365

jun.3.22

I'm not an important man in life. I have never thought I was high up, or worthy of praise, you know. But, the way these kids look at me, like I could be the father they never had, it makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing in life.

When I was a kid, my father ran drugs and my mother wasn't around. His name was DeLuca.

DeLuca's name was on the lips and minds of every cop in the city, every buyer he sold to, and every crook who wanted him dead. To me, he was DeLuca. He was the Boss. He was the drug lord.

He was never my father.

He was tough, had a no bullshit way about him, and he knew what to do when things went south. Nobody saw him sweat. He seemed to be in control of everything, and when he wasn't, he came off like he could be. He was a man I thought I could be. I wanted to be like him.

The people who worked for him respected him, and he respected them. That's why business went good for a long while. There wasn't much for complications, and any problems were handled well, with dignity. It went good, until it didn't.

Six bullets in his chest, dying on the pavement of a dead end street when I was eighteen, and it was the first time he told me he loved me. The first and last time. He told me he didn't want this life for me, but didn't have the guts to tell me earlier. Now it was too late, I was in too deep. I was a drug runner, one of the best, he said.

And he said as soon as his heart stopped beating, I was a lord.

I held him as he died. I think he wasn't afraid to die. He flirted with death, you know, and it was only a matter of time before she took him with her.

So, at eighteen, I was what my dad was: I was a drug lord, taking care of the business, with a bunch of people looking up to me for guidance. People older than me, looking at me to lead them.

And they took me seriously. They started calling me DeLuca, but that wasn't right. That was his name, I told them. Yes, they said, but you're a DeLuca, too. You're his son.

But I'm not DeLuca. I could never be.

Then, as if some sign from the heavens bowed down on me, they started calling me The Saint.

My father named me Santos Domenico DeLuca. He named me The Saint when I was born.

It's like he knew something I didn't, you know.

And now, over forty years later, I'm still a lord. The people I look after are young people, who needed a roof over their heads from the rough neighborhood they were forced to grow up in. They work for me, I take care of them. They say their own fathers never showed them a stitch of kindness, or were never there for them, or whatever the situation may be.

I guess, in retrospect, that makes me their father. All of them. Every single one that's walked through that door, every one that's stayed, and every one that's left. Every funeral I've gone to, every bullet I'd removed, every scar I've stitched. I've been called "father" in a lot of wills and testaments, in eulogies and letters of life, in half legible journal entries when they felt they couldn't even talk to God while spiraling down into a crash.

I couldn't tell you how many kids I've helped, how many of them see me as their father. But, if you have the time, we can sit down and I will tell you every name and everything about them.

They're good kids. And sure, drug running isn't the best thing for a kid to be doing. I should've closed the business as soon as DeLuca went. But if I'd done that, I wouldn't have met these kids. And they'd have been worse off on their own, than under my roof.

Call it biased, call it being sedimental, call it whatever you want to. But I believe I've saved more lives with my father's business, than what the streets would have taken without it.

I'm nobody important, but I think I've spent my life being a good person.