Uncle Wrath disappeared at some point. Or he was always gone, just slammed the ground of Milwaukee every now and then like lightning, and with him came his storm. The crew Uncle Wrath led was legendary. They were not the Sons of the Devil, they were the Princes. They were a new thing that none of Milwaukee had ever seen before.
It started around that kitchen table I would guess. Stone, Hard, Cousin Grin. The hardest crew Uncle Wrath knew. And my guess was that he envied that brotherhood every day. It was not difficult for him to take the step he took. He wanted it now. Not later. No brothers his age. Uncle Ball was barely an itch at the time. No cousins in town. Everyone in that house could trace their tracks back to West Virginia. Uncle Wrath only had the neighborhood kids.
At some point there was a pact. Sly, Giant, Wrath, Bobo, Billa Bong, and of course Bramble. There were others, but I was too young, and I’m way too damn old to remember all of them now. Hell. They turned everything they walked into to Hell. When Wrath’s crew entered a room, they took it over. If you haven’t seen it happen or been a part of it, then you can’t really understand, but I’ll try.
First guy in the room looks left. Second guy walks straight forward. Third guy is glancing to the right. The fourth is headed to a seat he has already picked out. Five and six back one and three, and every one of them flows. They just pour over everything. As soon as this crew moves into the bar, the schoolyard, the street fight, everyone takes notice. They are here, and everything has just changed. The temperature in the room just shot up ten degrees. The bartender is bracing himself against the bar and scanning the floor. I’m not sure there were many bouncers back then, but I might have that wrong. Fuck, I didn’t live there. I walked those streets after the Princes had split off, after the hot footprints of Uncle Wrath’s crew had cooled, and all that remained was the charred bootprints and the sense that something had passed through.
Then Bobo died.
I’m foggy on the details. I know it was a knife. I know it was ugly. I know that no one ever talked about it, except my mother one night when our house was hunkered under an inch-thick sheet of ice and a gentle yellow glow was radiating off a rarely used oil lamp.
She looked broken when she told the story. Years had either softened her telling or years had exaggerated it. I cannot ever know. No one who was there that night will talk about Bobo’s death. Only that it could have been any one of them. But it was him. And it changed Uncle Wrath.
He joined the military. Army. Learned to shoot, served his country. But more than that he escaped the heat of the streets and Bobo’s blood streaming on the sidewalk. He went from somewhere deadly to somewhere dangerous. Such is the way with the heart of Wrath.
This day, the lightning had struck and he was on leave. I remember picking him up at the airport. Rose had agreed to drive him and he was standing next to a massive green lump with straps, with his kill-them-all grin and the wheezy giggle he was known for.
“Go ahead, Jesse, carry my bag. You’re a strong guy, right? A tough guy?” He patted my tummy. “You can eat like a man, you can carry a man’s bag. So pick it up.”
I was five. That bag was filled with at least sixty pounds of gear. So let’s say I threw it over my shoulder and headed to the car with a cigar in my mouth and a grin. “You ladies coming?” No. I struggled and growled and got nowhere. He hoisted me in one arm, used the other to toss his bag over his shoulder, and off we went.
That night we were at Grandpa Stone’s house. He had a whiskey and a cigarette. Grandma, a cigarette and a Screwdriver. On one side of the considerably large kitchen, leaned up against every inch of counter, stood The Princes of Milwaukee. On the other side of the room, on the big counters, there sat Uncle Ball’s crew.
This is the first time I remember seeing my uncles in the same spot. They likely had been before, but I was too young to remember. Wrath looked at the young high schoolers and grinned.
“Hey Ball,” Uncle Wrath said. “Hi.” He waved with a grin.
“Fuck you, Wrath.” Grandpa barked. “Get yourself under control.”
“Daddy, can I get you anything?” Rose said as she moved through the crowd. She brushed her backside across Bramble’s body as she moved over to kiss her dad on the cheek.
“Got it all right here, sweetie, thanks. Think you might be able to keep these boys from ripping my house to shit tonight?”
“Well Daddy, I can say with one side of the room you are pretty safe. They are harmless, but this other side I’m not even sure I can keep them in line.”
Giant whispered to Bramble, who shook his head with a grin and Rose noticed. She swam through the sexual tension growing between her and Bramble, and she walked up to Giant. “What was that, big guy?”
“Ought to give him a slap,” Bramble said.
The room laughed and Rose pointed her sharp finger at him. “You deserve a slap for what you said, Giant?”
“Not what he said, but surely what he thought,” Uncle Sly said.
Room erupted and Rose looked at Bramble. So much was moving between them that I could not decipher. Far too young, no experience, but Bramble looked Rose in the eye that night and I knew.
“We are not harmless, you know,” Uncle Ball said. I will say that he said it, but it felt like how you heard it when you read it. It felt like a whine.
“Get in a lot of scuffles in that private school, do you, Ball?” Wrath said.
Every kid sitting those big countertops was guilty. Almost Ball’s entire crew went to a Lutheran private school.
“Lot of girls at that school,” Oily said.
“Yeah I bet,” Billa Bong said. The room erupted in laughter, and Uncle Ball’s crew’s heads drooped. All I can remember was Oily and Metal Head and Botch. Botch was huge, powerful, and did not go to a private school. I call him Botch because one day he was bowling and there was a mishap and he lost a finger. It was a botched throw, but it only made him a better player.
Oily was kinda big, not dumb, and covered, absolutely covered in acne. No safe place to put a fingertip on Oily. Metal Head was built like a fly swatter, but he was funny.
“Had to take him out of that public school. They had gangs. Those schools had gangs,” Grandma said. She shooed me away from where I was riding her table and I went over to stand beside Stone.
“Kid couldn’t lift his head up. They were giving him a hell of a time,” Stone said. “Had to get him somewhere he could get work done.”
“Gangs,” Bramble said. “Ball, you okay? Someone fucking with you?”
The room went quiet. I looked over at my hero, the coolest guy I knew. I looked over at Uncle Ball for stories of violence and I stared at the object in his hands.
It was a blade, I knew that. The handle split right down the middle and covered the blade completely. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but now I know its name and reputation. Uncle Ball was holding a butterfly knife. He was pulling it open with both hands and closing it, sheathing and unsheathing the blade.
“Yeah.” Uncle Ball looked at all the Princes. “Yeah, they were really tough guys, too.”
“Niggers,” Grandpa Stone said.
“Yeah, and the Spicks too, and they would chase you down and grab your bag and throw it and pick you up, right off your feet, and dunk your head in the toilet and flush it.”
“Swirly?” Uncle Wrath said.
“Damn it, Ball,” Stone grumbled low.
“And they come right up behind you and reach into the back of your pants and grab your underwear and—”
“Pull it tight, up high, so it nearly cuts the crack of your ass in half?” Giant asked.
“Ball, keep your damn mouth shut.”
“No honey, let him talk. We moved him out of that school for a reason. Let him tell them,” Grandma said.
“Yeah I remember those,” Giant said. “Tough stuff. Sometimes when I would pull the fucker’s underwear up to his shoulders, the hem would rip.”
The room burst into laughter and Grandpa roared.
“God Dammit, Ball! Can’t you shut the fuck up?”
“Bullies?” Wrath said. “They took you out of public school because of bullies?”
Everyone laughed except Ball’s crew, Ball, me and Bramble. Bramble looked Ball in the eyes, and when all of it died down, he said softly over a hushed room, “They come looking for you again, kid, you got my number.”
The room erupted in laughter again. Except Bramble. He was serious. If anyone came looking for Ball, Bramble would stop him. It was the code of the Princes. Uncle Ball flipped his wrist. The handle opened with a snap, blade flew, and blood spurted. The knife flew out of Uncle Ball’s hand and he dropped down from the counter and stepped over it. “Come on guys, my brother is an asshole.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the knife that had flown right past my head and bounced off the wall. Ball and his group walked out. Wrath shook Botch’s hand and Uncle Ball disappeared.
I picked up the knife and it scared the fuck out of me. It gleamed in the hazy smoke laden light of the kitchen. Giant reached over and took it carefully out of my hand.
“Better give that to me, champ.” Giant locked it closed and tossed it across the room. Billa Bong snapped it out of the air. The steel gleamed and flashed as that butterfly knife danced in his hand. Blade out, blade back in. Gleaming flashes. Blade gone. Billa Bong stepped up and set the knife in front of Stone.
“Here you go, sir. I know it’s safe with you,” Billa Bong said.
“Just keep the fucking thing,” Grandpa Stone snapped. He drew on his whiskey, and his cigarette, and he shook his head. “Fuck.”
Billa Bong handed the blade over to Giant silently. See, Billa already had one. But the Princes all knew Giant didn’t. They just knew stuff like that. It wasn’t long before Bramble was hugging my mother and whispering in her ear. She giggled and looked at him, biting her lip, and nodded.
“Uh, huh,” she said.
“That’s my little girl, you short little shit,” Stone snapped. He chuckled, looked up at Bramble and nodded. Bramble and the rest of the Princes left to the sound of thunder, leaving Rose with her hands locked behind her back, hopping on the balls of her feet. And me wondering where Uncle Ball had slunk off to.
Jesse Teller 
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