Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence

This chapter marks the first time that Canada hears gunshots in his neighborhood. He hears them during a quiet summer evening while he is talking with some friends on the street. His friends immediately take off running at the sound of the gunshots, and Canada joins them at first, before realizing that they are running towards the gunshots, rather than away from them. He is amazed and bewildered that he is the only one in the group who seems to be afraid of gunshots. The whole episode is a foreshadowing of what will happen to Canada’s neighborhood later on: “We all knew that a gun was the ultimate weapon. Little did we know that one day guns would forever change the codes of conduct that we worked so hard to learn and live up to” (65).

In this chapter, Canada also becomes more skilled at fighting, both from watching an older boy named Kevin get beat up and from being challenged to a fight by Mike himself. Mike, being eight years older, beats Canada soundly, afterwards telling him that he “[can’t] box worth shit” (72). Canada is hurt both physically and emotionally by the confrontation, but over time learns how to be a better and more sophisticated fighter. He gradually earns his right to hang out with the older boys, preferring their company to that of boys his own age. 

This chapter marks Canada’s first direct encounter with guns. He is playing checkers on the street one evening with a sarcastic older boy named Melvin. He is preoccupied both with beating Melvin at checkers and keeping up with his wisecracks, and he does not notice at first what everyone else around him notices: an older man running and limping past them, carrying a gun. All of the kids know this older man to be a local “numbers runner”: that is, a person who takes illegal bets.

The man is pursued by a girl whom Canada recognizes from elementary school, and who is holding a rifle. Her reasons for pursuing the man are never explained. The man runs into the building behind where the kids are assembled; the girl aims her rifle at the man, but to Canada it looks like she is aiming it directly at Canada’s own head. Panicked, he gets up and runs into the building himself. He plans to run down a hallway and to jump from a window out on to a back alley; however, the numbers runner has apparently had the same plan. The two collide in a corner, and the man points his gun at Canada. Canada later realizes that “I am alive today because he was a seasoned professional, not a scared kid with a gun” (80).

The man then runs past him, having quickly realized that Canada is not his intended target, while Canada turns and runs up to the fifth floor. He takes shelter there for a while, listening for the sound of the girl with the rifle. He finally decides that he has waited long enough, and tentatively makes his way downstairs. Outside, everything is just as he has left it, all of his friends still calmly playing checkers. Melvin eventually notices him and scolds him for having run away: “Don’t you know you hit the ground when someone points a gun in your direction?” (84).

Canada tells us that Melvin himself will later become a victim to gun violence. He will get shot while attempting to stop an armed man from beating one of his female relatives; the shot will paralyze him from the waist down and confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Melvin is, as Canada states in the chapter’s final line, “just another casualty of Union Avenue” (85).

In this chapter, Canada finds a K55 knife in a gutter. This is a type of knife that is favored by the older boys in his neighborhood, and has a manually-operated switchblade. Canada is delighted to find the knife, as he believes that it will be his “passport,” enabling him to walk more freely around the city without fear of getting beaten up (91).

The knife is also his secret, and he spends hours alone cleaning it and practicing how to use it. He has seen how older boys pull out their switchblades, and he tries to imitate their speed and dexterity. He thinks that he has become expert at removing his knife from his pocket and opening it as fast as possible; however, while trying to pull off a particularly daredevil way of opening up his blade, he accidentally cuts his right index finger instead.

The cut is deep, and he has nothing but toilet paper with which to bandage it. He is desperate to conceal the cut from his mother, because he knows that if she were to find out about the knife, she would want to confiscate it: “[…] and there would go my protection and my newfound freedom” (94). He lies to his mother that he got the cut from a vigorous game of basketball, and attempts to “splint” the cut with a pair of popsicle sticks, in order to straighten out his finger (94). However, this is a flimsy and temporary solution, and he ends up with a permanently-bent index finger, which he then has to conceal from his mother for the next five years that he lives with her. Such concealment is no easy task, but as Canada tells us, “one of the challenges that many of us [in the Bronx] faced was how to incorporate daily survival techniques into our lives so that they became habits. Hiding the finger was simply another challenge” (96).

Canada is out on the street one night with a few of his older friends, including a boy named Kevin. The evening starts off quietly, but there is a rumor that Kevin has called a local woman a “bitch,” and that he is going to get in trouble for it. As predicted, an enormous, angry grown man approaches the group, asking if any one of them is Kevin and identifying himself as the offended woman’s nephew. They all deny Kevin’s existence at first, but finally Kevin himself speaks up. He takes a challenging and defiant tone, and he and the man get into a fight. 

Kevin gets beaten badly, but the watching boys are impressed by his stamina. After a while, they decide that Kevin has had enough of a beating and that they need to intervene. At this point, Kevin’s opponent runs to his car and comes back (obviously to Canada) carrying a gun. Even so, the boys continue to surround the man. Canada is terrified that the man will shoot but is also both emboldened and calmed by the constrictions of being in a group: “I had given up the option of running. That freed me to act” (107).

The man, seeing the boys surrounding him and apparently unafraid of his gun, retreats to his car, points the gun at the boys in a final, threatening gesture, then gets into his car and drives away. Canada expects this incident to be discussed and analyzed, but none of the other boys say anything further about it. As he wryly observes, it is “[j]ust another night on Union Avenue” (109).

Canada has escaped his Bronx neighborhood and gone off to college in a small Maine town. Ironically, it is here where he buys his first gun. In Maine, the gun is useful for little else besides target practice, and he is able to put it away in his closet and to almost forget that he owns it. In his old Bronx neighborhood, however, to which he still returns on school holidays, he finds his gun to be all too convenient. His neighborhood has become increasingly occupied by violent gangs, who harass and intimidate people on the street. Canada begins to carry his gun in his pocket when he goes out on the street, and he finds that doing so changes his demeanor. Rather than crossing the street, as he had formerly, in order to avoid a gang, he deliberately walks through them instead, and even makes challenging eye contact with gang members: “I was prepared to shoot to defend myself” (116).   

Gradually, with the perspective and distance that his remote Maine college provides him, Canada realizes that he doesn’t want to shoot anyone, and that if he keeps his gun, he almost certainly will. He decides to throw his gun away, wrapping it up in newspaper and taking it to the local dump.

As he tells us in the final pages of his memoir, this all took place in 1971, when it was still relatively rare for a young man in the Bronx to walk around with a gun. Guns are far more commonplace now, both in the Bronx and in other tough neighborhoods, and young people who have “known nothing but war and have studied hard” are far more reckless and ready to use them (118). He urges us that we must all “do something while we still have time” to stop the epidemic of gun violence (119).