Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

that plagues the possessor of an inordinately tiny prick. At one point, in fact, his pediatrician back in Gary, Indiana, worried that young Jimmy had a rare form of micropenis—the clinical term for an extremely small johnson. Jimmy’s father, a coarse but loving stevedore employed by U.S. Steel, had refused to believe that any son of his would be afflicted with such a humiliating disorder, and ultimately decided, late one stifling hot summer night, to carefully measure the length of his boy’s penis, while Jimmy’s mom cluelessly ironed work clothes in the other room, absently singing “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” Nick Dalessandro was relieved to find that his kid’s dick was a couple of centimeters over the minimum length that would be considered normal. But it was cold comfort for a boy growing up on the mean streets of Gary, and over subsequent years, Jimmy Dalessandro learned to compensate for his genital shortcomings by beating people up a lot.

“This way.” Dalessandro slams through the Amtrak personnel-only door and enters a narrow hall of private offices tucked behind glass doors. “And let me do the talking.”

Looking insolent, the kid trudges along behind the capo with his head slumped. Clad in his hip-hop hoodie and torn jeans, Mark Ferri looks like he’d rather be playing video games than doing pretty much anything else. Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, he’s the perfect candidate to be yanked by the scruff of the neck into greatness—he’s got nowhere to go but up. “I’m comin’, Jesus Christ, slow down.”

They find the head of engineering behind the last door on the left.

“Hey, fellas, how you doing this morning?” says the little man in the olive drab work shirt, rising up behind his cluttered desk to greet his visitors. He wears little round eyeglasses and an Amtrak cap, the bill pushed cheerfully back. He has a warm smile and jovial manner, and he looks like a man at peace with his corruption and graft. Somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be this guy.

“Doin’ great, thanks.” Dalessandro shakes hands with the administrator. “I’m Jimmy Dalessandro, and this is Mark. The one I told you about. Say hello to the nice man, Mark.”

“Hey.” Mark Ferri leans his back against the doorjamb, the door still ajar. He pulls a small blue plastic device from his pocket—a Game Boy—and starts fiddling with it with a zombie-like stare.

The administrator gives them a smile. “Have a seat, fellas. You mind if I close the door?” He goes over to the door and gently pushes it shut. “Okay. So. I got a call from Mr. Ferri this morning.” He comes back around his desk and sits down. “I understand you’re doing this thing for the Make-A-Wish Foundation?”

“Something like that,” Dalessandro says, settling into one of the metal armchairs in front of the desk. “Mr. Ferri doesn’t like to make a big deal out of anything. Likes to make wishes come true for people. You know. Whenever possible. That’s just the kinda guy he is.”

“That’s fantastic.” The bespectacled little man grins again, his eyes twinkling behind the granny glasses. “The man is what I would call a true humanitarian.”

“That is exactly what he is,” Dalessandro concurs, and then shoots a thumb at the dimwit. “Ya see, Mark here, bless his heart, he’s got a rare form of brain cancer.”

The Ferri kid doesn’t even look up, just keeps twiddling his Game Boy with his thumbs, chewing his straw.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the Amtrak guy says, his voice dipping an octave, the twinkle going out of his eyes.

“Oh yeah. Kid’s brain is a mess.” Dalessandro casually pops a piece of chewing gum in his mouth. “Believe me.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yeah—so anyway. Kid really wants to run a train before he croaks.”

The administrator wipes his mouth. “Kid loves trains, does he?”

“Oh yeah, just loves ’em. Don’t ya, Marky?”

Behind Dalessandro, the Ferri boy is in a videogame-induced stupor.

“Marky?”

No answer.

“HEY, KID!”

The Ferri kid looks up. “Huh?”

“Tell the man how much you love trains.”

The kid goes back to his game, gnawing on the straw and mumbling, “Oh yeah... trains are, like, totally cool.”

“That’s wonderful,” the little Amtrak guy says with a sad crease in his brow. He looks like he wants to find a sucker or something to hand out to the boy. “Did Mr. Ferri give you the information on what train you’ll be using?”

“Kalamazoo, right?” Dalessandro pulls a black notebook from his pocket, clicks a ballpoint.

“That’s right.” The administrator flips through a schedule book. “Departs Chicago at 9:01, last train of the night. You fellas can pick it up at the Michigan City station around 9:40. Is that all right?”

Dalessandro writes it down. “Fine.” He looks at the little man. “So where exactly does the kid get trained to operate one of these beasts?”

The Amtrak guy stands up and claps his hands. “Tell ya what. The boy can ride to Michigan City with Charlie, the engineer. Learn the ropes, be his apprentice. How does that sound?”

Dalessandro looks at the dimwit. “How does that sound, Marky?”

The kid just keeps playing his game.

“Marky?” Dalessandro reaches over and tears the straw out of his mouth. “Tell the nice man how excited you are to learn how to run a train.”

The kid just shrugs.

Dalessandro smiles at the Amtrak guy. “He’s overcome with emotion.”

Oswald can’t remember the last time he had such a nasty case of the shakes.

Standing barefoot in the center of the fleabag room, dripping on the worn carpet, his gigantic nude form still wet from his shower, his long hair matted to his face, his stitches tingling and itching unmercifully, he looks down at his hands. Is this withdrawal?

“Fuck it.”

His voice is thin and spent with tension. He looks down at the bed.

His paraphernalia is spread across the moth-eaten spread like a merchant’s wares in some back-alley bizarre: a filed-down .22 Ruger, a matching suppresser, an ankle holster, two ammo magazines—one primary and one spare—each one filled with eight high-velocity Zippers, a wallet full of fake IDs, his little lock-pick