Martha's Vineyard Burning: A Tragicomedy Memoir of Drugs, Sex & Arson

by David Duarte, Ginger Martin

“You God Damned fucking bastards,” that’s all I can think. I’ve just been dragged down the hallway and thrown into a cell by four or five butt-ugly guard mother fuckers. I just look around and see cement floors, cement walls. No bed, no toilet, no sink, no nothing, just me. No clothes, I don’t have any clothes on. They stripped them all off me in the fucking lobby, and here I am sitting on the floor buck-ass naked looking around. Big fucking Bridgewater hello. Hellooooo. Fucking bastards. It didn’t take Sheriff Palmeira long to haul-ass either. Johnny “the flash” Palmeira. No goodbye, no see ya, no nuthin. Kiss my ass, Sheriff Palmeira, go back to your shiny new car, your home in Lambert’s Cove and your beautiful wife. Pricks, they’re all pricks. Especially my father; he’s the biggest prick of all. He could have kept this from happening. He’s never loved me. I hate him. I wish he would die, along with all his slut mistresses. I can hear people yelling, sounds like Halloween kind of—wooooo woooooo—way off in the distance. People are hollering, crazy like, shrieking, moaning. This is Bridgewater Hospital for the Mentally Insane. It figures; this is where they put the crazy mother fuckers; “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.” Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do? I’m David Duarte, age 17, a sophomore in high school. I was born in Oak Bluffs and have spent all my life on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. There aren’t many sounds of yelling in my memory bank to relate football crowds, family disturbances, teenage boys horsing around. I feel shamed by my nakedness; I’ve been raised Old Country Portuguese; I’m second generation Vineyard. My grandparents came over from the Azores. In other words, you don’t run around naked; keep your private parts covered. God is watching. So where is He now!?

331 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 10, 2020