The Subtle Art of Brutality

“I was seven when she killed herself. My one-picture mother.”

I say killed herself because that’s what it amounts to. What I call suicide Dad called adultery and come-upins. He died in a bar fight long before I ever had the balls to ask how he got away with it. Mom’s suicide.

“Dad stopped in every now and again to make sure the fridge was stocked with beer. It was for the next time he stopped by. Realizing he had some milligram of responsibility for me, he would go to the bulk store and buy a cardboard palette of Spam and some canned vegetable. It changed every time. Lima beans, carrots, stewed tomatoes. Once he bought an entire palette of mixed peppers. Jalapenos were the mildest in the bunch. Left the palettes on the kitchen table with a can opener. It was my breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

I remember sneezing then in the hospital and how much it hurt. “Whenever his bar tab would come due I knew I had to make the palettes last. New ones wouldn’t be forthcoming.”

My throat was dry all the time in the hospital. Not having a cigarette killed me. It was the longest five weeks of my life.

“My first job was at the age of eight. I used it to buy a hot plate. I hate cold Spam, and when they shut off the gas the next time Dad left it alone. He would shower at a girlfriend’s house. But having our gas off, it would ease the financial burden on his drinking. Everything seemed to revolve around that.”

/> After he died the bar came after me to settle his debt. I gave them the lousy seventeen dollars I had. At age thirteen that’s not bad. The bouncers asked for the other six hundred or so and when I quipped that I couldn’t believe they let him drink that much on credit they didn’t find it funny.

Dad always hit me in the ribs and kidneys. I assume it was to avoid visible marks. Maybe it was because he just got used to never hitting Mom in the face because he wanted her to always be pretty and those were muscle-memory habits he would then use on me.

The bouncers, they hit me in the face.

In the hospital bed, my head swam. I remember that. Molly just sat there, her hand, a loving oasis in the sea of my pure misery, it rested inside mine. Here and there she would squeeze harder. I was worried Clevenger didn’t like it. He never said anything. Looking back on it I’m sure he knew it was for comfort.

“Dad would stare at Mom’s one beautiful picture on the mantle and say: ‘Dick, two other greaser hounds was drooling over your mother, same time I was. Sniffing her skirt. The things men do, you know. And your mother, she picked me. Sometimes I’d think about if she ever wondered what her life woulda been if she’d picked differently.’

“He’d look at me and I’d be afraid to look away, but too mortified to look him directly in his eye. He called that respect. ‘And when I think about her picking somebody else, it’d fill me with rage, Dick. It’d fill me with rage.’”

We had that one-sided conversation several times up to the point my useless old man fucked with the wrong biker and took a face-full of buckshot from twin barrels. Never talk shit when you’re so hammered you’ve pissed yourself unless you know for a fact you are bulletproof.

“I remember one time after he said it’d fill me with rage, me being thirteen and him being within five months of a pine box, us standing in the doorway, he just nodded his head and opened the front door. Then he said: ‘I would think about it all the damn time.’

“Then he left.”

I turned my head towards Molly and my neck scorched from the injection site. “I guess I became a cop because I really liked Dragnet.”

And that was true.

Little Italy in Saint Ansgar’s north end.

I walk into the old barber shop on the corner of 77th and Roma. It’s been a staple in this community for decades. Francis “Temples” Forelli is gently shaving the neck of some greased wop who’s tilted back in an old-fashioned barber’s chair. Five fat guys, all relics of a bygone age where the film The Godfather was a contemporary statement, they’re all lined against one wall and smoking, chattering back and forth. Half their conversations are in their home language. They’re not here for haircuts; this will be the entire day.

I don’t like coming here. They know my face and they don’t like it.

The place is redolent with stale cigarette smoke and stark aftershave. Black and white photographs adorn the walls. Snapshots of the shop just after World War II. Guys long dead standing outside the front door on summer days with a bullet-nosed Studebaker in the background. Big Italian dinner table stuffed full of people. The floor is checkered. There is a candy striper pole outside. Sinatra is crooning from the grave on a record loop somewhere.

Temples has got to be pushing sixty-five but the full head of hair he has is jet black and lustrous with oil, save his brilliant, snow white temples. I guess that’s the nickname’s origin. I brush the snow off my shoes at the welcome mat. The bell jingling above my entrance draws Temples’ eye. He gives a slight acknowledgement and I step off to the side. Leave my coat on. Don’t bother with a seat. I’m not here for a cut.

Temples finishes and cleans up the patron. He snaps the towel off in a crisp, efficient manner, and the old man stands, makes his way back to the other men mumbling back and forth. Temples lights a smoke and walks over to me.

“You know the city banned smoking indoors?” I say, lighting my own.

“To hell with them crooks,” Temples says. Exhales. “Let ’em cite me for it. I know a guy. He’ll make it go away.”

“I bet you do.” I smile. Temples does know guys. That’s why I’m here. “Well, what’s new?”

“Hey, Temples,” one of the old fat guys shouts in a tone meant for the entire block to hear, “get that fucking pig outta here.”

Temples give a side-long look over his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Razor sends his regards, ya damn mook,” another chimes in.

“You know they don’t like me talkin’ to you. Not after Razor got hard time,” Temples says.