We lived on the east side of town, far less affluent than "The Heights" which bordered Lexington and Concord,
but far more upscale than the Cambridge slums which were a stone's throw away from us. Our's was a quiet neighborhood of mostly one family homes with fenced yards and two cars in each driveway but no tennis courts or backyard swimming pools, no grand homes or tastefully uniformed servants. We were working class, public school families who mowed our own lawns and took out our own trash each Monday morning.
The Lynch family - two adults and a rebellious teenage son who favored leather jackets and kept a cigarette tucked behind one ear - lived behind us on Lake Street. All that stood between us was a cyclone fence. Johnny was a high school drop out, part of an unpleasant gang of young and menacing thugs who roamed the neighborhood, vandalizing property and terrorizing the residents, off and on being sent off to reform school or later, thrown into jail. His own parents were terrified of him, the police knew him on sight, and the oldest of my two younger brown others idolized him. This frightened me and dismayed my parents profoundly - their middle child was clearly on the path to an early juvenile delinquency - but they had no idea how to alter the journey. My brother, with his perpetual sneer and easy defiance, outmaneuvered their attempts at discipline and ignored their pleas to conform and behave. By the sixth grade he was already well known to the truant officer as a repeat offender and he came and went pretty much as he pleased. He was a foul mouthed, abusive bully, a tormentor of small animals, an unrepentant thief and troublemaker and I hated him intensely.
He had gotten the cap pistol from Johnny Lynch, a trade for two packs of stolen cigarettes. It was silver and shiny, small enough to be easily concealed under his shirt and nothing to be concerned about, just another toy gun to be added to an already impressive collection. But it was loud and when fired it made sparks and smelled of fireworks, far too much temptation for a cruel natured child without a conscience. When I heard the noise and then the sharp, mournful howl of an animal in pain, followed by a cackle of laughter, I ran to the room my brothers shared and discovered the older one holding my beloved daschund by the collar and firing the cap pistol into his ear. Without thinking, I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it into my brother's smirking face, not once but twice, with all the energy I had, and then snatched up my trembling and terrified dog.
After several hours in the ER, my brother returned home with a broken nose, a grudge, and a story of how I had beaten him up for no reason - he might've been believed except that he'd hastily shoved the cap gun beneath his pillow along with the strip of burned caps, and when he approached Fritz, the dog cowered immediately. Since he'd spent the better part of the evening denying he even had the pistol, it was enough to convict him, circumstantial or not. I lost a week's allowance for the two punches - sentence suspended since I'd acted in defense of a helpless animal - my brother was confined to his room for a month and docked his allowance for two.
I'll get you for this! he snarled at me and to my absolute astonishment, my daddy slapped him across the face, hard enough to make him cry.
If, my daddy said in a calm but deadly tone of voice I'd never heard before, you ever raise a hand to your sister, your brother, or one of the dogs again, you'll have spent your very last night under this roof.
Stunned at this display of temper, my brother fell back onto the bed, choking with shock and disbelief. My daddy, white with rage, stumbled out of the room - I was sure he was already regretting the slap but he never took it back. Even my mother, a staunch defender of this child who was the most like her, stood speechless.
As for me, it was almost enough.
He had gotten the cap pistol from Johnny Lynch, a trade for two packs of stolen cigarettes. It was silver and shiny, small enough to be easily concealed under his shirt and nothing to be concerned about, just another toy gun to be added to an already impressive collection. But it was loud and when fired it made sparks and smelled of fireworks, far too much temptation for a cruel natured child without a conscience. When I heard the noise and then the sharp, mournful howl of an animal in pain, followed by a cackle of laughter, I ran to the room my brothers shared and discovered the older one holding my beloved daschund by the collar and firing the cap pistol into his ear. Without thinking, I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it into my brother's smirking face, not once but twice, with all the energy I had, and then snatched up my trembling and terrified dog.
After several hours in the ER, my brother returned home with a broken nose, a grudge, and a story of how I had beaten him up for no reason - he might've been believed except that he'd hastily shoved the cap gun beneath his pillow along with the strip of burned caps, and when he approached Fritz, the dog cowered immediately. Since he'd spent the better part of the evening denying he even had the pistol, it was enough to convict him, circumstantial or not. I lost a week's allowance for the two punches - sentence suspended since I'd acted in defense of a helpless animal - my brother was confined to his room for a month and docked his allowance for two.
I'll get you for this! he snarled at me and to my absolute astonishment, my daddy slapped him across the face, hard enough to make him cry.
If, my daddy said in a calm but deadly tone of voice I'd never heard before, you ever raise a hand to your sister, your brother, or one of the dogs again, you'll have spent your very last night under this roof.
Stunned at this display of temper, my brother fell back onto the bed, choking with shock and disbelief. My daddy, white with rage, stumbled out of the room - I was sure he was already regretting the slap but he never took it back. Even my mother, a staunch defender of this child who was the most like her, stood speechless.
As for me, it was almost enough.
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