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6 A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS I woke up suddenly, choking and gasping for breath. My heart was racing and my body was covered with sweat, my pillow and sheets were soaked. I was waking up like this with alarming frequency. I thought about the horrible nightmare, the recurring dream; faceless men coming to kill me. My gun jams, they keep coming, closing in. I run desperately, examining the cylinder of the pistol for bullets, trying to unlock the mechanism so that I can shoot at them and defend myself. It’s no use. I am cornered, with no place to go, so I turn to face my aggressors and fight. I punch out furiously with both fists, but my punches are powerless. It is useless. The terror of the men coming at me and my inability to stop them is frightening. Overcome with emotion, embarrassed by the shame of succumbing to fear, I look at my wife sleeping beside me, hoping that I did not disturb her. She is still sleeping soundly, undisturbed by the terrifying attack. It was real. I know it was real. They were after me, but I was saved. I got away. I made it this time. I looked around the room, trying to focus my eyes. As she sighed in her sleep, Pam interrupted my thoughts and drew my attention to her. I watched as she shrugged her shoulders unconsciously, drew her hands up to her chin, and rolled onto her side. We were as close to each other physically as two people could possibly be, and yet we were so far apart. We were in two completely different worlds. I was at war, and she was at peace. .......................... 10590$ $CH6 03-12-04 13:06:32 PS I stole out of bed and went into the room where my two daughters slept. I stood silently and watched, absorbed in the tranquility surrounding the beautiful babies at rest. They were a heavenly sight. I leaned close, and kissed them both gently. The clean, freshly powdered baby smell and the sweet sound of their breathing in the quiet stillness of their room filled me with wonder and awe. The terrible anxiety brought on by the emotional turmoil of my fight-or-flight encounter evaporated like smoke in the wind. A feeling of inner harmony and serenity took over. The next day, Danny and I attended the funeral of a dead Disciple. Lucky died with his motorcycle boots on, as they say: a heroin overdose. I was working in an undercover capacity, but I actually felt sad for Lucky’s poor-looking and obviously unlucky widowed mother. I was not moved, however, when the Disciples crowded around the earthen rectangle and urinated on Lucky’s freshly covered grave—his final farewell. After departing from the dearly departed, Danny and I bounced around with these motorcycle guys all day long. With so little sleep the night before, I was literally exhausted. We had dropped in and out of the motorcycle club, their girlfriends ’ apartments, and now we were headed for the Last Stop Lounge on Dorchester Avenue, a street that stretched from the gritty, working-class waterfront neighborhood and docks of Southie to the manicured green lawns of Milton, where the Irish on the upswing lived. Dot Ave., as it was called, teemed with thriving families and prosperous small businesses as the steady influx of hard-working Irish immigrants kept streaming in. Sometime in the 1960s, however, things began to change and the triple-deckers and businesses along the avenue fell into disrepair. Other immigrants from Puerto Rico, the Azores, and Vietnam crowded into the area and many white Irish families moved out. The whites sold their triple-deckers at low prices to these new immigrants or to speculators, who converted them to apartments. ‘‘White flight’’ spelled an uncertain future for the neighborhood , and it changed. The whites who could not afford to move out, could not sell their houses, or refused to were left behind to live with the darkerskinned immigrants speaking unfamiliar languages. The poverty of the people was reflected in the ever-increasing broken glass, boarded-up windows, and graffiti that marred the avenue. Harley-Davidsons were lined up next to the trash-strewn sidewalk directly in front of the steel-grated, dilapidated brick building with faint neon beer signs barely visible through the two small windows, thick with dirt and soot, on either side of the heavy front door, which was laden with...

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