“They’re not garment workers,” Connor said. “They’re emergency personnel.”
“He’s your brother.”
“Not anymore. He’s a Bolshevik and a traitor.”
“Ah, Jaysus H,” his father said. “You’re talking crazy talk.”
“If Danny is one of the ringleaders of this and they do strike? He deserves whatever’s coming to him.”
He looked over at Joe when he said this and swirled the liquor in his glass and Joe saw contempt and fear and an embittered pride in his brother’s face.
“You got something to say, little tough guy?” Connor took a swig from his glass.
Joe thought about it. He wanted to say something eloquent in defense of Danny. Something memorable. But the words wouldn’t come, so he finally said the ones that did.
“You’re a piece of shit.”
No one moved. It was as if they’d all turned to porcelain, the whole kitchen, too.
Then Connor threw his glass in the sink and charged. Their father got a hand on his chest, but Connor got past him long enough to reach for Joe’s hair and Joe twisted away but fell to the floor and Connor got one kick in before his father pushed him back.
“No,” Connor said. “No! Did you hear what he called me?”
Joe, on the ground, could feel where his brother’s fingers had touched his hair.
Connor pointed over his father’s shoulder at him. “You little puke, he’s got to go to work sometime, and you got to sleep here!”
Joe got up off the floor and stared at his brother’s rage, stared it straight in the face and found himself unimpressed and unafraid.
“You think Danny should be executed?” he said.
His father pointed back at him. “Shut up, Joe.”
“You really think that, Con’?”
“I said shut up!”
“Listen to your father, boy.” Connor was starting to smile.
“Fuck you,” Joe said.
Joe had time to see Connor’s eyes widen, but he never saw his father spin toward him, his father always a man of startling speed, faster than Danny, faster than Con’, and a hell of a lot faster than Joe, because Joe didn’t even have time to lean back before the back of his father’s hand connected with Joe’s mouth and Joe’s feet left the floor. When he landed, his father was already on him, both hands on his shoulders. He hoisted him up from the floor and slammed his back into the wall so that they were face-to-face, Joe’s shoes dangling a good two feet off the floor.
His father’s eyes bulged in their sockets and Joe noticed how red they were. He gritted his teeth and exhaled through his nostrils and a lock of his newly gray hair fell to his forehead. His fingers dug into Joe’s shoulders and he pressed his back into the wall as if he were trying to press him straight through it.
“You say that word in my house? In my house?”
Joe knew better than to answer.
“In my house?” his father repeated in a high whisper. “I feed you, I clothe you, I send you to a good school, and you talk like that in here? Like you’re from trash?” He slammed his shoulders back into the wall. “Like you’re common?” He loosened his grip just long enough for Joe’s body to slacken and then slammed him into the wall again. “I should cut out your tongue.”
“Dad,” Connor said. “Dad.”
“In your mother’s house?”
“Dad,” Connor said again.
His father cocked his head, eyeballing Joe with those red eyes. He removed one hand from Joe’s shoulder and closed it around his throat.
“Jesus, Dad.”
His father raised him higher, so that Joe had to look down into his red face.
“You’re going to be sucking on brown soap for the rest of the day,” his father said, “but before you do, let me make one thing clear, Joseph — I brought you into this world and I can damn sure take you out of it. Say ‘Yes, sir.’”
It was hard with a hand around his throat, but Joe managed: “Yes, sir.”
Connor reached toward his father’s shoulder and then paused, his hand hovering in the air. Joe, looking in his father’s eyes, could tell his father felt the hand in the air behind him and he willed Connor to please step back. No telling what his father would do if that hand landed.
Connor lowered the hand. He put it in his pocket and took a step back.
His father blinked and sucked some air through his nose. “And you,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at Connor, “don’t let me ever hear you talk about treason and my police department ever again. Ever. Am I quite clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Connor looked down at his shoes.
“You … lawyer.” He turned back to Joe. “How’s the breathing, boy?”
Joe felt the tears streaming down his face and croaked, “Fine, sir.”
His father finally lowered him down the wall until they were face-to-face. “If you ever use that word in this house, it’ll not get this good again. Not even close, Joseph. Do you have any trouble comprehending my meaning, son?”
“No, sir.”
His father raised his free arm and cocked it into a fist and Joe saw that fist hovering six inches from his face. His father let him look at it, at the ring there, at the faded white scars, at the one knuckle that had never fully healed and was twice the size of the others. His father nodded at him once and then dropped him to the floor.
“The two of you make me sick.” He went over to the table, slammed the cork back into the whiskey bottle, and left the room with it under his arm.
His mouth still tasted of soap and his ass still smarted from the calm, emotionless whipping his father had given it after he’d returned from his study half an hour later, when Joe climbed out his bedroom window with some clothes in a pillowcase and walked off into the South Boston night. It was warm, and he could smell the ocean at the end of the street, and the streetlamps glowed yellow. He’d never been out on the streets this late by himself. It was so quiet he could hear his footsteps and he imagined their echoes as a living thing, slipping away from the family home, the last thing anyone remembered hearing before they became part of a legend.
What do you mean, he’s gone?” Danny said. “Since when?”
“Last night,” his father said. “He took off … I don’t know what time.”
His father had been waiting on his stoop when Danny returned home, and the first thing Danny noticed was that he’d lost weight, and the second was that his hair was gray.
“You don’t report into your precinct anymore, boy?”
“I don’t really have a precinct these days, Dad. Curtis shitcanned me to every cold-piss strike detail he could find. I spent my day in Malden.”
“Cobblers?”
Danny nodded.
His father gave that a rueful smile. “Is there one man who isn’t on strike these days?”
“You have no reason to think he was snatched or something,” Danny said.
“No, no.”
“So there was a reason he ran.”
His father shrugged. “In his head, I’m sure.”
Danny placed a foot on the stoop and unbuttoned his coat. He’d been frying in it all day. “Let me guess, you didn’t spare the rod.”
His father looked up at him, squinting into the setting sun. “I didn’t spare it with you and you turned out none the worse for wear.”
Danny waited.
His father threw up his hand. “I admit I was a little more impassioned than usual.”
“What’d the kid do?”
“He said fuck.”
“In front of Ma?”
His father shook his head. “In front of me.”
Danny shook his head. “It’s a word, Dad.”
“It’s the word, Aiden. The word of the streets, of the common poor. A man builds his home to be a sanctuary, and you damn well don’t drag the streets into a sanctuary.”