Uncle Mack
I was born a fighter. I fought the devil the day I was born. He wrapped the umbilical cord around my neck and tried to strangle me on my way out, but as luck would have it he couldn’t finish the job. I lived but couldn’t breathe on my own for a bit, but I came out mostly ok. Sure my hands and joints are tight and I have a slight shake or twitch whatever you want to call it, but hell I am alive.
I grew up in a normal middle class working family, everyone had enough to eat and had clothes on their backs. Life was good, but the trials of boyhood and the journey to becoming a man is fraught with perils. My tremor as the doctors called it, made me an easy target for the neighborhood punks. They viewed me as weak and displayed their dominance in the social hierarchy by beating me to a pulp on a routine basis. One day when I was about twelve or thirteen I had had enough and when a large bully stepped in to smack me around I surprised him with a kick to the nuts. He went down and went down hard. Once he hit the ground I made sure he wouldn’t get up. I launched myself on top of him and pummeled him in front of everyone until his shocked friends yanked me off of him. He was bloodied and crying and I was too, but he appeared the worse for the wear. I would love to tell you it all got better after that because I fought one bully off, but it didn’t. He got pissed and swore revenge and we fought several more times, sometimes he would beat me badly and other times I got the best of him. But it was through these fights that I learned I had a knack for fighting. This particular bully eventually figured I wasn’t worth it anymore and moved on to fight easier targets, me however I started fighting anyone that said anything about me. If they looked at me funny I would go up and knock them out. I was determined to no longer be abused because people thought I was weak.
By the time I turned eighteen I had been in more fights than I could remember. It had gotten so bad or good depending on who you asked that I had started my own business more or less. Kids from high school would hire me out for fifty bucks to beat up whoever they wanted beat up. Yeah, I had made a real name for myself. Eventually this led to some unwanted attention, I was walking home one day from a local pool hall when I got jumped by three guys. They beat me to within an inch of my life because one of my high school clients had paid me to beat up of one of their younger brothers.
I woke up in a dark alley in a pool of my own piss and blood. The pain I felt was so intense I vomited twice before I could pull myself up to a standing position. I managed my way home and was out of commission for a couple of weeks. I told no one of what happened, they just knew I got beat up. While I laid in my room recovering I called in a few favors from guys I knew. I knew that a beating like the one I took doesn’t just happen in silence, I knew that whoever did it would be crowing about it like a banty rooster. Sure enough, it was just a matter of time before I had my three names.
It took me two weeks to feel well enough to exact my revenge. I found out who the biggest guy was that jumped me and his address. I waited until it was just about dark then I marched up his front steps and knocked on the door. Lucky for me he answered, as soon as the door was open I punched him through the screen. He stumbled backwards and the last thing I remember is the sound of my fists hitting wet flesh and a woman screaming. It turned out that the screaming was his mother and when the cops arrived she was beating me across the back with a broom handle as I lay exhausted on the puddle that was her son. The cops yanked me up and gave me a crack on the head for good measure then hauled me to the back of the police. As they threw me in and started driving for the station they were trying to question me but. all they got out of me was “I’m just going to take a little naps….” before I passed out from exhaustion.
I arrived at the police station, was booked and processed for assault and thrown into a holding pen until they found a cell for me. After a few hours of sitting there a large cop came to the holding cell with a clipboard held firmly in his hands. He started calling out names off the clipboard and a few of the other guys in the cell would stand up and walk through the door to line up. The cop got to the end of his list and starts yelling “Naps… Naps… Mack “NAPS” Schlage you get your low life ass up here in this line before I come in there and have you eating through a straw for the next month!” Apparently, the two cops that picked me up laughed all the way to the station about me passing out and had put down “NAPS” as one of my aliases on my processing paperwork. When you are in the joint, people don’t care what your name is. Your legal name is for judges and lawyers, you get called by your nickname, the name you made your bones with, and thanks to two jackass cops mine was Naps. That was it, the name just stuck and to every inmate in the place I was known only as Naps.
I ended up serving just over two months for that assault charge, I was released for “good behavior” and it helped that word got around that the kid I “assaulted” had jumped me first with his two buddies. After I got out, life went on as usual with a few fights here and there but now that I had a jail record, even as short as it was, I attracted the attention of people in need of my services. Word had got around about how I had my ass kicked but came up with a plan to get revenge.
I eventually drew the attention of a small time outfit that worked a lot in loan sharking, they approached me and offered me a job doing muscle work. I wasn’t working anywhere else and the money they flashed was tempting enough for me to jump at the chance, so I took the job. The first few “jobs” I would just show up with the loan shark and look threatening while he collected the debt. It was an easy job with a big paycheck for me, plus I liked being a tough guy, but like everything else my duties expanded. In just a few weeks, I was making collections and if they couldn’t pay I took my payment in the form of a pound of flesh. Most of the time, guys would pay up after a couple of black eyes, but occasionally you would run into a stubborn son of a bitch that thought he was tough and wasn’t going to pay. These were the guys I made my name with, I came up with a lot of creative ways to see the error in their ways. I broke a lot of bones, I would start with pinkies then make my way up the arm to wrists, forearms and elbows. If they were really stubborn I would take a baseball bat give them a clean shot to the knees making sure they would limp for the rest of their life and serve as a reminder to the other deadbeats to pay up.
I worked away at collections like this for almost two years before I got tapped to move up so to speak. I was given a territory and had to make house calls “selling security plans”. So I would go to the drug dealers and shop owners and basically extort a protection payment to operate and sell in my area. If they didn’t like my terms, I would persuade them to see things my way. If they were dealers, I would beat them to a pulp and take everything they had on them, I would take the drugs and the money and leave them in a pile. The shop owners were a little easier to deal with after you put some of their merchandise or their head through the front windows.
That was just the way of things for awhile, I would work over people and collect so much cash I was rolling in it. It would be the cash that drew me deeper and deeper in crime and violence. Word got around that I was very good at my “job” and was making quite a bit of cash, so a larger outfit rolled and bought me out so to speak. They approached me and told me I was working for them now and ordered me to pay a tribute percentage to the “organization”, but not to worry because they had big plans for me. I started to protest when they pulled out a few polaroids of my former employees with more holes than swiss cheese and the sight of that was enough for me to start down the road with my new employer.
From here it gets real dark, so how much do you want to hear Lo?
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