Paddy Town Punks

Paddy Town, West Virginia, wasn’t much of a place. A two-stoplight coal town where the mountains boxed you in like a prison, and everyone’s last name had been in the same graveyard for a hundred years. The people were born there, worked there, and died there, never really seeing anything beyond the county line. But for the six of us—me, Brook, Kenzie, John, Chico, and Scotty—Paddy Town was ours.

We had our own kingdom, a stretch of abandoned land behind the old rail yard called The Islands. It was a scrapyard of stolen plywood ramps, rusted-out washing machines we used as obstacles, and a ratty couch with cigarette burns we called “The Throne.” It was where we blasted The Ramones on a busted boombox, chain-smoked whatever we could find, and rode our BMX bikes until the sun dropped behind the ridge. It was ours, the only place in this whole town where we weren’t just some kids waiting to get stuck in the same dead-end life as our parents.

But in the summer of ’92, everything changed. And it started with a goddamn gas station robbery.

It was Brook’s idea. It was always Brook’s idea.

“Alright, hear me out,” he said, perched on his bike like he was about to drop the greatest scheme since Billy the Kid. “John, you go in, order a shit-ton of slushies, you know, act like a dumbass. Meanwhile, Chico and I sneak behind the counter, grab some cartons of smokes, maybe a case of beer if we’re feeling lucky.”

John took a long drag off his cigarette and narrowed his eyes. “You dumbasses realize they know us, right? It’s Ted’s Gas & Go. They know our mamas.”

“Which is why,” Brook grinned. “Kenzie and Scotty will be our distractions. Cause a scene. Maybe pretend to fight. Whatever. While they’re watching y’all, we clean ’em out.”

Kenzie cracked her knuckles. “So, let me get this straight. Your master plan is to steal slushies and cigarettes from a guy who saw me get baptized last year?”

“Exactly.”

John groaned. Chico shrugged. Scotty looked like he was already bored. But Brook, man—he had that wild look in his eye, like this wasn’t just about a couple packs of Camels. It was about beating the system. About taking something back from a town that never gave us shit.

So we did it.

Scotty knocked over a display of motor oil, Kenzie fake-punched him in the face (okay, maybe not so fake), and while the cashier scrambled to stop them, Brook and Chico made off with three cartons of cigarettes and a six-pack of warm Bud Light. John, in a panic, grabbed an armful of slushie cups, screamed, “FREEZE, FBI!” and ran out the door.

We rode back to The Islands, laughing so hard we almost crashed into each other. It was stupid; it was reckless; it was the best night of the summer.

And then the cops showed up at Chico’s house the next day.

It wasn’t our first run-in with the law. Deputy Hardin had been chasing us since we were twelve, convinced we were the reason Paddy Town was a shithole.

Chico took the fall, said he acted alone. His old man whipped him so bad he couldn’t sit right for a week. But Hardin wasn’t satisfied. “You kids are a damn plague,” he told us outside the 7-Eleven, sipping his gas station coffee like he was some big-city detective. “If I catch you up to anything again, I’ll make sure y’all never see The Islands again.”

And that’s when it became war.

See, The Islands wasn’t just a hangout. It was our escape. The only place in town where we could be something else. So when Hardin sent the city workers to bulldoze our ramps, we fought back. We stole the “ROAD CLOSED” signs off Main Street and nailed them to the trees like battle flags. John rigged his dad’s old truck battery to power the boombox, blasting The Sex Pistols as loud as we could. Brook—always the idiot—sprayed FUCK HARDIN on an old refrigerator and dragged it into the clearing.

The town called us delinquents. We called ourselves revolutionaries.

And then the dare happened.

There was a bridge. An old, rusted-out train trestle just outside town, over the river. It was thirty feet down to the water, maybe forty. Nobody had jumped it in years—because the last guy who did, well, let’s just say they found pieces of him all the way to Fayetteville.

But Brook, being Brook, declared, “If we’re gonna go out, we’re going out legends.”

“I’ll do it,” Chico said, rolling a joint on the back of a mixtape case.

“You’re full of shit,” Kenzie shot back.

“Bet me.”

So that’s how we ended up on that bridge at midnight, half-drunk, high as hell, John filming on his uncle’s camcorder like we were making a goddamn skate video.

Chico stood at the edge, arms spread wide. The moon turned the river below into black glass. “If I die, tell my mama I went out a hero.”

“No one’s gonna call you a hero, dumbass,” Scotty said.

He jumped.

For a second, it was like time stopped. Just Chico, free-falling into the dark, the wind screaming past him.

Then — splash.

Silence.

Then — laughter.

Chico surfaced, flipping us off. “SUCK MY DICK, HARDIN!”

We lost our goddamn minds. We were screaming so loud the whole county probably heard us.

And then—sirens.

Hardin must’ve been waiting for us. Probably had someone rat us out.

We grabbed our bikes and tore through the woods, half-dressed and soaking wet. The sirens were getting closer. John tripped over a tree root and lost the camera. Brook rode straight into a thorn bush.

But we made it. We made it back to The Islands, out of breath and grinning like idiots.

We knew we couldn’t stay. Hardin wasn’t going to stop. The town wasn’t going to stop.

And that’s when Brook, bleeding from a dozen scratches, looked up at us and said, “We’re leaving.”

We spent the next week planning it. We pooled our money—$146, three joints, and a gas gift card John stole from his brother. Brook knew a guy in Barton who could get us a car cheap.

The night before we left, we sat on The Throne, passing around the last of our cigarettes. The boombox was playing London Calling.

“You think we’ll make it?” Kenzie asked.

“Duh,” Brook said.

“No, I mean — ” She hesitated. “You think we’ll actually get out? Or are we just gonna end up back here?”

Nobody answered. Because we all knew the truth.

Paddy Town didn’t let people go.

But at dawn, we rode.

Down the empty streets, past the gas station where we’d stolen our first smokes, past the school we ditched more times than we could count. We rode like hell, like we could outrun the whole goddamn world.

And maybe, for a little while, we did.