The Old Neighborhood. Bill Hillmann

he was hung from an invisible wire. Then, Gabriel descended. His body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. Gabriel’s head cracked the sidewalk slab with a hollow pop. He lay flat and motionless on the sidewalk.

      My father pulled out the .45 and kneeled down over Gabriel’s body. He slid the length of the barrel into Gabriel’s gaping mouth to wake him up. Then my father explained to him, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn’t be burglarizing homes in the neighborhood anymore. After that, Gabriel disappeared from the block, and the burglaries stopped—for a while anyway.

      Ma hurried towards the front door. She dragged her thick, varicose-veined leg under her. Lil Pat rumbled down the stairs. As Ma got to the door, she closed it. She locked all three locks and the chain bolt, then pressed her back to the white-painted wood. I followed her. My betrayal of my brother and fear for my mother churned in my chest. He slowed as he neared the bottom steps and gripped the oak railing. All the family pictures hung just behind him on the staircase wall. They dated back to when Lil Pat was a chipped-tooth boy in the ’70s. He hadn’t gotten along with her even then.

      He stared at her. His eyes widened, and the whites glistened behind the bulged, red veins. His movements were brittle, like taut cords ran through his entire body.

      “Get out the way, Ma,” he warned.

      “Patrick Charles,” she said, her voice thundering with fear and outrage. “What are you doing with your father’s gun?”

      He stepped down the last few steps to the landing.

      “Get out the way,” he said, flatly, and tilted his head to the side.

      “No, Pat. This has to stop,” she pleaded. Her body quivered.

      “Get the fuck outta the way!” he yelled. “I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out, BITCH!”

      He twisted and pulled the .45 from his waistband. Then, he extended and pointed it directly in her face. It was like the bottom tip of my crucifix morphed into a point. It elongated, bent, and pierced my skin. Then, it sank deep into my heart and set like a hook. I clutched my chest. She bowed her head and looked away but didn’t move from the door.

      “Pat,” I said, breathless.

      Lil Pat turned and looked at me. The pistol trembled. All his teeth were showing—his face flexed. I leaned my back against the wall in the hallway and slid down it slowly. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Confusion swept over his face.

      “Naw, Joey, no,” He said, lowering the gun. “I wasn’t gonna do it… I’m… I’m sorry.”

      Then, he looked back at Ma. He dug his shoulder into her and knocked her out of the way. Then, he undid the locks as she grabbed at his wrist and hand. He swung the door open and smashed her into the wall with it. The rubber band snapped in her ponytail, and slices of her jet-black hair fell over her face. He thundered down the front steps and was gone.

      She shut the door and locked it, taking heaving breaths. And that wasn’t the last time there’d be a gun pointed at someone I loved.

      •

      A FEW NIGHTS LATER, they busted Lil Pat for armed robbery. Nearly all the heroin dealers on the North Side refused to sell to him, and many had even bulked up security just in case Lil Pat and Fat Buck tried to stick them up again. So, Lil Pat went pharmaceutical. He’d managed to get several high-dosage pain prescriptions, and since the union was still kicking out for insurance, he was getting high almost for free. When the insurance ran out, Lil Pat got strung-out. He went into the pharmacy with the .45 and had them hand over several hundred dollars worth of Oxycontin. He even put the .45 under a pregnant woman’s maternity dress to encourage the pharmacist to hurry up. She was a Filipino woman—mid-twenties, with that flushed glow of a soon-to-be mother. She was eight-to-nine months, with her round belly just hovering above that cold-metal .45 pointed up at that life yet to take a breath.

      They I.D.’d him easy. There was no way out of it. The cops wanted him bad because of the pregnant lady thing, and they came to the house looking for him. I remember the heavy banging at the door and the officers pouring in with a search warrant. Their hands clasped on their police issue 9s. Officer O’Riley showed up. He frowned—his gray-speckled mustache hung over his top lip. He stepped through the front door slowly, and his Mick-red face bowed. The cops left after the house was searched, and I sat at the top of the stairs and listened to O’Riley talk with my father. I’ll never forget my father’s cracked voice—the voice of a broken man without the choice of giving in.

      “He needs help,” my father said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

      “There’s nothing you can do, Pat,” Officer O’Riley said. “He’s gotta face the music on this one.”

      Later that night, the phone rang, and I heard my father’s voice downstairs. I got up and walked to the top of the landing and listened to my father convince Lil Pat to put the .45 in a dumpster behind the Jewel on Ashland. Afterward, Dad called the cops and told them where they could find the gun. Then, later, it was Lil Pat again. I listened as my father convinced him to turn himself in. He ended up getting sent for six years.

      It’s a strange thing to walk around the neighborhood with everybody knowing your brother’s in the Pen. The clean part of the neighborhood looks at you like you’re trash and expects you to be bad. I’d be playing with kids like normal when their mothers would call them in. It got so they didn’t come ask me to play ball out behind St. Greg’s gym no more. I remember the last time I came around to see the clean kids. I saw Mike Thompson walk out his front door with a mitt and bat, and I rode up to him and asked if he was gonna play a game and if I could come. Mrs. Thompson appeared at his front door and called him in. He shrugged and said sorry. I remember how after he passed her inside she stood at the screen door looking at me a long time. Not saying nothing, but saying everything with her frowning bitter face… My son will not play with the likes of you. Rifts swelled between me and clean kids. I started to hate them. At the same time, the dark part of the neighborhood looks at you with respect. Guys hanging out and sipping beers on front porches would say things like, “Ohh dat’s lil Walsh, Patty’s little brother,” then give me a sip of their beer while they asked how Lil Pat was doing in there. And the bad kids—the kinds with families just like yours—seem to hang around ya more ’cause the clean part looks at them the same way. So it gets to the point that you do bad shit ’cause it’s what the clean part wants. So they know they are nothing like you, and so you know you are nothing like them.

      PART TWO

      ADOLESCENCE