Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [65]
“Hello?” He sounded as if he’d been up for a long while.
“Pop?”
“Andre?”
“Yeah. I have bad news.” It felt as if I were telling him to lift his chin and hold still so I could plant my feet and raise my fists.
“What? What is it?”
And throw this right cross into his nose and mouth and trimmed beard. “Suzanne got raped last night.”
“What?”
“In Boston. Mom and Bruce are going to get her right now.”
My father said more things, his voice shot through with shock and pain. He said he’d be right over, and as I hung up, my face began to feel on fire for what I felt right then, shame that I had not protected his daughter, my sister, but there was something else too, something I needed to deny but could not, this dark joy spreading through my chest at having just done that to him, the one who should’ve been here all along, the one who should never have left us in the first place.
ON THE heavy bag now, I punched it so hard my knuckles stung and my shoulders ached. I kept seeing the men who’d done that to Suzanne; I kept seeing them as they were doing it. Then I’d change what happened. I’d stand in the middle of the street till the cruising sedan had to stop and I’d walk around to the driver’s side and set my feet and punch him in the temple, ripping a light through his brain that would forever stop his heart. I’d jerk open the back door and pry the knife from the one on my sister, then hook my forearm around his forehead and pull the blade into his throat and draw it from ear to ear, and I’d punch the bag and punch it and punch it till I couldn’t breathe anymore and my heart was charging faster than the sedan of the two men who got away and were never found, not then, not now, gone for good.
WASHINGTON STREET lay behind concrete floodwalls and ran parallel to the Merrimack River from Railroad Square all the way to the Basilere Bridge. In the winter of 1977, it was a street of closed shops, some of their display windows covered with brown paper, squares of masking tape sticking to the glass. Other businesses had nothing covering their front windows, and beyond them lay one big dusty room. Against the wall would be shelves and a bare countertop holding a brass cash register, its drawer open and empty. The old Woolworth’s building was closed up and locked, but farther down the street was Mitchell’s which was still operating and where, when she could, Mom would put clothes on layaway for us. Farther west was Barrett’s. Through the windows I’d see men in shirts and ties selling clothes to men who wore ties, too. I rarely saw men like that and assumed they must live across the river in Bradford.
And Washington Street was where the bars were: the Lido, the Tap, the Chit Chat Lounge. They were on the street level of the mill buildings, darkened, nearly windowless caves filled with men and women drinking and smoking, their cigarette smoke swirling through the dim lights behind the bar. There’d be music playing on the jukebox: Frank Sinatra and Sonny and Cher, Elton John, Tom Jones, and Johnny Paycheck. Near the register were jars of pickled eggs, a rack of potato chips and Slim Jims, wooden booths built into the walls, a few scattered cocktail tables, most of their bubbled Formica tops spotted with cigarette burns. Throughout downtown, along the narrow streets and alleys between the mills, there were many other bars like this: Ray and Arlene’s, Smitty’s, the 104 Club. There were stories of knifings or shootings in these places, of brawls with guys getting their teeth knocked out, their noses broken, their jaws splintered and having to be wired shut. The same names kept coming up, too—the Murphy boys, the Finns, the Duffys, Jon and Jake Cadell, the Wallaces, gangs of brothers who drank together down on Washington Street, then got into fights, sometimes with each other. And there were men known for just that one thing—brawling and almost always coming out on top: Jackie Wright, Paul Brooks, Ray Duffy, Bobby Twist, and Daryl Woods. Others, too. They’d work all week for the city repairing