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C H APTER 6 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 The Brass Knucks in Mama's Dresser ALONG ABOUT THAT SAME TIME W HEN WE WERE UVING IN THE H OUSE ON Detroit Street in Nederland, I was awakened late one night by the soW1d ofa grown man crying. The soW1ds weren't soft, and they weren't expressions from someone who'd only had his feelings hurt. The sobs were loud, they were full of pain, and they had blood in them. When I got to the scene, I could see that the crying was being done by my father's first cousin Ernest Duff, and he was holding out one hand toward my mother who was studying his thumb which looked like it had been chewed. It had been. And that had happened in a bar fight, I learned later, with a man who had gotten Ernest's hand in his mouth and really leaned into the job of chewing what was available to him. Ernest was a famous brawler, but this fight had gone agairut him, and he had come to our house drunk and wOW1ded in the middle of the night because my mother's skill as a fonner nursing student drew him. I don't know how competent Dorothy Duff really was as a first-aid practitioner, but like all the characteristics reputed to belong to members of the Dufffamily, her reputation was mythic. Anything possessed by anylxxly named Duffor connected to the Duffs took on ptoportions of importance and merit beyond that of what other mortals might claim. All the Duffs said it did, particularly my father, so it had to be true. We were all conditioned to believe the lies we told about ourselves to each other and to anybody else who'd listen, and believing those lies made them true. It had to be that way. All we really owned and claimed was not materiaL Others had scuff. The Duffs had stories about stuff. Ernest was weeping at full bay, my mother was trying to stop the bleeding and figure out whether her cousin by marriage simply had to go to a doctor or if he could get away without doing so, and my father was asking a series of questions designed to wring every detail ofthe event out of Ernest. I was scared, 26 THE BRASS KNUCKS IN MAMA'S DRESSER 27 horrified, tingling all over, and fascinated by what was before me and what had led to all that blood and bone visible in our living room in the middle of the night. No one would pay any attention to me, no matter how loud I cried and pulled at my mother and father, and I couldn't make them realize I believed I was the real victim here, the one most wotmded and in need offirst aid. No one listened, though, and it was finally decided that Ernest shouldn't go to the doctor but depend instead on the antiseptic my mother JXlured over his thumb and the gauze bandage she wrapped arotmd it. "Go to the doctor, Ernest," she said. "You've got to do it tomorrow. He's going to need to sew it up." "I can't, Dorothy," Ernest said. "I used brass knucks on the son ofa bitch, and they'll stick you in the pen for that in Texas." "What are brass knucksr' I asked, pulling at my mother's nightgown and knowing what Ernest had just said was the most interesting element that had JXlpped up so far from the bloody scene before me. "Tell me what brass knucks are." "Shut up, Gerald," my father said. "When did you use them, Ernest? Before he bit your' "No, hell, Willie," Ernest said between yowls. "If I'd got to do that, he wouldn't have had the chance to bite me nor nothing else." "What are brass knucksr' I said. "Tell me about the brass knucks." "Here," my grown, bloody, and bitten cousin said, reaching with his tmchewed hand into his pocket. "Here's the brass knucks. Run hide them in a dresser drawer, Gerald, or a chifforobe." "No, he won't," my mother said, taking whatever it was Ernest was holding toward me. "I'll take care of this. Willie, take Gerald back to his bed." "No," Iscreamed, risking physical ptmishment myself, "Ernest wants me to do it. I can hide the brass knucks all by myself." I wasn't allowed to do that, of course, but I...

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