It's his first real act of violence it won't be his last. He works out with weights, takes boxing lessons and, not long after, sends a bully to the hospital with a vicious punch to the face. Dubus, tired of being victimized, commits to retaliation - and in the process, he gives himself over to an intense rage that will eventually threaten to ruin his life. I will never allow you not to fight back ever again. I looked into his eyes: I don't care if you get your face beat in. As his mother tends to her son's wounds, Dubus looks at himself in the mirror, "this kid with narrow shoulders and soft arm and chest muscles and no balls. He is young, shy and meek, but he has also recently seen Billy Jack, the 1971 cult revenge movie. It's the mid-1970s, and Dubus, his mother and siblings have lived in a succession of low-rent houses in neighborhoods hit hard by poverty and crime. Early in his new memoir, Townie, Andre Dubus III recalls watching a local bully beat up his younger brother in front of their Haverhill, Mass., home.
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