Free Brutal by Kevin Weeks

Kevin. Kevin kidded him, insisting he must be looking for Whitey McGrail, a South Boston guy who owned a bar. The cop smiled at the joke but told him they’d just received word that Whitey and Kevin had hit this kid and knocked his teeth out. “I just want to let them know,” the cop had told Kevin.
    It turned out that the father of the kid, whose name was Frank Bolstad and who came from City Point, the more affluent section of South Boston from G Street down, was a Capitol cop who guarded the State House, and his mother was a crossing guard. His folks were all upset and knew it was Jimmy and me who had done this to their kid. Someone reached out to Jimmy, and he ended up paying $1,600 for the kid’s dental work, which included a bridge for his missing front teeth.
    Later, Jimmy said to me, “Why did you hit him so hard?”
    â€œYou told me to hit him,” I said.
    â€œYeah, well, I didn’t tell you to hit him that hard,” he answered.
    When I looked at him and said, “Now, we’re gonna have degrees of hitting?” he just started laughing. I still can’t figure it out. It was just a jab, not a powerful punch. Maybe the teeth were loose to begin with.
    But there were fights when I didn’t use my fists, like the one involving Chucka Devins’s brother Franny. Chucka, who was a little older than me, around six feet tall and heavyset at 280 pounds with brown hair, was always easygoing, laughing and enjoying himself. He worked at the doorat Triple O’s with me. One night when I was standing at the door, he got a phone call. “Is he all right?” I kept hearing him yell into the phone. “Is he all right?”
    When he came walking over to me, I could see he was visibly shaken. “Chucka, what’s the matter?” I asked him.
    â€œThey just stabbed my brother Franny,” he told me, his eyes filling up.
    â€œWho stabbed your brother?” I asked.
    â€œThese guys in Dorchester,” he said. “I know where they are and I’m going over.”
    â€œI’ll go with you,” I said. The two of us went outside and I hopped into his car with him. Larry Bavis, a regular down at the bar who played on the Triple O’s softball team, jumped in the back on his own accord, and the three of us drove over to Dorchester, which was about three miles from Triple O’s. When we got to the park where the kids were, the three of us got out of the car and walked over to the bunch of Franny’s friends who were still there. As soon as they saw us, three other guys in their mid-twenties started walking away. We didn’t pay any attention to those guys until one of Franny’s friends said, “Chucka, those were the guys who went after Franny.”
    As we approached them, they turned around with their backs against the fence. When I put my hands up to fight one kid, he broke the beer bottle he was holding against the fence. All he had at that point was the neck of the bottle, which was of no use to him. I looked at him and laughed. “Come on, motherfucker,” I said, and with that, he whipped out a knife with a five- or six-inch-long blade.
    He looked at me and said, “Now fuck you. You come on.”
    I started backing away and had my hands up. “Hey, take it easy,” I told him. When I had backed up about four or five feet away from him, I reached inside my jacket, pulled out a pistol from my belt, and shot him in the leg. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose, and everyone started yelling. The kid I’d shot was on the ground, people were yelling, and Iwas in the middle of the street as this car came flying around the corner, heading straight at me. I dove over the hood of the car, but it sideswiped two other cars trying to hit me. Then I turned on the car and shot out its back window. The car kept on going, and the kid I shot in the leg went limping down the street.
    Chucka, who had no idea who was shooting,