When Ruby heard about the man in Brazil who lived with a knife stuck in his brain for three years, she thought of her son, Benny. If Benny had a knife stuck in his head, that would explain why he was such an idiot. Like the man in Brazil, Benny got into bar fights. It could be somebody’d stabbed Benny in the head a few years back.
Ruby pictured the man in Brazil going about his daily business repairing tires, trying to keep the knife handle in his forehead from bumping up against the Goodyears. The doctors had chopped the handle off after the bar fight, of course, but she still thought if it as being there.
Of course, Benny didn’t have a knife stuck in his brain. He’d always been an idiot. When he was three, he had bruises all over his mug because he couldn’t learn that if he pushed a swing, it would come back at him. And now, at fifty-five, he thought the world was going to end in 2012 because the Mayans thought so. If the Mayans knew so much, why weren’t they still around? Yes, that son of hers was as dumb as a box of rocks with a few doorknobs thrown in.