Neighborhood Bully - The Fall

... continued from Neighborhood Bully - The Chink in the Bully Armor

As soon as the kids on the block realized that there was life after standing up to Jimmy, he gradually began separating from us. I'm not sure if it was on his part, our part or what. I don't believe it was a conscious thing. I think that as we got older and more mature and physically able, we were interested in and did things that Jimmy couldn't. We were all becoming different from Jimmy.

We each have our 'thing'. The thing that sets us apart. Big Chris' thing was his outstanding athletic abilities. Billy's thing was that he could shoot pigeons - and even robins - with his homemade bow and arrow (but that's a story for another day). Jimmy's thing was his cruelty and intolerance for people that were 'different' from him and his group. He'd always seen himself as the ring leader of 'the Irish kids' on the block. And from the lack of tolerance for 'things different' he had always shown in the past, he began seeing himself as different. Jimmy didn't know how to accept thing that were different - even, as it turned out in later years, himself.

There were times now when, after a day of playing pole to pole, we'd go hang out on Billy's stoop and listen to WABC (W - A - Beatle - C). Jimmy would show up once in a while. Sometimes it would be fine - Jimmy wouldn't insult or try to push anyone around. But other times he would try to recapture a little of that bully edge of his.

One day he did something that really pissed off Little Chris. I don't remember what it was (probably something clever about Little Chris' mother) but I remember Little Chris letting him have it verbally. "Jimmy, You are a big fat idiot," he said. This time he didn't storm away to his house giving Jimmy any satisfaction. He stayed on the stoop with the rest of us, shaking his head as if he felt sorry for Jimmy. And Jimmy didn't do or say anything back.

Then - and I can't remember if it was the same day or a day or two later - Jimmy did something to piss off Billy.

Now... Billy was a quiet Irish guy from Brooklyn who thought he was an American Indian. I told you... homemade bow and arrow..? a story for another day, but I had to give you that background so you would understand that Billy was a patient, stoic, long suffering guy who hardly ever had words with anyone. If you pissed off Billy you must have tried hard.

"Little Chris is right. You really are a big fat idiot, Jimmy. Now get the f' off my stoop."

(These were the days when you mixed your "...big fat idiot..." phrases with your new found curse words like "Get the f' off my stoop," and it sounded tough. Ah, the good old days.)

Jimmy put some effort into a smirk as he walked home alone but we all felt the wind beginning to blow in a different direction.

The homes on my block were two-story, single family, detached homes with garages in the back yards at the furthest part of the property away from the street. They weren't all exactly the same; there were slight variations in the style and width of the houses. Some of the garages were one-car some were two-car. The next block over, Coleman Street, who's properties rear ended the rear ends of our block's properties had the same arrangement of garages in their back yards, but because the properties were identical but back-to-back, the garages alternated position. (Click here to see what I mean.)

As you can imagine, this presented a unique opportunity for garage hopping - running along the rear property lines of homes on Kimball and Coleman Streets, 10 feet up in the air, bouncing from garage roof to garage roof. You tried avoid doing on Saturday night, though, when Mr. Mullins had been drinking.

There was this stretch of garages behind Billy's house that we liked best because there were a few trees there with limbs hanging between garages. We could swing out onto the limbs like Tarzan and land on various garage roofs. One big limb hung over Billy's back yard in plain view of the street via the driveway. One day, soon after Billy and Jimmy's altercation, while on top of Billy's garage, and carving our initials into the trunk of the largest tree, someone had 'a great idea'.

Billy no longer lives at this house. He's since moved on and has his own place now, as we all have. His family's moved down to Florida, and I personally haven't been in the backyard for a long time. But once in a while, after visiting with my mom who still lives on the block, I slow my car down while driving past Billy's driveway to see if I can still make out the words;

"JIMMY C IS A BIG FAT IDIOT"

... carved into the branch in foot-high letters. Sometimes, in the fall, when the leaves have fallen, I can.

I'll never forget the look on Jimmy's face when he saw it for the first - and as far as I know, the LAST - time. Totally defeated. Shoulders hunched over, I saw thoughts flashing across his mind; He couldn't climb fences - forget about trees - and there was no way for him to reach the limb to scratch out the words. None of us were going to take it down; we'd put it up there. For a hundred years, people would know that JIMMY C WAS A BIG FAT IDIOT. He turned and for the last time, I can remember, walked away from us towards his home.

Not long after this time, the guys on the block got older, went to different high schools, colleges, got married, etc... I saw Jimmy once or twice after the events described above, walking down the street, but never saw him again - until Mother's Day 2004.

There's a nice little neighborhood bar/restaurant on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Avenue T(?) with good traditional Irish food, which my mom loves, so for Mother's Day I took her there for dinner at about 2 in the afternoon.

As we waited to be seated, and our conversation lulled, my eyes drifted around the restaurant and landed in the bar area, where they became locked with a person sitting at the end of the bar. This person had been snickering about something with the bartender but when he saw me he immediately froze. He stared at me with a guilty suspicious stare, his shoulders hunched and he quickly glanced at the floor. I continued looking at him. His appearance was that of someone who had spent a great deal of time in this bar and many others. He was so pale as to be nearly transparent. The only color in his face was provided by broken or dilated capillaries beneath the surface of his skin. His hair was thin and snow white. He was no longer fat, but emaciated. I had heard from Little Chris a few months earlier that there had been a Jimmy siting, and he wasn't looking too good, but I had no idea he was this bad. Jimmy looked half dead.

I don't know what could have been done to make things turn out differently. It's easy to say that Jimmy brought it on himself. He was the older kid and initiated the cruelty and other crap he came up with. It could be a very complicated discussion in trying to figure it out, or you could simply say...

Sometimes bad things happen to bad people.