“I’m just trying to understand why you think the swingsets ask—”
“When you give a drunk, homeless person money on the street,” I said, “you’re helping him get drunk, right? And that’s probably what made him homeless to begin with. Getting drunk.”
“Sometimes, sure,” Manx said. “Though it could be that they resorted to alcohol abuse after—”
“I know, I know, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is that when you give a drunk, homeless guy money on the street and he buys alcohol with it, or even if he doesn’t buy alcohol with it and even if you know that—even if you somehow know that he’s gonna buy food or diapers or something with the money instead of alcohol—you’re not giving him what he needs to solve his problems. What he needs is a home. You’re not giving him a home.”
“I can’t give him a home.”
“Right. And he knows that. And that’s why he doesn’t ask you to give him a home. He asks you to help him in a different way, in the way he thinks you might be able to help him.”
“So if you could repair these swingsets, you would.”
“I think so. If they asked. I’m terrible with my hands, though. My dad’s really good with his hands, but I’m just…not. And most of these swingsets I murdered, they were really rusty, like rusted through, with holes in their legs and stuff, so I don’t know if that’s even something that can be repaired by anyone, let alone me, without destroying them first anyway, but if they asked me to repair them, and I knew how, I’d probably try, yeah.”
“Probably,” Manx said.
“I mean if I was good with my hands, I think I’d at least be a little bit of a different person than I am—so I can’t say for sure what I’d do. I only know who I am. Kinda. If I was exactly the same person I am right now, but I also had tools and the skills I’d need to repair the swingsets, then yeah, I’m saying. I’d repair them, I guess. I’d be different, though, wouldn’t I? With tools and skills. And then also, there’s practical questions.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like, what if it would take me months of nonstop work to repair a swingset that asked me to repair it? Maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe it would rather die than suffer for so long. And maybe, you know—probably, really—probably I wouldn’t have months to spend on repairing a swingset. Because the thing is, what we said before about the homeless guy, it isn’t a hundred percent entirely true.”
“How’s that?”
“Well you could get a homeless guy a home, couldn’t you, Manx? I mean, you’re a professor at this fancy school, right? You could live probably a lot cheaper than you live, and use the leftover money to get a homeless guy a home. Maybe you could even do it without living cheaper. Maybe you’ve got savings you could use. Or could sell some stuff you don’t use that much. But you don’t do any of that.”
“I don’t.”
“So maybe I’m like you. Maybe I wouldn’t repair them if they asked me to repair them. I don’t know. I guess it would depend. Like on how easy it would be to repair them. But the main thing is, though, that if they asked me to repair them, I wouldn’t destroy them. I wouldn’t destroy them unless they asked me. That’s the main thing.”
“And,” my mother added, “you won’t destroy any more of them even if they do ask you, right?” She turned to Manx. “Belt gave me his word he won’t destroy other people’s property anymore,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Yes.”
Manx seemed to ignore this entire exchange. “So all these swingsets you destroyed—they all asked you to destroy them?”
“All except for one.”
“And why did you destroy that one?”
“I guess mostly because I told myself it would’ve wanted me to. I mean, I went there, to this guy Feather’s place, to do the murder because some kids asked me to, but I’d also been starting to think by then that maybe that’s what I should’ve been doing anyway, is finding swingsets that looked like they needed my help, and then helping them even if they didn’t ask.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, you see. I know. I see, too. It’s a problem. I can see that now. At the time, though, I thought that maybe the problem might be that, for whatever reason, that swingset was unable to speak to me, or I was unable to hear it speak, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s in as bad or even worse shape than the ones that asked me to help them, and if it could speak to me, or if I was able to hear it speak, it would probably ask me to help it.’ So I helped it.”
“And how did you decide it was a problem?”
“How did I decide? Well part of it is what you’d expect, I think: maybe it didn’t want to be destroyed, I thought, and so destroying it was maybe a cruel thing to do to it. Maybe not, right? but still. Destroyed is destroyed, it’s the end, it’s over, and it’s too big a thing to take for granted that another being wants to stop existing if that being hasn’t said so, especially if that being hasn’t spoken to you at all. You could make a mistake. That would be terrible. And then also, I saw that there just isn’t time to live that way. There isn’t enough time to help all the rusting swingsets in even just Wheelatine, you know? And the world is filled with rusting swingsets, so if I’m going to believe that I should be going around helping rusting swingsets, I have to have some way of choosing which ones to help, and which ones not to, and so ‘only ones who ask for my help’ is a way to narrow down the choices. And the narrowing’s important. It’s really important. I mean, because that’s just rusting swingsets I’m talking about, but there are all kinds of damaged things in the world that ask me to help them—not just swingsets. I’ve only helped a couple of the ones who’ve asked that weren’t swingsets. I don’t really know why. I don’t know why I didn’t help the others that asked. I just didn’t care about them. Maybe I should have. I didn’t, though. I don’t. Maybe that sounds like nonsense, and that’s why you’re looking at me like that. I’m not used to talking about this stuff. And so maybe it’s nonsensical of me to care more about swingsets than windows or ashtrays or even maybe rocks or whatever, and more nonsensical than that that I don’t know why I care more about the swingsets, but I don’t know why. It seems really random to me—I don’t understand it. Like how I like salty foods better than sweet foods. Usually. Not always, but usually. I just do. Is that nonsensical? I don’t know. It seems pretty random, though. Same with swingsets. I just care more about swingsets.”
“What does—”