Southie tales

[BrownBear]

Gerald Sullivan raised his bottle of Hennessey in its crumpled brown paper bag and simply let the golden brown liquid flow over his parched lips, much of it spilled into his matted grey beard or over his unrecognisable military jacket. He didn’t bother to wipe any of it off; his arms ached too much for any movement other than to spill his pain killing whiskey.

 

He tilted his stiff neck up to see the sun, but it wasn’t there, just a grey curtain, no clouds, just a grey sheet with no signs of light or any other features. He picked his back up against the wall and grunted as he did so, he had stayed in the same spot for so long his body had now grown into the arch shape he positioned himself in. A man opened the back door of his Chinese take away which led into the alley,

“f*cking bum, get a job” The man shouted.

 

Gerald mumbled incoherently, he amused himself with the thought that he and his unit had shot Japs in to protect this Chinc’s parents. But Gerald didn’t like to think, his mind was just an alcohol and pain addled mush and pin pointing his thoughts on one thing just heart his head.

 

Gerald couldn’t walk the streets of South Boston anymore, partly because his muscles had almost completely deteriorated, but more because of the emotional pain it caused. Southie was the place Gerald grew, up, it was his home. It was never a family place but it was never so dangerous that you couldn’t walk the streets; criminals had honour and would only hurt criminals. But all that had gone to sh*t; the gangsters now would sell drugs to pregnant women and shoot them if they failed to pay.

 

Southie was made up of rows upon rows of brown stone houses, intersected by alleys and roads. After the war in Vietnam started people came back with no jobs and no money, all the bleeding heart hippies were so upset that people were getting shot in some country half the world away that they lost sight of the veterans of that war, instead of coming back to parades they came back to beatings and aggression. This sprouted all the hatred and out of that hatred and poverty so came the drugs and out of those drugs came the gangs which had ruined the streets of Southie.

 

Gerald had once been a kind, conscientious young man, but as the Second World War came he was drafted and the things he saw at the battle of Guadalcanal warped his young mind, he came back and realised there was nothing to live for.

 

He lifted the Hennessey again to his lips and spilled it over his mouth, the hard taste knocked him round the head and he drifted off into an alcohol induced sleep.