It was believed, things when downhill for Jackie when his brother died in Viet Nam. Before that he was a just a troubled kid who lost his father young in life. After his older brother died, he started to become increasingly uncontrollably unstable. Attachments were severed and never repaired. His mind became cut cables and snapped bridges. He stood and looked to a distant land, a river of fire separating the two.
Jackie’s life was a war. His eyes saw smoke and detached limbs and blood stains and craters. A life defined by an unusual, perverse, and melancholy testament of violence and destruction born in his past and echoed in the ever burdening present.
I had seen him get the shit kicked out of him many times. At any moment during any day, it was possible. The majority of the time he provoked it. The list is long too. I watched cops, friend’s fathers, his own siblings, and teenagers inflict violence on Jackie’s skinny frame. I never understood why he would mouth off to someone to the breaking point and get punched and kicked. His eyes and his words told me it was a necessity.
My grandmother, my little sister and I used to sit in the kitchen with the lights off like owls. My grandmother was a busy body and we were her students. We would stare out the window into the Quinn’s yard. All the Quinn boys and girls would be having a party. I remember seeing Mrs. Quinn out in the yard with them. She would be young again. She would be in her chair laughing and smoking, with a case of Genny Pounders at her side. She was one of the gang in a carnival of celebration.
Over the loud music, a fight would always break out and Jackie would be in the center of it. From the kitchen, in the dark, we would watch. Jackie’s brothers would beat him with wooden chairs and coolers from the back yard to the middle of the street. Every party, Jackie would be tarred and feather as the one who ruined the fun. The price to be paid for such a transgression was a cup of blood.
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