Starve the Vulture

by Jason Carney

  “Y’all want toothpaste?” I ask.

  She nods her head yes. I walk over to my shaving kit, offer her the tube with an outstretched arm. She holds out her finger.

  “How about you?” I ask the man.

  “No thanks.”

  She starts brushing her teeth with her finger. No water, no sink, just the minty scald of the paste to her raw gums. She seems invigorated.

  “You want some water?”

  She nods her head again. I point to the bathroom. She rolls her eyes.

  “Last hit,” he says.

  I break down what is left of my slab, tossing him a few rocks. She steps back into the room. Their renewal process over, they both sit down in their original positions. He loads his girlfriend a fresh bowl.

  I need entertainment. I focus on the door. One of my favorite tweaker games is Freak Out on the Door. Simple to play: Take a hit, then waste your time constantly going to the peephole checking for anyone. Once you sit back down, stare at the handle for movement. I mean really stare at the handle as if everything in the world depends on it remaining motionless. After a while, convince yourself that it does move. Focus on the Do Not Disturb sign as if you are sure the placard is wiggling. Then get up. Do the peephole thing again. If you are not freaked when you start, you will be by the time you make the third cycle. Back and forth. You can do it for hours before you realize how fucked up you are. With more than two people, you may have a very interesting spectacle. A simple suggestion can create a centrifugal force spinning a doper into hell.

  I start the game off: I get up, stand at the door for a couple of minutes, then walk away. Then one-step back to the peephole, as if I heard something. Reluctantly, I return to my chair. My gaze fixes on the handle, the chain. Silence fills the room again. In just a few slow minutes, I have their attention. The game is underway!

  “You hear that?” I say. I stand, the blood rushing from my head. Wooziness stumbles me the first three steps. Regaining composure, I make my way half blind to the door. My shut eye presses against the peephole. They talk to themselves about what I hear, what I see.

  “Y’all be quiet a minute.” I sway, peeking through the glass-covered hole.

  “What is it?” the guy asks.

  I return to my seat, fixating on the handle. “Did you hear that?” I ask.

  “I did,” she says.

  “Go check it out,” I say.

  She crosses the floor like a ninja, leaning against the door ever so slightly.

  We have a winner.

  I load a fresh hit and watch the spectacle unfold. For ten minutes she stands at the door. I sit smoking.

  Does she see what she thinks she hears?

  She returns when her boyfriend calls her over for a hit. Now she is in a constant panic, watching the handle. I say nothing else. One statement followed by a simple action causes her to spend the next thirty minutes going from bed to door, door to bed, her only salvation the thirty seconds every once in awhile when her lips suckle on a metal tube.

  The guy figures out what is going on, but he is powerless to stop the whirl of her paranoia. We both lose interest in her debacle. I begin to feel bad. Just as I am about to tell her to sit down, that I have been fucking with her, she darts to the bed.

  “There’s a black man at the door dressed in a uniform,” she says.

  Pangs of death fall over us.

  I am not about to fuck around. Without a noise, I glide over to the door, listen for a knock, a faint breath out in the hallway, voices climbing the stairs. There is only silence.

  Is she fucking with me?

  She is prone. Arms nestle under her frame; she shrinks to the carpet.

  Surely not.

  Crackheads are great liars but horrible actors. If you can learn to tell the difference, you will never be cheated with fake dope.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, confusion and panic rattling my brain.

  “Yes, he bent down when he got to the door,” she whispers.

  The guy and I stand frozen, the bologna sandwiches of the county jail racing through our brains. He shuffles to the window and checks the edges of the curtains.

  “I don’t see any squad cars,” he says.

  The game turns on its side now, a sense of reality dosing our spinning heads.

  This is going all wrong.

  No one breathes. He and I glance at each other, then the door, then at her. No squad cars, no knocks at the door, no sound rushing through the hallway—only four minutes of silence.

  We begin to breathe again, still unsure of what the fuck is going on. I approach the door, slowly caressing the peephole open this time. Nothing lingers in the hallway. I decide to open.

  “What are you doing?” he asks as I undo the lock.

  “Oh shit,” she whispers.

  There is nothing in the hallway and no one on the stairs. I peer down the hallway, then down at my feet. A piece of paper lies on carpet right at my feet. The receipt for my hotel bill. I begin to laugh.

  I explain that the security guard left my bill. Their tight faces show relief. No bologna sandwiches today.

  “Fuck,” he says with a deep exhale.

  As the girl stands, my cell phone goes off. We all jump. I sit back into the chair, load a fresh bowl, and check my phone.

  C has texted me, wants a favor. Tells me to be there at two forty-five a.m., a package needs delivery. Something doesn’t feel right about this. I debate not getting back with him.

  He is not going to take no for an answer.

  “Y’all, I’ve got something to do,” I say. “Where can I drop you at?”

  “At the Racetrack on Bunker,” he quietly replies.

  The location could not be more perfect. Four minutes to the apartments where C waits. They gather their stuff; disappointment flows over their frames. Her body seems to grapple with the exhaustion of having to go back to the street. For the first time, I really grasp how easy the past few hours of her life have been.

  We exit the room. No one talks as we travel down the stairs. I feel guilty. As I reach the landing, I turn to look back to the stairwell entrance.

  “Y’all hold on one second,” I say, “I forgot something.”

  I return to the room. As I insert the key, I check to make sure I am alone. Shut the door behind me. I climb to retrieve a hundred-dollar hunk from inside the smoke detector above the bed. I put the rock in my pocket, leaving the smoke detector hanging from the ceiling.

  I will fix that when I return.

  I thank them for waiting. The first three minutes of our drive is quiet. All of us speed in our own directions; a haze floats over the car. I cannot stand the silence.

  “Where y’all going to stay tonight?”

  “Hopefully we can scrounge up enough dough for a cheap room before dawn,” he answers. I can tell he is waiting for me to offer them one of the beds back in my room.

  My generosity is evaporating quickly. I head down the highway to East Dallas. I begin to think of my mother. The girl in the backseat is someone’s daughter, even if her parents do not love her. Sacrificing her youth to the hands of this man who is not much different from my father, from myself. I make a spur-of-the-moment decision, the voice of my mother somewhere in my head. I exit one stop early, travel the service road entering the parking lot of the Mesquite Inn and Suites. The Racetrack is only a quarter of a mile away.

  “What are we doing?” he asks.

  “Wait here; I’ll be right back,” I say as I open the car door.

  I walk inside, pay for two nights in the cheapest room they have.

  This is the smartest thing I’ve done in days.

  The clerk hands me my change. The whole act takes less than five minutes. I head back to the car smiling.

  “I have a friend that stays here; let’s check it out,” I say.

  We drive around to the side of the building, the parking lot lit up and quiet. I imagine hookers, crackheads, and maybe an unsuspecting tourist hiding behind the three or f
our rooms whose lights peek through the holes in the curtains. I pull into the parking spot right in front of the door. The guy and I move quickly out of the vehicle, we do not speak, we both want a hit. I turn to look at the car as I stick the card into the slot. She climbs out, ten steps behind us. I wait for her to catch up and I hand her the key. “Y’all can stay for two days.”

  They do not say a word, their faces twisted by the absurdity of my actions, an unheard-of kindness. To me, out there in the darkness is a mother, unable to sleep, wondering what bad decisions her eighteen-year-old is making. We enter the room.

  King-size bed, cable television, a shower, it’s nothing special, but more than she has in her life right now. She jumps on the bed like the teenager she is. Arms spread out above her head, she makes snow angels on the comforter. Even lets out a little giggle.

  I reach into my pack of smokes. The large slab is easy to grab. His eyes light up as he catches the rock in my hand.

  “Let me borrow your pipe,” I say.

  He already has it out, anticipating more good fortune. I load a very large bowl, the crumbles flow over the edges like the head of a root beer float. I strike the lighter. Inhale deep. The sweet sensation envelops my head. I almost pass out from holding my breath too long. I throw the slab of crack on the nightstand. Walk out. I do not say a word. Neither do the couple.

  In the car, my mind swirls with an uneasy feeling about going to C’s.

  I hate doing favors.

  I hate this cycle of addiction. The nonsense will not end without a catastrophic event. No matter how many panhandlers I help, until I save myself, I am heading toward disaster.

  She will sleep in a bed tonight. The first small victory to put a smile on my face in months. For the next couple of days she will not have to beg to feed her boyfriend’s habit.

  I feel that this is somehow going to be my last act of kindness. I start to cry. I sense disaster floating close around me. I am exhausted.

  My car drives itself down the service road.

  SMOKED-OUT TOOTH

  I sand my teeth with metal emery boards,

  catch dust of enamel and tin on my tongue.

  The back of my mouth bleeds congestion and

  stale euphoric memory of the high. It tastes

  of gasoline and disease. Chrome pus

  floods my gums when I laugh and clench.

  My bones quake to stand still. I am faced

  opposite of yesterday—the warm melted

  smell of cannibalism licks my neck. I will

  not turn to its truth. Relinquish trophies

  that stab my cheeks. I will grind smooth

  spit-shine stars from their blackness.

  FAITH WITHOUT WORKS

  2005

  “THE CHOICE IS YOURS," I say. “I can only show you what I was taught, no grand revelations here, man. Only hard work.”

  “I know,” he responds. “After hearing you tonight, I think my ideas may not be so right.”

  When I offered at the beginning of my show earlier tonight to talk to any of the six who committed the hate crime on campus, I didn’t think I’d have any takers. This was not the first time I’ve had to address such issues at one of my shows. At the University of Virginia a few years back, we did a show shortly after the first African American girl to run for student president was beaten by white boys using racial slurs as she walked across campus. Last night, security cameras caught six young men spray-painting hateful slogans all over the campus of this small public university, located in upper Michigan, in protest of the drag show that the gay and lesbian student organization sponsors every spring. One of the more sedate scriptures that they painted on a wall: Bring a shotgun to school and kill a fag.

  By the time the sun came up, the campus was covered in a sickness and ignorance colder than the April snowfall of a few days before, now littering the ground, embedded with dirt and grime. The only spot of cleanliness I noticed when I arrived on campus this afternoon was the public outpouring of support for those harmed by the act. Even the state representative for the district came by and got his photo-op: one politician, three hundred students, and the university employees wearing black T-shirts with the slogan: Gay, Fine by Me.

  This student, not admitting to being one of the six, and I have been in my campus hotel room—a small room above the school’s kitchens used for administrative guests and visiting professors—for about two hours, bullshitting and telling each other stories about our raucous youth, while I gather and pack my belongings. I am tired. The chill of the night outside settles across the room. The show tonight is my last for the current school year. I did not expect this one to be so eventful, not anticipating this chance to make a difference, and I feel discombobulated in my approach, pausing several times during the course of our conversation to pray silently within my head for guidance.

  At six in the morning, a cab is coming to take me to the airport. I did not intend on being up this late. The enormity of this moment has not reached him yet. I can see myself in his twenty-one-year-old eyes. I pull a legal pad from my backpack and the ballpoint pen from my shirt pocket. He seems intrigued, as if I am doing a magic trick, removing what we do not like about ourselves to somewhere far away.

  On the paper, I draw two lines, creating three columns with the largest on the right. In the first column, at the top of the row, I write the word nigger. It’s a word that we as a culture have created, used solely for destructive purposes, and implemented over the years to differentiate and denigrate fellow citizens who we could not contain but tried to confine. His eyes light up with an uncomfortable stare. Every white person fears the discussion of this two-syllable word of hate because it begins with guilt and ownership and accusations that have always been true of this privileged white culture. I learned a lot over the years, watching even the most liberal white citizen hide true emotions in the guise of politically correct bullshit slogans, such as: I got black friends and I never owned any slaves, or I am Irish and we were treated just as bad as the blacks. Instead of addressing the problem, and collectively moving on to a better definition of not what past we are hiding from but rather who we have become out of those errors and regrets. Even worse when done with sophistication and advanced rhetoric such as black-on-black crime and black-on-white crime. I discovered white folks have a strong dislike toward discussing white-on-black crime, even though its origins allowed for freedoms and wealth to be created.

  We sit in silence for a few moments.

  “If you take inventory of your life, you’ll have a better understanding of who you are and the world around you. If you don’t define yourself and the world, then the world will define you. And that’s limiting to your identity and the possibility of achieving your dreams.”

  In the middle column, I write a few short sentences describing the first time I learned that word from my family. I give him the brief outline of the tale as I write. He laughs at the story, catching himself and trying to suppress his emotion.

  “It’s okay, laugh,” I say. “It’s a funny story. That’s the point. In this country we teach hate with laughter and love. You didn’t invent this anger and hate inside of you, you weren’t born with it either. Somebody taught it to you.”

  “I don’t know, seems like this is the way I have always felt.”

  “That is what I thought,” I say. “I’ll prove it to you.”

  In the third column, I write the word family. Under that I write words associated with what I felt hearing the story, and how it affected me and my actions. When finished, I move back to the first column. I write the word gay-rod. Next to it, in the middle, I write down boys on the playground.

  “I called a white boy nigger on the swings and he called me a gay-rod and a gay-wad. I told him that I didn’t know what those words meant, so the kid’s older brother explained them to me.”

  I write down my age: five. Then in the third column, I write down the word friends, under that the lessons I associated with gay-rod. The de
eper I go in the third column, the more actions appear because of the knowledge of the first and second columns. The causes and effects become quite clear.

  “I’m not responsible for column one and two,” I say, “but column three, those actions are mine. I have to take responsibility for them. Do you see what I’m doing here?”

  “Yeah, I get it. But how does this apply to me?”

  I slide the pad over to him. “Think back. What was the first racial slur you remember hearing?”

  “How’s this going to help?”

  “Every thought, action, fear you have had since you were little has been built off a foundation. We’re looking for the cornerstones, so to speak.”

  He picks the pen up, thumps it on the pad as if it’s a drumstick. His brown hair hangs down over his forehead, his face hidden from view.

  “If we discover the what, when, how, who, and why of your beliefs, then we can see their virtue or their failure,” I add. “Writing that shit down gets it out of our head, and onto something that we can control outside of our self—the page. We can rewrite the page, thus changing ourselves in the process.”

  “I’ve always looked at the world just the way it is.” He shrugs. “Some things are just the way they are.”

  “Faith without works is dead.”

  “Huh?” he responds, as if this is the most complex thing he has ever heard.

  “Once you start to do this, you will never look at the world the same way again. You’re going to have to be around your family and friends, their attitudes and beliefs, their actions and speech.”

  “Yeah, that sounds hard,” he says. “I don’t think I could change my dad or my friends.”

  “It ain’t about changing them, it’s about being an example to them. Your actions are the example to them, as well as your speech. We are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with you.”

  “All right,” he says.

  “Just know, if you do this, if you start to change your views and redefine yourself, the world will test you. At some point, you’ll have to take action and live what you’ve learned. That is the karma of personal growth. Faith without works is dead.”