Digging Up the Past (The Boy Who Never Grew Old)

The furnace kicks on and the pipes rattle like old bones. Sometimes I swear they’re trying to talk—those buried voices, the skeletons in the closet I never quite managed to bury proper.

November night, basement one-bedroom, East End now. Almost fifty years on the odometer, half a cup of cold tea, a stack of books I still haven’t finished. The TV’s on mute, just city lights flickering across the screen like Hamilton never really leaves my bloodstream.

On the table sits a picture of Smitty. Blonde hair, that sideways smirk that could get him into—or out of—anything. He’s been gone since ’08, but some nights he’s still leaning against my wall, arms folded, waiting for me to start talking. So I do. That’s what you do when the past refuses to stay in the ground—you talk to it until it shuts up for a minute.

We were North End kids, back before condos and ten-dollar craft beer. Air tasted of steel, sweat, and diesel. Everybody knew everybody, and every family carried its own legend. Mine worked the docks. Smitty’s people did too; you could tell by the way folks at the tavern gave them the nod and a little extra room on the sidewalk.

He was seven years younger—wild even before his voice dropped. I still see him bombing down James Street on his BMX, no hands, yelling curses at the sky like he’d already bought it. That kind of energy makes you believe a kid might actually own the world.

We ran together once he got big enough. Days killing time at the corner store, nights chasing whatever trouble the city coughed up. Small scores at first—pinching a couple bucks, boosting a laptop. Wasn’t about getting rich. It was about belonging, about being part of the hum.

Smitty lived for the chaos. He’d laugh in the middle of a scrap, eyes shining, adrenaline rolling off him like steam. “Come on, Blackfish,” he’d grin, wiping blood from his lip, “life’s short, brother—gotta make it loud while it lasts.”

None of us knew how right he was.

One summer—2002, maybe—everything felt wide open. We’d come into some easy money and spent it like wiseguys: clubs, alcohol, music thumping through the damp heat. Hamilton was alive then—neon bleeding onto cracked sidewalks, Harleys snarling past like thunder. Smitty stood in the middle of every story that summer.

He talked big about loyalty, honor among thieves, all that. But under the noise was a kid who’d slip a friend twenty bucks when he was short, who’d feed any stray cat and never brag about it. Two sides, same coin. The world loved him even when it hated him.

You could feel the undertow coming, though. The same fire that made him burn bright started dragging him down where the air gets thin. Guns showed up. Real scores. Real risk. I was older, should’ve pulled him back, but we were brothers by then. You don’t leave your own.

The night he shot himself. Birthday party across the road from his parents’ place. Music so loud the windows shook, laughter spilling into the street. He’d been drinking, showing off like always, waving that tool like it was a toy. Then the flash. The sound. A hole in the world where the music used to be.

They thought he’d walk it off—he always walked everything off. He didn’t. Twenty-four years old, and just like that the world got too big for the rest of us.

I was a pallbearer. North End turned out in force—bikers, dreamers, hard cases, brothers. Engines idled at the graveside like a minute of silence that refused to be quiet. When we lowered him, something in me went down too—the last piece of the kid who thought he could outrun anything.

Seven months later the raid came. Blue and red lights, doors kicked in, cold cuffs. Thirteen months inside. Enough time to meet every ghost I’d ever made. Smitty’s sat on the bunk across from me most nights, same half-grin, asking without words: Well, brother, what now?

I walked out in 2010 into slow-falling snow. The North End already looked different; maybe I was the one who’d changed. I never went back to that life. Transferred the grit-blasting skills from rusted freighters to aerospace parts—precision, control, order. Worlds away from James Street.

Years slipped. I quit the substance abuse, quit the noise. Became a hermit, I guess. Work, hike the escarpment trails, read, listen to wind in the trees and remember how loud we used to be. Some nights, moon on the lake, I still talk to him out loud. Ask if he’d have ever slowed down, found peace like I did—or if peace was never in the cards for a soul that bright.

People say time heals. It doesn’t. It just rounds the edges so you can carry the weight.

Last week I found that old picture—us outside the bar on James st. N, me in my leather, looking stupidly young, Smitty holding up a beer like a trophy. The night smells rush back: gas, tobacco, the sweet burn of thinking we could cheat time.

Now time is what I’ve got plenty of. Quiet mornings, steady hands, a little peace I fought for. But the North End hum is still in my blood. You don’t ever really leave; you just carry it different.

Sometimes I walk the old streets when the pull gets too strong. New glass towers where mills once stood, kids who’ll never know the ghosts they’re stepping over. I stop at the tavern—same walls, new sign—order a tea, watch the door. Every time it opens I half expect him to stride in, twenty-four forever, already talking about the next score.

I've walked past the cemetery too. The stone’s clean, black marble catching the sky. SMITTY – NEC. The rings carved between his parents’ names shine when the light hits them just right. I place a hand on the cool surface and feel something stir—a mix of sadness and grace. “Still with you, brother,” I whisper. Then I go, because staying too long feels like trying to bargain with the past.

Back in the basement the furnace rattles like applause from the bones. I nod at his picture where the morning light hits it first. “Another day, brother,” I say. “Let’s see what we can make of it.” I like to think he’d laugh at that—the hermit grit-blaster still talking to ghosts, still trying to weld something solid out of melted metal and memories.

That’s what this is, I guess: making peace with the noise we once called living. We were kids forged in steel and bad decisions, but we learned what love was the hard way. Smitty never grew old, but he taught me how to.

When people ask about the North End now, I tell them it was fire and family. Raised you fast, burned you faster. But it gave you stories that refuse to die.

I’m just the storyteller these days, the old Blackfish in the basement, keeping the flame alive so it doesn’t vanish with the last of the steel dust.

Outside, the city keeps humming—new faces, new deals, same heartbeat. I take a breath, let the quiet settle, and thank the silence for listening.

Then I close my eyes and see him under the streetlight, blue eyes shining, shouting back at me—

“Come on, Blackfish! Life’s short, brother. Make it loud while it lasts!”

The pipes rattle once more, like the past is clapping.

And for a moment we’re both laughing again—two North End boys who found peace in different ways.

~ End ~