Shag DeBrillen, Brickie by Tom Sheehan

Shag DeBrillen, Brickie
(or The Usual Flat-out Failure at Most Things Unexceptional)

by Tom Sheehan

As Shag DeBrillen was about to turn the corner in the suburban area where he lived, he spotted a lone car a short ways down the town road. He whistled and told himself it was an Impala, an oldie, an olden golden, a gem of an antique. With the six ports in the rear end looking like gun ports on a fighter aircraft, he affirmed it was a ’63. The car was parked at a siding and the driver, leaning out the window, was talking to a young girl of ten or so; Shag assumed was on her way to school.

He wondered if he was looking at an illusion of sorts, not thinking he was really seeing what he was seeing; there was too much nothing around the scene. An old car, a young girl, not much else to look at, or take your eye to the quick. Sometimes what you see is not what you see.

It was early October and the school year had recently started. Soon, he thought, the leaves would begin to change color — the big silver maple directly across from him soaking up the early sunlight, the threat of change poised and real in its broad cast of leaves. The nights would come cooler in a matter of a week or so, the year looking at its cold ending.

The front of his old Pontiac, a ’76 Bonneville, with the Indian head yet proudly mounted by his own hand on the hood, nosed out into the crossroad. Shag DeBrillen knew another minor accident would probably finish off the car. He’d had enough of them, he recalled quickly, a few snickers mixed in with the recollections. So the car was driven gingerly, as Stockwell his plumber buddy had noted: “Hey, man, ole Shag drives the bucket like it was Aunt Mindy’s sewing machine, I swear to God.”

Shag had a piece of sheet metal and an old wire coat hanger wrapped around the muffler. Each day he’d tighten up the coat hanger or add a new one, wary of the cops who had warned him about excess noise, Trupote being the nastiest about it, a smartass rookie. Tenuous at best, a front end rocker arm sent tremors that were known in his hands and arms at each turn on the road. The amount of oil usually burning now in the old engine, he surmised hurriedly on numerous occasions, would float a rowboat. Besides, the exhaust smell was real and dark. Unreliable was the word consciously coming into his vocabulary, working its way in on a daily basis. At 168,000 miles the old sedan was counting the miles as well as the days. It was just about good enough to get him to the next wall he was working on. One more solid day’s work in the offing; another brick, another tier, another wall.

Suddenly, up there ahead of him, a hand snaked out of the Impala and snatched the young girl, perhaps ten-years-old he said again to himself, into the car.

Shag sat straighter in his seat, quickly upright, and his foot locked onto the brake pedal. Blond tresses, bleached from constant sun, fell over his forehead, which the hot summer had painted a dark tan. He felt as inert as a concrete block. Something almost physical caught in his throat, caught and grabbed on harshly, as fishing barbs. For a fraction of a moment he thought he would choke. Mary Gibbons, now mysteriously gone these many years, leaped into his mind. Once more he saw her pretty face ringed with dark curls in the seat right beside him in Mrs. Stone’s third grade class. She’d been pretty as a picture. Once her slip had shown as white as snow. That glimpse was more than half his lifetime earlier. A breathtaking dizziness flooded his head and his hands froze on the wheel. From that last day going home from school, not a soul had seen pretty Mary Gibbons. Twenty years of nothing.

The Impala, in a surging motion, took off down the town road, dust lifting behind it in a minor contrail. The rear ports, like a logo or a full name across the back of the vehicle, kept saying Chevie.

Shag DeBrillen earlier in age had blown about all his schooling and then his one attempt at a G.E.D. Plain and simple it came up for him . . . books and numbers had little place in his life. He was a brickie; of that he was absolutely positive. His hands told him where he belonged. That perfect line necessary on a wall was scored into his eyes. It had been there since the day Marsellaise, the old neighborhood mason, had shown him eighty years’ worth of tricks of the trade.

“Illusion is important to a mason,” Marsellaise had said. “Make it work for you. Then do your thing.” Shag took that release all the way, figuring he already had a head start on things; he had worn his hair the way he wanted to, ever since his father had beaten him for not wearing it the way “grown and proud men do.”

Shag knew brick laying and cars and little else.

Now decisions came abruptly at him, the kind he felt he was not capable of making. In a kind of desperation, he began to talk to himself. At least the sound was there: There’s no illusion here. No second sighting down the line of a wall, no chance to reset a stone or brick in an otherwise perfect wall. Can’t use a piece of string for this.

The gas pedal kicked at his tromped foot. Perhaps I can get the number on the registration plate. It’s all I can hope to do; there’s be no way this old junk can catch that car. The engine coughed and kicked and sounded just like old Marsellaise the day he died at the end of a long wall, a day’s work done, a lifetime of work done. It had been ten minutes before the work day was supposed to be over when the old gent kicked over, true to the bitter end.

In the rearview mirror he saw the plume of black exhaust flowing out behind him. Momentarily, he smelled the exhaust, and then discounted it. The picture of the girl’s mother came to him, cleaning the kitchen from the breakfast meal, probably a yellow apron about her waist like his mother used to wear, yellow as the morning sun in the early slant or a whistling canary, planning lunch or the evening meal, pleasant time on hand. Oh, damn, this can be the worst of days for her and she has no idea yet. No idea!

The engine snorted and kicked back again at his pedal foot. The smell of oil was heavier, the wake of exhaust as wide as the road behind him. In the back seat his trowels rattled against one another, and one clinked against the hammer head, sounding out the single tick of a clock. An empty plastic bucket fell off the seat. If there’s a car behind me, I can’t see it. Maybe a cop’s back there. I damn sure wish a cop was there. I need a cop. I need a cop. What the hell can I do in this claptrap! Goddamn it!

He stepped on the gas again. The car shook again. Down the road ahead of him the Impala was pulling away. A half mile down the road a yellow Bluebird school bus had a red octagonal flag flung out at its pick-up stop. Two or three cars were stopped coming from the other direction. One was a pick-up truck. I wonder if it could be Stockwell on his way to work. I hope so. That Dodge of his could do a hundred if he wanted it to. The abductor’s Impala slowed and stopped, and Shag crept up behind it and got the number on the plate. 781-Q77. That’s easy, he said to himself. He wrote the number boldly on his arm with his stubby work pencil. The figures were scrawling and uneven but fully legible. On a second thought he wrote the number on his jeans. The pencil felt as though it was cutting into the skin of his thigh.

Shag spoke aloud, “I should get out of the car and approach the other car, rip open the door, get the guy out before he can take off. But the guy will see me and go. I’ll lose time. I’ve got to be smart about this. Here I am, a goddamn brickie. What the hell can I do? I need a cop. Ain’t that a laugh.” He could hear the echo of his voice, helpless and languid, distant as a star. Once when he was sick he had felt like this. Never had he begged for anything, not when sick, not even for his G.E.D. “I need a cop. I need a cop.” He looked behind him, back down the road, the exhaust fumes momentarily thinned out and the air clearer. Nothing was in sight behind him. Nothing as far back as he could see.

The red arm on the bus folded and a Buick came past the bus from the other way. The Impala snaked slowly out over the double line and dipped back as the pickup came abreast of the bus. It was not Stockwell’s truck, but it was a speedy new Dodge Ram 2500. It came beside Shag. Its engine roared and then flew past him. In front, the Impala slipped around the bus and headed down the road. Shag could not see the girl moving in the car. “Oh, damn,” he said. The sound of his voice was fainter, receding with his hope.

Marsellaise’s voice came in a rugged whisper. Illusion, it said. Illusion. That old man was still trying to teach him something, Marsellaise being noisy again.

A police car came out of a side road and headed toward him. Marsellaise was still talking to him, now noisy and incoherently it seemed, a mesh of gibberish and accent from an old man long gone. The white and blue said it was a state police cruiser, one man behind the wheel. Shag shook his head, trying to shake off the voice, the sense of illusion still at him, the loudness. He was trying to concentrate on something. It was difficult, the damn voice of the old mason refusing to let go. Pretense, Illusion, it kept saying. What was Marsellaise at? Where was his voice coming from? This blue and white car was real, wasn’t it? Shag leaned over the wheel, faked inertness, lack of attention, yet kept the Bonneville straddling the double traffic lines. The shadow of the cruiser slipped beside him with a roar. The squeal of brakes came from behind. Shag leaned on the gas pedal. The old bucket had some life in it yet, something beside the guttural grunts. But not enough. Moments later the cruiser roared up behind him.

Ahead the Impala was moving off as small as the head of a pencil.

Shag came to an abrupt stop. He lept from the Bonneville as the trooper came out of the cruiser directly behind him. Shag waved his arms, tried to scream, his blond curls shaking all over, the tanned face red with excitement. The eyes were popping in his face like glazed saucers. Desperate breath rushed into and filled his throat. Words tried to claw their way through, almost scratching his throat. He looked like an actor in serious trouble onstage, forgetting his lines, the audience on the edge of their seats. Then he pointed up the road, out of town. “That Impala, plate number 781-Q77. The driver grabbed a little girl back there.”

God, he was coherent!

The trooper smiled and said, “This your car? You Shag DeBrillen? You old Trupote’s favorite driver in these parts? I haven’t seen one of these things since my Uncle Henry was around.” His hand was on the fender of the Bonneville. “Man, I heard all about you. Tru says he can hear you coming before he sees you. That a fact?”

“Listen, that ’63 Impala driver grabbed a little girl back there about a mile. Yanked her right into the car. You gotta do something about it.”

“I don’t gotta do anything about nothing! Old Trupote said you had a hundred stories. This another one? A new one?” The trooper cocked his head, noting that he was tuning in the loud muffler. A smile crossed his face.

Shag heard Marsellaise’s voice coming from behind his car. Illusion, it said. Illusion.

Lie, it also said. Lie like hell or force the issue.

“It’s gonna be your ass, not mine, when I tell this story.”

“Don’t threaten me! You got a rep, that’s for sure. I heard about the time the pawn shop was ripped off and you gave the locals a plate number because you saw something. Cops chased an old teacher of yours almost to the New York border. Scared the damn hell out of her and she said you were paying her back for something she’d done to you years ago.”

Shag came back quickly. “That was an old maid busybody who manufactured that. I gave a number and the dispatcher screwed it up. In this case, it’s the little girl who’s threatened.” He pointed down the road out of town. “A couple of more miles, out of the lake region, and they’ll get away. That’s when your ass will be in a wringer.”

The trooper smiled. “I don’t take to threats. Trupote said you had a talent for this stuff. Could lie like a trooper.” He smiled at his own words. “Play the game for all it’s worth.”

“Well, think about her mother sitting home and you’re sitting here shaking your dick at the side of the road ’cause you caught a guy with a loud muffler, and her little girl is grabbed by some guy and making it out of town right about now.” He again pointed out of town, the small pencil dot of an Impala barely visible at a big curve in the road as it began a sweep around Lake Chagmond.

With no expression on the trooper’s face, Marsellaise’s voice came back. Lie like hell, it said. Lie like hell because she’s worth it, that little girl. And her mother putting around the kitchen right about now, dumb as she’ll ever get.

The old vision came back. Marsellaise was scribing a line with a string, pegging it. At one point he put stress on the string. “Right about here. Here’s where you do a little double dip, an eye catcher. This grabs their eye, right here. You know you can’t make a wall that looks straight without them saying their piece about it. Here’s where you lie like hell.” He had snapped the string.

Shag was thinking in Marsellaise’s words: “Make a good excuse for this and you’re home free with the whole thing.” So Shag said, “What’s your name, officer?” He put a smirk on his face.

“You want my badge number too, wise guy. 6-7-2, and remember it.” His rancor was still riding the air when Marsellaise took the opportunity to come back. The trooper put his thumb behind the badge and nearly popped it into Shag’s face. “6-7-2!” The smirk was returned wholesale with the gesture. “I think you’ll find out sooner than later, my friend, that when you’re talking to the police you better drop the wiseass stuff. It’ll do you better in the long run.”

The car, said Marsellaise. The car. The car. Then it came heavy. The cruiser. Damn it, Shag, the cruiser. Then he punctuated his words. Illusion, he said, his voice suddenly softer, testing him, cajoling. It’s our only chance!

To Shag, the our was all inclusive. It meant the little girl, her mother and father, perhaps siblings, 6-7-2 with the smirk still on his face, Marsellaise, and of course, the Pariah, the loser, Shag himself caught up again. Life will never change, he thought. I might have thought I’ve been shortchanged forever, but now’s not the time. A tree caught in the morning sun almost blazed up on the side of the road as the sun smashed into it. Summer was gone. Fall was here. Winter was coming. Loneliness, terror of the worst sort, could be coming to a mother behind him, toward the center of town.

Down the road Shag looked, out of town. And the telltale dot of the Impala was gone. Panic reared its ugly head, and then backed off as he tried to visualize the map of the area. What side roads there were. What was the nearest intersection for the Impala to find flight? Who patrolled out there if it wasn’t this obnoxious son of a bitch? The whole string of summer cottages along the one side of the lake snaked into his mind. They’d all be shut up now, the summer traipsed away and gone, nobody around.

Time was running as fast as the Impala. Shag felt the now-or-never crunch pounding down on top of him. It was worth it all, even what he could see coming at him, as clear as he could ever see anything . . . and the mother in her apron in her kitchen, oblivious to all of it. He tried to keep the little girl’s fate out of his mind. Tried not to see her in some helpless position, some animal of a man hovering over her. The shock went through his body, snapped into the back of his head . . . he swore he could hear Mary Gibbon’s laughter, see her face once more, the brown hair, the red lips, the big eyes. Perhaps he heard her cry out, an endless plaintive cry that would last forever. He shivered and caught himself at the edge of something new. Marsellaise was as near as ever, that good, old son-of-a-bitch brickie not letting go, not leaving him.

Coyly Shag said, “I thought you were getting a flat tire when I saw you coming,” thinking, If he’s as stupid as he looks, I’ll have a chance.

6-7-2 looked at the street side of his cruiser, bending over, being sure. One hand touched the rear tire as though he didn’t believe his own eyes. The other hand was on his holster, as if he were still in class at the academy and being put to a test. The tire was okay. He walked to the back of the car and bent to look at the other rear tire.

That’s when Shag heard Marsellaise as if he were standing just behind him, sharing the same shadow.

Now! the single word was a roar.

It hit Shag between the eyes like a baseball bat in the hands of the Red Sox rightfielder, Trot Nixon, or the big guy, David “Papi” Ortiz, World Champs, the two of them.

Now!

Swearing the whole world could hear the long-dead mason, he leaped at the car, praying not to stumble, not to screw up again, not to fail miserably at perhaps the only good thing he might ever do in his whole life. Pulling the door open, he jumped into the cruiser, snapped the door lock down and jammed the engine into drive.

The gears ground as harshly as an old cement mixer, then caught, meshed, brought a sudden speed to the take-off. With a roar the cruiser jumped off the shoulder, spent rubber leaving smoke, and rocketed down the road. 6-7-2 lept, cursed, and went for his gun. From behind him and from the other direction, cars were coming. He holstered his weapon. The portable radio came off his hip. He yelled into it.

Other than being a brickie, Shag knew he could drive. He’d been driving, whether anyone liked it or not, since he was eleven, more than once at the wheel of a “borrowed” car . . . his father’s, his Uncle Harry’s, Bert Wills’ who lived next door and always left the keys in the car after a night on the town. Good old Bert never missed the car on a dozen occasions. The last ride was the best, the cops chasing Shag around half the town, and he slipped out of Bert’s car and into the house without anybody the wiser. Ten minutes later he saw Bert, shaking his head, yelling, being hauled off by the cops. Shag had laughed himself to sleep.

The cruiser was now doing about 80 miles-an-hour as Shag began the loop about the lake.

The lake’s surface, off to his left, through trees, cottages, cabanas, was a silver blue, catching a piece of the morning sky in it. Yet it was a cool blue, making his fingers feel icy. Another shiver came to him as he thought of the coming winter on an open staging, the unset bricks piled at hand on the staging, the wind blowing out of the northeast, some arrogant son-of-a-bitch of a boss yelling up from a heated truck cab below. The sun poked fingers of light through decorative camp trees, in gaps between the cottages and cabanas, and spread itself in the maple treetops off to his right, color catching as if being crayoned in at the same moment.

In the straightaway, as the curve about the lake was left behind, there appeared no pencil-dotted Impala ahead of him. Christ, he could be gone forever… and the kid with him. Shag tromped on the accelerator and felt his back punch against the seat. He’d get this son of a bitch car up to a 100 if he could. If the Impala got to the turnpike they’d have a cold shot in hell of finding it, and the kid with it.

Even then the old mason wasn’t letting go. Shag heard Illusion again, Marsellaise’s voice coming as if from the back seat, another unauthorized passenger.

The radio popped alive. “Unauthorized driver at the wheel of a stolen state police car, westbound out of Saxon on the lake road. Driver is dangerous. Post blockade short of the turnpike exit. Trooper afoot at the Hanscombe Road intersection. Needs assistance.”

Hell, they’d be on him in minutes, the Impala probably going right on by them, the little girl maybe knocked unconscious in the back seat. He tromped harder on the accelerator.

And then, his heart near pounding in his chest, pressure building in his head, his hand now sweaty instead of cold, he caught sight of a glare of light between two small and obviously empty cabins on the edge of the lake. It was like John Wayne or James Arness picking a barrel of a rifle from a distant point out of a vast expanse of otherwise darkness. It was the six rear ports of the Impala, all six of them blinking at him at the same time. He was dead sure about it, and the vehicle was parked between the two small buildings, and partly under a small clutch of trees.

Shag braked, went by the two cabins less than a hundred feet off the road. “Don’t squeal the brakes,” he told himself. “Easy does it. Leave the cruiser here in the middle of the road. If 6-7-2 has made contact, someone’ll be here soon enough.”

He climbed out of the car, after setting the emergency brake, leaving the keys in the ignition switch, the engine running.

Behind a clutch of brush and small trees, he picked up a half dozen stones and made an arrow in front of the cruiser, pointing back to the Impala. Doubt hit him. He knew it was a cover-your-ass gesture. It made him sick about himself. He slipped down into the brush. His heart came pounding again, his hands cold in return, then hot in a hurry.

He neared the Impala. Silence sat on the lake, now bluer and brighter, and in the air. There were no cries. No strange sounds. No struggle evident to his senses, but an overwhelming strangeness crowding him. He was feeling hatred for something part human, an ogre, a monster, a child-thief. Bile suddenly loaded his throat with sour burning. His hand closed on a rock of good size. His huge brickie’s hand closed down on it as if it were a baseball in the hand of Curt Schilling or Pedro Martinez. Two fingers curled tightly about the rock. He had to stop whatever was in process right now. Get him out in the open. He’d take his chances with him, the driver, the abductor, that rotten son-of-a-bitch. The unknowing mother in her yellow apron in her quiet kitchen came back to him. The helpless girl leaped into his mind, her hands reaching for her mother. For her father. For him. The bile loaded itself again. He gagged and recovered. In one swift move, standing upright about thirty feet from the nearest cabin, he fired the rock at the single window facing him. He missed the window by a foot, but the rock rattled as loud as a gunshot against the side of the cabin. Sounds came to him from the interior of the cabin. A sudden noise of banging objects. The scream of a little girl. The sounds of quick bedlam. Over his shoulder he heard sirens screaming across the lake as if a police speedboat were approaching. They were coming from the turnpike end of the road, he was sure, all-out to help a brother officer.

Then, as Shag turned back, a single male, tall, moving quickly, made his way out of the cabin. He limped. He had a beard. His jacket was blue and worn. Even with the limp he moved rapidly, perhaps desperately. There was another scream from inside. Shag’s heart pounded as the man raced to the Impala.

Shag threw another rock. This one smashed against the rear window of the Impala and shattered it. The man heard the sirens. Seeing Shag, he jumped into the car, and it shook as the ignition caught with a roar. Sand and debris rose by the rear wheels as he backed the car. Shag hurled another rock, smashing against the side of the Impala. The engine died, coughed, started again. The sirens were closer. The car coughed and gagged and coughed anew. Then the engine caught again. The Impala swung towards the road as two police cruisers, one a state vehicle, the other a town police car, came to a stop beside the cruiser stranded in the middle of the road. Two uniforms lept out.

Shag screamed, “Stop him. He’s the one who grabbed the girl. She’s in the cabin.” He raced to the cabin as two more police cars converged on the Impala, now its underside caught on an embankment, the wheels spinning harmlessly, the old engine letting go its final cries.

Shag DeBrillen, quicker than he’d ever been, ran into the cabin and found the girl crouched on an unmade bed. She screamed once more, shook all over, and then her mouth and lips were caught in a sudden silence. He held his huge and ungainly hand out, and said, easily, softly, with all the kindness in his voice he could muster. “Your mother sent me.”

Outside there was as single shot. A voice screamed, “Halt.”

“They got him,” Shag said. “They got him.”

The brickie put his arms tenderly around the little girl, and her arms came around him. She had dark hair and big eyes. Tears flowed from her eyes. Could be that in the classroom a boy next to her stole quick glances at her all the time.

Shag thought all that was coming to him would be worth all of this, this one sweetness in his whole life. He could picture the girl’s mother, in her canary yellow apron in her quiet kitchen, looking out the window, admiring the leaves that were changing colors, winter down the road a ways yet. As far as she was concerned, this far in the new day, nothing but winter was coming her way, nothing out of the ordinary.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tom Sheehan’s Epic Cures, short stories, won a 2006 IPPY Award. A Collection of Friends, Pocol Press, was nominated for an Albrend Memoir Award. He has nine Pushcart and three Million Writer nominations, a Noted Story nomination for 2007, a Silver Rose Award from American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), and the Georges Simenon Award for Excellence in Fiction. He served in the 31^st Infantry Regiment, Korea, 1951. He has published four novels and four books of poetry. He will meet again soon for a lunch/gab session with pals, the ROMEOs, Retired Old Men Eating Out, 92/80/79/78. They’ve co-edited two books on their hometown of Saugus, MA, sold 3500 to date of 4500 printed, and he can hardly wait to see them. His pals will each have one martini, he’ll have three beers, and the waitress will shine on them.

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McBride

by Nick Rothstein

He heard his name, walking out of his bank, head down, fingers skittering through receipts in his palm.

“Eddie Dooley.”

The voice was Jimmy McBride, and he was the voice — the same as when they were kids: abrupt, unbalanced, a weapon by itself.

“Sweaty Eddie, what’s happening?”

“Jimmy McBride,” Eddie said. He felt his bowels click.

“Fuckin’ A-right. I just saw one of the trucks. Your name’s everywhere, huh? Business is good?”

“Pretty good ...”

Eddie smiled, kept his glances furtive, hiding his mental inventory: the morning sun, the grates in the storefront, Jimmy’s grocery cart of bottles and cans, his black, cloaklike sweatshirt, and pushed-up sleeves, the raised scabs on the insides of his arms. He refreshed his smile at Jimmy, who had never looked away. Absent of depth, Eddie retreated to the familiar.

“How’s your mother? And Donna, and your brothers?” Eddie asked.

“Good, probably — who knows?”

Eddie shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“You waiting ... to ...”

“Return some of these ...” Jimmy thumbed towards the cart. “... and get a morning pop, you know ...”

Jimmy cackled, put a gray fist in Eddie’s shoulder. To look directly at Jimmy McBride was like looking at the black windows of a vacant house: you knew there was nothing inside but you always imagined movement in the darkness. Most people who were invited into Jimmy’s gaze generally swallowed and walked in another direction.

“Yuh, I hate to bolt, but I’m late for an estimate out in Chelsea. You know how ...”

“Hey, you got a finski?”

“Fin? Sure Jimmy.”

Eddie’s fingers squeezed into his pants pocket, pulled out a thin stack of bills, clumsily extracted a five dollar bill, handed it to Jimmy. Some ones floated to the sidewalk. Eddie huffed as he scooped them off the pavement.

“You’re the man,” said Jimmy with a grin full of rat’s teeth. His hair was shaved by a dull kitchen knife, maybe a week ago.

“It’s nothing. Listen, I got to run ...”

“Tell Julie I said hey.”

“Yuh.”

Eddie backed toward the corner of the intersection, exhaled when out of view. He thought he might need a bathroom.

McBride, he thought.

He found himself pausing, slowing towards his pick up, parked several cars down, then standing erect, shuffling the toes of his boots across the pavement, as if to nudge debris off the sidewalk, along with his hot flash of disgrace. With hands on his waist he fixed his eyes on the sky, let his nostrils flare in the breeze.

Christ. God dammed McBride.

Eddie began to walk and, contrary to the chorus of screams in his head, he backtracked around the corner. Jimmy was still there, waiting inches behind a clerk, who was unlocking the grate that covered the storefront. Jimmy’s eyes burned in the back of the clerk’s neck. Had not his hands been dragging the rickety cart behind him, Jimmy might as well been readying to envelop the clerk in cloaked wings with a perversity that nearly made Eddie faint.

Eddie’s words neither startled nor impressed Jimmy when spoken.

“Jimmy. Question for you ...”

* * *

“You did what?” his wife Julie said, fork poised at her mouth, a long piece of asparagus flopping in front of her.

“I offered him a job.”

She stared a moment, then placed her fork on her plate, pinching the bridge of her nose. Shaun and Kevin, their two young sons, who sat on the same side of the dinner table, stopped flicking their food at each other, then shifted in their seats to brace for the ensuing argument, as if they had become accustomed to a routine.

“You offered Jimmy McBride a job. What — to be a mover?”

“Yuh.”

“You offered him a job.”

“Jules, what part don’t get through?”

Julie gazed open mouthed at her husband. She flipped her hair over one ear, twisted her body and put her whole arm on the other side of her plate, leaning towards the center of the table as if to completely veil his peripheral vision. Eddie tilted away, continued to chew his food, staring at a point on the wall across from him.

“Please, though. Indulge me this. You saw him where this morning?”

“Outside of Reggie’s.”

“Oh good. In front of the liquor store. Waiting for his breakfast.

Kevin began shoveling peas on to his fork. But Shaun, the older of the two, remained fastened to the conversation.

“Eddie, what possessed you?”

“I just did it. It’s done.”

“You know he’s still shooting heroin.”

“It looks like it.”

“Kelly Morrison says he sleeps in Robinson Park most nights. On the benches.”

After a few moments, Julie turned back to her plate.

“Well,” she began again, “As long as he stays on the trucks.”

“He’ll stay on the trucks.”

“Don’t let him in the office.”

“Won’t be in the office.”

“Wait until I tell Pam.”

Eddie finally looked at his wife.

“No. She don’t need to know.”

Julie’s eyes centered on a spot in front of her, her jaw tightening. Then she picked up her plate, her fork clattering to the floor, stomped into the kitchen where Eddie and his boys heard her crash her dishes into the sink. Eddie glanced at his sons, who sat frozen. Shaun searched his father’s face for relief, a sign of mirth, something to squash the anxiety in his belly. He found nothing but clouds.

“By the way,” Julie said, as the top half of her body swung around the corner from the kitchen, “the roof’s leaking again. Third floor bedroom.”

“I’ll call a guy.”

“Why can’t you ... never mind.”

She sighed, swung back into the kitchen.

* * *

To understand Jimmy, you had to understand Whiskey Point — the old neighborhood. There wasn’t much to say, but there was much to know. All you had to do was mention you lived in the Point, and you were immediately linked with fading brogues and Boston accents, Catholics and claddaghs, bricks and mortar, townie boors who swung on you for thrills, teenaged girls who would give you the finger with one hand while crossing themselves with the other, bad cops, drunken brawls, gas pumps, poverty, addiction, and disease that was shared only in whispers. Jimmy, and Eddie for that matter, was part of the last gasp of breath of this neighborhood.

As a kid, Jimmy challenged all boys to fight, lifted up the dresses of the girls, broke bottles against houses, wrote his name on mailboxes, pushed kids off bikes — still only a petty thug of the Point, it came with the territory. But there was a troublesome joy that Jimmy took from his actions, even the other Point kids felt, and most watched him with a pensive admiration, even the older kids.

As Jimmy grew, so did his antics. He stoned neighborhood cats, punched walls until his knuckles bled, still challenged the boys to fight. When some of the local boys tried to burn out a Korean family that moved into a three family house near Clark Park, they let Jimmy carry a can of gasoline.

Still, most never blamed the neighborhood for the evolution of Jimmy. His mother used to tell her friends on her porch: My other kids is all right. But Jimmy ... poor Jimmy ... he’s touched. Pure evil, that one.

As far as Jimmy knew, his involvement in Eddie’s life was minuscule. But to Eddie, Jimmy defined his existence as much as the neighborhood.

It was a tough quarter — and Eddie, he barely qualified. He was painfully average and unremarkable: pasty, thin, not the slowest runner, certainly not the fastest. When the local boys geared for hockey every winter, Eddie showed little promise as a youngster, and his skates eventually grew rust and never left the bottom of his closet. As the division of children grew in school — between the ones who would evolve and the ones who would not — Eddie managed to pass subjects with a Gentleman’s C. At Sunday school, he whispered jokes to his friends when the nuns turned their backs, but they always fell flat. Jimmy McBride would have probably focused more of his terror on Eddie during his childhood if Eddie had not been so boring to harass.

But Jimmy’s despotism in the Point would be abbreviated. By the time he dropped out of high school, the surrounding boroughs, swathed in colonial mansions and productive public schools, paired with white flight, gradually gnawed away at the Point, allowing most families to sell high — including the McBrides.

Jimmy had not been invited to make the move. He whirled in the streets like wind blown trash.

* * *

Three days later, in the early morning, as Eddie and Julie looked over a work order on a desk in the office, the men of the moving crews lingered by the trucks near the warehouse, smoking and drinking coffee, Jimmy wandered into the alley of Dooley’s Moving company, grin in tact, his black sweatshirt unzipped and dangling around his frame. He had discoloring around his right eye, a red sore on his lip.

“Eddie!” he called randomly toward the office, around the hunched shoulders of the men in front of him. “Yo Eddie!”

There was a frenetic wiring to his voice that made the men pause with their cigarettes perched at their mouths. Eddie and Julie looked through the office window out in the alley.

“Christ,” Eddie said.

“Yuh,” said Julie.

Eddie walked out of the office door into the alley. Jimmy lurched through the group of men and invaded Eddie’s space.

“I’m here, man. Let’s rock n’ roll.”

“All right, Jimmy. Whoa, hold on for a sec. The trucks don’t even get to the sites until nine. You need a shirt, too.”

“Fine, let’s get a shirt.”

“Yuh. Go have a smoke.”

“Sure. Got one for me?”

Eddie walked into the office, began rummaging through some boxes. Jimmy swaggered through the office door, his cigarette poking straight from the center of his mouth. Julie looked up from the desk, inhaled a long, audible breath through her nose, and held it.

Christ.

Eddie closed his eyes for a moment before continuing his search amongst the boxes.

“Hi-ya, Jules,” Jimmy said behind his erect cigarette.

“Jimmy. How you doing?” said Julie, as she released her breath

Within seconds, Eddie found a work T-shirt, pulled it out without checking the size, stumbled over to Jimmy.

“Here. Come on outside, let me introduce you around.”

Jimmy exited first, detached as he had entered, without saying goodbye to Julie. As Eddie followed, he looked back hopefully at his wife, only to witness a glare in her brown eyes that severed him in half.

* * *

It was it was Jimmy’s attention for Eddie’s sister that would ultimately carve out Eddie’s anxiety.

Pamela Dooley was born with a wild tangle of red hair that the women of the Point thought gorgeous, the men amusing. But there was no doubt about it — she was a beauty. In the beginning, at the school yard, though, she felt the sting of abuse for her uniqueness, in particular from Jimmy and his boys.

Eddie tried to be brave — he really did. One time, in fifth grade, after Jimmy told the boys in school that Pammy stroked his package in the boys’ bathroom, Eddie’s ire flared irregularly. At the end of the school day, he walked along a chain link fence, he on one side, Jimmy and his friends on the other, told Jimmy just what he’d do if the fence weren’t there.

“You’re a dickhead.” It was the best he could create.

Jimmy listened for a moment with a grin, curled his fingers of both hands around the mesh like a caged creature, said he’d meet Eddie at Robinson field later. Then he shook the fence with gale force for a full minute, the entire time staring into the back of Eddie’s head as he walked back towards the school.

Finally Eddie approached his father. He wanted to wait for a time when the two of them might have actually been alone, out of the house. But since it rarely happened, he settled for the one place he could find his father – in his usual chair near the window, facing the television. Regardless of the season, Frank Dooley wore a Dooley’s Mover’s T-Shirt. He watched black and white TV, bleary, inanimated, his corded fingers curled around glasses of whiskey and cigarettes every night until he died. The evening Eddie told his father of his troubles, All In The Family blared through his voice. When Eddie mumbled through Jimmy’s taunts of Pammy and him, Frank Dooley slowly turned his head, his Irish blue eyes devoid of any real understanding.

“Why don’t you just fight him and be done with it?”

“Dad, I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Fer Christ’s sake.”

“Watch yer tongue.” Eddie heard his mother say from the kitchen.

Frank watched the screen for a moment, then looked back at his son. For a moment he revealed a small concession in his eyes, perhaps a reconciliation, that his son was a weakling, a dependent, in need of guidance. It was the only time Eddie could ever remember his father being sympathetic towards anything.

His father placed a calloused hand on his head.

“Them McBrides is a shameful bunch. Don’t waste a moment on ’em. You’ll end up in jail or in the morgue.”

He smirked quickly, rubbed Eddie’s head once, turned back to the television.

* * *

It was six-thirty in the evening. Julie and the kids were probably eating by now. So would have Eddie — except he was still in the office, with Rico, who sat in a chair across from his boss, looking spent. Eddie’s eyes glazed over as he stared into the expanse of the office.

“Say that again,” he said.

“He stayed in the shitter for forty-five minutes,” said Rico

“What time was this?”

“Round nine-forty-five. We barely started. Man, can’t have this.”

“Christ. What’d the wife say?”

“Nothing. ’Cept she use a whole can of Lysol when he come out.”

“What’d he do after that?”

“He move, like a total of maybe five boxes. At lunch time, he left to go buy lunch down the block. He come back, maybe round four. Me and Gus do everything. The couches, that dining room set, them marble shelves ... can’t have this, man.”

“All right,” said Eddie. “All right.”

The next morning, as the men folded furniture blankets and straps in the backs of the trucks, Jimmy stumbled up the alley towards the office. He wore the same clothes as the previous day, including his work shirt which hung slack across Jimmy’s taut frame. His face had barely healed, the welt on his mouth now maroon. Eddie motioned through the window towards the door. Julie stood up from the desk, walked into the bathroom.

“Jimmy,” Eddie said from behind the desk. “How was yesterday?”

“Outstanding.”

“Good. Listen, this type of job, a good thing, is to, you know, make sure you ... kick in the same amount.”

“The fuck’s that mean?”

“I’m just saying, everyone’s gotta pull in their own weight? You know how that is.”

“You saying I didn’t do nothing yesterday?”

“Christ, no Jimmy. I’m just saying, do like everyone else.”

“’Cause that’s bullshit. I carry my weight.”

“Jimmy, I know ...”

“Besides, you put me with two guys who don’t know the friggin’ language. How’m I know what I’m supposed to do?”

“Jimmy, here we gotta work with all kinds of people. That’s something that we all deal with.”

“’Cause those guys spoke Spanish all day, like I don’t exist. I know they talked shit too. About me. You know me, Eddie, I won’t take that.”

“I know, Jimmy, I know. Why don’t you go out with Chuck and Dave today. They’re on truck two.”

“That’s more like it.”

Eddie watched through the window as Jimmy weaved slowly through the trucks until he found two guys humping dollies into the back hatch of truck two, then leaned against the alley wall and smoked a cigarette. Eddie went to knock softly on the bathroom door, but it wanged open into his raised fist. Julie whisked by him without looking, grabbed her pocket book off the office chair.

“Going for coffee,” she said, as she went to exit past the freshly brewed pot on the table near the door.

* * *

Of course, Julie’s role in their history had been bewildering to all, including Eddie, who could only assume the worst. Julie never even spoke to him in high school, but when she realized her choices were corralled by men who drove the town dump trucks, custodians, midnight shift cops, she sought out the anomaly, the man whose legacy shone through the gloom. But what she never pictured herself doing was manning the phones, filing estimates in a small office in the warehouse of a relatively successful moving company.

It was no surprise to anyone when she retained her last name Shea, most people agreeing that she spared herself the indignity of “Julie Dooley.” But Eddie always knew it was more than that. Rico, in front of the men on the trucks, used to say with impunity, “Hey, man. If she don’t take your last name, it mean you ain’t eating enough pussy.” The other movers would whoop and slap the sides of the truck. Eddie always pretended not to hear.

* * *

The rest of the week brought the same reports at the end of the day: Jimmy was lazy at his best, disruptive at his worst. Tuesday morning, with Chuck and Dave, he refused to take bottom end of any two man carries — then he left the job site at three, before the truck was unloaded. On Wednesday, on Mal’s truck, Willie Lee swore up and down he heard Jimmy say the words “dumb jig” — Jimmy denied it all at the end of the day and left spitting on the brick of the alley. Friday, Jimmy showed at noon, waited in the office with Julie until Eddie came back from an estimate and had to drive him to the unloading site where Rico and Gus exchanged long glances in the back of the truck as Eddie drove off.

Friday evening, as some of the boys drank beer back at the warehouse in the alley, Jimmy hung in the front door of the office with Eddie, as if to block it from exit. Eddie could see the boys sitting on upended crates, spitting in the dirt, laughing over mumbled conversation, every now and then studying the office.

“So I get paid now, right?”

“Yuh, Jimmy. Let me cut you a check.”

“You said you had forty hours a week for me, right? At ten an hour?

“Yuh, actually Jimmy, I was thinking, just how many hours you think you worked?”

“Forty.”

“Cause, you know, you took off a couple of times, showed late today. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

“No biggie. We’ll let it slide this week. Let me get my checkbook.”

“I got no bank account.”

“Take the check to the Corrib. I’ll call Richie. They usually do it for me.”

“Naw. I got kicked out of there last month. Richie won’t let me through the front door.”

“Christ, Jimmy. I don’t know what to do then.”

Eddie glanced up at the doorway. Jimmy’s hands gripped the sides of the door jamb, his black eyes converging, the cartilage in his jaw like a stone.

“I need to get paid,” said Jimmy.

Eddie wiped his hands on his pants, walked to the desk. He keyed into the bottom drawer, pulled out a metal box, laid it on the desktop. From the box he pulled out a small stack of bills, counted them out them out behind the lid. Jimmy swung out of the doorway and into the office for a better look.

“I got a hundred and forty three cash here,” said Eddie. “That’s it. I can give you the rest on Monday.” He swallowed after he finished his sentence.

“That’ll work,” said Jimmy, and he swiped the money out of Eddie’s hand.

* * *

It wasn’t until Sunday dinner that Julie and Eddie spoke of it again. Julie sat mashing her meatballs over and over into her spaghetti. Kevin and Shaun sat quietly and slumped in their seats, their mouths orange with sauce.

“I don’t believe this,” she began. “You want to make him a driver.”

“Not the big trucks. Just the twelve footer.”

“You must be lost. You think he has a class three license?”

“You don’t need a class three for the twelve.”

“I’m sorry. Do you think he has a library card, much less any license at all?”

“I’ve let high school kids drive that truck before.”

“Yuh, your cousins. You don’t even let Gus or Willie drive the twelve.”

“They won’t care.”

“Oh my God, are you ...” Julie stood up with her half full plate and stormed into the kitchen and slammed the plate in the sink. Eddie stared mutely at the wall across the table. Shaun watched his father as usual, then gave up, moved some peas around his plate with his fork. After a moment, Julie swung her frame around the wall.

“Two more things,” she said, “The roof guy you got sucks. There’s fresh water stains on the third floor ...”

“I’ll call Fitzy. His cousin in Waltham does roofs.”

Julie put her tongue in her cheek, looked away.

“... and when I went to the office yesterday the box was empty. What happened to the money in petty cash?”

* * *

On Monday, after the big trucks went out, Eddie gave Jimmy a course in the twelve-footer on the back roads for an hour. Jimmy smiled as he spun the large steering wheel.

“You’re doing good,” said Eddie from the passenger seat of the cab.

“This is nothing. My old man drove the sweepers for the town before he split. He used to let me drive with him back in the day.”

“Good. Take me back to the office.”

Outside the alley, Eddie jumped out of the door, swung it shut, and hung his arms back inside the cab through the window.

“All right, go meet Rico and Gus out in Dedham at this address here,” Eddie said as he put a work order on the seat. “Have Rico call me on my cell when you get there. I need to tell him something about owners of the house.”

“Yep.”

Jimmy swerved back into the road and turned the corner, the back end of the truck swinging like a fish’s tail.

* * *

Eddie’s cell phone buzzed on his waist around lunch time.

“Truck’s not here, man,” said Rico.

“Not there?” said Eddie. “You mean, the truck’s not there yet?”

“Nope. We need that truck too. The guy here says he wants to take the shit in the garage now.”

“Christ.”

“Yep. You ever think maybe your friend ain’t right for this line of work?”

“He could turn it around.”

“You say so. How hard it is to find an address, man?”

* * *

Jimmy swayed up the alley with the sunlight behind him around three-thirty. The collar of his work shirt was stretched twice as wide as it had been when he left, as if someone had yanked it over his head. From the office, Eddie could see there was a fresh knot on his stubbly scalp, and in the front pocket of his unzipped sweatshirt, the top of an open aluminum can cradled by a paper bag.

“Jimmy. The truck?”

“It’s at the top of Larz Anderson. It don’t run right.”

“The park? How did you end up there?”

“I stopped to read the map. I tried to start it again. It won’t go.”

“Damn, Jimmy. You think of calling?”

“You give me a bum truck and now I’m the bad guy? I just walked three hours.”

“No. Not like that, Jimmy. My fault. Listen, you got the keys?”

“Yuh, here.”

“You want to take a ride, help me out?”

“Naw, you need a tow. I gotta go anyhow.”

Driving in his own pick up to Larz Anderson park, Eddie called for a tow, then sped to the top of the park where the parking lot lay. On inspection of the truck, the front fender was bent and had fresh scabs of white paint on the silver that had not been there before. He sat in the driver’s seat of the truck, his hand drumming the steering wheel and called back the tow.

“Sorry Pat, false alarm,” Eddie said into the voice mail. When he hung up, he inserted the key into the ignition, and the engine grumbled to life in the barren lot.

* * *

Jimmy’s assault on Pammy was what solidified Eddie’s disgrace.

There wasn’t much to the story — for some godforsaken reason, Pam, after weeks of Jimmy needling her, agreed to date him. She was a sophomore in High School — he might have been a senior — at least his age would indicate where he should have been. At some point he set his sights on Pam, and somehow elicited enough bad boy charm that she agreed to take a drive with him and eat a slice at Pino’s.

By the end of the night, he had consumed, in full view of Pam, a pint of Four Roses, stole all the jars of pepper flakes from Pino’s, refused to stop at any red light in his Caddy. Finally, after pleading to be taken home, Jimmy sealed the night with slap so stinging and cold, it left red fingerprints across her cheek like a cattle brand that could still be seen the next week. He left Pam crying on the front stoop of her house, the tires of his car squealing around the corner, her red hair a tangle of snakes.

Certainly, every teenager from the Point knew what happened by Monday at school. But not one of them doubted how it would play out. Not only did Eddie do nothing, he avoided the front of the school for weeks, as if he had been absent altogether. Hiding out in bathrooms, and going home via the back exit, his humiliation reached new heights. Never once did he confront Jimmy — even when Pam vowed never to speak to him again.

He just didn’t have it in him.

* * *

Later on that week, Eddie sat in the living room with Shaun in his lap shining from a bath, the two of them reading from the same children’s book. They were halfway through, when Shaun tilted his face towards his father.

“Dad, why don’t you just fix the roof like Mom wants you to?”

“I don’t like heights.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

Shaun looked at the book. Eddie continued reading aloud, but he was cut short again.

“Do you know Dylan Slavin in my class? Jimmy McBride’s his uncle. He says Jimmy beats up people.”

“No, he doesn’t. Those are just rumors.”

“Dylan says one time, Jimmy chased a black guy around the Point with a shovel, and then hit him with it.”

“That ain’t true either.”

“Dylan kicks people a lot. What should I do if he kicks me? Am I allowed to hit him back?”

“Christ already. Time for bed.”

* * *

The following Monday morning, Jimmy assaulted Mal for confronting him on his two hour trip to buy smokes. Jimmy caught him right above the eye and caused a half inch gash on the eyebrow. In the office, after the job, Mal’s eye shone like a hard boiled egg as he leaned his arm over the back of a chair. His cigarette in his mouth bobbed up and down as he spoke.

“It either him or me,” he said.

“I’ll talk to him,” said Eddie.

“He suckered me, called me ‘nigger,’ and spit on the truck on his way out, and you sayin’ you’ll talk to him? In my neighborhood, he woulda caught a bullet in his pale ass. Hole be shaped like a fuckin’ clover too. Shit.”

“Okay, yuh. I’ll do something.”

“I know for a fact Viking is hiring. An’ I’ll take Willie and Gus with me. Those dudes be madder’n me.”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“Your shit will shut down. Down to the ground.”

* * *

Eddie wouldn’t have to solve his problem – Jimmy would do it for him.

When Julie came home on a Saturday night from her mother’s, Eddie heard her toss the keys on the front table, shuffle off her shoes, move faster than usual into the living room. When she appeared her jacket was still on, her purse still hung in the crook of her arm. There was a sheen on her face, and a tight lipped grin.

“Well,” she said towards Eddie, who sat facing the ball game on television, “looks like you’ll be a man short come Monday morning.”

Shaun and Kevin, who raced matchbox cars on the rug only looked up now. Eddie clicked the mute button on the TV.

“Jules, what are you talking about?”

“My mother gets a call from Dottie an hour ago? Dottie got a call from Joanie’s aunt who said Jimmy got locked up last night.”

Julie could barely catch her breath as she spoke.

“What for?”

“How about armed robbery, assault with a shod foot, resisting arrest?”

“Where was this?”

“Get this. He tried to rob Reggie’s. During rush hour. Reggie wouldn’t sell him booze, so he decided to rob the place instead. He held a hypodermic needle up to Reggie’s throat.”

Julie couldn’t stop her smile from breaking though. Eddie put the remote control down on the arm of the chair.

“Better go see him tomorrow.”

“For what? It’s over. This will be like his hundredth offense. His goose is cooked, my dear.”

“Yuh, but I should see him. You know. Guy’s in jail.”

Julie stared for a second, then ripped off her jacket and slammed it into the crook of the couch.

“You know what Eddie? Fuck you. Shaun and Kevin, Mommy’s sorry.” She stomped to the stairwell, didn’t look back as she climbed towards the bedroom.

* * *

The next morning, Eddie signed a log book at the courthouse, entered a series of gated checkpoints, walked past several empty cells to the last in the row. He had been led by a uniformed guard, who blocked out the lights on the concrete ceiling above. If Eddie’s rumbling belly had been as audible as he thought it was, the guard didn’t let on.

“Thanks Billy,” said Eddie.

“No problem. Call out when you’re done. Hey Jimmy! Wake the fuck up! You got a visitor! Tell Jules I said hello.”

Billy lumbered back and closed the hall gate with a clank. Jimmy had been lying on a suspended bench covered in graffiti with no blanket or pillow. He rose slowly, walked to the front of his cell, put his face in between the bars and bared his rat’s teeth. He rested his hands out on the steel crossbar as if he had just stepped up to a bartender. He wore a tank top that was as thin and gray as cheese cloth. Eddie swayed but caught his weight in time as not to make it obvious.

“Sweaty Eddie. You’re my first visit.”

“Christ, Jimmy.”

“No I ain’t Jesus.” He cackled, then hacked up some phlegm and spat it outside the cell, about a foot to the right of Eddie. “Smoke?”

“Yuh.” Eddie reached into his pocket. “So what are you looking at?”

“Who gives a fuck? False arrest is what those guy’s are looking at.”

“Sounds like a tough go.”

Jimmy put the cigarette in his mouth — Eddie lit it with a lighter.

“Can you go my bail?” said Jimmy.

“What’d they bond it for?

“Ten grand.”

Eddie stepped back for a moment, pushed some grit around on the cement floor. Jimmy’s mucus stared back at him like a watery eyeball. Eddie felt air rush into his lungs — then he clenched his bowels and spoke.

“Naw. Not gonna happen.”

“Why not? Eddie, you gotta get me out of here.”

“Naw. You’re in the right place.”

“What. What you say? Don’t say that shit to me.”

Eddie took a step back from the cell.

“Jimmy, you’re a fuck up. You’re a degenerate fuck up and you deserve what you got coming.”

Jimmy’s breath was audible and rife with funk.

“You’re a fucking goner.”

“And I hope your cell mate is gorilla with a ten foot dick who fucks you in the ass until it comes out your mouth. Billy!”

Eddie began falling towards the exit. Billy had not yet appeared.

“Wait till I get out of here, Eddie,” called Jimmy, his face in between the bars. “I’ll put you in the morgue. I’ll come to your house.”

“And don’t you think about coming to my house! I’ll put a shotgun in between your teeth and pull the trigger.”

Eddie could no longer understand the epithets echoing out of Jimmy’s mouth, but as he stood at the locked exit, out of breath, he looked back and saw Jimmy’s hands trying to shake the steel out of his cell door with every ounce of muscle in his corded wrists. Finally, like some kind of massive angel shrouded in light, Billy appeared, twirling a ring full of keys around his finger.

* * *

Jimmy got six years in prison. During the trial, his court appointed lawyer admitted as much to the judge that he could not get any character witnesses to justify why the sentence should be suspended. On his way out of the courtroom, his hands shackled behind him, Jimmy called out to the judge, telling him the next time he sees him he’ll shove his gavel up his ass.

* * *

The night of Jimmy’s sentencing, Eddie and his wife continued eating dinner while their sons washed themselves, laughing in the bathroom. Julie’s empty plate remained in front of her, as she smiled to herself, fingering the petals of a flower in the vase in the middle of the table. Eddie leaned back in his chair, his plate also clean.

“Say it again,” Julie said. “Try and remember your exact words.”

“Something like, ‘And I hope you get fucked by a ... forget it. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Was it awesome? To like, bitch him out.”

“I don’t know. Yuh, I guess.”

Julie stopped touching the petals after a moment, put her hands under her chin, and then stopped smiling.

“So what, you feel like you got some kind of revenge or something?”

Eddie pursed his lips and did not answer.

“Because you didn’t, you know. Get revenge.”

Eddie stared at a familiar spot across the way, then glared back at his wife.

“Whatever, Julie.”

* * *

Three months later, during the summer, Eddie pulled a cobweb covered forty foot ladder out of his basement by himself, propped it up against the side of the house, and climbed to the rooftop, tool belt banging his hips, breathing as calmly as if in a hammock. Not only did he repair the shingles that allowed water into the third floor, he resealed the flashing on his chimney and removed a vacant bird’s nest from a gutter. Even though he had sold the moving company last month and remained unemployed, and even though his wife had packed a suitcase one night and moved to her mother’s, he was still able to kick his feet over the side of the roof and wave to his sons in the driveway, who craned their necks up and smiled in awe at their father in a place they had never seen him before.

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Nick Rothstein lives in Jamaica Plain (a borough of Boston) with his wife of four years, Jen, and his two daughters, Faith and Scarlett. He teaches High School English and instructs boxing. He writes short fiction and poetry, while currently working on a novel. After his Bacholor’s from American University in Washington, Nick received a Master’s from Simmons College.

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