Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

Then he was standing up beside her and she got the kind of prickly excited feeling that only King could give her.

  King came down the steps and shook hands with Bobby and they carried the bags inside and put them in the guest room. Then King walked Bobby out onto the porch. “I quit drinking,” he said. “But I can get you something if you need it.”

  “I’m fine,” Bobby answered. “The main thing I need is a night’s sleep.”

  “My grandparents made him sleep on the sofa last night.” Olivia laughed. “Well, I guess K.T. is asleep, isn’t he?”

  “You can look at him.” Jessie smiled. “Come on in. I don’t care if it wakes him up.” She took her sister’s hand and led her back to the child’s room and Bobby and King went out and sat upon the steps.

  “Jessie says you rodeo,” King began. “I tried it once, when I was a kid in Mississippi. My granddad put me on a steer. That’s a hard goddamn sport.”

  “It’s what we do where I live.” Bobby laughed. “It’s mighty nice of you folks to have us here. Olivia’s been a nervous wreck all day, hoping I’ll pass muster.”

  “So how much dough is she going to get from this oil?”

  “Too much. I guess I’ll never see her again after that.”

  “It’s a bitch. Figuring out what women want.”

  “That’s what my dad always says. He says it’s the hardest thing a man has to do.”

  “What does he do? He’s a rodeo star?”

  There was a long silence, then Bobby answered him. “He’s a pilot. Right now he’s in jail. He ran some dope.”

  “Hell, I’ve sold dope. Anyone can get into that. I’m sorry he got caught. Damn, that’s hard to take.”

  “Yeah. Well, life’s hard. No one ever wants to believe that, but that’s the way it is.”

  Olivia and Jessie came out onto the porch and joined them and the conversation moved on to where they would eat dinner the next night and what bands were in town. At twelve-thirty they turned off the lights and went to bed. Jessie and King into the master bedroom and Olivia and Bobby into a smaller bedroom that joined the baby’s room. The house was what is called in New Orleans a “shotgun house.” A long rectangle turned on its side toward the street. A central hall ran from the front door to the back. If you shot a bullet through the front door it would exit at the back. The living room and dining room took up the front of the house, the master bedroom and kitchen were on the left of the central hall and the guest room and nursery on the right.

  Way down deep in the Desire Street project Richard Brown was shooting cocaine with a couple of his old high school friends. He was staying away from his gang. His gang was mad at him and that was a very dangerous state of affairs. There was something his gang wanted that Richard didn’t want to give. They weren’t real mad about it. They were just starting to get mad. It would be another day or two before it became what Richard considered critical. It would be at least two days before he would have to leave town. For now, the gang still believed in Richard. They believed Richard would change his mind, which would be the best thing for everyone concerned. Only Richard couldn’t change his mind because he no longer had the thing they thought they needed.

  He should be doing something about leaving but he had run into two old buddies and started shooting up instead. It was nice, sitting on the stoop with his old friends, shooting up and thinking about King Mallison, Junior, and what a bad little boy he had been and now he had a baby. The cocaine was pretty low-grade shit. The whole deal was turning into a maudlin trip. Richard was getting sad for King. He decided King was like a lost prince in a tower, all closed around by the Jews his mother lived with and all their money and cars and perfect yards and all those goddamn hamsters and gerbils. I’d rather be me than that poor little kid, Richard was thinking. He was in a time warp now. He was fifteen and King was thirteen and he was going down to the Garden District and save the little kid and give him some dope and maybe get him laid. Only it was King who tried to give me some, he remembered. Sell me some. Well, he might have given it to me.

  Richard wandered away from his friends. He wandered over to the edge of the project and got into his car and started driving. He had decided to go see King. He drove down Jackson Avenue to Prytania and turned and went on down to where there was a K&B and went in and got a Pepsi and a package of cigarettes and got back into the car and started driving aimlessly, trying to remember what it was he had set out to do.

  Oh, yeah, he remembered. Go and see King’s baby. Go and pay a call. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It said two forty-five. Well, they might still be up. Hell, they’d want to get up and see him.

  Richard had looked up the address earlier in the day in the telephone book: 1789 Webster Street. Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, coming for to carry me home. Poor little old King. Fuck a bunch of white folks keeping a bunch of nasty rats in the basement, keeping little old white boys all locked up in a basement with a bunch of rats. He turned onto Webster from Magazine, which was the wrong way, as Webster runs from Saint Charles to the river. He drove slowly past Camp, Chestnut, Coliseum, and came to a stop behind Olivia’s father’s Mercedes. He took a .38 revolver out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his belt and walked up and knocked on the door.

  Bobby heard the knocking before King did. He sat up, wondering where he had put his pants. The knocking grew louder. Then a doorbell began to ring. Olivia made a deep, irritated sound and pulled a pillow over her head. Bobby slipped out of bed and pulled on his jeans.

  In his bedroom, King climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of underpants and started walking down the dark hall. What the shit, he was thinking. What the hell is going on? He had thought at first he was in his old hippie commune in Buda, Texas. Someone was always beating on the door in the middle of the night in Buda.

  King walked to the door and pulled it open. He was face to face with Richard. He had forgotten what Richard looked like and he didn’t recognize him now. The two or three times he had run into him in bars, he had talked to him without really knowing who he was talking to.

  “It’s Richard Brown,” Richard said. “I came to see the baby.” King backed into the hall. Richard had the gun in his hand hanging loose at his side. “Want to see that little ole white baby. Auntee Traceleen told me you got you a baby and I come to see it.” His eyes were everywhere. King kept on moving backward down the hall, trying to think. He was wide awake now and what he knew most was that he needed a weapon. He backed farther down the hall, past the open door to Olivia and Bobby’s room, going to K.T. to protect him.

  “I got to see that little baby,” Richard was saying. “Got to see that little old baby of mine. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.”

  K.T. started screaming. He had awakened to the sound of human voices and the static coursing through the house and he began to scream. King stopped dead still in the middle of the hall. “Get out of my way,” Richard said. “Get out of my way and show me that little old baby.”

  Bobby stepped out into the hall and threw a T-shirt around Richard’s neck and threw him to the floor. Richard pushed the trigger of the gun and the blast went through the wall of the baby’s room and through a painting by the New Orleans landscape artist Katherine Sonlinga and out the door to the garden. Then Bobby was on top of Richard and King was holding the hand that held the gun. Jessie and Olivia were clutching each other in the baby’s room.

  “Call the police,” Bobby was saying. “Get the cops over here.”

  “Oh, God, don’t tell Daddy,” Jessie was saying. “He’s worried to death already about me living here.”

  “What the shit, Richard?” King added, having figured out at last whom he was dealing with. “What in the name of God are you up to?”

  “I came to see the baby,” Richard crooned. “Came to see that little old baby of mine.”

  Later, after Jessie had gotten the baby to stop screaming and Olivia had made a pot of coffee and they ha
d tied Richard up with package string and the cords off the dining room drapes, they put him on the sofa in the living room and tried to decide what to do. Richard was crying now, coming down off a high and starting to be delirious. “We can’t call the police,” Jessie said. “They would send him to Angola. We have to wait until Manny and Crystal get up and ask Manny what to do. Richard, we are going to help you. I know you don’t believe that.”

  “He didn’t do anything I haven’t done,” King said. “Maybe we ought to let him go to jail. The three nights Dad left me in that jail in Florida were the beginning of wisdom to me.”

  “If we called the cops on Richard, we couldn’t ever look Traceleen in the eye again. He isn’t going anywhere, is he? Can’t you hold him there, the two of you?”

  “He’s sick,” Olivia said. “What he needs is a doctor.”

  “You want to give him something?” Bobby said. “Some kind of downer?”

  “I don’t have anything,” King answered. He and Bobby were on either side of the sofa.

  “We just need to sit here until about six o’clock and then call Manny. That’s all we can do.” Jessie had come and sat on the floor in front of Richard.

  “I need a fix, man. I need a hit.” Richard was starting to sweat. He was beginning to get sick.

  “We should call Crystal now,” Jessie said. “We need to get a doctor over here. Sitting up all night isn’t going to do a thing.”

  “She’s right. Can you hold him, Bobby? I’m going to call my mother.”

  In half an hour Manny was there. He was followed by his best friend from high school, a pediatric surgeon, who gave Richard a shot of Valium and Demerol and began to call around the country to find a place where they could dry him out.

  “All the good places are voluntary,” he said. “What do you think, Manny. Will he volunteer to go?”

  “Richard’s smart, Stuart. I’ve known him ever since he was a little kid. How much Demerol did you give him?”

  “It will wear off by afternoon.”

  “We’re breaking the law by not turning him in, you know that, don’t you?”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  “I can get him in a place in Dallas that’s done miracles, but they won’t lock him up against his will. He’ll have to want to stay there.”

  “Call Traceleen,” Manny said. “Get her over here. Call her up, King. Tell her what’s going on.”

  Then Traceleen was there and people walked in and out of the house trying to decide what to do. Richard slept for several hours and woke up full of terror and remorse.

  “Let’s sit on him,” King said. “Will you help me, Bobby? We’ll keep him here and talk to him and try to get him to agree to treatment. I’ve done it before. If it works, it’s the best way.”

  “You haven’t got room here, in this little house.”

  “Yes, we do. Richard trusts me. He’ll know I’m not going to call in the cops.”

  “He’s got a gang. They’ll come looking for him.”

  “Okay, then we’ll take him to a hotel. Let’s do it now. While the Demerol is still working on him.”

  “Where?” Jessie asked.

  “The Pontchartrain,” Manny suggested. “We can have the old suite upstairs where my grandmother used to live. Let me call and see. It’s still early. We can go in the back way if we need to.”

  “Use our house,” Crystal suggested. “Just use the basement of our house.”

  “No. I don’t want to do that,” King said. “Too many entrances to guard. How do you think I sneaked out all the time? No, a hotel is better. Okay, Bobby, get what you need. Let’s do it.”

  Then Manny called the Pontchartrain Hotel and the manager met them at the back door and Bobby and King took Richard to a room and started working on him. For two days Bobby and King sat in the hotel room and ordered things from room service and watched old movies on television and tried to reason with Richard. “I got to go somewhere,” Richard said several times. “I was planning on going to Florida. I got some money hid away. The trouble with my gang is that money. They found out I saved it and it’s supposed to be share and share alike. I can’t go out now. They think I’ve run out on them as it is.”

  “They’d never look for you in this place,” King kept saying. “This is the richest dry-out center in the United States. Shit, man, they’ll be so glad to see you. They never had a gang member there, I bet. You can tell them things they never get to hear. Besides that, you can save your life. Why you want to be dead, Richard? I’ve been there, man. I know what it’s like to think your days are numbered, but they don’t need to be. You can get well. You can start all over.”

  “And get me a little wife and baby and a job?”

  “Don’t knock it. It’s not too bad. You can go to college and get an education and be a happy man. You don’t have to hide out and be scared.”

  “Get Auntee Traceleen over here,” Richard said at last. “I want to talk to her.”

  Then Traceleen came, and Andria, and they stayed shut up alone in a room with Richard for two and a half hours and at the end of that time Traceleen called Bobby and King into the bedroom. “I’ll do it,” Richard said. “How long does it take? How long do I have to be locked up?”

  “Two or three months,” King said. “It takes at least that long, but you’re strong, man. Anybody strong enough to join a gang is strong enough to join the human race.”

  “Look at all the great people that have done it,” Bobby said. “Hell, man, half the famous people in the United States have been in drug treatment centers. There’s no telling who you might meet while you’re there.”

  While King and Bobby were locked up in the hotel room with Richard, Olivia and Jessie worked on the Japanese garden. Traceleen’s husband brought them a ton of gravel for a gift and hauled it around to the side of the house and Crystal took care of K.T. while they drew the pattern and smoothed the gravel into waves. It was almost dark on the second afternoon when they finished the pattern and set the stone markers to the east and west. Just as they were finishing, a soft rain began to fall. By the time they got inside it was pouring and they sat on the porch watching the rain fill the grooves in the pattern and run down into the yard. “I never thought about what it would look like in the rain,” Jessie said. “I was just trying to copy the picture in the book.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Olivia slipped her arm around her sister’s waist. “Nothing is ever what we plan. Everything is always a surprise.”

  Lightning played across the sky, so far away there was no sound of thunder. Inside the house the phone began to ring. “I bet it’s Aunt Helen,” Jessie said. “I was wondering when she’d call. She has a dowser’s rod for trouble. She’s worse than Grandmother.”

  “Are you going to tell her about Richard?”

  “Sure. Why not. Who would she tell?” Jessie went into the house and picked up the phone. “Hello, Aunt Helen,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

  “How did you know it would be me? Am I getting that predictable?”

  “No, you’re right on time. Wait till I tell you what’s going on.”

  “Wait till you hear what happened in New Orleans,” Helen said, when Mike came in that evening from class. “You won’t believe what they’re up to now.”

  “Oh, yes I will. Start talking. I can’t wait to hear.” Then Helen gave him an account of the events around Richard Brown’s visit, stopping every now and then to say, “Oh, God, I bet this is boring you to death.”

  “Oh, no it’s not,” he insisted. “You can’t imagine how much I like to hear about your family.”

  Helen did not call Daniel. No matter what anyone believes, Helen did not call Daniel or even mean to tell him. She had known Daniel all her life and she would have known better than to tell him that. She was sitting around knitting a blanket for DeDe’s baby when Daniel called to talk to her about her divorce. Late in the conversation, just chatting, happy to be talking to her brother when it w
as clear he was sober, she just happened to mention the girls. “Your girls are doing fine,” she said. “They’ve got hold of some real men.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, that thing down in New Orleans. The citizen’s arrest and all that.”

  “What citizen’s arrest?” Daniel’s voice had grown quiet, but Helen chattered on, telling him the story as she had told it to Mike, putting in all the flourishes Mike had laughed at, saying several times how brave it was of them not to call the police and how young people were so understanding and forgiving.

  “They let some black man go that broke into the house in the middle of the night? That’s what you’re telling me, sister?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Well, it’s all over now. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Well, never mind. Tell James to go on and get the divorce finished. You’re sure he can do it without me being there?”

  “If you’re really going to settle for this offer Spencer made. I think you’re a fool to do it, which is why I called you up. But whatever you want to do. It’s up to you, Helen. It’s your life. Well, I got to go now.”

  Daniel stayed up all night thinking about it. He started to call Jessie several times, then he would hang up the phone without finishing dialing. Finally, at noon the next day he went out to the airport and got on a plane and flew to New Orleans. He called Jessie from the airport and asked them to meet him for dinner at the Royal Orleans. Then he called Crystal and asked her and Manny to come and bring Crystal Anne. Then he checked into the hotel and lay down upon the bed and went to sleep. He had told everyone to meet him at six-thirty. At five forty-five he woke up and took a shower and put on a fresh seersucker suit and a white shirt and tie and went downstairs and had a shoeshine and then went into the bar and started drinking. By the time Jessie arrived he had had three double gin martinis. By the time the dinner party was gathered around a table he was slurring his words. By the time the waiter brought wine there was a chill around their end of the dining room so intense that Crystal Anne had started sneezing.