Maybe I'll finish the story...one of these days. - MM
The cigar shop, the coffee shop, and the butcher shop were three of the places The Kid visited most often. Every now and then one of his uncles would send him to an old-man bar or a social club, though only during the daytime. Uncle Paul was adamant about that.
"You don't need to be hanging around those places at night," he'd tell him. "That's when things get too wild."
One afternoon, Uncle Paul told him to meet him after school at a particular social club a few blocks away. The Kid figured he was being sent to pick up an envelope or deliver a message. It was no different than any of the other errands he ran.
He arrived a little earlier than expected.
The main room was nearly empty. Not seeing Uncle Paul anywhere, he wandered toward the banquet rooms in the back. Voices drifted from one of them. One voice sounded familiar.
Uncle Paul.
And he sounded angry.
The Kid followed the noise and stepped through the doorway.
Then he froze.
Uncle Paul and another man were beating someone bloody.
For a moment, he couldn't process what he was seeing. The man was already battered, his face swollen and red. Blood stained his shirt. He tried to speak, but his words came out as little more than wet, desperate sounds through broken teeth.
"Stay right there, Kid!" Uncle Paul barked.
The Kid obeyed instantly.
Not that he could have moved if he'd wanted to.
His legs felt rooted to the floor.
He had never heard Uncle Paul yell like that. More importantly, he had never seen him hit anyone before. Yet here he was, watching the man he knew as a smiling uncle drive his fist into another man's face again and again.
The man collapsed.
They kicked him.
Pulled him back to his feet.
Then started over.
It continued for only a few minutes, but to The Kid it felt much longer.
Finally, Uncle Paul stepped back and wiped his hands.
"Take care of this babbo," he told the other man. "I gotta talk to The Kid."
He walked toward him slowly, breathing a little harder from the effort.
The Kid's lower lip trembled.
"Uncle Paul, what did he..."
"Don't worry about it, Kid," Uncle Paul interrupted. "This doesn't involve you."
He gently turned him around and guided him toward the door.
"Sometimes stupid people get too big for their britches. They forget they've got responsibilities. That's all this was."
As they reached the doorway, Uncle Paul glanced back at the crumpled figure on the floor.
"Just a reminder," he said.
Then he raised his voice.
"A reminder not to be A FUCKING BABBO!"
The beaten man flinched.
Uncle Paul led The Kid into the main room and bought him a soda.
"I'm sorry you saw that," he said after a while. "You weren't supposed to."
To his credit, he sounded genuinely apologetic.
"It's just... sometimes I gotta do things like that. I don't like to."
The Kid wasn't entirely convinced.
"But sometimes it's how it has to be."
They sat quietly in a booth while The Kid worked on his soda.
After a few minutes, Uncle Paul reached into the breast pocket of his brown leather car coat and pulled out an envelope.
"I need you to take this down to the butcher."
The Kid nodded.
He knew the routine.
By then, running envelopes had become part of his weekly life. Some mornings one of his uncles would drive him to school. During the ride he'd learn which errand needed handled that day. Sometimes he arrived at school with an envelope tucked inside his book bag.
Once, another kid tried to steal that book bag.
The Kid got it back.
Later, he mentioned the incident to Uncle Paul.
Not long afterward, the other kid's father ended up in the hospital.
A few weeks later, the family moved and the kid transferred schools.
Nobody ever explained why.
The Kid never asked.
By now he understood that the envelopes mattered, even if nobody told him what was inside them.
Watching a grown man get beaten nearly senseless by Uncle Paul and another man had not answered the question.
But it had given him a much better idea.
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