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In the Family
In the Family.
Liverpool, 1969
“You’ve already pissed me off Driscoll, don’t fuckin’ do it again!”
My old fella shouted at me as he stood in his overalls.
He was rail thin and barely ate enough to keep a rat alive.
All morning he’d been bitching about this heat we’re having, sopping the sweat off of his forehead with the heel of his hand.
The ropey muscles on his neck twisted tighter as his face turned purple with anger like a spot about to burst.
“You hear me, boy?”
The truth was, I didn’t hear a bloody word.
I was pissed out of my mind and had a real urge to smack my head down against my pillow.
Trying to push forwards and up the stairs, my hands groped in front of me and only managed to get hold of what felt like a chewed-up dog’s bone.
But really, it was my old fella’s arm and he had it outstretched, blocking the corridor.
“Let me through,” I mumbled, followed by a burp and some acid that tickled the back of my throat.
“Don’t make me call the old bill,” he snarled.
He could get fierce, my father, especially when he’d been at the whiskey; from the smell of his breath, I could tell he had a fair amount, despite this weather.
When he was about my age, nineteen, the townspeople would call him ‘Break-nose Billy’, not because he was some god send of a fighter who was sent down to rearrange people’s faces.
No, it was because he would always have a plaster taped across the bridge of his nose.
A wound that never healed from fights he always got into.
He was a right asshole, just like me; probably ran in the family.
But during late nights when he clung to that bottle like his life depended on it, I could see a sadness in his eyes.
It was regret.
That’s when he reached for the rotary phone.
His fingertips yellowed, betraying his weakness for cheap unfiltered cigarettes.
I grabbed the machine by both hands before he could and yanked the damn thing out of the wall, pulling it with more force than I intended.
The next thing I knew was it sailing through the air.
Then came...
Liverpool, 1969
“You’ve already pissed me off Driscoll, don’t fuckin’ do it again!”
My old fella shouted at me as he stood in his overalls.
He was rail thin and barely ate enough to keep a rat alive.
All morning he’d been bitching about this heat we’re having, sopping the sweat off of his forehead with the heel of his hand.
The ropey muscles on his neck twisted tighter as his face turned purple with anger like a spot about to burst.
“You hear me, boy?”
The truth was, I didn’t hear a bloody word.
I was pissed out of my mind and had a real urge to smack my head down against my pillow.
Trying to push forwards and up the stairs, my hands groped in front of me and only managed to get hold of what felt like a chewed-up dog’s bone.
But really, it was my old fella’s arm and he had it outstretched, blocking the corridor.
“Let me through,” I mumbled, followed by a burp and some acid that tickled the back of my throat.
“Don’t make me call the old bill,” he snarled.
He could get fierce, my father, especially when he’d been at the whiskey; from the smell of his breath, I could tell he had a fair amount, despite this weather.
When he was about my age, nineteen, the townspeople would call him ‘Break-nose Billy’, not because he was some god send of a fighter who was sent down to rearrange people’s faces.
No, it was because he would always have a plaster taped across the bridge of his nose.
A wound that never healed from fights he always got into.
He was a right asshole, just like me; probably ran in the family.
But during late nights when he clung to that bottle like his life depended on it, I could see a sadness in his eyes.
It was regret.
That’s when he reached for the rotary phone.
His fingertips yellowed, betraying his weakness for cheap unfiltered cigarettes.
I grabbed the machine by both hands before he could and yanked the damn thing out of the wall, pulling it with more force than I intended.
The next thing I knew was it sailing through the air.
Then came...
