by Jones, K. J.
Except for Peter in an upstairs bedroom. Three bedrooms. One smaller than the other two, which was where the boys slept. Emily and Brandon took the bed in one room, both sleeping in their clothes with coat hoods protecting their heads from the pillows. Since there were too many piles of crap on the bed of the third bedroom, Peter, Matt, and Pez slept on the floor.
Maybe Peter’s leg didn’t like the floor. Or perhaps he had grown so used to Phebe by his side that without her, he felt ill at ease like she was still locked up in the stockade. He went downstairs and checked on her. Sound asleep on the couch. Chris laid out between piles on the floor. The fire still going.
Too restless to settle down, Peter went outside. His breath instantly blew out in a mist. Barren trees created strange shapes against the stars. No creatures rustled in the night. He sat on the porch step, tucking his hands under his arms.
What was bothering him so much? His body felt tired. Should be no problem falling asleep, and he believed he had been asleep for a little while. Yet even sitting outside in the brisk cold air, he still felt bothered.
Abbeny maybe. That man gave him the creeps and set off internal alarms. Why?
His Uncle Tim flashed through his mind. His father’s oldest brother, a Sullivan cop. Tim was a Boston PD detective. A big Irishman no one wanted to mess with and known to not be the gentlest guy. He liked to carry things like brass knuckles and what was called a Boston Leather midget sap. He’d fit in well in the 1960s method of police interrogation but restrained himself to get his pension at the end of his career.
Peter scowled. Why was Uncle Tim on his mind?
Memories of conversations with Uncle Tim. “Ya punch ‘em right in the balls, as hahd as you can, kids.”
Peter chuckled, remembering his first self-defense training was as a small child and from Uncle Tim.
“Any man tries to touch your peepee, you haul off and ya punch him right in the balls, as hahd as you can.”
MJ had asked an intellectually pressing question, “So not in the dick, but in the balls?”
“Either, both doesn’t matter. Just hit him as hahd as you can and then run and get me or your dad or Grandpa, one of us.”
Priests had molested boys in the projects of South Boston. This had been one of the first stories to break about the priest molestation thing. It happened in the mid-1990s and rattled all of Southie, a heavily Catholic area.
Childhood memories were funny. They didn’t necessarily link together or make much sense. More of random video clips. Since the priest issue re-emerged in the family when MJ and he were to become altar boys, he had older kid memories, which explained the younger kid ones.
Uncle Tim would not allow his own sons – he had three – to be altar boys and pitched a mighty battle with his wife over it. “It didn’t happen with the priests in the Point,” wasn’t a good argument in Uncle Tim’s eyes. Whether he had been involved as a detective with the cases against the priests or not, Peter did not know and had never remembered to ask. What he did know was Tim’s vehemence in protecting the boys. If Tim had ever been highly church-going, Peter did not know this either, but in his time, Tim was a holiday Catholic, showing up at mass for Christmas, Easter, special family occasions, but not Sundays. His wife brought their sons to weekly mass. Peter knew this because he and his siblings were brought to mass every week by their mother.
Sunday was the one day of the week Peter’s parents didn’t yell at each other and they pretended their marriage was okay … at least in front of the family. Since they had the big house in the Point near the water, everyone came over for Sunday brunch after church. It had been routine since forever. He loved it, hanging out with his cousins, wrestling and getting dirty. As well as seeing his elders. Grandma was alive back then, and despite she did not like his mother, she was kind and affectionate with the kids.
MJ and he had once overheard Grandma say to an aunt about Maggie, their mother, “She’s mobster OC trash wrapped in a pretty package.” OC meant the Old Colony projects housing, one of the oldest in the nation, and ninety percent Irish back in the day. The boys knew all those words Grandma used, but not the meaning of them when strung together in a sentence. Whatever it meant, it didn’t sound good.
Funny how the memory worked. Remembering Grandma Sullivan saying such a thing, but no further context to it.
Back then, most of the Sullivans lived in the Point, and all the cousins attended St. Bridget’s Catholic School, which was in the neighborhood and they walked there. Their lives were close-knit and routine. Everyone knew each other. Maybe knew each other a bit too much. As a kid, it was great. But he remembered vague things about women yelling at each other over rumors or something. The kids would hear village gossip and repeat it without a clue of their meanings to the wrong people.
Bad things had begun to creep in and wreck otherwise idealistic childhoods. Men were being laid off as the utility company went automated. Southie High had no school spirit since the forced bussing integration and race riot of the 1970s. He had no memory of going to games at the high school but remembered hearing his elders talk about going before all the trouble, and he and his siblings asking why they didn’t go now – he didn’t remember the answer.
The snow of Southie was not falling from the sky so much as circulating between dealers and users. It was the days when the local mob ruled. The days of Whitey Bulger, who was heavily in the cocaine trade, but treated as a local hero for the projects. Child molesting priests. Teen suicides in a place where suicide was a huge sin, some of which were public by teens hanging themselves on the porch. The place was rocking with unease. Poverty grew. And violence as a result. The whole place felt angry and betrayed by the rest of America, especially by the press and the Democrats. The Saint JFK followers had begun to vote Republican, despite ancestors haunting them, they were that pissed off.
As a kid, he didn’t know this was happening. It was normal. But he reacted. The fistfights among little boys of the Point were products of their environment, absorbing the vibe of the place.
City Point, South Boston, the tightly knit, working-class Irish enclave used in the 1970s by the press to represent the housing projects on the other side, was a place where people did not talk about things. Everyone behaved as they were supposed to, and no illegitimate children or babies were predating a marriage, at least that anyone talked about to kids. Back then, people still kept on an eye on neighbor’s children and ratted them out to parents when they misbehaved. The phone call would beat the kids home. At-home moms were still prevalent – a lot of eyes on kids and the kids could still run around as free-range children.
It was changing as he grew up. More moms went out to work as more dads lost their jobs. The kids knew something was changing, but they could not understand why or how. Adults talked about nothing that made any sense. More and more latch-key kids. After school, cousins came to the house because there was no one home at theirs until after five at night. His lawyer dad made so much money, their mom could stay at home and help fill in the gaps hitting the extended family. All the cop wives worked full-time to do something adults called “put a roof over your heads and food on the table.” A cop’s salary no longer provided for a whole family. It was the 1990s.
What Peter remembered the most was the anger, fear, worry, and violence. Fortunately, the violence never happened in his house, despite they yelled at each other a lot. He often experienced the violence from other boys, and when his mom brought them across Southie to the Old Colony housing project to visit their grandmother.
The overflowing ashtrays. The filth and chaos here reminded him of being in Grandma’s rundown apartment. Such as sharp contrast to his nice home in the Point. His grandfather was already in prison – Walpole maximum security prison, technically called Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Cedar Junction, which once had a really big prisoner riot long ago. He had gone once to visit his mother’s father and threw a temper tantrum any time after so as to never go again. It was a siblin
g unified protest. They didn’t know that man, and they didn’t like him or the place. Why go when they had a nice grandpa back in the Point? He remembered hating leaving the Point for years. Everything outside of it seemed dirty and mean.
Perhaps that’s where the OCD to clean came from? Grandma at the OC.
Peter’s contemplation broke as he heard the interior door open and turned to see Jayce push open the aluminum storm door.
“Sorry,” Jayce said. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.”
“What you doing awake?” Peter asked.
Jayce shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “Can’t sleep. Thought I’d get some air.”
“Not intending on burning this house down, too? With all the crap in it, it’ll go up like tinder.”
“I apologized. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. But it takes a minute to get over things like that.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Same as you.”
“I really dislike that man,” said Jayce. “I know I should love all where they are, but something about him. I found him creeping the hall upstairs.”
Peter cocked a brow. “He was?”
“Yeah. Pez woke up and told him to go back to the cellar.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see him when I was up.”
“Good. Let him stay down there. Hey, if you want to burn down the place when we leave …?” Peter smirked.
“Not funny.”
“Was to me.”
“Can I sit with you?”
“Yeah. Pull up a step.”
Peter looked sideways at the teen, whose wool cap was pulled down around his ears.
Jayce shivered for a second. “I dislike how cold it is here.”
“It’ll be worse in Boston. The hahbah is right there. Water makes the chill go into your bones. It’s a beautiful city, though.”
“Why didn’t you stay there then?”
Peter shrugged. “Too much family, I guess.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“For me, yeah. Plus, my injuries don’t like the cold.”
“I noticed.”
“I’d kill for a hot bath for my leg. Some Epsom salt.”
“Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get there soon.”
“That would be good. And without incidents would be great. Everybody’s worn out.”
“I won’t burn down the house again. I don’t know what came over me. I hardly remember doing it.”
“A psychotic break, I think that’s what it’s called. Had some of my own. It happens. The trick is coming back from it. You seem to be doing better.”
Jayce shrugged. “Just wish I could sleep. Hey, you ever had your brain not stop thinking?”
“Oh, yeah. That happens to a lot of people. Everybody hates it.”
“Is there a way to fix it?”
Peter chuckled. “I’m the wrong guy to ask on that.”
“You mean, the substance abuse?”
“Yeah, that little old thing.”
“What do you do since?”
“Don’t know since I am sitting out here in the middle of the night. Try meditation.”
“I pray.”
“No, try clearing your mind and focusing on your breath, in and out. Relax your body one area at a time, consciously telling the areas to relax and rest. It works, I hear.”
Jayce yawned.
“Hey,” said Peter. “Go in and try it. You need your rest for tomorrow.”
Jayce stood up. “So do you.”
“I’ll be in in a minute.”
“You wish you had beer or weed, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Mullen always complained about not having weed. I hope he’s okay.”
“Hope so, too.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sleep tight. Don’t get any bed bugs in there.”
The storm door’s hinges creaked open. “I hope there aren’t bed bugs in here.” Jayce opened the interior door and gently closed the aluminum storm door so it wouldn’t bang and wake people up.
Alone again, Peter’s mind kept thinking. Memories of childhood whirled and swirled along with worries about Jayce and Tyler and the baby inside Phebe. How long he sat there, stewing, he did not know, but his cold butt began to fall asleep, so he stood up. A cringe and hiss of air at his damn leg.
“Motherfucker. Why can’t you just shut up with this bullshit?” The leg did not respond to his reprimand.
A sound from inside caused Peter to turn. More sounds, muffled. He located their source as the little bedroom above the stoop roof. It sounded like a tussle, people wrestling or something. Peter thought the boys were up and messing around instead of sleeping. It angered him.
Tyler’s young voice screeched, “No, get off me!” It was panicked sounding.
That wasn’t messing around. Despite the leg, Peter raced to the door. He didn’t catch the storm door from banging shut. Up the stairs as fast as the adrenaline-charged leg would allow him.
“What’s going on?” Chris’s voice from the living room.
Onto the landing, the sounds from the front bedroom changed. Peter couldn’t quite identify them, beyond a new struggle with larger bodies involved. He ran across the hall. The door stood open.
Inside, in the faint glow of a flashlight cockeyed on the floor, he saw Jayce repeatedly plunging a kitchen steak knife into the back of Abbeny, who lay unmoving, faced down.
Tyler squished himself into a corner between the dresser and the wall. He breathed fast. His clothes were ripped. His eyes wide and terrified, a look never seen from him before.
“What happened?” Peter asked.
Jayce stopped stabbing and sat back on his butt, Abbeny’s blood splatter all over him. His brown eyes burned with intensity. A big bruise on his cheek, opened from hard knuckles catching him, worse than any bruises from the others earlier. His lip bled and the front of his t-shirt tugged at. A fight had happened.
“Sully,” Tyler’s voice broke with emotion.
Footfalls of the others coming.
“Hey, hey.” Peter squeezed into the room and went to Tyler He squatted down with the bad leg straight off to the side. “I’m here. What ha–”
Tyler rushed into his arms and hugged him tightly. Peter could feel him shaking and his heart racing. He held the terrified kid tightly, protectively.
“Shh, it’s over. You’re safe. I got you.”
“What the fuck?” Brandon’s voice.
“Oh, my God,” Emily’s voice. “I’ll get a towel to clean him up.”
Peter kept holding shaking Tyler, not turning to see the others. He remembered Phebe once saying, “Strong arms, wide shoulders, these things have a way of making smaller than you people feel safe when we’re in them.” Maybe Tyler needed that now.
“What happened?” Matt’s voice sounded closer, not in the doorway. “Jayce? Can you talk to me, Jayce?”
Peter had to see what was going on and turned his head. Jayce’s back leaned against the closet door; his legs bent in front of him with his wrists atop his knees. The bloodied serrated steak knife still in his right hand. He stared. Something in his eyes that wasn’t Jayce Jackson-like. Tyler, sure. Phebe, definitely. But not private school Jayce Jackson. The light of innocents had entirely extinguished.
Emily came in with a towel. She had to move around everyone else in the small bedroom to reach Jayce. She gingerly pulled the knife from Jayce’s hand.
“I’m gonna clean you up, okay? Get this blood off of you.”
Peter spotted Pez peering around the doorframe since the other guys dominated the doorway. His eyes showed the shock of the scene, assuming this was a crazy Jayce thing.
“Don’t be rushing,” Chris’s voice further away.
“I’m going as slow as I can,” Phebe snapped. “I’m not gonna break.”
At hearing Phebe’s and Chris’s voices, Tyler picked up his head.
Phebe
appeared in the doorway. The others moved out of her way.
“Oh, my God. Ty.”
She skirted the others, the body, and the blood splatter to get to them. Peter released Tyler. The boy let the tears rip at seeing his mother figure, his adapted grizzly mama. She dropped on her butt on the floor and scooped him up as if he was five years old. Peter noticed the kid’s pants were pulled off-center. His fly busted open.
Peter knew then. Rage filled him. Every cell within him, down into his bone marrow, filled with rage. He stood and turned. His voice low and husky, “Did he try to rape Tyler?”
Jayce’s eyes slowly moved up to meet Peter’s gaze. He nodded. “That’s how I found them after leaving you.”
“Motherfucker,” Chris seethed in the hall.
“Son of a bitch,” said Pez. A sneer rising on his face.
“You did good,” Matt said to Jayce. The medic then crouched over the body. His fingers pressed into the neck for a pulse. He pushed the body over and looked for signs of breathing. “He’s still alive.”
“No,” Jayce wailed. “I stabbed him a hundred times.”
“The knife.” Matt picked it up. “Is not long enough for back plunges.”
“We gotta work on that,” said Brandon to Jayce.
“Don’t, Matt,” said Peter.
“Don’t, what?” asked Matt.
“Don’t save him.”
“C’mon, sweetie.” Phebe pulled Tyler up.
“Let’s go downstairs,” said Emily. She helped Jayce to his feet and led him towards the door. The men backed out for them to pass.
“Jayce,” Matt said. “You did good. Proud of you.”
Jayce nodded.
Matt’s gaze followed Tyler with worry and sympathy. Tyler looked at no one, head down.
Once the boys were gone, leaving the men in the room or in the doorway, they stared at Matt for what he would do.
Matt’s face looked hard. His green eyes cold.
Abbeny began to awaken. “I … I can’t feel my legs.”
“Yeah?” Matt asked.
“Help me.” Abbeny’s hand reached for him.
“Help you?” Matt sardonically laughed. “How bad do you think a steak knife would hurt, guys?”