Leo's confession

So, this sonofabitch comes to talk to you about truth and sincerity and Jesus Christ, but he
tells you I got the restraining order against me because I went to my wife’s house. That’s a
frigging lie. I apologize for cursing earlier. It’s got to stop. It must stop. Anyway, he’s
framing me just like he did that day, tricking me into going over there. Don’t believe a damn
word he says. He wouldn’t know the truth if he stepped right in a big pile of it. And then he
names it “Leo’s Last Word.” I ought to know when my last stand is. I’ll tell you all of it.
I have always had a difficult life. My parents came from Poland with the shirt on their
backs and dirt on their hands. They sacrificed everything for me and never let me forget it.
It was eight years in a two room apartment before they had me. My mother always talks about how I never cried, never made a sound when I was a baby. They say I was always aware of my responsibilities. My mother said I didn’t want to add to their problems by crying. I don’t know what it was, but I know that by the time I was six, I realized there wasn’t a damn thing to cry about, since crying didn’t change anything.
My folks didn’t need me crying but working, so I started working when I was eight years old.
Pop had had a stroke and was laid up. I took on the chin at school, and that’s when my head started hurting all the time. I took all kinds of work—shoveling snow, toting, painting, cleaning out people’s garages. A guy paid me fifty bucks one time to set his car on fire. I did it and took the money home, and our rent was paid for three months.
I loved watching the car burning. The fire was so red and so forceful. I know I sound like a fruit, but there is no other way, after all these years, to describe it. It was a gas! I loved smelling the rubber from the tires burn. My eyelashes got singed from the heat when the car exploded, but I knew I was on to something. That was also the first time he showed up. I know he was trouble because he goaded me, always talking about setting something on fire. I’d be gone for half an hour and I’d end up sitting in my car with a sack of matches and a full can of gasoline. I-I-I s-s-set fire to a d-d-d-dog I found in a park because he told me it was half-
dead and needed to be put out of its misery. Even then I knew it was a lie, but I didn’t care because I wanted to see it burn. I heard it scream.
I st-st-st-till do.