The North Shore household: the alcoholic mother and the ex-Navy M.P.'s methodical beatings

pivotal · childhood, ~ages 8-11, B.S. late 1980s-early 90s

• When: Gately's childhood in Salem then Beverly MA (detail recalled ~ages 8-11); the same facts resurface in the hospital fever (scenes 161/162)
• What: Gately's mother was a Stolichnaya alcoholic. Her live-in lover, a broad blond retired Navy M.P. (Military Police / Shore-Patrol / brig-guard skills), methodically beat her on a schedule after ~8-10 Heinekens, hitting her between groin and breast so nothing showed, logging each beer in a spiral notebook; he delivered cheese, worked in a chowder factory, and kept free weights in the Beverly garage where he taught the young Gately controlled lifting (never knocking Gately himself around). Gately, by a certain age big enough to out-bench the man, only ever raised the TV volume and never intervened. The M.P. also demonstrated maiming (not killing) houseflies so their "screams" would warn off other flies; the child Gately would hunch trying to hear them. The homes: a decayed Salem beach-cottage under a hole in the roof covered by breathing polyurethane sheeting the boy named and feared as "Herman," then a Beverly tract house.