True Facts

That guy with half a face who lives across the back alley is in jail again tonight. One of my friends who lives in that building was over here this morning telling me that it's 'Bye Bye Half Face.'

I never learned for sure why he has only a half a face. Some people tell me that it was due to his having had a stroke, and others say he got shot in the face. He seems too young to me to have had a stroke, but I don't actually know.

My next door neighbor, that lady who feeds feral cats, was complaining about Half Face earlier this week because he had stolen the gate to her iron link fence. She confronted him about it, and he said he only got about a buck for it at the scrapper and that he would give her that buck.

Anyway, there was a lot of noise last night over at his house across the alley. There are about three people who live there in addition to that fat guy who just sits on the back porch all day and who have various substance-abuse problems. It seems that one of the women who hang around over there is upset with Half Face for non-delivery of dope. So they argue and scream about it late at night, and she is not going to be treated this way, so she she steals his cellphone and goes home to her own apartment.

Half Face goes there with his Pit-Bull to get his cellphone back and is making banging noises and yelling and swearing and the girl is screaming and the Pit-Bull is barking. People gather and the dog bites some kid on the arm and Half Face is threatening the girl. The cops arrive and take Half Face to jail and impound his Pit-Bull. They charge him with some offense against the girl and something else, and set bail at $13,000.

My friend who is telling me the details this morning is especially worried about the dog. He thinks the dog may have to be put down, since it is untrained, undisciplined. People around here worry more about animals than about human beings. When that kid broke into the flat behind the dry-cleaner's last year, and killed a guy and his dog, my neighbors were more upset about the dog than the guy. And we have two cat ladies on this block who would go to jail themselves before they would stop feeding feral cats. The city told them that they would be fined over $100 per offense if they caught them doing it, and that was over a year ago but they're still doing it.