Hooligans
Most nine-to-fivers trudge through the Monday-to-Friday workweek, looking forward to the weekends. Despite having to run errands and do chores that they have no time to do during the week, for the most part, they are able to spend Saturdays and Sundays as they choose. These are days to be spent with friends and families and are a time when workers can pursue their hobbies, look for adventure in the great outdoors or just kick off their shoes and relax.
Then there are people like Joe Pincher, the head of maintenance at a nearby college, for whom the weekends held no special significance beyond being days when he was able to sleep a little later in the mornings. Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon and evening he could be found at Doyle's, an Irish pub in the heart of Boston where other men like him escaped their humdrum lives by having a few drinks and watching sports.
When he walked into the pub on the Sunday afternoon immediately following Thanksgiving Day, only a fraction of the regular customers was there. He took his usual seat at the bar and ordered a beer.
"Where is everybody?" he asked Brad Rayman, the part-time bartender and full-time law student, who was watching the Patriots take on the Houston Texans.
"It's a holiday weekend. They're probably home with their families."
Joe was a single man whose parents moved to Arizona after his father retired. He had no siblings and no steady girlfriend. He had spent Thanksgiving alone, eating a turkey sandwich at The Cheesecake Factory.
"And Doyle? I've never known him to take a day off."
"He's here. He's in the office on the phone."
The bartender placed a bottle of Sam Adams on the bar and turned his attention back to the game in time to see Houston intercept Brady's pass and score a touchdown. Grumbling was heard throughout the bar, not surprisingly, since every one of the patrons was a Patriots fan.
"What did I miss?" Doyle asked when he stepped out of his office and joined Brad behind the bar.
"The score's seven to three," the bartender answered. "The Texans just scored a touchdown."
"No need to worry, boys," the pub owner said in his thick Irish brogue. "It's only the first quarter. We've got three more to go. Besides, Houston has never been able to beat us."
Although Doyle McQuade had been born and raised in Dublin, he had no difficulty switching his allegiance from Gaelic football (known in Boston as soccer) to American football. In fact, he followed all the local sports: Red Sox baseball, Bruins hockey and Celtics basketball. Furthermore, since equipping the pub with six widescreen televisions and turning it into a sports bar, he drew many likeminded fans to his establishment.
Oddly enough, the new clientele did not mean more dollars in Doyle's pocket. All too often customers came to the bar to watch the games and hobnob with their cronies, not to drink. Joe Pincher, for instance, never had more than three beers, which would last him from early afternoon to late in the evening. All the while he munched on the complimentary pretzels and salted peanuts. Occasionally, though, he splurged on a hamburger, hot wings or a plate of fish and chips.
As the Texans added to their lead, Joe slowly sipped his Sam Adams.
"Need a refill?" the bar owner asked.
"Not yet. I'm still working on this one."
Ah, what the hell! Doyle thought good-naturedly. As long as I make enough money to pay my bills, that's all that matters.
The Patriots rallied in the fourth quarter but failed to gain the lead. Despite the loss, talk at the bar turned to the playoffs. With the best record in the AFC East, the Patriots would play the Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC championship.
"Then it's on to Miami for Super Bowl LIV!" Joe confidently exclaimed.
"Whoa, lad! Aren't you getting ahead of yourself? We haven't won the championship yet," Doyle reminded him as he refilled the dish of salted peanuts.
"Do you think Tom Brady will let us down?"
"None of us ever thought Trump would get elected president and look what happened," Brad joked.
The patrons within earshot of the bartender broke out in laughter. Few people in Boston, the capital of the blue state that had spawned the Kennedys, were supporters of the sitting president. The fact that he was from New York and was a lifelong Yankees fan was enough to make diehard Red Sox fans dislike him.
"Yeah, well Brady ain't Trump," Joe declared in defense of the revered quarterback.
Once the postgame show was over, the all-sports station presented its news broadcast, bringing viewers up to date with the other teams in the NFL.
"In Dallas," the sportscaster, a former Heisman Trophy winner, announced, "fighting broke out at AT&T Stadium after the Cowboys/Vikings game. Three visiting Minnesota fans were sent to the hospital with injuries as a result."
"I wish I was in Houston right now," Joe said, in between mouthfuls of free pretzels. "I'd sure like to pop a Texans fan in the nose."
"You sound like a hooligan," Doyle declared.
"What's that you called me? A hula-what?"
"A hooligan. They're rowdy British football fans that would cause trouble and perform acts of vandalism at games, in pubs, at the stadiums. They were quite a problem back in the Eighties."
"You mean like the guys who were fighting in Dallas today?"
"The hooligans were more structured. They joined gangs called firms. The ICF, the Inter City Firm, followed the West Ham United team, showing up at both home and away games to wreak havoc. They had a logo in the team's colors, claret and blue, that boasted 'these colors don't run.' They were so brazen that they actually left business cards behind in the pubs they vandalized and beside the beaten bodies of rival hooligans."
"Business cards? With their names and numbers printed on them?" Joe asked with amused disbelief.
"No. The cards said, 'Congratulations, you've just met the ICF.' Imagine that?"
"I gotta hand it to them. It takes a lot of cojones to leave a calling card."
"To give the devil his due, hooligans were organized. They would hold war councils at a local pub—their battle headquarters—to plan their tactics and then use a network of underground contacts to spread the word."
"It sounds like a lot of work and effort went into fistfights and petty vandalism."
"I'm not talking about some black eyes and bloody noses, lad. Hooligans were armed."
"With guns?"
"No. They attacked with broken beer bottles, razor blades, spiked golf balls, rocks and even pub darts. When nothing else was available, they kicked with their steel-toed Doc Marten boots."
"Sounds like these hooligans were resourceful as well as organized."
"Yeah, well don't give them too much credit. When all is said and done, they were nothing but a pack of ruffians and thugs."
"Whatever happened to them?"
"Authorities started cracking down on the firms. More hooligans were arrested, and the prison terms for those convicted got longer. Eventually, the number of incidents dropped. As I understand it, some of the hooligans gradually graduated to more serious crimes, including selling drugs."
When Doyle walked to one of the pub's tables to wait on paying customers, Joe grabbed one more handful of pretzels and finally finished the last swallow of his third beer. He left a not-too-generous tip on the bar and put on his jacket.
"See you guys next week," he called out to the other regulars, who returned his farewell.
"Maybe next Sunday we'll win," Doyle said.
"Damn right we'll win! Go Patriots!"
* * *
When Joe Pincher returned to his low-rent, on-campus studio apartment (a perk of his job), he took out his laptop. Normally, he only used it to check his email or add movies to his Netflix queue, but he wanted to know more about hooligans and thought the Internet would enlighten him.
Growing up, he had been an introvert, never taking part in group activities. Despite a love of sports, he never played Little League or any school football. He never joined the Boy Scouts, played an instrument in the school band or took part in an academic club. Now, for the first time, as he approached his fortieth birthday, he wanted to belong to something.
I could form my own hooligan firm, he thought with growing excitement. But how? I can't just go up to people on the street and ask if they want to join.
Two things you were sure to find at any institution of learning—elementary school, high school or college—were, one, popular kids with plenty of friends and, two, outcasts who, in the words of Green Day, walked alone with only their shadow to walk beside them. Joe knew how to spot the latter; he had been one himself. Tanner Durant, a freshman from Taunton, was another. He was also a genius with computers.
"Got a minute, kid?" the maintenance man asked the timid student the following day.
"Sure. What do you want?"
"You like football?
The question took Tanner by surprise. Was the maintenance man going to invite him to a game? Why? He knew Pincher was a single guy who lived in a basement apartment at one of the dorms. Was he a pervert? Was this leading up to a Me Too moment?
"I watch it," he replied cautiously, "but I never played it."
"Patriots fan?"
"Yeah."
Joe then explained his desire to set up a website to attract members for his firm.
"I don't know anything about computers, but you do. I could really use your help."
Realizing the maintenance man was not interested in him sexually, the student was eager to discuss ideas for the webpage. He was also open to the idea of joining the firm himself.
"Great!" exclaimed Joe, who had appointed himself the leader. "You can be my second in command and chief tech guy."
The webpage went up by the end of the week. Tanner waited for four days before he received the first response. It took another three days for the second. By New Year's Eve, there were roughly two dozen young men, mostly college kids, who wanted to be hooligans. They met the first Saturday in January at Doyle's, the place Joe had chosen to be their battle HQ.
"With the Super Bowl only a few weeks away," Pincher announced to his disciples, "we won't be able to schedule our first battle until the next preseason starts, sometime in August."
"Let me get this straight," said one of the recruits, an outcast like Tanner Durant. "No one gets hurt, and no private property will be destroyed."
"That's right," Joe assured him. "We're talking harmless pranks like the kids play on Mischief Night."
"What are we gonna do? Put toilet paper in the trees outside of rival stadiums?" another student joked.
"I was thinking more along the lines of egging opposing fans' cars, maybe letting air out of their tires."
"Misdemeanor stuff," Tanner added. "If we're caught, we're most likely talking a minor fine and some community service time."
Once everyone agreed to join, the question of what to call the firm came up. Various ideas were put forth from members of the group.
"Since we're forming to support the Patriots, why not the New Englanders?" one pre-med student suggested.
"How about the Founding Fathers?" another young man called out.
"Nah, the Revolutionaries," a third insisted.
"Hey, I got it," Tanner proudly announced. "The Minutemen."
"You mean like the printers?" Joe asked, thinking of the Minuteman Press chain.
"No. The Minutemen were militiamen during the American Revolution. They got their name because they were known to be ready for battle at a minute's notice."
"I like that," the maintenance man concluded. Then he stood and addressed those assembled: "Welcome to the Minutemen, gentlemen."
* * *
"What's this?" Doyle McQuade asked when he found one of the business cards Tanner Durant had printed from his computer.
"I don't know," Joe lied. "What is it?"
"It says, 'Congratulations, you've just met the Minutemen," and I found it on the floor beneath the table you and your college buddies were sitting at last week."
"It's nothing. One of the kids must have dropped it."
"Nothing, huh? It sounds to me a lot like the cards the ICF left. What exactly is your group doing in my pub?"
"Watching the games, having a few beers."
"What else?"
"Hey, I've been coming to this pub for years. Why the third degree all of a sudden?"
"Because I know what this is," Doyle said, holding up the Minutemen card. "You've formed a firm of hooligans."
Joe dropped the pretense and admitted, "All right, yes. But it's got nothing to do with you. Hell, you ought to thank me. Look at all the new customers I brought to your bar."
"Customers like you who order only a couple of beers and eat up all my pretzels and peanuts."
"If you don't want us to eat your snacks, you shouldn't put them on our table."
"That's not the point here. I don't want any more meetings here in my bar."
"Why not?"
"This place may not look like much, and it will never make me a rich man, but it's mine. I worked my whole life to afford this place. I don't want it vandalized by hooligans."
"Do you think we would hurt our own home turf?"
"No, but rival firms will form, and they'll come here in retaliation of what you do to them."
"Look, it's not that type of firm. We're not going to beat anyone up or destroy anyone's property, so there'll be no reason for anyone to come here."
The kind-hearted Irishman reconsidered.
"All right. But if any hooligans show up and break a window or start a fight, you're out."
Throughout the winter, spring and early summer, the Minutemen met twice a month to plan their "attacks" on individual fans of opposing teams who traveled to New England for the games as well as work out the logistics for members of the firm to attend away games.
Halfway through the next season, the Minutemen, who always left their calling cards behind, began to draw attention and spawn the formation of rival firms. By Super Bowl XV in January 2021, every NFL team had its own hooligan following. Both Joe Pincher and Tanner Durant took great pride in having started the trend.
Eventually, however, what the college maintenance man and the computer major had not anticipated, and what Doyle McQuade had feared, occurred: the petty pranks escalated. Not content with egging SUVs, some hooligans took things a step further by smashing windshields and slashing tires. This behavior sparked physical retribution. Fistfights occurred in stadium parking lots. Although a major riot broke out in New Orleans' Raymond James Stadium between fans of the Saints and the Buccaneers, Joe insisted the Minutemen would never stoop to such behavior.
"I told you this would happen," Doyle declared when he read about the uprising in the Globe's sports section.
"That's New Orleans, not Boston," Joe said defensively. "The Minutemen aren't brawlers."
"Maybe you're not, but can you speak for the rest of your firm? Your new members aren't computer geeks like Durant. They look more like gangbangers from Southie."
"Our members know the rules when they join the firm, and they swear they'll follow them."
Although Doyle did not share Joe's confidence in the hooligans' ability to refrain from fighting, against his better judgment, he continued to allow the Minutemen to hold their meetings at his pub.
* * *
On a warm July afternoon, with the start of another eagerly anticipated football season in sight, the Minutemen met at Doyle's for the first time since January.
"Our season opener is in New Jersey against the Giants," Joe announced, reaching for the bowl of salted peanuts. "We might want to consider chipping in and chartering a bus rather than driving down there in a bunch of cars."
Most members of the firm—with the exception of the leader and his second in command—did not attend all planned attacks. In fact, they usually only showed up at half of them. But the leader assumed everyone would want to travel to East Rutherford's MetLife Stadium to take on supporters of the Giants. True Patriots fans still held a grudge against the team since the 2008 Super Bowl upset.
"Count me in," Tanner said. "I hate those damned Giants. They stole the championship from us with less than a minute left in the game."
"Come on, that's ancient history," grumbled Arnie Zamora, who had joined the group midseason the previous year. "Get over it already."
Unlike the original members of the Minutemen, he was no college student. He was a construction worker with a quick temper and a record of arrests for assault.
Joe chose to ignore Arnie's attitude and continue with the meeting.
"I move we vote on the bus then."
"Why don't we see how much it will cost us first," another member, a student who was always short of cash, suggested.
"Okay. I'll get a few estimates and present them at our next meeting."
"This is bullshit!" Arnie suddenly shouted. "This is beginning to sound like a board meeting."
"Calm down," Joe cautioned.
"I have a motion of my own," the construction worker continued, despite the warning. "I move we elect a new leader."
"Don't be ridiculous. This is my firm. I came up with the idea, and me and Tanner put it together."
"So? That don't make you a leader for life."
Most of the Minutemen in attendance sensed impending trouble. The belligerent Zamora, who was six inches taller and weighed fifty pounds more than Pincher, was clearly a threat.
"Who do you want to nominate?" Tanner asked, hoping to diffuse the situation by going along with Arnie.
"Me. I'd like to do things my way. I say enough of this piddly schoolboy stuff. It's time to bang some heads together."
Joe unsuccessfully tried to maintain control of the firm. While a number of members shared his goal of nonviolence, others were eager to follow Arnie down a different path. It was a close contest, but—like the 2008 Super Bowl—the result was an upset. Joe Pincher was out; Arnie Zamora was in.
Word spread and within a week, several members left the group. At the same time, the new leader recruited three times as many new hooligans. These included men with criminal records whose interest in joining had less to do with a love of football and more to do with being part of a gang. Although he was no longer the leader, Joe remained in the firm. He felt a responsibility to Tanner and the other kids to try to curb Arnie's worst impulses.
* * *
"Did you hear what happened in New Jersey?" Tanner, now a senior in college, nervously asked Joe.
Immediately following the Patriots/Giants game, a riot had broken out between the Minutemen and the Giant Killaz hooligan firm. Eleven people went to the hospital, two with life-threatening injuries, and more than two dozen cars were set on fire.
"Yeah," the firm's former leader replied, clearly upset by the events. "I wish to God I'd gone with them. I might have been able to stop things before they went too far."
"There was nothing you could have done."
"This is not what I wanted when I started the Minutemen."
"I know. I certainly wouldn't have joined if I thought those were your intentions."
"I'll be honest with you, kid," Joe confessed, his face etched with mental anguish. "I don't know how to fix this."
"I'll be honest with you, too. I'm out, and if you know what's good for you, you'll quit, too, before it's too late."
"Maybe you're right. Tell you what," Pincher said, arriving at a decision he had contemplated since hearing about the MetLife Stadium riot, "put it on the website that there'll be an important meeting at Doyle's after the game with the Eagles. Say that everyone is strongly urged to attend."
"Are you going to try to take control of the firm back?"
"No. Like you, I'm going to quit, but I'd like to take as many of our original guys with me as possible. I'd hate to see any of them get hurt or arrested because of my dumb idea to become a hooligan."
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to the Patriots/Eagles game, the police visited known members of the Minutemen.
"We hear you're the man who started this gang," Detective Vann told Joe Pincher.
"It's not a gang. It's a firm," the maintenance man corrected him.
"Call it what you want. We consider it a gang. Were you there when trouble erupted in New Jersey?"
"No. I was here in Boston fixing a clogged sink in one of the dorm rooms."
"You got anyone can corroborate your alibi?"
"Yeah, the student who made the maintenance call was there the whole time I was working on it."
"We'll check on that," Vann said, jotting down the student's name and room number.
"Detective," Joe said as the police officer stood up to leave, "I'm out of the Minutemen. I'm going to make it official at this week's meeting."
"That's what Mr. Durant told us. Just make sure you do it."
Compared to the riot that had broken out in New Jersey, the altercation that started at the Patriot's Gillette Stadium was minor. Security had been beefed up, and guards managed to keep the toll at a few broken bones, some lacerations and six shattered windshields.
After the fight broke up, the Minutemen—minus the four members who had been arrested—met at Doyle's. Brad Rayman, who was still tending bar on weekends to help pay for his law degree, was working beside the pub owner when the rowdy bunch walked in and sat at their usual tables.
"Here they come," Doyle said, promising himself his bar would soon cease to be the firm's battle HQ.
"We need to think of some way to get the Eagles' firm," cried Arnie, who had managed to escape arrest. "Those damned security guards spoiled all our fun."
Joe and Tanner, neither of whom had been at Gillette Stadium that day, entered Doyle's together.
"Where the hell were you two?" Zamora growled.
"After what happened at the Giants game, we decided to leave the firm," Joe answered.
"Aw! You and the computer nerd can't handle a little heat?" Arnie asked mockingly.
"Maybe we should leave now," Tanner whispered. "I don't like the mood he's in."
"No. I came here to talk some sense into these guys, and I intend to do so."
For the sake of the young students he had brought into the firm, the maintenance man fully intended to stand up to the new leadership. But just as he was about to issue his carefully rehearsed plea, a throng of Eagles fans, who had driven up from Philly for a rumble, barged into the pub. Like the fabled eighteenth-century American patriots from whom the New England hooligans got their name, the Minutemen were ready for action in a minute's time. No sooner were the first punches thrown than turmoil erupted in the pub.
"Take it outside, boys," Doyle shouted, attempting to break up the brawl; but the violence quickly escalated.
Before the young bartender could get his cell phone out of his pocket to call the police, a shot from a Smith & Wesson .38 special rang out. Police would never ascertain who fired first or whether that unknown person fought for the honor of the Eagles or the Patriots. What they did learn was that Brad Rayman, the law student who had recently passed the Massachusetts bar exam, was the first man down, dying with his iPhone clutched in his hand.
Enraged at the sight of his fallen employee, Doyle McQuade put his fist in the face of a Philadelphia fireman. Moments later, however, the Irishman was shot in the head, his blood splattering on the screen of one of the pub's televisions, where an ESPN sportscaster was condemning the current wave of violent hooliganism plaguing the NFL.
Tanner Durant, the college outcast who had once been Joe Pincher's second in command, tried to flee the bar, but a shot in the back took him down just inches from the door. The police who responded to the call of "shots fired" had to step over his dead body when they arrived.
* * *
Sonny Railsford, a new addition to the staff at the state-run long care nursing facility, had agreed to work on Thanksgiving, despite Thursday being his usual day off. It was a holiday, after all, and many people requested time off to be with their families. Since Sonny was a single man, he agreed to fill in for his married coworker.
He walked into the common room, where most of the patients—at least those who were not bedridden—had gathered after finishing their turkey feast. A few of them were sleeping in their chairs, several were reading, some were playing cards and others were talking softly among themselves.
"It's so quiet in here," Sonny loudly announced. "How about some television?"
Being Thanksgiving, it was a day of college bowl games. He found the channel that was broadcasting his favorite team: the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
"Turn that off!" the old man in the wheelchair suddenly shouted.
The fierce reaction took Sonny by surprise. Since he began working at the nursing home six months earlier, he had not heard the paraplegic patient utter a word.
"What's wrong? Don't you like football?"
"Why don't you put something else on?" Nurse Emilienne Starnes suggested, having entered the room when she heard the old man's raised voice.
Nurse Railsford found a station playing twenty-four hours of A Christmas Story and asked, "Is that better?"
"Much," Emilienne replied.
She then took Sonny aside and asked, "Don't you know who that is?"
"Who? The man in the wheelchair?"
The nurse nodded her head.
"Remember that shooting in a Boston pub thirty or so years ago?" she asked.
"Yeah. Sixteen people were killed. Don't tell me that guy was there."
"He got a bullet in the spine that left him paralyzed from the waist down."
"Damn!" Sonny exclaimed. "No wonder he doesn't want to watch football."
"Even worse, he was the one responsible for the whole mess!"
"Why isn't he in jail then?"
"The D.A. didn't have a good enough case to prosecute him. Besides," Emilienne said, nodding in the old man's direction, "he's been in that chair ever since, and he'll be in it for the rest of his natural life. I'd say that was a pretty stiff sentence."
The two nurses then returned to their duties. It would soon be the end of their shift, and they could go home and enjoy what remained of the holiday.
Meanwhile, Joe Pincher silently stared at the widescreen television. He had no interest in Ralphie's desire to own an official Red Ryder BB gun, however. Instead, his memory took him back to a previous Thanksgiving weekend, a day when he sat at Doyle's bar, slowly sipping his glass of Sam Adams and gobbling down the free pretzels and salted peanuts. He raised a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand and wiped a tear from his eye. Then he reached into the pocket of his bathrobe and took out a well-worn, blood-stained piece of cardstock. The words printed on it were now barely legible: "Congratulations, you've just met the Minutemen."
When Salem was a kitten, he liked to toss around a football; but as he grew older, he preferred less physical activities: like eating and sleeping!
