Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [132]
I ran back upstairs to my mother and brothers. “You have to do something,” I said. “Gary is going to kill him.”
Frank got up and went down and stood between Gary and my father. “Leave him alone, Gary,” he said. “Can’t you see he’s too weak to fight?” Gary shoved at Frank. Frank shoved back. Gary hit Frank in the face. Frank returned the blow. Then the two of them were brawling, furniture and dishes flying all over the place. “I’m not a great fighter,” Frank told me later. “I’m not tough. But Gary knew almost nothing about fighting. He was strong but he was also awkward. If he got hold of you he could hurt you, but I made sure that he didn’t, and I was coming out ahead.”
Then my mother entered the fray. She came into the room with a broom and started to hit Frank Jr. over the head with it, saying: “Stop this, you’ve gone far enough. I’ve called the police on you, Frank—I want you out of here.” Both Frank and Gary stopped fighting and looked up, startled, at my mother. “Leave Gary alone,” she told Frank once more. Frank looked deeply wounded, got up off the floor and walked out of the house, slamming the front door behind him. My mother sat Gary in a chair, dabbed the blood off his face, and handed him a wad of twenty-dollar bills. “Now please leave before the police get here,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Frank Jr. came back after midnight. My mother had gone to bed, but my father was sitting up at the kitchen table, still in pain. When my father saw Frank walk in, he said: “I want to thank you, son, for what you did today.”
Frank Jr. was a little drunk by this time and was still stinging about the way his mother had thrown him out of the house. “Man,” he said, “I didn’t think Mom would ever call the cops on me. I was trying to help.”
My father said: “She didn’t call them on anybody. She just said that to stop the fight. She couldn’t very well say she had called them on Gary, because who knows what he would have done? He would take that real serious, because she’s the person he feels he can always trust. He might have killed one of us at that point. So she said she called them on you, just to get things straightened out.” Frank thought about it and decided it all made sense. Nobody could confront Gary. They had to protect him and themselves at the same time. He finally decided it was one of the smarter things his mother had ever done.
FRANK WAS IN DOWNTOWN PORTLAND a few evenings later when he ran into Gary on the street. They hadn’t seen each other since the fight. Gary came up to Frank and extended his hand. “Hey, man, I’m sorry about what happened,” Gary said. “I shouldn’t have acted that way.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Frank said. “It shouldn’t have happened, and I’m sorry that I hit you, but I got all upset when I thought you were going to hurt Dad.”
“Well, you were doing the right thing,” Gary said. Frank accepted Gary’s apology. He didn’t want any bad blood to stay between them.
“Hey, you hungry?” asked Gary. “Let’s go over to George’s Coney Island, get a couple of chili dogs, then get a beer afterward. It’ll be my treat.”
Frank agreed.
George’s Coney Island was a hot dog diner in the lower part of Portland. It served one thing: hot dogs, but they were the best dogs in town. The place was run by an old Greek man named George. The myth about George, according to my father, was that he was a millionaire who lived in a mansion in Portland’s West Hills. But he loved making and serving hot dogs, so he ran the diner as a way of keeping busy and staying in touch with people. My father had known George for many years, and whenever we were downtown, he’d take us to George’s Coney Island for a meal. He and George got along famously. “Ah, my favorite customer,” the burly George would say in his Greek accent when my father walked through the door.
Gary and Frank took a seat at the counter, and George greeted them warmly. “How’s your father? Any better? No? Don’t worry, your father