Big Joe's Fan Club

"His name was Joe, big Joe McCabe. Bastard, just a horrible prick of a man. Nowadays, he’d be dealin’ tenner bags for somebody better organised, but there was none of that back then. So, he hung around with other hard men – or, if you like, real hard men – and got his screw when anythin’ was on the go. Reset...that’d be sellin’ stolen goods to you...stuff ripped off from the docks, cases of whisky, tobacco was a big favourite. And strange stuff for our neighborhood, sometimes. Cuban cigars, I remember. Was how I learned what a cohiba was, how about that? And he did the occasional wee robbery...I think. Ripped off shops, broke into offices, stole tools, whatever they could lay their hands on. And if the big man – Shuggy Devlin, he was called, needed a face striped, big Joe would do that, too, once or twice. Never worked, never had a job, just drew his dole and spent his whole time crooked. And he wisny even that good at it. Small-time, never had any ambition. Take away his back-up, take away Shuggy and his boys, and he could only hit women and kids.”

“Jack and your mama, you said.”

“Aye. He was every bully you ever heard about. My sister...she was older, never seemed to wind him up. Kinna got on his good side, agreed with him or somethin’, dunno. Just made ma look bad by comparison, I always thought, not that she ever talked back, anyway – but how do you figure the way a guy like that ‘hinks? He only hit Frances once or twice – me, more’n that, but not often, and only when I was younger.”

“You got on his good side, too?”

“Not hardly. More the opposite. See, I’m not Johnny, I’m not Frances...with me, he was, I dunno, different. Careful, after a while. Wary. You can get out your dime-store psychology book now, cuz that’s where we’re at. Seemed like he could sense a weakness in people, like – listen to me talk, jeez – like an animal can. Just somethin’ basic, fundamental. He went for the weaker ones, Johnny – he was the youngest – and my mother, some people would call her a doormat. I’d be one of them.”

“Christ, Steve.”

“Well, you asked. See, Johnny, now, in his own way...whatever bullshit he broadcasts, he likes strong women. Always been the same – not CEOs and senators, okay, but not doormats, definitely. He doesny know it, but he’s desperate for his woman not to be like his mother, cuz he’s -”

“- never gonna act like your papa. I can see that. I can see what you say abou’ John. Yeah...I can see he don’t know it, too...where they now, your mama and papa, gone?”

“Aye, long gone.”

“Just...gone?”

“Not ‘just’, not really. It’s the usual story, pretty much. Never mind the psychology, you’ve seen a hundred movies where the victim fights back – that was what happened. Only it wisny the big victims, not him and ma, it was me. He hadny actually touched me for a coupla years...longer, mibbe, thinkin’ about it...and I just watched big Joe hit him and her. Drunk or sober, he just...he had this fuckin meanness in him. Find somebody weaker’n him and lay it on them. Bastard, dirty bastard. And, like I say, it’s the usual story. I began to lip him up – you do that again, I’ll no fuckin stand for it, I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. But he never hit me, just laughed and said ‘come ahead’ and then he called me a big poof when I never actually did anythin’... happened a few times, until, y’know, the time I did do what I said and went over the line.”

“How far over?”

“Far enough. Plenty far...fuckin miles. He skelped ma cuz his tea wisny ready. Punched her on the jaw, decked her in the living room. She got up and he hit her again, I says ‘quit it’. He goes ‘aye, who’re you, ya big prick?’ and I just lamped him. End of.”

“That simple?”

“Yes and no. He howled and he looked at me so I clattered him again and he goes down...it got ugly, have to say, Jesus, was it ugly...but I’m still proud. Aye...proud’s the word. Cuz I booted him where he lay, kicked fuck out of him, over and over again and he’s shoutin’ ‘ahh’ and ‘I’m dyin’’, so I toed him again and he’s...he’s shrieking like a pig and I dragged him up and pulled him out the door by his hair – some head of hair on him, big Joe. Hah. And he’s yowlin’ away...Then I booted him down the stairs in the close and he rolled over himself, scuddin’ his way down those stone steps, two flights, big stairs they were an’ all, kept kickin’ him until he was down on the ground floor, and he’s in tears by that point. He gets half up on his knees and I booted him again in the stomach and told him to fuck off and never come back...he says nothin’ , just staggers out into the street. He ran down the road, one shoe on, blood for skin, howlin’ like livestock. I broke his jaw and five ribs, right there. Like I say – ugly. But it got the job done. I was fourteen, big as I am now, but fourteen, still. Kinna big night for me, that.”

“Madre. He come back?”

“Sure he did, when he could, when I was out. My ma wanted him back, y’see? He wheedled his way in the door and it was easy, cuz she actually wanted to say yes. I told him to fuck off but he apologised and said that anyway, I was outvoted.  Ma said okay, Johnny was just a kid and Frances would just go along. So, somehow, it was me was causin’ the trouble. And that was him, back in the house, back in her bed.”

“He still the same?”

“No...he was a lot more careful. Kinna creepy, in a way, bein’ nicer-than-nice and it’s all ‘aw-right-son, how’re ye doin the day’?’ every five minutes. But people don’t change, not like that, was a matter of time and that was the drink, that time, the time he went back to bein’ how he was. See, he’d lost a lot of his swagger after what happened when I gave him a doing and chucked him out. He never reported it to the polis – how embarrassin’ was that for a hard man, given a tanking by a fourteen-year-old? – and anyway, what did they care if somebody like him got bleached? But Shuggy Devlin and them, they knew, and he never got his face back. Plus, he was gettin’ older anyway, and soon he just gets to be a hanger-on. He never was high up the pole in the first place, and when a soldier loses it...he was nobody. I knew, eventually, he’d take it out the old way, and it’d be ma, cuz she’d complain least. Johnny was on my side by then, if you’d call it that.  And then he did it. One night, I was out, he came home early, steamin’, and he raised his hands to her.

“I came in, saw what’d happened and just told him to get off his mark and never come back, else he’d get a leathering that’d’ve made the first one look like a fuckin massage. He just went, hardly said anythin’ and I never had to touch him. My ma never said a word to me, just looked at me, like...I was the bad guy.”