Tony Fries

Another true story, just a bad memory from youth.

 

   I want to tell a story about a guy I knew named Tony Freis. Tony was a guy I met at about my  thirteenth year of l;ife. I met him in juvenile hall to be honest about it and I continued to know him in high school and just around the neighborhood. The reason this part sounds vague is because Tony and I were not exactly friends. He was one of those people that nobody liked. He was a thief, he was a liar, he was loud, obnoxious and generally a real a*****e. Somehow, all my life, I have been the keeper of strays. You know, the people that no one else wants so they always hung on to my shirtsleeves. The a******s, as well as the unpopular kids, the strays, in every sense, always found some sort of comfort with me. I guess I have a tolerance for everyone and, although I, like everyone, judge; however, I don't hold the judgments against anyone. We are all flawed.

  

   Anyway, Tony Freis was a tough case, even for me. My girlfriend, (later, my wife) hated him. She wouldn't come out of her room if he was around. I myself have fought him on several occasions. That was part, if not most, of the problem. He always wanted to beat people up. He was hard for me to whip and I was twice his size. But because I could whip him, I guess that was our bond. I don't think anyone else in the neighborhood could.

 

   Well, the time came when Tony crashed some party I was at. I didn't really care, hell it wasn't my party and I was in no mood to fight, let alone a long exhausting fight that would surely be with Tony Freis. I just wanted to smoke pot and make out with my girl and maybe pick a few tunes on my guitar After all, that was why I was there.

 

   Soon enough Tony had started some s**t with about all of the other party  group. Most people had split as soon as he arrived, more after the fighting broke out. My girl and I were still there. A good friend of mine and another fellow that played drums had showed up.  There was also a black kid that I had never seen before and one or two others. Tony had started pushing around the black kid who was his buddy, I thought. I later learned that they had only met that evening. 

  

   Well, suddenly, while my girl was trying to sing the opening to "All along the watchtower" to my twangy, hillbilly influenced guitar licks; the one guy stabbed Tony with a kitchen knife. Apparently, he was stabbed only one time, and that was enough to kill him. He died, right there on the spot. Unbelievable. We were just youngsters, twenty-one, or so and it went too far. Tony Freis, whom I had now known for about seven years, was lying on the floor of someone’s living room I barely knew with his whole life running out of his chest. His eyes were still open, a look of surprise on his face, for eternity.

  

   I was blown away. I grabbed my guitar and my girl and split. Leaving only this drummer guy I had just met, the black kid, and the other kid that lived in the house there to deal with the situation. I was young and had been in trouble before; I didn't want to be mixed up in a murder.

 

   In the days that followed, the sheriff had been persuing me in an attempt to get a statement from me.They tried real hard to contact me. I was no help in their search for any aid to solving their mystery because  I didn't have anything for them, not even a lousy statement. To be honest I haven't really had a statement since.

  

   Just last week I had brought it up to my wife (same wife) asking if she ever thought about "it". She guardedly said no, she hadn’t. The reason for the memory lapse is  because, that night many years ago, they arrested the black kid for the murder of Tony Fries. The guy that did it still hasn’t been caught. The black kid apparently got in Tony's pockets after we had left; taking his money, his dope, and whatever else he had, just about the time that the police had arrived. Of course, he swore that was all he did, but in our neighborhood, especially in those days, if you are a black kid with a pocketful of drugs and money, who happens to be standing over a dead white kid, well, good luck.

 

   The fact is, that young man was convicted of the crime.  He was, and is, truly innocent.  I have no way of knowing whether or not he is still locked up.  I don’t even know his name. I think about him sometimes though.  I feel like he is alive, still incarcerated, and hating me for knowing the truth and never telling.

 

 

Reviews

[Lloyd]

misspelled pursue, how the hell does that happen???