Richard Atkinson - The Life Crimes and Hard Times of Ricky Atkinson, Leader of the Dirty Tricks Gang: A True Story

The first memory is crime followed swiftly by punishment. I was four years old. It was my birthday and I wanted cake and a celebration. A light-skinned kid lived a few doors away. His name was Gaylord Baldwin and it was his birthday, too. The party for both of us was at his house. At the time there was a commercial jingle for a Gaylord the Dog pull toy: Gaylord, he looks kind of crazy, moves kind of lazy.

I sang that jingle to tease Gaylord and he punched me, so I threw one of my shoes in his direction. I missed him with the shoe but I broke a window in his house. My mother saw the shoe fly onto the street and came out to see what was up. I got a spanking right there, from my mother, on the street. I didnt care. My first lesson was that theres a reward in not caring about punishment when youre fighting back.

Happy birthday.

Another memory from that time is one I carry with me every day. There was a hot comb on the stove, glowing red I guess someone was planning to straighten their hair. That happened all the time in a house that was home to so many aunts and uncles and cousins. You rubbed straightening cream into the hair and then pulled the hot comb through it hissing and stinking but giving that long, pretty, white folks kind of hair desired by many non-whites then and now.

My younger brother Dwane took the comb by the wooden handle and laid the hot metal on my hand. Sizzle, howl! I dont have to try very hard to remember the smell of my burning skin. I threw the comb back at him and it hit his bare chest, sticking there for an instant. Also sizzle, also howl.

My mother said, Look at you two, burning each other up. You better learn to get along because you will be sharing this house until your sixteen. Come and put this ointment on your burns. I learn the lesson of getting along with my brother every time I look at that faded scar on the back of my hand.

These are just the first of the memories that linger. Not long afterwards, with my hand still bandaged, we gathered in the backyard getting ready for Thanksgiving.

We were a big mixed-race clan, black, native and white, from Nova Scotia. Five uncles, nine aunts, and all us kids, including my older brother, Danny, and the younger ones, Dwane and Russell, plus little sister, Brenda. I had forty-five cousins, some in the yard that day. My second cousin Junior MacDonald and his mother came because they were close to us.

It was turkey-killing day. With so many of us to feed, we had three turkeys, live ones because it was cheaper than buying them killed and gutted from the market. My father, Sonny, beheaded them himself, and my brothers and I helped. It was his way of teaching us about life.

Sonny laid the neck of the first bird on the chopping block while Dwane held its body firmly in place. Down came the axe, thud; up rose the headless bird with hot blood spurting from its neck, flapping its dead wings furiously and flying sightlessly but straight at me.

I hid behind my uncle Biggy until the bird landed, spun around and finally died on the grass.

Next, said Sonny.

He meant the next bird and he meant me.

Meanwhile my grandmother, Edith, sat in the background, nodding her approval, trying to hurry things along so she and the others could get the birds gutted and plucked. Edith, of Mikmaq/black blood, was the matriarch of the clan and the one who did the cooking. My grandfather was nowhere in sight. He was out on the streets, forbidden to come to the house because he was drunk all the time and wouldnt leave the girls alone, including his teenage daughters and their friends.

Come on, said Sonny. Cant wait all day.

This was downtown, in Toronto, in the Fifties. We were country people, black and native, killing turkeys and doing whatever else we did, in large numbers, right there in the heart of town.

I dont know what the neighbours thought, but the business of meat and blood was not new to me. Id seen Sonny skin the rabbits he shot in Mississauga so that wed have food on the table, just as Id watched him crack a pigs head with a hammer so that the women could make headcheese.

Even so, I was afraid because this was the death of a living thing.

Get over here, Ricky. Help me with this bird, my father ordered. I froze. I aint going to ask you again, get your little butt over here.

Shakily, I crept over to the chopping block. My father grabbed my hand and forced it firmly on the turkeys chest. The bird fluttered I could feel its heart beating. My father smiled and I smiled back nervously, knowing that the smile on his face was really a smirk. Then swoosh the birds head flew off. Its heart seemed to jump against my palm, wings flapping madly. I tore my hand from my fathers and jumped back, racing across the yard to hide behind Uncle Biggy. Kids and women were shrieking when the bird fluttered their way, until it collapsed and died. I looked at my hand to see if it was bloodstained. It wasnt and I relaxed a bit.

Once the last bird was beheaded, we were sent out to play in the park close by the station where the streetcars turned around. Five minutes later, a car pulled in. I guess the driver thought we were too close to the tracks. Hey, you little half-breeds, get out of here.

Half-breeds?

We ran home and told Sonny what the driver had said. My father picked up his axe, still red with blood, and hurried out the laneway to the park with a hard look in his eye.

No one ever messed with my father. If you were talking shit, hed smack you, adult or child, as simple as that. Anyone calling us half-breeds was clearly talking shit.

The driver of that streetcar had no idea how lucky he was that hed caught the light and was too far away to chase. I remember looking around then and seeing my grandfather sitting on the sidewalk by the liquor store, drunk as usual.

Happy Thanksgiving.

And then there were the killings that were averted.

Dwane was four years old and I was five. We were playing William Tell in the backyard, not with a bow and arrow, but with my fathers .38 calibre revolver.

Dwane stood there with an apple on his head while I took aim. I was William Tell, Robin Hood and John Dillinger all at once. The gun was big and full of bullets, far too heavy in my hand.

I had taken it from my fathers dresser drawer. My mother hadnt seen me do it, and I didnt know that what I was doing was wrong. One thing I did know was that pulling the trigger was not supposed to be hard. It was supposed to be easy, just like in the movies.

I told you it wasnt real, said Dwane, who finally tired of standing still. The apple rolled off his head but I was not going to give up. I slapped the gun against my thigh, bent over and banged it hard against the ground. I fiddled with it and I fumed. Then all the banging somehow freed the safety and the cylinder clicked easily as I turned it. Almost intuitively, I knew that the bullet in the chamber was ready to be fired.

I told my brother to take up his position against the wall and once again he balanced the apple on top of his head. Dont move. I dont want to miss. I raised the gun carefully and took aim. I could feel the trigger begin to move beneath my finger, and

Ricky!

My mothers voice, urgent, louder than I had ever heard it before. I turned to see her looking at us through the open kitchen window. There was something wrong about the way she called my name. I froze. The gun fell at my feet and once again the apple rolled off my brothers head.

Mother came running out the back door and raced toward me. I put up my arms and tried to stop her, but she slapped me hard across the face with a hand still soapy and wet with dishwater. I was crying as she picked up the gun, wrapping it in her apron, before any of the neighbours could see what had just happened.