I preface this story with a pertinent excerpt from “Tommy” Chapter 5:

“The water was still hot, so I made myself a cup. Spied the .38 again, but left it be. The mere thought of holding the damn thing was too much. I’d been cured of guns during a run-in with my father’s 20 gauge shotgun when I was fifteen. But that’s another story for another time.”

Brookpark, Ohio. 1970. Another time.

Saturday afternoon.

I was watching TV in my bedroom. I saw rapid movement in the hallway outside my door. The old man had flashed by and into my parent’s bedroom. The old man never moved fast. Ever.

“Uh, oh.”

The night before I’d gotten the old man’s shotgun out of their bedroom, loaded it, stuck it out the side door, and blasted it into the night toward the backyard. My parents had gone out for the evening. My older brother was at his girlfriend’s house.

Not satisfied, I kicked out the empty shell, reloaded, and fired forth a mirror image of that charter blast. Sated I jockeyed up the street and dumped both shell casings into the storm drain, then went back to the house. The neighborhood was as quiet as before I blasted it.

He came out of their bedroom with his snout pressed against the barrel of that shotgun.

I almost made it past him, but, alas he caught me going by as he handed the shotgun off to mother. Held me tight while he whistled the loops on his drab olive-colored work pants. He’d just returned home from Midland-Ross and a cherished time-and-a-half Saturday. Doubled that leather belt and went to work. It was a miracle he didn’t use the buckle end.

Somehow, someway I broke away and made it out the front screen door. He was over 50, but, that old man would not give up the chase that afternoon. We lived at the end of the block, so I headed the other way. Everybody knew me. I was their paper-boy, Cully-boy Castleberry.

“Stay off the lawn, boy.”

“Quit cutting over my grass, boy.”

“Hi, Cully-boy. And here’s an extra dollar, sweetheart.”

I could not lose that old man. Five pm, everybody was getting home from their time-and-a-half Saturday at the Ford plant.

Now? You’d see a man chasing a child with a leather belt and you’d step in. Not fifty-years-ago. They stood on their front porch stoops and watched the spectacle.

I finally gave up and took station on the sidewalk side of a ‘65 Ford Falcon, that light blue color I detested. He chased me round and round that Falcon, but, now I had the advantage.

“Get home.” Over the top of the Ford.

“No.”

“I won’t hit you anymore, boy.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”