Chapter 5: Looking for Whitey

Chapter 5 really introduces the character of Whitey Bulger, but not right away. Chapter 5 talks a lot about the siblings of MacDonald and he starts off first by telling us of his new baby brother Seamus and the love he has for him. He used to take him for walks in the stroller, and even though he was only a few weeks old, Macdonald would get irritated if someone swore around Seamus. 

The MacDonald’s also got a bigger apartment. They were aloud to breakthrough the wall and connect two apartments and his mother would bring home random furniture from the dumpster, which mortified the kids, and made them the envy of all the neighbors.

Eventually Whitey is brought up and one of the first descriptions we have of him is as a protector. Southie was made to believe that Whitey was taking care of them all from “being overrun with the drugs and gangs we’d heard about in the black neighborhoods, as well as stopping the outsiders who wanted to turn the projects into expensive condominiums.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, as we later find out that Whitey was bringing in the most drugs and kicking out all the dealers, along with being an FBI informant. However at the time, Whitey was a celebrity and people bragged about having even seen him. His older brother Frankie the boxer was close with him through being such a great fighter. Frankie was known for working hard and for being a gym rat. His days at the gym turn him into a fantastic fighter and he is known throughout Southie as their pride. His other brother Kevin began working for Whitey as a drug dealer. Kevin began started off working as a paper boy but his criminal ways got the best of him and he lied, saying he was robbed of his money and immediately quitting, when in reality he kept all the money in the end and bought drugs to sell with it. He sold the drugs out of his mother’s house, while his other brother Joe (I know it’s a lot of siblings to remember and  I’m almost confusing myself with this blog) began making friends with some black kids. He nearly got his ass kicked for it because segregation was still occurring and so were the violent protests. The drugs that Whitey was bringing into Southie were turning almost every kid into a drug addict. Especially MacDonalds older sister Kathy. She was addicted to Angel Dust.

The politics in the story are a bit confusing but only because it’s overwhelming. MacDonald talks about how people in Southie wanted George Wallace for president because he was the only one paying attention to Southie but in reality he was a racist pig himself. This didn’t stop MacDonald from branching out and found himself at discos with other nationalities, but when push came to shove the racism was still around and he would run to the nearest mob in Southie for protection when it came down to it. Towards the end of the chapter we see racism begin to slowly decrease, but by slowly I mean a snail crawling slow.