I had not yet found a new job by the next Saturday night, when the A&P’s office phone rang. Gene picked it, listened and asked only one question before hanging up. He called out to me at the registers, “Marlow, clock out and go home. NOW! There’s trouble at your place. Ride your motorcyle out the front door.”

Having never power ridden my bike out the front door, I didn’t need any further info. The lizard section of my brain suspected something like this might happen someday. Running back through the produce section I grabbed a machete, slid it under my belt, started the bike and raced it through the store. I side-skidded it hard right and then through the front door that Gene was holding open.

Less than a minute later I was roaring down Cleveland Avenue with my high beams on looking for the creeps who were trying to break into my upstairs apartment front door. It was all that stood between them and my family.

Seeing dark forms on the porch was all I needed to go full apeshit mode. A rush of hot blood rage engulfed and amped me. Downshifting and yanking the handlebars back, I wheelied the bike up onto the porch barely missing them.

They scrambled away and headed to what they thought would be safety inside the fenced cemetery at the end of the street. It would take them a bit, since the iron spiked fence was eight feet tall. So, I wheeled the bike onto the sidewalk attempting to slash them with the machete. Luckily for them the blade clanged harmlessly on the fence.

A couple of them struggled to clamble over when they got caught on the spikes. So I wheeled the bike around the corner to enter the death zone’s main gate. I made for them directly across the grassy areas between the stones. With the grounds quite sodden with snow melt, now and them I bumped a stone or two. As I came upon my quarry, I heard them curse that I was one crazy f*cker. That made me smile and shout something unintelligible and that I was coming to get them. My crazy-assed chase bore no fruit that night other than for them to drop some of their weapons as I shouted death curses at them.

I stopped and left after five minutes of mouth foaming chasing all over the place as they split up, hid and made my night hunt impossible. That and I knew the cops would soon be there. After collecting their stuff that I found, I putted my motorbike back home and slept the sound sleep of the dead after several large belts of cheap bourbon.

The next day, I walked the cemetery to find that I had rutted up the grassy areas pretty bad. Upon returning home, some of my older male neighbors spoke to me about what had happened. I explained and said I knew who they were and I would find them and take care of it.

They counseled othewise. They asked what I planned to do next. I told them that I planned to fix the damage I had done to the graves. Their offers to help were accepted and during the next few hours of landscape repairs, they offered me an alternative solution and job finding assistance.

In exchange for the names or descriptions of those I chased, they would talk to their friends on the police force as well as grocery store managers in South Bend’s sister city of Mishwaka about three mikes East. After several shots of slivovitz I had thought through their offers and agreed.

After talking to a SBPD detective on Monday, I found a job less than three days later for more pay and hours. I never saw those westsider bastards again anywhere on the streets again.

I was tired of fighten’ em all
Even street gang armies couldn’t hold me back
I was gonna kill them off
Took my time chasin’ em thru the graveyard out back

And I was talking to myself in dreams at night
Because I couldn’t forget
Back and forth through my mind
Behind French cigarettes
A message formed in front of my eyes
Said leave them alone

Didn’t want to hear their crap ’bout it
Every single one had a story to tell
Everyone knew about it
From the town mayor to parking lot booze hounds from hell

And if I had caught them on my way
I was gonna kill em all, I’m telling you
But that ain’t what you wanted to hear
But that’s what I planned to do
And the raging feelings coming from my bones
Said kill ’em all before they got into my home

I’m going to Mishawaka
Far from this A&P opera for evermore
I’m gonna work night crew
No more flop sweat dripping out of every pore
No more dreaming and dreaming ’bout bleeding
Right out onto the store floor
All the fear had to leave me
I couldn’t take that fear anymore
And more anger rising in my blood
Told me I couldn’t go back again

West sides hand sign

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