• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I have no idea why I was the only one in the family to become a criminal. No one else in my family rebelled against my father, and all my sisters and brothers became hard-working, law-abiding professionals. Today, all of us are close. My brothers would do anything for me, short of killing someone. The only difference is that if necessary, I would take it one step further. Yet in some strange way, my father lived through me and the life I chose. Here he had these two great sons, both of whom graduated from Harvard and went on to lead successful, respectable lives, and he was the most proud of the son who became a criminal. It’s hard to understand. And sad.

But back in the fall of 1975, I was eager to get my job back at South Boston High, and help out my parents. I had been back working at the high school for just a few months when I ran into a problem. A new principal, Jerome Winegar, had been brought in from Minnesota to replace Dr. Reid, who was forced out. Winegar seemed to think he was intellectually superior to everyone around him. He had thin hair and a pock-marked face, and looked like a tall version of the comedian Professor Irwin Corey. I only wish I could have used the cord attached to the glasses that hung around his neck to strangle him. It was something that they brought in a guy from Minnesota to show the city of Boston how to achieve integration in a high school. Winegar came for the money, not because he believed in the concept. Every time I saw him involved in a situation, he was cajoling the black students or favoring the minority teachers. He was there for six or seven years and the problems from busing certainly didn’t get any better under his leadership.

One day, a few months after I’d returned to my job at the high school, a group of us aides, including Richie Turpin and my best friend, Billy Connell, were on the second floor of the auditorium, taking a break. A black kid walked by and said something smart to Richie, who said something smart right back to him. The kid went home and told his father, and a couple of days later, we had this big meeting at the school. Winegar set up this long table for the major from the state police who was in charge of the troops at the school, the vice principal, the black student and his father, and Richie, Billy, and me. Richie, Billy, and I were sitting on one side and the black kid, his father, Winegar, and the police major were on the other side. We were all going back and forth over who said what to who. The father, who was wearing a black T-shirt covered with the words SUGAR SHACK in glittering letters, turned around and said to his son, “I don’t care about who said what. Just show me the boy who hit you.”

None of us had hit him, but the kid pointed at me of all people and said, “It was him, Daddy. It was Weeks.” I’d never had a word with the kid, but the father jumped up like he was coming over the table at me. I jumped out of my seat and suckered him over the table. When Billy and Richie jumped over the table, the state police major jumped in and broke it up.

Jerome Winegar backed the kid’s story, and it looked like I was going to be brought up on charges. The state police major wrote up his report, gave it to Jerome Winegar, and told him, “You should read it.”

Winegar said, “I think we all saw the same thing.” But he read the report and was dumbfounded. The state police major told me he’d written that the black man was coming after me and I was defending myself. Winegar insisted that he saw it the other way.

The state police major said, “I’ve been a trooper for over twenty-five years. In my experience, he was defending himself.”

A week later, Jerome fired me, not Richie or Billy. And I got brought up on charges of assault and battery. This was my first time as a defendant, but the case got thrown out at a probable cause hearing in Southie. At that hearing, I met Billy O’Neil, one of the owners of Triple O’s, a popular bar in Southie, who had been brought up on charges