Thrust Your Hand into My Side

Nearly 4:00 a.m. I’m opening the refrigerator door for the eighth or ninth time, staring into its polar whiteness, looking, searching for—what? I’m not hungry. Couldn’t eat anyway, and I sure don’t need a beer. Close the door.

The doorbell rings. Tolls. My heartbeat jumps and goosebumps pock my flesh. “Oh, God, please,” I say.

I flip the porch light switch and turn the door lock and slowly open the door. I see the badge before the face, then look up. It’s a cop I know. Then I see my son, Thomas, 14-years-old next to him, his expression that of a wannabe bad ass who has a grudge against the world, starting with the cop. And me.

The cop, though a friend, doesn’t greet me, just says flat, “No more breaks. Next time….”

“I’m doing my best. Tried everything….”

“Everything? Have you told him about Leon? About you?” He shakes his head, turns and walks back to the patrol car.

How many times had I tried talking to Thomas, but I’d named him well. A true skeptic, he doubted everything anyone, especially me, told him.

Thomas declares, “I’m going to bed.”

“Oh, no you’re not. Sit your boney ass down and listen—listen good, ‘cause you’re on a bad path and you don’t know the half of it.”

“You gonna tell me about ‘Leon’? Who the fuck is Leon? Why should I care?”

I don’t waste time, telling Thomas to watch his language. That would be a skirmish; I’m fighting a war.

“Leon and I used to hang out together a long time ago. Then, we were both a lot like you. But we were tougher. You aren’t as tough as you think. Back then, Leon would’ve chewed you up, spit you out and ground what was left into the dirt with his bootheel.”

“Oooh, dear. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“Not yet, but I hope you will be soon.”

I remove my shirt and point to the scar on my right side I’d once told Thomas was from a childhood accident, a fall from a great height.

“Look at this. Look good, look hard. No accident. But the result of a fall, so to speak, nonetheless. I was nineteen. A smartass like you. But Leon and I were better at it after years of practice. Leon and I were real bad asses. Not silly schoolboy pranksters. Street fighters. Thieves. Damned good thieves. We stole anything we wanted, things other people wanted to buy. Then one night we robbed a liquor store. Something we did all the time, just for something to do, for what we called ‘our spare change.’ But that night, our world turned to shit, and before I knew what was happening, I ended up in the joint, prison—not city or county jail but upstate with real criminals, hard criminals who’d rather stomp you or stab you than say hello. I tried to act tough, and that’s when I had my ‘accident.’ A stabbing that nearly killed me. Spent three years in the joint, several months of that in prison hospital recovering from this for robbing a liquor store with my buddy Leon. So, look at this wound, look close—come on, touch it—thrust your hand into my wound so you can believe.”

Thomas surprises me when he stands and touches my right side, runs his fingers gently over the scar. When he sits down again, he asks, “So, where’s Leon now? Did he go to prison with you?”

“Leon never went to jail. Never walked out of that liquor store.”

BIO: Nick Di Carlo has careened about this planet for seven decades and more than a bit. He's taught writing and literature in New York State’s Maximum Security Correctional Facilities. Lawrence R. Reis, author of Wolf Masks: Violence in Contemporary Poetry, noted: “The men in Dr. Di Carlo’s classes recognized many similarities between their experiences and his. Those experiences, often dark and sometimes violent, inform and power Dr. Di Carlo’s own writing.”

Read his work in The Muleskinner Journal, The Orange Rose Literary Magazine, BULL, Shotgun Honey, Guilty Crime Story Magazine.