“Billy Hamas”
By Mort Laitner
Billy Hamas was my cross to bear. He was a major thorn in my butt. Not a small prickly rose bush thorn but a butcher-knife sized agave spike.
Ever since he moved into the neighborhood, he tried to make my life miserable and sometimes he succeeded.
He placed broken Coke bottle shards on my stoop, knowing I walked barefoot to retrieve the Daily News. As I pulled three slivers of glass from the soles of my feet, I cursed him and swore revenge.
But he continued to scream filthy words at my family as they walked down the boulevard.
He continued peeing in my flower bed and uprooting my carrots.
Then on the Fourth, he shot bottle rockets at my sister—aiming for her eyes.
I warned him on many occasions, “Billy, you gotta stop messing with me. You’re pushing my buttons way too hard. I’m much bigger then you. I can break you into little pieces. I’m smarter than you’ll ever be. My switch blade is longer and sharper than your puny stiletto. Don’t mess with me or my family or you’ll end up in the hospital.”
Billy sneered his disrespect. But he dared not talk or look me in the eyes. The last time he did, I broke his nose.
Now I hiked the snaking path up this Oregon mountain, wondering if Billy was alive. I remembered the wails of the police cars as they raced toward his body. How the officers jumped out of their squad cars with guns drawn. Pivoting in all directions, looking for a perp. As one cop examined Billy’s body, the other radioed for the paramedics.
From the rooftop I heard the ambulance arrive. I dared not look to see if his head would be covered by a white sheet.
I wiped his blood off my blade and onto my blue jeans. The same pair of pants I wore as I drove across the country.
I headed up toward Rattler Butte, as Douglas firs stood at attention by my side.
I observed white mushrooms growing out of the trunks of the fallen. These dead trees reached across the forrest like witches’ fingers covered in dripping velvet moss.
As I watched as sunlight break through the tree-lined canopy, a leaf fluttered to the forest floor. In that instance, I knew that my blade had stopped the beating of Billy’s sneering heart.
My burden had been lifted. My thorn surgically removed.
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> http://www.amazon.com/A-Hebraic-Obsession-Mort-Laitner/dp/0996036903
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August 17, 2014 • 8:37 am
Hi, Mort. Oh, I’m not sure what to say. I understand the impulse, and the way you’ve transposed the conflict here is notable. I just wish there didn’t have to be such violence in this post.
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About Erika Dreifus
Erika Dreifus is the author of Quiet Americans: Stories (Last Light Studio), which is an ALA Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for outstanding Jewish literature. Quiet Americans was also named a Notable Book (The Jewish Journal) and a Top Small-Press Book (Shelf Unbound). Erika is a contributing editor for Fiction Writers Review and an advisory board member for J Journal: New Writing on Justice, and she wrote the section on “Choosing a Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing” for the second edition of Tom Kealey’s Creative Writing MFA Handbook (Continuum, 2008). Erika is also the editor/publisher of The Practicing Writer, a free (and popular) e-newsletter featuring advice, opportunities, and resources on the craft and business of writing for fictionists, poets, and writers of creative nonfiction.
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Quiet Americans – Stories by Erika Dreifus
A high-ranking Nazi’s wife and a Jewish doctor in prewar Berlin. A Jewish immigrant soldier and the German POWs he is assigned to supervise. A refugee returning to Europe for the first time just as terrorists massacre Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A son of survivors and the family secrets modern technology may reveal. These are some of the characters and conflicts that emerge in Quiet Americans, in stories that reframe familiar questions about what is right and wrong, remembered and repressed, resolved and unending. Portions of the proceeds from sales of Quiet Americans are being donated to The Blue Card. Quiet Americans has been named a 2012 Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title (American Library Association) and recognized as a “Notable Book” (The Jewish Journal) and “Top Book” (Shelf Unbound).
