Disclaimer: I did not use Lenny from Mice and Men, this is the name of the dead guy my father recovered from the bottom of the lake for the Park Rangers, but it is odd that they are the same. Hmmmm...

WHAT I WANT TO SAY IS...


What I want to say is, I have tried and tried to explain this but nobody will listen to me. I know that the people of this hick town don’t think I am able to do murder, but I did do it.

I even went down to Sheriff Moby’s office and told Deputy Carl all the gory details of how I broke into Mr. Dukowski’s house and killed him. Well, Carl wrote it all down and typed it up. It took forever because he types with two fingers and not his whole hands like you’re supposed to.

Then he had me sign it. The whole time I was talking and he was typing he kept explaining to me that this was called a con-fess-ion, like I didn’t know that. But mostly what made me so mad was the way he was talking to me like I was a little kid. I am not a little kid; I will be twenty-eight next month on the fourteenth. I am a grown man and also very strong.

When I signed it he stood next to me patting my shoulder like I was some kind of stray dog he felt sorry for. I just hate it when people pat me. The people at the Special ED. Class I used to go to never did that. They know that just because a person is a little slow, he still needs to be treated with respect. I like that word a lot, respect. There’s a song about it, the woman who sings it spells it out for you. Another word I like is dignity.

When Carl patted me, he said, “Lenny, I am real glad you came down here today.” But I could tell by his fake smile that he really wasn’t. I could also tell that he didn’t believe a word of my con-fess-ion. Even though I put stuff in there that nobody else would know but the guy who did the crime.

Like taking the wheels off Mr. Dukowski’s walker. I am very good with my hands and some people even pay me to be their handyman.

Some people would say that taking some old wheels off a walker doesn’t equal murder. But I say that if you had been in and out of that house as many time as I have been you would know that Mr. Dukowski was half blind and that it would take him a while to notice that the wheels were gone. Also there is three steps down from the living room to the hall and a door right there to the basement that is kept open a lot.

Now I want to say that I am very sorry that I didn’t get the new wheels on sooner and about the big mess at the bottom of the stairs where Mr. Dukowski hit. I don’t know who they got to clean that up.

Anyway I have told everybody about how I killed him and I am willing to take my licks like a man. Only, like I said, nobody will listen to me. That is not respect.

Maybe tomorrow when I fix old lady Johnson’s toaster and her house goes up on fire, they will listen to me then.