Rough Trade by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9781786369475
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-08-31T21:00:00+00:00

BIG BOY (1959)

“Big Boy” was what I called this story when I wrote it in September of 1958, but when it appeared in the May, 1959 issue of Guilty it bore Scottie’s new title of “The Blonde and the Brute,” an alteration which I am happy to reverse here.

The story owes something, I guess, to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, although my Big Boy is rather more of a psychopath than Steinbeck’s hulking Lennie. But Steinbeck was writing a mainstream novel and I was writing a crime story, so we had different goals in mind; and, in any case, Steinbeck was not the first to write about a giant whose physical strength is too much for his degree of emotional maturity. (King Kong travels in some of the same territory, and the various tales of Beauty and the Beast.)

BIG BOY

He’d like to take a throat in his big hands—and squeeze.

The Big Boy felt pretty good about things that morning. He always felt pretty good about things. He had a good job, he got fed on time, and people looked after him. So he was happy. And once in a while the Bossman let him take someone’s neck in his big hands and squeeze, and then the Big Boy felt a lot happier.

Right now the Big Boy was sitting in the front room of the Bossman’s place, reading the Sunday comic section. The comics were about the Big Boy’s speed. He looked at the pictures, and if he crept up on the words very slow and moved his lips a little to help himself along, he could make some sense out of them. The Big Boy wasn’t very smart. But he was big and he was loyal, and so the Bossman kept him around as a bodyguard.

Right now the Bossman seemed to be having some kind of fight with Marie. Big Boy could hear the angry yelling sounds coming out of their bedroom. He didn’t care what they were yelling about. He slouched back in his chair and tried to puzzle out Dick Tracy. The Big Boy lived in the same apartment with the Bossman and Marie. He slept up front, in a room off the foyer, and he kept out of their way when the two of them were having one of their fights.

The Big Boy’s name was really Danny, only everybody called him just Big Boy. He was six feet five and weighed two hundred ninety-five pounds, and none of it was fat, none at all. It was all muscle, including the part between his ears. The Big Boy wasn’t much good at thinking or figuring things out. He was kind of slow in the head, as a matter of fact. But he was useful to the Bossman. He was a good bodyguard.

The doorbell rang. The Big Boy didn’t need to wait for orders. He put down the comic section and went shambling to the door to open it.

The man waiting in the hall was a foot shorter than the Big Boy.

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