Old Pete

Old Pete lived at the bottom of the cinder pile across form Pumpilio’s garage on Huron. He lived in a hot and stuffy six by six, tin roofed shack smelling of dog, body odor, and smoke. His cot, with a moth eaten green wool army blanket hanging to the floor, took up the wall opposite the door. Sitting on the cot, Pete, forever needing a shave, lifted a flap of blanket revealing Trixie in a bed of rags suckling a litter of still blind, snuffling and mewing pups. “You can’t hold one yet,” he said is his wreak of a voice. He dropped the blanket. “Still too young. Maybe next time, after their eyes open.”

The tin plate of stew my mother gave me sat in front of him on a small round wooden barrel next to his butcher knife. He ate the stew with a big spoon he gripped like a hammer. We each had a battered tin cup he got from a medicine cabinet with no door tacked to the wall.

He had poured me water from a ceramic moonshine jug he kept on the floor next to the barrel. He drank coffee he heated on top of a little potbellied stove in the corner. Tin stove pipe ran out and up the side of his shack capped with tin, belching an occasional puff of smoke like a shack in a cartoon. He held his hot tin cup with an old wool sock.

He shoveled his stew in his mouth like there was someone looking over his shoulder. He talked with his mouth full, shoving food back in his mouth with his fingers stained with grime.

“Your, ma’s a good cook. Good woman. You listen to what she tells you. You hear.” I nodded. My seat was a metal milk crate turned on its side with an old towel for a cushion. Between swallows, Pete huffed to get a breath in. “Sure ya do. You listen to your ma. You’re a good boy. She’s learning you right. You’re lucky. You tell’er I said so. Old Pete.” He sopped up the gravy with a chunk of crusty Italian bread, sucking his finger clean one by one. “Old Pete,” he said again, looking off somewhere. “Been a long time. Poor old woman. You’re old man?”

His tone of voice turned colder. It scared me when he got angry. “He don’t hit you none? You tell Old Pete. That weren’t right. Old Pete knows. He knows how t’take care a things, too.” He wiped his mouth with the soiled sleeve of his overcoat, swallowed the rest of his coffee in a gulp.

“You get out of here now. Pete don’t want no more company. You gonna cry now? Go on. Git.” He grabbed his bottle of gin. I got up and hurried out the door. It was almost dark. I ran a little way and stopped to look back. He stood in his doorway gripping his gin by the bottle's neck. In his other hand was the tin plate. “Think this is?” he yelled. He pointed at me with the gin. “Git.” He threw the tin plate after me. "Think I got time t'mess with the likes a you?"

This was before the Old Polack hit him in the head with the baseball bat and he turned mean.