the hammer hit the nail and it did not budge

He watched the kid smacking the hammer over and over on the nail.   It might be a fucking toy but there was something wrong about never being able to feel that nail slamming down into wood.  That seemed reason enough to get out a real hammer, board and some nails.

What the hell, it wasn't like it was going to cost him 45.40, like that the damn 'Little Builders' charge that he had come across on his VISA Card Statement.  He'd just went out to the garage to an old rabbit hutch that had been waiting to be torn down for 4 years and some odd months, tore a board off with AS FEW RUSTY NAILS AS POSSIBLE (he would later tell everyone that he had to legally or otherwise describe the night to), searched around in a few kitchen drawers for the hammer and box of nails, and gave them to the kid.

Everything was fine at first.  Then he realized, abruptly, why giving a real hammer and nails to a two year old could cause problems.  The first indications of trouble, as was so often the case with the boy, were the blood curdling screams.  In  what he would later swear was no less than three seconds, the boy managed to get a nail stuck into his thigh   (the child welfare workers would not believe him as to the timing, and the etiquette of the situation had required that he not add, as he did with his hipper friends when he told the story, 'maybe it was just the weed.').   Not in very deep, but even as he was screaming, the kid was getting ready to hit the nail again, as if that was the right punishment for it hurting his leg.

He was going to stop this, too...  but he couldn't help but pause and wonder if that kid really was stupid enough to do it?  Just long enough for the kid to prove that indeed he was quite stupid enough.

He had seen the cowboys poor whisky on a wound enough times to resent the cops bitching about the kid smelling like Jack Daniels.  And yes, he did make the kid sip it to help stop the pain, but that was about the only chance he had of getting some quite while he waited for his wife to get home and bitch at him over the blood.

Looking at him all covered in red, he couldn't help, as he always did when the kid somehow managed to injure himself under his watchful eye, but fantasize again about having had the kid aborted.  He kept tellinghis wife he was meaning to drag his her out behind the pick up, or at least punch her a few times in the gut...    but he put off the abortion until it was too late, so he just kind of let it go.  Next thing he knew, she was gone for a few days and came back with this screaming thing.

 Oh, it was cute sometimes....  at least he could sell pictures of the thing to internet nerds (he had no idea they were pedophiles, and indeed would be three weeks into his court case before he realized what the word meant... the way he jumped up from his chair after the judge explained the word and mercilessly beat the other defendants went a long way with the jury, got him off....  though he had just seen something on Law and Order about earning prison cred by beating pedophiles and was bored with all the fucking talking heads on what he had begun to believe was the Court TV channel, drunk as he always was and nodding off and waking--so much so that his occasional outburst of 'change the channel,' got him ejected from the proceedings for three days;  he would later admit none of this, and indeed, would still not quite understand that he had not been charged with riding a bike on the sidewalk, as he had before the word 'pedophile' was explained in court).

So there he was now...  sitting in the park, where he was probably going to have to sleep...

The wife came home and he caught her at the door, before she could see the kid, hugged her close, kissed her neck and told her, "Tonight, we are going to not have any fights... just you and me, in love, having a nice night...  I owe you that."

It worked until she saw the kid.   As she started asking him if he had always been a moron, he tried to no avail to remind her of the vow he had elicited like 3 seconds before she started screaming.

Then she thinks he needs a doctor....

He tried to tell her that he poured whiskey on the kid so that took care of any need for a tetenous shot, and that he too was worried about the bleeding, which is why he had put the kid in a trash bag, to save what he could of the carpet and furniture.  He had even told her, "If he needs a damn infusion, he can have my blood.  I'll do it, even if I have to smoke some fucking  crack to deal with the pain.  For the children."  She didn't believe him and he was about to go out and score some crack and show her, when she started dialing 911.   The cops of course showed up immediately.

Like they had told his wife on various occasions, "Give us an excuse to beat this guys ass, and we will be in here in seconds."

What a life he told himself, what a life.  If he was to blame for anything, it was being too right about everything.