Life is Warm and Buttery: Prologue (completed)

The fat man pushed into the wall belly first. His hips turned with contact, rolling him around until he was flat on his back. The crying child remained secure in his heavy arms.

Sweat flooded his eyebrows and stung his eyes. One arm was allowed release to wipe this perspiration. After a single wipe, the arm returned to the safety of the newborn.

The crying echoed through the stairwell loudly. Concrete walls provide effective reflection. Two deep breaths and the fat man resumed his hurried descent, stomping loudly to help block the cries. There were six floors left to go. He would stumble again and hit the wall, but the child remained secure in his obese bosom.

The fat man knew something about mothers. He knew how they could be cruel. This sweaty fat man saw through the myth of the loving mother. He'd never known any as a child nor as an adult. Poked and prodded, mocked and abused, this thief, this kidnapper, this panicked father recognized a lack of motherly love. He saw it in the face of this child's mother. He couldn't let it happen again.

Here was a fat man, a fat boy, a loser, an idiot, an unreliable employee and all around piece of shit. There came a woman, not fat, but ugly. She had ugliness that reeked of suicide and wine. She was sick and the fat man thought she might let him take care of her. But she wouldn't, even after she was pregnant with his son. Instead, she lived rough and deadly, trying to kill the infection in her womb. The child would be dead. She wouldn't raise a son of his. She'd kill it or sell it. And then she gave birth.

When the doctor showed her bundle of joy, she complained about the pain. She begged for drugs she knew she would get. True disgust crusted her lips when she heard her son begging for her poison milk. She held the infant away from her, away from her lactating breast. Her eyes shuddered with this burden. And the fat man recognized the look.

He burst through the exit and entered the alley, the child's screams still echoing in the stairwell behind them. He caught his balance without the assistance of the walls and looked around them. An ambulance sat idle with lights flashing, its crew busy inside with their own unloved body. The fat man knew where he was heading. He could make it on foot.

The fat man tried to walk brisk but calm. He was too heavy for brisk. His thighs smashed together and the hang of his gut bent his back. The sweat from the stairwell started to pour. His appearance was everything but calm.

The child screamed and his father didn't hide it. So many questions and consequences popped between his temples. This moment he'd agree to raise the child; that moment he had no choice but to abandon it. He wanted to attack the boy's mother and he might just as well. Deep down he knew he would only run, terrified she would track him down, hungry for what he had cost her with steaming blood in her eyes. The fat man disgusted himself. No child should be raised like that.

He was ready to be stopped. He wanted a police officer, an EMT, a passing nurse, anyone to stop him and demand release of the child. This spineless, battered fat man would spill it all, the drugs, the dirt and blood and the pain, endless pain. The fat man didn't know life without it. He was ready for someone to take this child to a safer place, anywhere except near his mother and father.

The fat man loved the child. He glanced down at the red wrinkled face insulated in the meat of his elbow cradle. He wanted to protect the child, his son, and thought he knew the only true way. Safety existed only where the his mother couldn't find him. It would be years before the child's black market value would plummet.

Even in his struggling waddle, the fat man and his son had made it three blocks from the hospital. The man's shirt was now drenched with sweat. The child's blanket grew damp with it. Not much farther, just another few blocks.

People stared as he passed them, but no one stood in his way. He certainly didn't look like a dangerous kidnapper. Witnesses would clearly remember him later, but that's due to his obesity with his combined gallop as he passed. The spectacle was in the humor not the threat.

Debate raged on in his mind. The child screamed in protest of the wind, the only sound in a solitary square. The walked on streets of stone and passed buildings of brick. Finally, they found a tree. An iron bench reclined and invited as only iron can invite. The fat man wanted to sit and breath the peaceful air. He stopped and held the child less tightly.

It was peaceful there, as safe as appeared peaceful. The child cried his side of the story. The fat man watched the bench, hypnotized by its offer. The bench would take care of the child, at least until some one heard him which they almost certainly would. Why can't all bets be that safe?

A honking horn breaks the spell. All doubts are ignored and he continues to walk. They're almost there, just around the corner. They avoided capture. So far so good.

The child's mother screams at this fat man, a black widow bound to its web. Soon she'll recover and she'll come hunting for her mate hungry to take back the murder he stole from her. The fat man thinks about her and wonders if she's saying his name.

The father steps into a parking lot with his son. It is quiet except for a single truck, old and parked in front of the stairs leading to a convent door. A large sign reading "Sisters of St. Elizabeth" hung behind a podium in a courtyard. The fat man exhaled relief. He had brought his son to safety. The child ceased to scream, sharing his father's relief.

They cross the parking lot and begin to ascend the steps. Sweat is pouring, his heart is hammering, the adrenaline has run out. Only a few more steps and a letter, a brief letter, just something to prove he had held the boy. Maybe even something for the boy to keep.

Footsteps, women speaking, the fat man freezes and looks both ways. Several women, the sisters of St. Elizabeth, begin exiting from the doors. The fat man steps backward and almost loses his balance. He hugs the child tightly then recoils in fear of being too tight. Women continue to exit, a class must be dismissing, or mass just ended.

The fat man loses his nerve. He can't look them in the eye and hand over his son. The urge to run, mad panic, drilled his senses. He turned around, covering the child, hiding his good deed. The old truck sat waiting for him, more inviting than the iron bench. His hand covered the child's mouth but not completely. The boy kept his silence, giving no reason.

The fat man glanced at the side of the truck to make sure it wasn't named as servicing child molesters or demons. Those were the only businesses for which he would have refused to hide the child inside the truck. Fortunately, it belonged to a local trash disposal yard, a city dump, certainly safe enough for abandoning a child in a hurry. As more luck would have it, the door was unlocked, another sign of a beckoning haven.

The fat man moved slowly to place the child on the seat and assure his dampened blankets were still wrapped tightly. In all other actions he scrambled, oblivious to the stench of raw, molding, morning fresh trash, the grime, the ash, the waste. Nuns now spread across the courtyard, some watching the jumpy fat man bent over the passenger seat of a trash truck.

His round, fatty fists grabbed an invoice for an oil change from the floor and slammed it against the dash board. A pen was found stashed in the console under saved cigarette packs. The truck's owner could arrive any moment. The fat man felt ready to burst and cry. The child remained quiet, aiding his own abandon.

A farewell forever, a final goodbye to his son. The fat man scribbled but steadied his hand and started over. He insisted his only words be clear. Once written, he stashed the letter inside the blanket, hoping its instructions would be followed. The letter was quick but not hasty. The emotions were erratic but true.

The most careful part was the naming. The letter had to include the child's name. Of all the decisions the fat man had wrestled this had not been one. With witnesses in black robes rapidly surrounding them, he had to keep it simple. But he wanted the name, his only gift to his son, to be important to the boy too.

The letter implored the reader to accept this boy as their own and to feed and clothe and keep the boy healthy and not to abuse him unless he warranted so. It offered no reasons except that if those basic cares could be given then the boy would be better off than with his own. The letter was short but flooded with shame. The clock ticked thunderously and the fat man finished the seal.

The fat man recalled all the abuse, scorn, and contempt he'd born. He winced with memories of terror and broken glass. Sweat mixed with tears and sizzled on his chin. The fat man reached out a pillowed paw to pet the gentle creature he had saved.

He named the boy Happy. He hoped if he heard the idea enough it would last within his soul and he believed that such simplicity might just inspire enough moments of real joy to be worth more than a lifetime of anything else his father could give him.