GRADY

That shit don't get it! Same crap my Momma ran my ass ragged with when Sam came to live with us. "Grady, go tell your Uncle. Grady, go tell that teacher."

Grady go tell shit! You tell `im your own damn self!

God damn uncle of mine, never got off his lard ass to do nothing. "Grady, go get me a beer... Grady, turn the antenna" God damn.

I was eight. Crazy neighbor, Guy Frank, threw a big keg party and his doped-up musician friends parked all over our lawn. Raisin' Hell, yellin' and screamin' like a bunch of fuckin' animals.

Uncle yelled out the window but nobody listened. So he starts yellin' at me. He was the kind of guy, when some kid stole a car, I got a whippin' and no dinner. Ya' see what I mean?

My uncle wouldn't say the first word to Guy Frank since the time he pissed in the gutter one night, too blind to make it into his house.

Uncle said: "Grady go tell that frog fuck to move them cars 'fore I call the police."

Well, I didn't wanna knock on that man's door and tell him nothin', so I just stood there.

But my uncle said, "You keep standing there and you'll spend the rest of your life wishin' you hadn't." So I went.

And it was a drag.

There was a bad fight; blood on the doormat and a man yellin' loud. I could hear a dog barking in the backyard and some woman cryin' and cursin' them both.

Three men were on the front porch. One face down I had to step over to get to the door. Another man sat up against a barrel full of beer and ice. His face cut open from eye to chin and the flap of skin didn't fit right where it was supposed to. A brother held a towel fulla' ice against the gash with one hand and a can of beer in the other.

Somebody turned up the hifi loud, jazz, Duke's Mood Indigo. To this day, it shakes the shit outta' me. Crazy.

I pounded on that door `til my hands hurt, but all I could hear was saxophones, people screamin' an' that dog barkin'.

When I looked at the cut man's face oozing blood and beer foam, I started kickin' the door, more scared than anything else.

The door flew open and a woman came screamin' out, knocked me down, stepped on my ankle. She lit into the bleeding man, drunk spittin', "You killed him you son of a bitch!" and kicked him in the head.

He made a sound like, like a sound... can't place it. I watched the towel of ice fly into the air, summer sun exploding all these shiny pieces bust wide, bouncing and dancin' off the cars parked on our lawn.

Cut man was knocked silly; his tongue stuck out the flap where there was a hole in his cheek. Eyes all glassy, he coughed out a spray of blood when the brother tried to push it back in.

I tried to stand, but my ankle was fucked. I looked at the man I stepped over. It was Guy Frank with an wood ice pick handle stuck out the back of his head. No sense how it stuck out straight, hanging edgeways, just wrong, but there.

Not a drop of blood, face all calm, like there was nothin' wrong, asleep or maybe drunk like... Aw fuck, I never seen a dead man `til then; I was just a kid.

Somebody was teasin' the dog in the backyard, rilin' it up, barking, yelpin'.

Another fight started in the house, shoes on the pine floor and women screaming in the glass breakin'. So I crawl to the edge of the porch, tryin' get away.

The beer brother was tryin' to make that flap fit back on the cut face but there was too much blood. Where the pieces came together, one was white and the other was blue, slash runny red.

I watched the dead man movin' like tryin' to get warm, just gettin' stiff.

"Grady get over here!" Uncle yelled and I knew from his voice that he was pretty much shit-faced himself.

I fell from the porch, hit the lawn and got up on the ankle, broken or what, when the dog made the fence and hit me on the run. It grabbed holda' my arm and wouldn't give it up.

My uncle started yellin' louder and I knew I was dead no matter what, so I start screamin', "Move your God-damn cars off our lawn god-damn it! GOD-DAMN IT!"

The cops got there and had their hands full, so they shot the dog right off. It went down, and kicked, runnin' upside down, blood, blood, blood.

When I got back home from the hospital with a cast on my foot and stitches in my arm, my uncle wouldn't talk to me for weeks.

Now, whenever the story about the killin' comes up he looks right past me and says how Guy Frank was his best friend.

Martin Higgins