This is a tale of two brothers. And a story of a neighborhood that wasn't, a place where the cops didn't come.

Neighbors heard the sounds. Daddy with the belt. And not just the belt.

If there was a mother, she wasn't there, and she's not important to the story anyway.

It doesn't matter which brother was older, really. Neighbors couldn't tell. Either they were twins, or one had grown faster than his elder half, or ... it doesn't matter.

Neighbors heard the sounds. And heard the sounds.

No one really liked the family all that much. People speculated wildly about the dad. Stories circulated about his torture of his children, about his methods, how he starved them, how he electrocuted them. Neighbors seemed to enjoy speculating: did he rape them? He drove a nice car, had nice things. Women came and went. Why did the children not eat at school?

Like I said, this was not the best neighborhood. It was one of those places where the cops don't go, like the HLMS or the projects.

Oh, the neighbors called the police. They complained about the noise, the stories, the belt, the rape, the torture, and the noise. Made the call, got logged into 911. And, somewhere a city away, some cops sat around and debated what to do, or the operator kindly told the neighbor that there was no proof, that nothing could be done.

That nothing could be done.

About a decade or so ago, when the kids were still little, the father had attacked someone. Real angry guy. Beating the father of the flat next door. Traumatizing the kids. Bad all over. And a bunch of the neighbors had gotten together, decided to do something about it. That night, they went into that apartment, pushed the dad out, helped the family being assaulted. Fucking brutal neighborhood, one without cops. And they had pushed the dad back into his flat, where his kids rushed to see what was happening.

That's the thing about mobs: they get out of control. One of the kids looked like he was doing something, and he got hit. The neighbors hit him. He was rushing them. But he didn't have a weapon. He was just a kid. And the mob, some crazy guy who wanted to beat the father to death or something, this guy just hauls off and whacks the kid. The other neighbors kept it from going any further, and a few of the men even went back to their apartments and got food, then returned and gave it to the kids.

Good kids. Didn't speak much.

Now, worrying about someone rushing you in that flat isn't totally out to lunch: that family has a hell of a lot of weird shit. I'm talking weapons on the wall. Bizarre little things. Things you don't even understand how they're supposed to be used until someone tells you, and then you pretend to be tough by trying not to be shocked, by hearing about a torture device like you're hearing about the clouds that day or something. Like you're reading a newspaper, whatever that is. Anyway...

That was about it. There was nothing to do. No one wanted to take the kids. No one wanted to feed them every day. To adopt them. To adopt their problems. Oh, some argued for it, but it wouldn't fly: that wasn't what they had gotten together to do. There'd been a disturbance, and there was another family in trouble, and the neighborhood had come together, ousted the angry dad who'd stepped over the line. But taking the kids from him, cops or no cops, was another story.

So fast forward. A decade later. Everyone's grown up. A lot of the neighbors have changed. Some families have moved. A lot has happened. It's a different world, a different neighborhood entirely.

The strongest, richest guy on the block. A guy who ran a business, who'd been one of the real go-getters in the incident. A guy everyone loved for his kindness but went home and bitched about how he had all this money in a poor neighborhood. Well, turns out someone resented him a little too much. Some thugs didn't like that he ran his little business, though he charged too much, exploited them, kept out the competition, didn't care about them. And these thugs shot his little boy. Just shot him. And he was there, in the dirty streets, holding his little boy. And the cops never came. He kept his family together, pulled them all together, but nothing was going to bring back his son, and nothing was going to take away the shock and grief that still hung in the air around them.

So this guy starts talking about their violent neighbor. Maybe the store-owner had a chip on his shoulder, after losing his son. A little less tolerance for the violence and the shit of it all. But some of the neighbors just thought he was going nuts, that the grief and the grudge he bore against this violent neighbor was getting the best of him. They had cried with his family, some of them, when his little boy was shot. But they still thought he'd gone off the deep end. Everyone remembered how he led the charge a decade ago. And most of them thought this violent neighbor was a problem, was at least a jerk if not a rapist, but he didn't have anything to do with the guy's son being shot.

He'd already gone after the guys he thought had done it, roughed them up, shown a little brawn. A sloppy, emotional retaliation. More kids getting smacked around. Less of the neighbors helping out than in the incident a decade ago.

It seemed like the barometer was falling in the neighborhood, like everything was up for grabs. Like there were new rules. To the people who thought this guy was off his gourd, he was changing the rules, acting out. A rich storeowner who didn't know half the neighborhood had lost a son or daughter at one point or another. To the people who agreed with this guy, the new rules were the result of a wake-up call. Now violence had touched the life of Mr. Privileged, and he wasn't going to have it. Oh, he was fine with violence in the neighborhood, knew it was there, even participated in it, was a major player among the neighborhood watch groups, in the mobs that stopped shit like the violent dad in his neighbor's apartment. But the violence had never taken one of his own before, and it had changed him, for better or worse.

Truth be told, his family had been touched by violence in the past, though never quite so brutally. There were beatings, but not too bad or too often, and not for some time. You see, this storeowner wasn't old money. A little more than a half-century ago, when the neighborhood was just as violent, his family had come into money, founding its store that would become a staple of the neighborhood. The family had earned respect even before that, taking out some of the bullies then and a couple decades before. And it was based on that that he'd founded his store, organized his family from one of thugs like everyone else into the economic powerhouse of the neighborhood. And now the grandson of the guy who did this, who started the store, had all the cockiness of new money. True, he'd been born into it, but he'd retained some of that nothing of deserving it, some legacy of his family's past a century before when his was just one of the many important families on the ave.

Anyway, this guy, his son dead a year before, started talking up the threat Mr. Violent posed to the neighborhood. How someone should take him out. How he had all these weapons. How he was a threat to his neighbors, who he'd attacked. How he was a threat to his kids. Well, most people couldn't make heads or tails of this, and thought that any one of these points might be good but that Mr. Privileged was sounding a bit off by throwing all these points around as if any one of them meant that they should all go into Mr. Violent's apartment and take him out.

Of course, the way word gets around, Mr. Violent had heard all of this.

Most of the neighbors got together and Mr. Privileged said that Mr. Violent had to surrender his weapons. If he did that, at least he would pose less of a threat. Mr. Privileged spoke of his son, though there was no real connection between Mr. Violent and the guys who did that, who were kind of nomads anyway, gangsters camping out with one family after another. They all agreed that Mr. Violent should surrender his guns, at least. But, when they asked Mr. Violent, he said he didn't have any.

"What happened to all those guns you had last time?" asked Mr. Privileged. "We know you had them. If you don't have them now, tell us what you did with them."

But Mr. Violent claimed he had gotten rid of all of his guns, when he would admit he had ever had any at all.

This did not please Mr. Privileged, and he kept talking about how they all had to do something. Most people just wanted Mr. Privileged to shut up. I mean, Mr. Violent hadn't stormed anyone else's flat in the last ten years, and he wasn't likely to do so again. Who wants to rock the boat? Mr. Privileged would bring up the kids and their abuse, but no one thought that was what Mr. Privileged was really concerned with. Mr. Privileged would invoke his dead son and say that there was a real threat here, but a real threat exists everywhere, and most would rather just hope for the best, or point out that storming Mr. Violent's flat was more likely to get him to use those guns if he still had them. Even some of Mr. Privileged's own family wished he would shut up and pointed out that Mr. Violent was more likely to attack their other son if Mr. Privileged kept talking like this.

But Mr. Privileged did keep talking like this. I mean, he talked up everyone in the neighborhood. Soon some of the other people in the neighborhood, including a couple fairly respected members of the community, came out against Mr. Privileged's plan and interpretation of things. Most of the neighborhood agreed with them. But others stood with Mr. Privileged, and if they didn't agree, they certainly didn't want to alienate him or his money.

Mr. Privileged said that their little get-togethers and community organization had failed if it couldn't take care of this guy who everyone agreed was a threat to the neighborhood. But come on -- this was a margin call at best. People pointed out that there were lots of dangerous guys in the neighborhood, and that if Mr. Privileged really wanted to act like the neighborhood cop, there were lots of guys to go after before Mr. Privileged. There were guys we knew were shooting people.

But that Mr. Privileged had a real hard-on for Mr. Violent. And everyone had their own theory -- I mean everyone.

So finally Mr. Privileged got together a few of his friends and went and did it. He ignored the people who had disagreed, cutting them out completely. And he liked to talk about how a lot of others were with him, though they sat at home and watched TV while he actually did it. Hell, they weren't going to break down Mr. Violent's door.

And so Mr. Privileged and a few friends, themselves armed to the teeth, broke down the door of Mr. Violent.

Now, the irony could barely be more obvious. This time, they weren't stopping Mr. Violent, drunk and angry in some other family's apartment. This time, it was they who were invading another family's apartment, even if it was someone no one particularly liked. And they were well-armed, even though they had bitched about Mr. Violent's dangerous weapons.

Although, you know, it's a matter of who you trust. I mean, everyone knew Mr. Privileged had more guns than anyone else in the neighborhood. You'd be crazy not to have guns here. And Mr. Privileged could buy the most and the best guns anyone had ever seen. But Mr. Privileged wasn't the psycho Mr. Violent was. Or, if he was, he was a different kind of psycho. And more and more people thought he was a psycho, after he kicked down the door.

But this isn't a story about Mr. Privileged. He's just the catalyst. This isn't even the story of Mr. Violent. This is the story of his two sons.

Now, when Mr. Privileged and his gang burst into Mr. Violent's apartment, it was not surprise to Mr. Violent. Still, there was no doubt as to the outcome. Even if he took one of them out, Mr. Privileged and his guys had the best guns. I mean, they went in with bulletproof vests. You just can't compete with that. No way.

And the kids knew all of this too. They were, as I mentioned, older than they were last time. And that meant that they heard the rumors in the neighborhood, and the debate about their father, even if people weren't as forthcoming with them as with everyone else. They heard how Mr. Privileged was talking about how he and his friends would provide food like they did last time, how everyone would be happy.

And they thought about what they would do. When and if it happened.

"Fuck Dad," one brother said. "Fuck 'im. You see these clothes we got on? You see this hunger in my gut? Fuck 'im. He's got his cable, his satellite, his DVD, that car. And what do we have? We've got scars. Let 'em fucking come and kill him, for all I care. At least we won't have to worry about gettin' beat no longer."

"Fuck you, man," his more loyal brother replied. "We're Violents." Keep in mind this ain't their name -- I'm just using it for clarification. Protecting the innocent and all that. Anyway, he said, "We're Violents. He's our Dad. And we gotta protect him. He takes care of us."

"Some care," his less loyal brother said, pulling up his sleeve to show the marks on his arm.

"Hey, fuck that," said the loyal brother. "I don't like that shit either. But ... he's not the best Dad, but he's our Dad. The food we do got, we got 'cause him. The ... I don't like that he ... that he hits us any more than you do, but ... he's our Dad. And we're Violents."

"They're trying to help us," said the other brother.

"It's none of their business," the loyal brother replied. "It's ... none of their business. They're gonna tell our family how to live. Uh-uh."

"What the fuck is ... is Dad doing for us? They're going to ... let them kill him for all I care. I hope they fucking kill him."

"Fuck you. Fuck Mr. Privileged. If you're not a Violent now, when he's bitching -- when he's trashing us to the whole neighborhood, then ... then you're not a Violent."

The loyal brother charged Mr. Privileged and the others when broke down the door. He charged a group of armed men in order to defend a father who hit him.

Down the hall, Mr. Smith heard the door being broken down. He thought about whether or not he should do anything. I mean, the Violents weren't good neighbors, but they were on his floor, in his building. And armed guys were breaking in.

When he heard the gunshots, he bolted from his chair and rushed down the hall. A few other neighbors had the same idea. He had to see for himself whether it was Mr. Violent or one of his kids they'd shot.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

This is the third fictional column for Apollonian Bacchanalia.

This is a time of war. Go back and read the last column for my analysis of it. It's really, really smart and it's really, really important.

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