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- The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. What they did to him. They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country. The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country.
A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I’d visited him three times – on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died.
“Lanie,” he said, as he sat me down. When he was done, he looked like he’d been brawling with an entire rugby side. “I’ve learned my lesson”. The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs. One of Da’s customers had shopped him.
“There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for”.
When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my peeping poor tweetybird, I put a blender there. I closed my eyes. “There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for”.
- “Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup”. “There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for”. The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country.
“That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything”. It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals – performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters.
He was off his rocker, that much was clear. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car, while a spokesman told the world that my Da’s organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least twenty million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty.
It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape.
“Lanie,” he said, as he sat me down. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way. “You’ve been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten. Years”.
It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape. I’d visited him three times – on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died.
- They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country. One of Da’s customers had shopped him. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
Da.
“You’d risk another ten years to print out more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats? … Wow”. He was off his rocker, that much was clear. “Come here and listen to your stupid Da”. God knew what he went through in prison. I closed my eyes.
- A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car, while a spokesman told the world that my Da’s organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least twenty million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest.
God knew what he went through in prison. By the time I turned eighteen, they were ready to let Da out of prison. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.
One of Da’s customers had shopped him. “I’ve learned my lesson”. “There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for”. The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight.
“I’m not going to print none of that rubbish, never again”. “That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything”. It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape.
When he was done, he looked like he’d been brawling with an entire rugby side. By the time I turned eighteen, they were ready to let Da out of prison. One of Da’s customers had shopped him.
The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
When he was done, he looked like he’d been brawling with an entire rugby side. The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight.
Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed. It was made out of printed parts, so it would only last a month before I’d need to print new bearings and other moving parts. I’d visited him three times – on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died.
- I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it. It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape. He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation.
One of Da’s customers had shopped him.
I closed my eyes. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. He was off his rocker, that much was clear.
I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. “There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for”. “I’ve learned my lesson”.