this description. He was smart. That was interesting. I wondered if he had the mean streak I’d seen in the others, especially Grizz.
“So you’re Grunt. I like it. Especially now that I know what it means,” I teased.
“Yeah, I guess it’s easier than ‘Grown Up Runt,’ but it’s kind of an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”
“An oxy what?”
“An oxymoron. Here, look it up,” he said as he tossed me a dictionary.
I didn’t know then, as I innocently perused the dictionary looking for a word I wasn’t sure existed, that I hadn’t been invited to Grunt’s room to listen to records. I’d been invited to Grunt’s room to lose my virginity.