Chapter 2

The next two weeks passed by quickly. I was busy setting up for Christmas, and doing my best to catch up on the business paperwork that I needed to take over to our accountant. Jean had gotten on with a beauty parlor in Groton, and seemed to be be comfortable enough, living at Butch's place, and helping them out with their expenses. All of Uncle Sonny's kids were satisfied with just getting by, financially speaking. They didn't try to save up for their own houses, or put anything away for emergencies. They were nice people, for the most part, but none of them were what I'd call ambitious, or driven by any need to excel. Most of them envied my mother and father's lifestyle, and my parents lived in a subsidized housing project for the working poor. They didn't often ask for anything though, and were always grateful for any help they received. On several occasions Billy or I had put one or more of the kids to work during the summers when they wanted to make some extra money for school clothes or something. Butch was a good, hard worker, but he had quit school in the tenth grade and would always be casual labor at Electric Boat. In a good year, he got in about a thousand hours of work for the company. The hourly rate was pretty high, but half time work isn't ever enough for a man with a wife and a couple of kids. Butch was the best of Uncle Sonny's kids though, in terms of being steady and reliable.

It was a week before Christmas when Sam Crocker drove over to Groton, mad as he could be, and wanting to tear into Jean in the worst way. Sam had just found out that Jean and one of his brothers had been fooling around together during the time that Sam was out on the fishing boat, and his brother had been laid up back in port with a broken arm. Butch was home that day, when Sam came over, and he tried to help pull Sam off of Jean when Sam was slapping her all around right in Butch's living room. Sam turned on Butch and the incident turned into a big brawl, with Diane, Butch's wife, running next door to get a neighbor to call the police to come help Butch. Butch wasn't hurt that bad, more his pride than anything else, but Jean got smacked around pretty good, and she wasn't that big to begin with. I found out about it when my mother called and told me that Jean was staying with her and my father for a few days, until she would be able to go back to work My father went over to New London, but Sam and his brothers had already put out to sea for at least a week of fishing off of the northern banks. My dad then went over to Sam's father's house and told him what he thought of a man who'd beat up a woman, and of a man who raised a man who'd beat up a woman. Sam's father heard him out and didn't offer any challenge, either to my father, or to his words. At fifty two, my father would certainly have been a heavy favorite to whip Sam's dad, but I didn't think he'd have been able to make out very well against Sam. My mother decided that I should be the one to tell my father that he was now too old, and too slowed down by smoking and drink, to be out picking fights with younger, stronger men. I started in trying to explain that to him, but he just stopped me and made an offer to kick my ass, just to show me that my mother and I were both wrong. When I saw the look my mother got in her eyes, I realized that she'd set me up again, and I just backed off, refusing to give her the satisfaction.

Ever since the time I'd gone over to New London, many years before, and whipped my father's ass in a bar over there, my mother had been trying to goad him and I into having a rematch. She loved me, of that I'm positive, but she idolized my father. She somehow got it into her head that he'd have to whip me before all of the family honor would be restored from that earlier incident. She was a little bit crazy about things like that. She was Irish, and the Irish seem to have some pretty strange ways of dealing with father/son relationships, at least where it concerns the oldest son. My father believed, at least until the day before he died, at eighty one, that he was still a big favorite if he and I had another fight. It is a source of some pride to me that I never gave him an opportunity to find out any different.

I knew that it would be better if I handled some things before my father got another chance to actually speak with Sam, and to share with him his low opinion of him. Billy had several friends who fished for a living, and he got in touch with a couple and asked them to pay attention, and let him know when the Crocker's were headed back to port. Billy found out that they were due back on Christmas Eve, and he and I both decided that it could wait until after Christmas for us to pay Sam and his buddies a visit. My father must have had his own fisherman contacts, and not been as sentimental about Christian holidays, because he was down at the dock when Sam and his brothers pulled their boat in to unload and fuel up at the cannery dock. One minute after Sam jumped down on the dock to go see what my father was shouting at him about, Sam was laying stretched out on that dock, unconscious, and with a jaw broken in two places. It happened so quickly that nobody who was present, really saw the fight, or remembered much about who the guy was who floored Sam and then walked away. At Christmas dinner the next day, my father was in a particularly jovial mood, and my mother was beside herself, personally standing by his side and choosing to serve him portions of all the assembled delicacies. Her serving, while the rest of us ate, was nothing new or remarkable. The fact that she served nobody else that day, well that was unheard of.

It was almost a week later before Billy and I found out what my father had done. The word we got was that Sam's jaw was wired closed, and that he was eating his meals with a straw. No one had heard him making any threats about retaliation, so we all thought the incident was closed. I was even willing to forget about the more than three hundred bucks that I had decided Sam owed to me. It probably would have all been forgotten if Jean didn't decide to get even with Sam for his slapping her around, and with his brother, for telling Sam about their little indiscretions. Jean freely admitted having slept with Sam's brother, and insisted that his other brother had been after her too. Jean got herself a jerry can with five gallons of gasoline, and torched the Crocker's boat right at the dock. The boat burned down to the waterline before anyone even knew that it was on fire. Jean had stayed right there to watch the whole thing. She was too drunk to answer any questions that night when they arrested her. She was booked for felony arson and five or six other charges like endangering a commercial dock, and having an open flame too close to a fuel depot. If convicted on all counts, she could have received over twenty years in the women's prison. My mother and father both came down to the jail and started the long process of getting her a lawyer, and having bail set. My father got in to see her and told her not to give any statements to anyone.

"God damn Bunny, you might not know it, but what you did last night might just cost you all of your youth. Arson is a serious crime. People get killed all the time from fires that weren't supposed to hurt anybody. That whole dock could have gone up in flames if the wind had been blowing in. We're getting you a good lawyer, so don't say anything to anyone until you talk with him. You listen to Uncle John now, and just keep that mouth of yours closed. You understand me?" Jean looked at my father and nodded her understanding. "Say nothing to no one, okay?" Again she nodded. An hour before her new lawyer could get in to see her, Jean made a full, written confession, to the two detectives that came over to question her. There wasn't that much anyone could do after that. Mr. Bennett knew people who had some influence here and there, so Jean got as small a sentence as was politically possible, but she still got five years, and wound up serving almost three of them. My parents were the only ones who ever went to visit her during that entire three year period. All of her brothers and sisters were too busy trying to survive with their own families to be able to take a whole Sunday just to drive up and visit with her for an hour or two. When Jean got out of prison, she went right back to her old ways, not having learned anything from her ordeal. There's a lot more to the story though, and I'm getting ahead of myself by telling you about what happened with Jean.

Sam, having lost his fishing boat, and his father, not having had any boat insurance that he could use to replace it with, filed a lawsuit against my father, Billy and I. The lawsuit was for the broken jaw, and for the losses that they had both suffered as a direct result of that injury. They claimed in their suit that Sam would have been on the boat, and out at sea, if he hadn't been laid up with a broken jaw, and thus no damage to the boat would have been possible. They named Billy and I because they were trying to show that the furniture wood business was somehow an asset of my father's, and that Billy and I were conspiring to hide that fact from the Internal Revenue Service as well as any present and future creditor's that my father might have. The whole thing was laughable, except that none of us were laughing. My father had written out a bill of sale for his third of our business venture after our run in over his drinking and expense account, but Billy had somehow misplaced it. It was further complicated because there was a direct link between the furniture wood business and the money that I took over to my mother every month. The attorney that we hired told us that it was possible that we could lose the case and be liable for any damages awarded. It was ridiculous, but even with a best case outcome, it would still cost us several thousand dollars to defend ourselves from their claim.

A week later, unknown to any of us, Butch went over to New London and turned himself in for the assault on Sam Crocker on the Christmas Eve just past. He claimed that he did it out of a motive for revenge for the earlier incident at his place, and that Sam was going after his uncle, only because he had the deeper pockets, and could be forced to pay damages if the Crocker's were successful in their lies. It was a three ring circus for awhile, the Crocker's all claiming that it was my father who broke Sam's jaw, while at the same time, Butch is busy making a deal to plead guilty to the crime of assault in return for simple probation and a fine of one hundred dollars. Butch never spoke with any of us before doing this. He did it all on his own, and out of a sense of family pride. He didn't want anybody to suffer for trying to help out his sister. The plea bargain was accepted, with some background help from Mr. Bennett, just to see that things went according to Butch's agreement. Butch got the probation and fine, and was back working the following day.

Everyone just assumed that the lawsuit would be dropped after that, since someone else had plead guilty to the incident that was the basis for the suit in the first place. Everyone was wrong, because the lawsuit was still going forward. The attorney wanted more money, while telling us in the next breath, that the case was now impossible for the plaintiffs. Billy and I both told him that we'd rather not pay him any more, and just wanted to have him appear with us at the trial for an hourly sum of sixty bucks an hour. He started talking about how much research he'd have to do in order to come into court prepared, and so we just fired him and left. We both figured that we'd get somebody right before the case came to trial and pay a fair price then. That was when we were noticed for depositions, all three of us.

We all had to go over to the Crocker's attorneys office and swear an oath and let their lawyers ask us questions. They had a court stenographer and everything. Billy and I both had it easy. We knew nothing about the assault and both testified, under oath, that my father had no ownership in the company, and that the money we gave to my mother was a voluntary payment made in appreciation for the good will my father had brought to our business during the time that he worked there. We were in and out in less than half an hour each. My father spent two hours being questioned, claiming that he no longer owned any part of the wood furniture business, that he hadn't assaulted Sam Crocker at any time, and claiming to have only met him on one or two occasions when Sam came to some family events accompanied by Jean Murphy, his niece. Sam was there at the deposition, and had to be told repeatedly to quit talking and making statements contradicting my father's deposition. My father enjoyed himself, kept his temper and composure, and felt that he'd made a very credible witness. The lawsuit still proceeded. Just the fact that they kept calendaring through the various stages was a source of concern for Billy and I. My father really had no assets that could be attached, or impounded and sold, but Billy and I both had a lot. Jean was convicted and started serving her sentence. All of us felt bad for her, but she had made a long series of poor choices, and we all felt that maybe this might serve as a wake up call for her to stop, make some necessary changes, and begin to take charge of her life.