MANSFIELD: New Year Off with a Bang

By Mansfield Frazier

The title of this piece is admittedly a bad pun, considering the fact a five-year-old child and an upstanding, righteous man on his way to work were among those recently killed in Cleveland as the New Year begins. But the sad fact is… we had better brace ourselves for more news articles regarding senseless killings as the year progresses.

Violence in this country is as American as apple pie, and there’s little chance of simply “policing” our way out of another high body count by year’s end. We simply have to engage in the commonsense programs such as Promise Neighborhoods, which offer the best chance of putting youth on a positive path in life from birth. Otherwise they’re going to be lost to a culture of violence many only see in movies, video games, and on TV.

But make no mistake, the world of violence they’ll eventually get caught up in is very real … I know firsthand because I was almost caught up in it myself during my late teen years.

I was virtually raised in the beer tavern my father owned that we lived upstairs over in the old Central neighborhood, so, from a very early age I enjoyed nothing better than being behind the bar pestering him with the millions of questions an inquisitive small child asks — and he enjoyed nothing better than answering them as best he could. In retrospect, I now know that when he didn’t know the correct answer, he made something up.

But the beer joint he ran could (and often did) turn violent at the drop of a hat when a couple of inebriated patrons didn’t, as my father demanded, “take it outside!” Occasionally, he would have to go around the bar and physically separate the would-be combatants … something he was fairly good at. Looking back, I think it was how he got his exercise.

When I was about 19, I stopped into the tavern one day after getting off work just to chat, something I did on a regular basis. As he was complaining about the Cleveland Indians (a team he dearly loved) becoming no more than a farm team for the hated Yankees, a fracas broke out between two women, something that was not all that uncommon.

Big Mary (who lived in the neighborhood and derived her name from the fact she was well over six feet tall and had shoulders as broad as any first-round draft pick linebacker) was at it again. She was a bully who, as the saying goes, “went for bad.” She always carried a knife and after a few drinks would just as likely try to jump on a man as she would a woman. But in this case it was a woman half her size that she, knife in hand, was menacing.

When Big Mary refused to “take it outside” as my father admonished and lunged at the petrified patron with the knife, my father went around from behind the bar to break up the nascent altercation, which I felt he’d already let go too far anyway. In fact, she should have been “eighty-sixed” long ago, but my father rarely took the step of barring someone out of his establishment, no matter how bad their behavior.

As he got between the two women, Big Mary tried to reach around my father to again lunge with the knife, but this time she stabbed my father in his lower abdomen. “Bitch, you stabbed me!” my father yelled grabbing his side, blood beginning to stain his white bartender’s apron.

Grabbing the big .45 caliber automatic pistol from where it always sat next to the cash register, I vaulted over the bar and grabbed Big Mary’s shoulder from behind, spinning her around to get her away from my father, whom she was again moving towards. She then raised the knife intent on stabbing me, but I sidestepped her and smashed the butt of the heavy gun upside her head. I recall she had this completely startled look in her eyes.

Now, I’d been in the usual tussles all kids growing up in just about any neighborhood are prone to engage in … but had never been in anything like this; this woman was intent on hurting — if not killing — me.

Big Mary quickly regained her footing and came back at me with the knife again, and I again crushed the butt of the gun into the side of her head, this time with all my might, causing her knees to buckle. I then struck her again, and she turned and began stumbling for the door.

I wish I could say that I was in a blind rage due to this woman stabbing my father and attempting to stab me, but the honest fact is, I wasn’t. I made a cold, calculated decision at that point, that, to this day I don’t regret, in spite of the internal consequences of it.

Knowing that I didn’t want to have to always watch over my shoulder, looking out to make sure Big Mary wasn’t sneaking up behind me to seek retribution, I followed her outside and as she attempted to regain her balance I came up behind her and smashed her head with the pistol once again; she crumpled to the ground and attempted to crawl away. But I wasn’t having it. I viciously kicked her in the side and she rolled over, covering her head with her arms, the switchblade now lying beside her. I kicked it into the gutter … and then kicked her again.

Some of the regular patrons — people I’d known all of my life — began spilling out of the tavern, some with a sense of blood lust, but two or three of them attempting to intercede and stop the beating I was coolly administering. When they got too close I raised the automatic up, almost placing the barrel of it against the forehead of Jimmy, the man closest to me, and spat, “Get back, or I’ll blow your motherfucking brains out!”

You can actually hear the sound of ribs breaking, that is, if you’re close enough. As I methodically walked around the woman’s now cowering body, looking for the best place for the toe of my work boot to do its most damage, my goal wasn’t to just break her ribs … my goal was to break Big Mary. I was determined to kick all of the bully out of this person, so that she would never again dare to menace anyone, let alone raise a hand to my father or me. And after a few more well placed kicks and stomps I succeeded. Her breathing was becoming shallower and shallower.

Only when Henry Buchanan screamed, “Man, go see about your father!” did I stop my brutal work and go back into the tavern.

It only took a few stitches to close the wound in my father’s side, but I would carry the psychic wound from the incident with me forever … yet I still have no regrets for my actions that day. I’d learned something valuable (albeit ugly, but nonetheless valuable) about myself; I had inflicted severe pain on another human being as dispassionately as a butcher would slaughter a hog. And there was no rage inside of me to blame my brutality on, to exculpate or mitigate my actions. My heart was stone cold … but such a sense of complete and utter satisfaction spread through my body that I instantly knew I should have been deeply ashamed of such a feeling. But I wasn’t, it would be years before I would come to terms with that dark side of my psyche.

Calmly walking back inside the tavern, I knew then what horrible deeds I was capable of committing, and also knew at that moment I would never — as my father had been planning for me all of my life — one day take over and run the family business.

While we were so much alike in so many ways, I knew then I didn’t have the compassion, tolerance and forgiveness that my father had for the sometimes aberrant and brutal behavior of the denizens who patronized Kings Tavern and Grill. I knew then, that, if given the right set of circumstances, I would one day kill someone.

From that point forward a secret part of my internal thought processes were spent guarding against that monster (that I then knew, by virtue of my actions, in no uncertain terms dwelled within me) ever again escaping. I became wary, very careful of any confrontation that might turn towards the physical, afraid of what I might do. And thanks be to God I’ve been successful; I’ve never visited that dark place again.

When the meat wagon (as EMS was called back in the day) came to scrape Big Mary up off the sidewalk of course the story was “she stumbled out of the tavern drunk and must have slipped and fell.” She spent about two weeks in the hospital and was only spotted around the ‘hood for another two weeks, sulking about in the shadows like a specter, before completely disappearing.

Yes, I had rid the neighborhood of a bully, a monster; but, in turn, due to the brutal way in which I had methodically went about it, people began to look at me askance — as if I were the new monster in the neighborhood. And … perhaps I was.

 

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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One Response to “MANSFIELD: New Year Off with a Bang”

  1. Peanuts

    You should have given her a warning shot in the left leg and told her to get the f*ck out

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