Jack Book Two in the Trilogy: Murder on the High Seas

Jenkins Part 25

Arnold B. Jenkins grew up on England's north coast at Newcastle Upon Tyne. He was one of the smallest boys in his neighborhood and was constantly getting into fights with other, older kids who liked to try to push him around. That lasted until Jenkins was ten when one day, a much larger boy tripped him on a cobblestone street while Jenkins was running for a tin can another boy had kicked away from him. Jenkins fell to the ground while running full speed, causing severe scrapes and lacerations to his knees and face. The older boy laughed heartily like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and calling the boy, "you little cunt!"

Many kids who had been playing at kicking the tin can laughed when the bully used that phrase to describe Jenkins who suddenly stopped trying to clean the blood and mud from his face. The bully began smugly walking away, laughing loudly, singing a ditty, when Jenkins ran up behind him with a brick and crashed it onto the bully's head, causing a severe injury as his eyes rolled upwards uncontrollably and he collapsed to the ground. Blood oozed from his wound. Many of the kids said he was dead. He seemed to not be breathing. The whites of his eyes were all that showed from his orbitals. All of a sudden, he awakened, saw Jenkins above him and started sobbing and screaming, "No, no Jenkins don't hit me again! Please don't hit me again!"

The bully didn't go back to school for a week. Nobody again dared to pick on little Arnold Jenkins. In fact, many of the boys present that day began to associate more with little Jenkins. Later they would tell him things - who was picking on who and who was talking behind his back or talking badly about Jenkins' new friends. Jenkins and one of his "gangs" would then pay that badmouthing boy a visit, usually in a dead end alley where they would all "kick the shit" out of the offending boy who, oftentimes, would later join one of Jenkins' "gangs" which he referred to as "my boys."