Flesh and Blood

1.

“Hey, Drew! Wake up!”

Tommy Drew pressed the crook of his arm deeper into his eyes against the brightness of the lights blinking to life overhead.

“Come on, man, I said get up!”

Tommy grabbed the business end of the thing poking his ribs and bolted up straight in his cot. Once his crusty eyes focused, he saw it was a nightstick gripped in the meaty fist of Officer Foley, the night guard at Springfield Juvie. He also saw the officer’s wide-eyed startle and his other hand reaching for a can of pepper spray on his belt.

Tommy let go of the nightstick. He closed his eyes and raised both hands in supplication; he had been sprayed at his arrest and had no desire to endure that searing pain again.

“What the hell, man?” Foley said. “You having a bad dream? You were screaming like a girl, creeping everyone out.”

Tommy lowered his hands and rubbed his eyes, still dopey from sleep. Hell yeah, he had a bad dream. He had the dream often: endless, dusty hallways, rooms filled with bodies, a dead baby in an old, broken down cradle. He had no idea what it all meant but he always woke up scared and hopeless, his heart racing from the memory, just as it was now. He tried licking his parched lips but his tongue was thick and cottony. And he had a raging headache. He’d had it for a couple of days now.

“All right, all right,” Foley wheezed, “If you’re done with your beauty sleep let’s get going.” He returned the pepper spray and nightstick to his belt and motioned to Tommy with a quick flick of his hand.

“What?” Tommy mumbled, confused.

“You’re being released. Your old man dropped the charges last night.”

“Last night? And you wait til now to tell me?”

“Whattaya think this is, a hotel?” Foley’s big Irish face became a shade redder. “Your old man thought an overnight in jail would set your ass straight. I got my doubts, though.” 

Foley backed out of the cell and looked at his watch. “C’mon, c’mon, grab your stuff and let’s go. My shift’s over and I can think of about a thousand places I’d rather be.”

Tommy looked around the cell and realized his “stuff” was a newspaper that had fallen to the floor. He reached for it and his head swam, bolts of electric misery streaking through his skull. He grabbed the paper anyway and stood, wondering if he had a concussion. It would make sense given how many blows he had taken to the head. He wondered if he should go to the emergency room.

~

“All dressed and ready for school, Sarge.” Officer Foley pushed Tommy toward a desk in the main admitting area of Springfield Juvenile Detention Center. Behind a sheet of reinforced plexiglass, a grizzled, angry man, with a grizzled, angry mustache ignored Foley and filled out a form.

“Hey Sarge, I’m punching out in a few and me and some of the boys are meeting at the Pig for a pint or three. You wanna join us?”

“It’s five-thirty,” Becker said without looking up, “As in ay em.”

“Yeah, I know, but they open up early for us night shifters.”

Becker “humphed” wearily and waved Foley away.

“Well, okie dokie, then. Maybe I’ll see you there.” Foley loped toward the front door and stopped. 

“Oh, and kid,” he called back to Tommy. “Sweet dreams.” Foley snickered and pushed his way through the door.

Tommy turned back to find the desk sergeant frowning at him. Tommy frowned back. Becker shook his head and returned to the form, then shoved it and a pen through the plexi’s talk-through for Tommy to sign. He dumped out an envelope filled with Tommy’s wallet, keys and a few pocket odds-and-ends and passed those through as well. Tommy dropped the newspaper on the counter and Becker glanced down at the completed crossword puzzle. Tommy loaded his pockets with his belongings and signed the form.

As he walked away Becker growled at him, “Drew.”

Tommy turned and saw the man holding the newspaper out. Tommy raised his eyebrows and Becker shook the paper at him. Tommy smirked, returned to the window and grabbed the outstretched paper, but Becker held on. 

“You know, you seem like a pretty bright kid.” The policeman leaned forward. “Why don’t you wise up?”

 Tommy stared for a few moments. “Duhhh, what?” he said, and jerked the newspaper away. It ripped. Tommy dropped the torn part on the floor and walked off. “Keep it.”

“You act like a punk, but you could change everything right now,” Becker shouted after him. “Why don’t you use some of those brains of yours and make something out of yourself?”

Tommy just glared at the man. Sergeant Becker knew nothing about him or the real reason he’d been locked up. Who was he to lecture about what he didn’t know? A hundred replies passed through his throbbing skull, but he ultimately realized the futility. He knew the kind of man Becker was. He’d heard this lecture plenty from teachers, school counselors, from Father Quinn at Saint Anthony’s. They all viewed life from a single, naïve, Sunday school perspective: what we sow, we reap. For them, actions alone dictate repercussions. None of them would ever understand that all the good deeds in the world couldn’t prevent the cold abuse of a sadistic bastard like Tommy’s father.

In reply, Tommy settled for his old standby, sarcasm. He yawned widely and smacked his lips, feigning boredom. “That it, teacher, can I go now?” He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

Becker waved him off with a disgusted flick of his hand. Tommy laughed and left the old policeman mumbling to himself behind his desk.

~

Light was just beginning to streak over the rooftops of his working-class neighborhood when Tommy hopped up the steps of his front stoop. All along MacDougal Street a wispy fog clung to the tiny front lawns with ghostly persistence. Tommy seldom saw the street at this time of day. The quiet and moist calm gave it a rare splendor, the sense that it possessed a certain potential, which, Tommy knew after seventeen years’ study, MacDougal Street would never achieve.

He stamped out a cigarette with his sneaker and fit his house key into the lock. The key wouldn’t turn. He pulled it out, examined it to confirm it was the right one, then put it back into the lock. No good. He tried his back door key, but that one wouldn’t even go into the hole.

Tommy cursed and ran down the steps to the side of the house. He jumped the fence to the backyard, knocking over a watering can. It echoed loudly in the quiet morning air and set off the neighbor’s German Shepherd. The house was so close Tommy could hear the dog scrabbling across the linoleum floor to bark at him through a window. 

He stomped up the steps to his back porch and tried the lock on the kitchen door. None of his keys worked there either.

“Damn!” he cried, banging the door with his fist. He stood staring at the lock for a moment. It was shiny, new.

“Damn!” he screamed again, giving the door a hard kick. The shepherd renewed its manic barking. “Open the door!”

A light flicked on inside. Wary, Tommy retreated down the steps into the early morning shadows and saw his father wrap a tent-like robe around his flabby bulk as he stumbled through the kitchen.

“Who’s that?” Frank Drew said, squinting through the window of the kitchen door. He flipped on the back porch light, which revealed Tommy at the bottom of the steps. 

“Oh,” the man said, dispassionate. The two stared at each other, neither of them moving. “What do you want?” he asked after a moment.

“You changed the locks.”

“What do you want, boy?” he repeated, checking the knob on his side.

“What do you mean?” Tommy shouted, incredulous. “This is my home.”

“Not anymore,” Frank Drew barked and folded his arms in front of him. He was big and blonde, a thick-fingered laborer who worked as a foreman in a warehouse. “I’m through supportin’ your punk ass. Ev and I are going back to the way it was. You’ll be eighteen in a couple months. You’re old enough to take care of yourself.”

As if on cue, Tommy’s mother, Evelyn, entered the kitchen in her faded, flowered robe. She was short and round and despite her girth always seemed breathlessly frail.

Tommy couldn’t have been more unlike the two of them. Thin and pale, with large, dark eyes, his black hanks of hair shot out from his head in all directions.

“Frank?” his mom said, her voice sleepy and worn.

“You just clear on outta here, boy,” Frank Drew said, holding back his wife as she tried to slip past him to the door. “This ain’t your home no more. Your stuff’s over there. Take it and go.”

Tommy followed his father’s sausage finger toward a filthy green duffel bag. It was overstuffed with a hodgepodge of his belongings falling carelessly onto the porch floor. 

“You’re kicking me out?” Tommy screamed.

“You’re lucky I didn’t keep your ass in jail!”

“Frank, please don’t do this,” Evelyn whimpered, clawing at him.

“Damn it, Evelyn, we talked about this. I’m not letting that boy lay a hand on you again.”

“But, it was an accident. You know it was an accident.”

“Shut up and sit down,” Frank Drew barked and pushed her hard toward the table. Evelyn retreated and sat as ordered.

“You can’t do this,” Tommy shouted. He banged on the door and pulled the knob. “Let me in, I want to sleep in my own bed. Let me in!”

The shepherd was going ballistic next door.

Tommy leaned against the door, hands on either side of the window. A blind rage coursed through him as he stared at his father’s wide, fat face glaring back at him with contempt. Tommy’s head felt as though it might split open, and seventeen years of hate would gush out like blood from a head wound. He looked at his mother, who sat trembling at the kitchen table. 

“Mom?” he pleaded.

She glanced quickly at her husband, who never moved. She looked back at Tommy, her face creased with fear and uncertainty. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it and lowered her head to stare at the floor.

Tommy slowly dropped his hands. His shoulders sagged, his fury collapsing into something like defeat. He shuffled over and picked up his duffel bag, its contents spilling onto the porch like the entrails of a slaughtered animal.

2.

The first time his father kicked him out of the house, Tommy was fourteen. He’d been on a month’s restriction for fighting at school. 

Home every day, go straight to your room, do your homework and don’t come out until dinner. After dinner, back to your room. My house, my rules!

Never mind that his father had never bothered to find out that the much older boy had been persecuting Tommy nearly every day since the beginning of the year, and that when Tommy finally fought back he beat the boy bloody, which caused the kid to pull a knife. Never mind that the teacher who broke up the fight only saw the bloodied boy and not the knife, and suspended Tommy.

But after two weeks of his father’s solitary confinement, Tommy had had enough. Instead of going home after school, he went to his best friend Ben’s house and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there. He knew he’d catch it later, but what was the difference? So what if a beating awaited him? Beatings and restrictions were as regular as sunrise, so he might as well have a little fun.

And it was fun. Ben’s dad was drunk as a lord, sprawled on his stained, beige couch, watching a Celtics game and shouting at the television. He poured himself a giant glug of Southern Comfort, and was so wasted he never noticed when Ben stole the bottle right out from under his red, puffy nose. The boys ran into the backyard, laughing like all hell and proud of themselves as fine, fancy criminals. They smoked Ben’s weed, finished the bottle of whiskey, and punched each other in the arm until their flesh turned red. They giggled at everything and hung out and talked of the further felonies they would commit that summer.

At one point Ben’s dad roused from his stupor and shouted at his son to get him a beer and a peanut butter sandwich. Ben dropped everything and ran into the kitchen that his mother had abandoned three years earlier and dutifully prepared a thickly heaped, creamy Jiff sandwich with a kind of bizarre reverence that Tommy desperately admired.

“Jesus H. Christ, boy, you ain’t worth a fart in a wind storm!” Ben’s old man shouted when he separated the two halves of the sandwich and found it wanting.

Ben waved it all off and ran away, laughing. His dad was an asshole, but in his way he loved Ben. Tommy knew it was because he was his natural-born son. That was a bond you couldn’t break. Blood was thick, Tommy knew. Blood was all.

~

Blood stained the sidewalk where Tommy now walked. He couldn’t tell if it was human or animal, but added it—along with needles, crack vials and liquor bottles—to the cliché list of inner city litter he encountered nearly every day. 

A man and woman cursed at each other in different languages from an upstairs window. Four stubbled old men in sweat-stained T-shirts sat at a card table in front of a bodega playing dominoes. They laughed and swilled malt liquor despite the early morning hour.

He trudged through this seedy part of town with everything he owned slung over his shoulder in the old green duffel bag. It was as though Frank Drew had whipped through Tommy’s room in anger and tossed into the bag anything within reach: some toiletries, a pair of jeans, a couple socks and T-shirts—dirty as well as clean—a mismatched pair of sneakers, his school backpack, and a few other of his personal items. He’d also thrown in a ratty old Navajo blanket given to Tommy after a long-ago trip to the southwest. What a sweetheart.

What his father hadn’t included were any of his books, despite the fact that Tommy’s bookcase took up a whole wall of his room. Made sense, since his whole life Tommy had never seen Frank Drew read anything but the sports section of the Springfield Republican. He even overheard him once brag to a drinking buddy that the only two books he’d ever read were the Marine Corps manual and the King James Bible. So, naturally the moron wouldn’t think to throw in a book or two, Tommy mused bitterly. Of course he wouldn’t consider them necessities. You know, not like smelly socks or a threadbare blanket.

Tommy would just have to satisfy himself with an old dog-eared copy of Franny and Zooey he found in his backpack. That was fine. He had read it a few times already, but Salinger was a favorite. Actually, so were any of the Beat Generation writers: Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac—high priests of the disenfranchised. Tommy was on the road himself now, and in a way this pathetically optimistic notion cheered him a little on what was, he decided after adding up all the columns, the worst day of his life.

Of course, it could have been far worse. If his father had searched the backpack, he might have found Tommy’s windbreaker along with the lump inside its removable lining. If he’d found that, forget Springfield Juvie. Tommy would likely be doing serious time upstate. He thanked a god he’d long ago abandoned for that bit of luck, because the lump in his windbreaker didn’t belong to him.

He turned the corner onto Burns Avenue and crossed the street toward a dilapidated building with a pawn shop at street level. A wordless sign of three balls hung over the paint-peeled door, which Tommy opened to the sound of a bell clunking overhead.

Joe Grimes looked up from his newspaper. Greasy, balding and drug-skinny, Grimes couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Well-l-l-l, whattaya know. Look who’s back?” he said and swung his legs off of the counter. “The boy most likely to …” 

He stood and hobbled around to Tommy. Grimes’s spine was twisted in a kind of elongated “S”—a result of childhood scoliosis—and his slightly off-balance gait reminded Tommy of John Wayne. Behind his back he called him “the Duke,” which cracked up some of the other runners, though none of them understood the reference. They didn’t know who John Wayne was, and thought it was because Grimes acted like he was royalty.

“Ya know, I gotta say, Tommy, I really missed ya,” Grimes said. 

Then he slapped Tommy on the side of the head. Hard.

“What the hell?!” Tommy cried and jumped backwards, rubbing his skull.

“Whattaya want, kisses?” He pushed Tommy’s chest. “Where is it, asshole? And don’t tell me your dog ate it—” He moved his jacket aside to reveal a 9mm pistol in his waistband. “—because I’m feeling like I might risk twenty-to-life over your sorry ass.” 

“Just hold on, man, I didn’t steal your drugs!” 

Tommy ran to his duffel bag slumped by the door. With an eye on Grimes, he quickly unzipped the bag, pulled out the windbreaker and peeled away the plastic baggie taped inside the lining. 

Grimes’s eyes lit up. He grabbed the baggie out of Tommy’s hand and pulled out one of the four vials. He unscrewed the top and tasted the white powder. 

“Well, all right then,” he said, returning the vial to the zip-lock and sealing it all up again. “But, when you didn’t show up last week, I thought you’d skipped on me.” He limped into the back room and Tommy slumped into a chair. He closed his eyes and rolled his neck around, thoroughly exhausted. He hadn’t slept well the night before—in fact he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep that wasn’t filled with dreams of dark hallways and dead bodies. And he still had the headache. 

Grimes reappeared with a self-satisfied grin on his unshaven face and returned behind the counter. “So, where ya been, loser? I had some boys out looking for your ass.” He picked up a stack of bank receipts and shuffled through them, loudly licking the pad of his bony thumb to turn each page.

“I was at juvie,” Tommy said. “My old man turned me in.”

Grimes snorted contemptuously. “What’d you do this time?”

“Who cares?” Tommy said and leaped from the chair. “Look, man, my dad kicked me out of the house and I’m broke right now, so I was wondering if maybe you’d—”

Grimes waved him off. “Oh, no,” he laughed derisively and walked the receipts over to a dented filing cabinet. “No way, pal, ’cause you’d pay me back the day my wife starts putting out.” He opened a drawer and threw the receipts in on top of a stack of others.

Tommy followed him like a dog begging for scraps. “Come on, man, all I’m asking for is a couple of bucks. Three hundred, tops.”

“Three hundred? You kidding me? What’d you do with the money I paid you?”

Tommy slumped, sullen. “I spent it.”

“You spent it … yeah, well, you need to learn to budget your finances better.”

“Look, I could’ve run off and sold the coke for a helluva lot more than three hundred. I’m just asking you to help me out till I get back on my feet. I’ve always worked hard for you and you know it.”

Grimes laughed again and poked Tommy in the chest. “You gave it back to me because you knew I’d kill you otherwise. You don’t get rewards for doing what you’re supposed to in the first place. Besides, I don’t make enough money as it is without I’m giving it to a loser like you.” Grimes was close enough that Tommy could smell the foul breath exhaling from between giant silver molars and yellowed teeth. 

“Anyway, my runners gotta have a lower profile than you. You keep ending up in juvie and one day they’re gonna come looking for me, you dig?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m through with you, man.” He snapped his fingers and held out a pale hand, palms up. “Turn in your phone, we’re done.”

“You’re kidding me?” Tommy said, the embers of his near-constant rage flaring as he pulled the phone from his jacket and handed it to Grimes.

“So long, loser, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

“Eat me!” Tommy spat back. “You’re the loser! You think you’re a big-time gangster? You got it all figured out? Man, they all laugh at you behind your back, don’t you know that? Fine. Take your phone and this job and shove ‘em both up your ass!” 

Grimes’s eyes flashed fire and he backhanded Tommy across the face.

Something cracked open in Tommy. Without a word he lunged forward and grabbed Grimes by the jacket lapels. He wrenched him across the room with such force that the man slammed into a case of musical instruments, which crashed to the floor around him. The 9mm jerked loose from his waistband and clattered across the linoleum.

“Don’t you ever hit me again or I’ll kill you!” Tommy screamed.

Grimes reached for his gun and found nothing but shirt. He looked around wildly, saw the pistol across the floor and started to crawl toward it. Tommy fell on him and began pummeling his body. Grimes raised his hands to ward off the blows even as he scrambled for the gun, but Tommy was younger and stronger. He couldn’t stop hitting. All his rage, disappointment and hurt fell like red rain down on Grimes through his fists. Tears of rage blurred Tommy’s eyes and the drug dealer’s face became Frank Drew’s face. Wide. Fat. Sneering.

Tommy broke his father’s nose and then the bones in his cheek—he heard the crunch under his fist. His father spit blood at him and Tommy increased his attack, focusing on the mouth, cracking teeth, splitting his own knuckle. The pain shot up through Tommy’s wrist and into his arm, but he kept on. The pain was nothing. Tommy had felt pain before. He had felt it on his head, on his ass, in his gut. He had felt his father’s anger and hatred all over his body. He could use his own anatomy to chart his father’s disgust.

Still Tommy kept hitting, just like he had been hit nearly every day of his life for seventeen years. Seventeen times three hundred sixty-five times x, with x being the number of blows Frank Drew chose to deliver to Tommy’s body in any given beating.

Grimes was a bloody pulp under Tommy’s fists, but still the man breathed. Somehow, maybe because of the heroin that coursed through his veins, he was able to reach weakly for the gun—a feeble, childlike stretch of his pained and broken fingers. But just as he touched the handle of the 9mm, Tommy brought his fist down and broke a few more finger joints. Tommy grabbed the gun and pointed it at Grimes, who shrank back into the floor.

Tommy lightly fingered the trigger as he pressed the barrel into the swollen, purple flesh of the man’s cheek. He wanted to pull. He needed to pull. He could see the firing mechanism strike the bullet casing, which would ignite the gunpowder inside, forcing the bullet to spiral down the gun’s barrel and out the end with a flash, the gunpowder residue blackening Grimes’s cheek just as the bullet entered his skin and drilled down through the facial bones into his brain. Then a brain leak, a brain death, and an end to the pathetic, dangerous life of drug user, drug dealer, Joe Grimes.