Doc: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

Burger King on Friday nights when he got paid and to the Tuesday night wrestling matches at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory. I loved Dusty Rhodes, André the Giant, and Haystack Calhoun. I’d get in fights with kids at my school about who was the greatest wrestler ever and whether the whole thing was a fake. I wanted so badly to believe.
    The fun outings with James ended abruptly. One visit, he was cool and fun. But the next time, he’d done a total 180. Something in the army must have messed him up. He spent his next couple of visitsdrunk and acting crazy. He thought nothing of walking past Gary or me and grabbing a sandwich right out of our hands. We knew better than to ask for it back. One day, James stormed past both of us and into the backyard, picking every single orange off half a dozen orange trees. He carried them back in the house in a laundry basket and slammed the door. As he passed by us, he looked down at the oranges and said, “If you touch any of these, I will kick your ass.” He definitely wasn’t joking. Then he went upstairs to his room.
    Gary and I said nothing. We just stared at the TV in silence, hoping not to antagonize him anymore.
    I still don’t know what that was about. But James never mellowed much as far as I could tell. I heard he was in and out of prison for drugs and robbery, and we didn’t see him for long stretches of time.
    But compared to psycho Uncle G. W., half brother James was a pussycat. G. W. was married to my older sister, Mercedes. When I was five years old and she was twenty, she and G. W. lived two houses away from us with Derrick, their eighteen-month-old son.
    One afternoon, Merc was watching me and Derrick while my parents were off at work. She was sitting at the kitchen table. Derrick and I were goofing off on the floor. It was a day like many others until her badass husband came roaring through the door. He had a gun in his hand, and he was seething about something.
    I don’t know what set him off this time. With G. W., it could have been anything. The sound of kids laughing could make him furious. He could fly into a rage at the mailman for delivering a court order or unexpected bill. He got physical with my father once. Another time, my mom pulled a gun on him. He even took a knife to himself after my sister threatened to divorce him. When I was visiting Merc and Derrick, I always tiptoed around G. W.
    Looking back, someone might have asked, “How could your parents leave you at Mercedes’s house with G. W. around?” But they were family, and I don’t think anyone ever gave it a second thought.
    What I know for certain—what I saw with my own five-year-old eyes—was G. W. marching into the kitchen that day, raging at Merc, and opening fire with a handgun.
    Bang.
    Bang.
    Bang.
    Bang.
    Bang.
    It was five quick shots from a distance of two or three feet, all of them raining down on my sister. I’d heard fireworks before. I’d played cops and robbers. I’d faked dying. This was nothing like any of that. That gunfire was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.
    Mercedes didn’t scream. She didn’t say much of anything. She just let out a tiny whimper and slumped to the kitchen floor. Purplish, red blood was pouring from her head and shoulders. The blood settled in a pool beneath her on the linoleum floor.
    I didn’t have time to think. I looked at Merc. I looked at her crazy husband. I scooped up little Derrick. I sprinted for the bathroom and locked the door.
    My heart was pounding like a bongo. I crouched beside the tub, shivering and crying with Derrick in my arms.
    I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to expect. Would G. W. come flying through the bathroom door? Were Derrick and I next?
    G. W., bully-coward that he was, must have split immediately, leaving his son and nephew huddled in mortal fear and his helpless wife dying on the kitchen floor. Soon I heard sirens. Then cops and paramedics came rushing into the house, clearly uncertain about what