Free The Sea Beach Line by Ben Nadler Page A

I was failing out anyway, and it was clear to everyone that I was out of my mind on drugs. When they interrogated me, my answers didn’t make any sense. They didn’t even pertain to the issue at hand. The school just wanted me to go away, and Bernie and my mother came to a quiet agreement with them. My mother was still pretty mad about the whole situation.
    â€œWhen I left school,” I told Mendy, “I went and stayed with my parents in New Mexico, where they live now, to get my head straight.”
    â€œYour parents?” Mendy was confused; the only parent of mine he knew was Alojzy.
    â€œMy mother and my stepfather. They sort of retired down there, I guess.” Bernie was a few years older than my mother. “The climate’s good for my stepfather’s asthma. I mean, he still works, but from there. There wasn’t really any reason for me to be there. I’m staying with my sister here in the city now.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œIt’s where I’m from originally. I guess I feel more at home here.”
    â€œMe too. I’m the same way.” I took a look at Mendy. I really couldn’t see him existing anywhere else except a New York City street.
    â€œHey, why did you guess it was fighting they kicked me out for?”
    â€œI thought maybe you had that part of your father in you.” It made me happy that he thought that.
    â€œHe got in a lot of fights out here?”
    â€œWell, look: he was always a nice guy to me, and everyone else who treated him nice, but if someone crossed him, oh boy, it was on.” Mendy finished his last bite of yogurt, and put the empty container down on the curb. “His face, the shape of his face, could physically change. It was terrifying. He had a thing about respect. If you were respectful to him, fine. But if he felt disrespected . . .
    â€œThis one time, he forgot his heavy jacket out on the street by mistake, his own mistake, after he’d packed up for the night. He comes back the next day, and asks Eye—a guy, a street guy, who hangs out around here—if he’s seen the jacket. Eye says yeah, right after Al left, this guy who passes by here walking a little white dog every morning and every evening, he came by and picked up the jacket.
    â€œSo Al, he waits until the guy comes by on his morning walk and approaches him. He says, ‘Excuse me, did you pick up a jacket from here yesterday night?’ The guy says, ‘No. I didn’t.’ And Al says, ‘Oh really, that surprises me, because you know, my long-term acquaintance Eye, who’s never steered me wrong on any factual matters, says you picked up my jacket that I forgot.’ The guy says, ‘Fine, so what if I did, what I find is mine. It’s none of your business what I pick up off the street.’ Al, I could tell he’s on the verge, he says, ‘Maybe you didn’t realize it was my jacket. But it is, and I’d like it back.’ The guy says, ‘No, fuck you, it’s my jacket now.’
    â€œAl looks at him calmly. So calmly the guy thought maybe he’d won, but the thing is, your father at his calmest was your father at his most frightening. So he looks at the guy and says—his tone just as friendly as could be—he says, ‘That’s fine. I just want you to understand, though, that after I finish beating the shit out of you, I’m going to beat the shit out of your dog.’
    â€œThe guy went right on home and got the jacket and brought it back.
    â€œLater, I said to him, ‘Damn, Al, that was something.’ He says, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Al, I mean, you were really going to beat up a little doggy?’ He says, ‘Look, Mendy, I knew by the fact he’s every day taking this little dog for walks in the fresh air, that he really loves that animal. If people cross you, then you have to hurt what they love.’” I liked hearing this story.