Coming Soon – The Make Right Man – The Legend of Billy Shitpants

Some names you only say when the easy answers run out. The Make Right Man is a serialized story set in Chicago’s Bridgeport, where the streets remember, the bars keep score, and one nickname became the neighborhood’s quiet alarm bell. Larry “Karp” Karpinski comes home with his life thinning out at the edges, telling himself it’s temporary. Bridgeport doesn’t do temporary. He's wondering about an old friend, Billy Szczepanek—Billy Shitpants—and if he's still carrying the same gravity he had when they were young, still standing where time left him.

This series traces how a legend forms and what it costs to wear it. Told through Karp’s reflective voice and Billy’s measured, watchful one, the story moves through kitchens, parks, and front rooms where truth finally sits because it’s run out of places to hide. This isn’t a clean crime story or a hero’s tale. It’s about friendship that stands the test of time, family that holds even when it hurts, a love so deep it survives the worst that life can throw at it, and a neighborhood that knows some problems don’t fix themselves. When Billy’s name gets whispered, the clock starts. Every favor counts. Bridgeport watches—because it always does

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© Drew Zagorski. All rights reserved.
 Published under the pen name Drew Glass.
 The Make Right Man – The Legend of Billy Shitpants is a work of fiction and part of You Don’t Say… Stories from the Drew Zagorski Files, produced by LeftBrainRightBrain Marketing.

Transcript

Next time - Billy Shitpants Lives – 7 Mouths, 16 Legs – and The Making of Billy Shitpants

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Coming to You Don't Say in late January, early February 2026. The Make Right Man, The Legend of Billy Shitpants, a You Don't Say serialized novel. Hey, how you doing? I got a question for you. You ever notice how every neighborhood has that guy? Not the loud one, not the toughest one, the one people don't talk about unless they're already talking quiet. The guy whose name you don't say unless you need something handled. You meet guys like that when you're young. Hell, sometimes you even get close to them, as close as they let you anyway. You drink together, you tell the same stories too many times. You think that stretch of years is just how life is going to be. Then life does what it does. You move, they don't. Or time just kind of brushes people and places into the mist, and one day, poof. You realize you ain't thought about a guy in twenty years, and that's when it hits you. You start wondering, is he still around? Did he drop dead, straighten out, disappear, end up in jail? Or did he just stay right where he was while the rest of the world kept moving? Where I'm from, Bridgeport, we had one of those guys. Guy's name was Billy Schaponik. Everybody called him Billy Shitpants, not because he was sloppy. It was this thing when he was a kid. Somebody tried to embarrass him and instead of folding, Billy did what Billy always did. He turned it into a warning label, wore it like armor, made it useless against him forever. That's Billy. He don't flinch, he don't explain, he don't ask permission, and he never forgets a debt. This story don't start with a gunshot or nothing like that. Doesn't even start with a phone call. It starts with a guy coming home. Enter Larry Karpinsky or Carp as he's known around the neighborhood. Guy ends up back in Chicago without a real reason that holds up when you say it out loud. His marriage is coming apart, his kids feel farther away than they should, and all the stuff that used to tell him who he was, it's just quiet now. So he goes back to a place that still knows his name. Carp tells himself it's probably temporary, tells himself he just needs familiar streets, familiar faces, something solid to lean on while he figures out what's next. He don't call it nostalgia, but it's close. Thing is, neighborhoods don't care why you come back. They just remember that you did. One day, Carp rolls up on a quiet block and sees something he didn't expect, and somehow always expected. Son of a bitch, Billy's still there. Same house, same gravity, same way of standing, like the block owes him nothing and he owes it even less. No big reunion, no speeches. Just two guys surprised to see each other after so many years, both knowing exactly how much history standing between them and how dangerous it is to pretend otherwise. So the story's told in two ways. One voice is Carp's looking at the present through the cracked lens of memory, trying to understand how a guy he grew up with could still be at the center of so many stories, even after Carp's own life carried him away from the neighborhood. The other voice is Billy's, quiet, disciplined, watching the world the way he always has, like a system that mostly works until it doesn't. You'll move to Bridgeport as it was and as it is, kitchens where arguments end cause dinner's ready, parks that look peaceful until you remember what they've seen, bars where favors get traded without nobody writing anything down, and front rooms where the truth finally sits cause it's run out of places to hide. This ain't a crime story where the bad guys wear signs, and it ain't a hero story where the lines stay clean. It's about a friendship, the kind that survives without announcing itself. It's about family, blood, and chosen, and the quiet math of what you owe versus what you're willing to pay. It's about a love story. Well, check that, several love stories, just maybe not the kind you see on Hallmark Channel. It's about men neighborhoods make to do things neighborhoods won't admit they need done. Cause here's the truth, nobody says out loud. There's problems the law can't solve, and there's messes that don't clean themselves. And then there's moments when doing the right thing looks an awful lot like doing the wrong one, just ain't better. That's when somebody finally says it. Not loud, not in public. They say it like a question even though it ain't. Should we call Billy shit pants? And once his name's in the air and once the block remembers what he's for, the clock starts running. Every favor Billy ever did, every line he crossed so someone else didn't have to, every silence he kept, they all come due. And Bridgeport watches, because Bridgeport always watches. So yeah, grab a stool, a beer, or whatever floats your boat, and sit back, take a walk, drive to work, listen to the You Don't Say production of the serialized novel, The Make Right Man, The Legend of Billy Shitpants. Tune in in late January, early February 2026 on episode one of The Make Right Man, The Legend of Billy Shitpants. Chapter 1, Billy Shitpants Lives. Chapter 2, Seven Mouths, 16 Legs. And Chapter 3, The Making of Billy Shitpants. Larry comes back to Bridgeport thinking he's just killing time, maybe closing a loop. That's how guys lie to themselves when they don't want to admit they miss a place. But neighborhoods like Bridgeport don't do casual visits. The streets remember whether you were ready or not. And then there's Billy, still right where you'd expect him, like time took a swing at him and missed. Seeing him again isn't nostalgia. It's a reminder that some people carry the old rules whether they want to or not. Now, anyone who knows Billy knows the guy didn't grow up in a quiet house. That place was always full of people, noise, elbows and opinions, and mouths that needed feeding all at once. You learn fast in a house like that. When to speak, when to shut up, when to wait your turn, and when waiting meant you weren't getting anything at all. Love was there, sure, but it wasn't soft. It taught you how to stand without asking permission. And somewhere along the line, all that pressure had to come out. Usually does. A day should have ended clean and doesn't, and suddenly there's a room full of kids watching to see what sticks. That's how names like Billy Shitpants are born. Not as a joke, not as a dare, but as something that follows you home and stays. You don't get to vote on it. You just find out whether you're strong enough to carry it. That's next time on The Make Right Man, The Legend of Billy Shitpants. The Make Right Man, The Legend of Billy Shitpants, is written and produced by Drew Zagorski, published under the pen name Drew Glass. This podcast is a production of Left Brain Right Brain Marketing and is part of You Don't Say stories from the Drew Zagorski Files. While stories, characters, and events are works of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or actual events is coincidental and probably exaggerated anyway. Copyright 2025 Drew Zagorski. All rights reserved. Crowded Pub Sound Effects Credit, Bar Kraut, Logan's Pub, February 2007. Sourced from freesound.org forward slash S, forward slash 31487, forward slash. License attribution 3.0.