Barking Man

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Even though he was so close, I didn’t go out to see Davey near as much as I would have liked to. The lawyer kept on telling me it wasn’t a good idea to look like I was pressing too hard. Better take it easy till all the evaluations came in and we had our court date and all. Still, I would call and go on out there maybe a little more than once a month, most usually on the weekends since that seemed to suit the Bakers better. They never acted like it was any trouble, and they were always pleasant to me, or polite might be the better word. They wanted what I wanted, so I never expected us to turn out good friends. The way it sometimes seemed they didn’t trust me, that bothered me a little more. I would have liked to take him out to the movies a time or two, but I could see plain enough the Bakers wouldn’t have been easy about me having him off their place.

  Still, I can’t remember us having a bad time, not any of those times I went. He was always happy to see me, though he’d be quiet when we were in the house, with Mrs. Baker hovering. So I would get us outside quick as ever I could, and once we were out, we would just play like both of us were children. There was an open pasture, a creek with a patch of woods, and a hay barn where we would play hide-and-go-seek. I don’t know what all else we did—silly things, mostly. That was how I could get near him the easiest, he didn’t get a whole lot of playing in way out there. The Bakers weren’t what you would call playful and there weren’t any other children living near. So that was the thing I could give him that was all mine to give. When the weather was good we would stay outside together most all the day and he would just wear me out. After it turned cold we couldn’t stay outside so long, though one of our best days of all was when I showed him how to make a snowman. But over the winter those visits seemed to get shorter and shorter, like the days.

  Davey called me Momma still, but I suppose he had come to think your mother was something more like a big sister or just some kind of a friend. Mrs. Baker was the one doing for him all the time. I don’t know just what he remembered from before, or if he remembered any of the bad part. He would always mind me but he never acted scared around me, and if anybody says he did, they lie. But I never really did get to know what he had going on in the back of his mind about the past. At first I worried the Bakers might have been talking against me, but after I had seen a little more of them I knew they wouldn’t have done anything like that, wouldn’t have thought it right. So I expect whatever Davey knew about that other time he remembered all on his own. He never mentioned Patrick hardly and I think he really had forgotten about him. Thinking back, I guess he never really saw that much of Patrick even where we all were living together. But Davey had Patrick’s mark all over him, the same eyes and the same red hair.

  Patrick had thick wavy hair the shade of an Irish setter’s, and a big rolling mustache the same color. Maybe that was his best feature, but he was a good-looking man altogether—still is, I suppose, though the prison haircut don’t suit him. If he ever had much of a thought in his head, I suspect he had knocked it clean out with dope, yet he was always fun to be around. I wasn’t but seventeen when I married him and I didn’t have any better sense myself. Right through to the end I never thought anything much was the matter, his vices looked so small to me. He was good-tempered almost all the time, and good with Davey when he did notice him. Never one time did he raise his hand to either one of us. In little ways he was unreliable—late, not showing up at all, gone out of the house for days together sometimes. Hindsight shows me he ran with other women, but I managed not to know anything about that at the time. He had not quite finished high school and the best job he could hold was being an orderly down at the hospital, but he made a good deal of extra money stealing pills out of there and selling them on the street.

  That was something else I didn’t allow myself to think on much back then. Patrick never told me a lot about it anyhow, always acted real mysterious about whatever he was up to in that line. He would disappear on one of his trips and come back with a whole mess of money, and I would spend up my share and be glad I had it too. Never thought much about where it was coming from, the money or the pills, either one. He used to keep all manner of pills around the house, Valium and hides and a lot of different kinds of speed, and we both took what we felt like whenever we felt in the mood. But what Patrick made the most on was Dilaudid. I used to take that without ever knowing what it really was, but once everything fell in on us I found out it was a bad thing, bad as heroin they said, and not much different, and that was what they gave Patrick most of his time for.

  I truly was surprised to find out that was the strongest dope we had, because I never really felt like it made me all that high. It sure didn’t have anything like the punch the speed did. Yet you could fall into the habit of taking a good bit of it, never noticing how much. You would just take one and kick back on a long slow stroke and whatever trouble you might have, it would not be able to find you. It came on like nothing but it was the hardest habit to lose, and I was a long time shaking it. I might be thinking about it yet if I would let myself, and there were times, all through the winter I spent in that apartment, I’d catch myself remembering the feeling.

  I had come just before the leaves started turning, and then I believed it was all going to happen quick. I thought to have Davey back with me inside of a month or six weeks. But pretty soon the lawyer was singing me a different tune, delaying it all for this reason or that. He had a whole lot of different schemes in his mind, having to do with which judge, which social worker, which doctor might help us out the most. I got excited over everything he told me, in the beginning I did at least, but then nothing ever seemed to come of it at all. It turned off cold, the leaves came down, that poor little apple tree underneath my window was bare as a stick, and still nothing had happened.

  You couldn’t call it a real bad winter, there wasn’t much snow or anything, but I was cold just about all the time, except when I was at work. The TOA was hot as a steam bath, especially back around the kitchen, and when I was there I’d sweat until I smelled. In the apartment, though, all I had was some electric baseboard heaters, and they cost too much for me to leave them running very long at a stretch. I’d keep it just warm enough I couldn’t see my breath, and spend my time in a hot bathtub or under a big pile of blankets on the bed. Or else I would just be cold.

  Outside wasn’t all that much colder than in, and I spent a lot of time sitting there on that balcony, looking way out yonder toward the mountains. I got a pair of those gloves with the fingers out so I could keep on stuffing my envelopes while I was sitting out there. Day or night, it didn’t matter, I was so familiar with it I could do it in the dark. I’d sit there sometimes for hours on end, counting the time by the trains that went by. Sound seemed to carry better in the cold, and I felt like I could hear every clack of the rails when a train was coming, and when they let the horn off it rang that whole valley like a bell.

  But inside the apartment it was mostly dead quiet. I might hear the pipes moaning now and again and that was all. If the phone rang it would make me jump. Didn’t seem like there was any TV or radio next door. The only sound coming out of there was Susan getting beat up once in a while. That was her name—a sweet name, I think. I found it out from hearing him say it, which he used to do almost every time before he started in on her. “Susan,” he’d call out, loud enough I could just hear him through the wall. He’d do it a time or two, he might have been calling her to him, I don’t know. After that would come a bad silence that reminded you of a snake being somewhere around. Then a few minutes’ worth of hitting sounds and then the big slam as she hit the wall and the clatter of my pots falling down on the floor. He’d throw her at the wall maybe once or twice, usually when he was about to get through. By the time the pots had quit spinning on the floor it would be real quiet over there again, and the next time I saw Susan she’d be walking in that ginger way people have when they’re hiding a hurt, and if I said hello to her she’d give a little jump and look away.

  After a
while I quit paying it much mind, it didn’t feel any different to me than hearing the news. All their carrying on was not any more than one wall of the rut I had worked myself into, going back and forth from the job, cleaning that apartment till it hurt, calling up the lawyer about once a week to find out about the next postponement. I made a lot of those calls from the TOA, and Tim and Prissy got pretty interested in the whole business. I would tell them all about it, too. Sometimes, when our shift was done, Prissy and I would pour coffee and sit in a booth for as much as a couple of hours, just chewing that subject over and over, with Tim passing by now and again to chip in his opinion of what was going to happen. But nothing much ever did happen, and after a while I got to where I didn’t want to discuss it anymore. I kept ahead making those calls but every one of them just wore down my hope a little more, like a drip of water wearing down a stone. And little by little I got in the habit of thinking that nothing really was going to change.

  It was spring already by the time things finally did begin to move. That sad little apple tree was beginning to try and put out some leaves, and the weather was getting warmer every day, and I was starting to feel it inside me too, the way you do. That was when the lawyer called me, for a change, and told me he had some people lined up to see me at last.

  Well, I was all ready for them to come visit, come see how I’d fixed up my house and all the rest of my business to get set for having Davey back with me again. But as it turned out, nobody seemed to feel like they were called on to make that trip. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” was what one of them said, I don’t recall which. They both talked about the same, in voices that sounded like filling out forms.

  So all I had to do was drive downtown a couple of times and see them in their offices. The child psychologist was the first and I doubt he kept me more than half an hour. I couldn’t even tell the point of most of the questions he asked. My second trip I saw the social worker, who turned out to be a black lady once I got down there, though I never could have told it over the phone. Her voice sounded like it was coming out of the TV. She looked me in the eye while she was asking her questions, but I couldn’t make out a thing, about what she thought. It wasn’t till afterward, when I was back in the apartment, that I understood she must have already had her mind made up.

  That came to me in a sort of flash, while I was standing in the kitchen washing out a cup. Soon as I walked back in the door I’d seen my coffee mug left over from breakfast, and kicked myself for letting it sit out. I was giving it a hard scrub with a scouring pad when I realized it didn’t matter anymore. I might just as well have dropped it on the floor and got what kick I could out of watching it smash, because it wasn’t going to make any difference to anybody now. But all the same I rinsed it and set in the drainer, careful as if it might have been an eggshell. Then I stepped backward out of the kitchen and took a long look around that cold shabby place and thought it might be for the best that nobody was coming. How could I have expected it to fool anybody else when it wasn’t even good enough to fool me? A lonesomeness came over me, I felt like I was floating all alone in the middle of the cold air, and then I began to remember some things I would just as soon have not.

  No, I never did like to think about this part, but I have had to think about it time and again, with never a break for a long, long time, because I needed to get to understand it at least well enough to believe it never would ever happen anymore. And I had come to believe that, in the end. If I hadn’t I never would have come back at all. I had found a way to trust myself again, though it took me a full two years to do it, and though of course it still didn’t mean that anybody else would trust me.

  What had happened was that Patrick went off on one of his mystery trips and stayed gone a deal longer than usual. Two nights away, I was used to that, but on the third I did start to wonder. He normally would have called, at least, if he meant to be gone that long of a stretch. But I didn’t hear a peep until about halfway through the fourth day. And it wasn’t Patrick himself that called, but one of those public assistance lawyers from downtown.

  Seemed like the night before Patrick had got himself stopped on the interstate loop down there. The troopers said he was driving like a blind man, and he was so messed up on whiskey and ludes I suppose he must have been pretty near blind. Well, maybe he would have just lost his license or something like that, only that the back seat of the car was loaded up with all he had lately stole out of the hospital.

  So it was bad. It was so bad my mind just could not contain it, and every hour it seemed to get worse. I spent the next couple of days running back and forth between the jail and that lawyer, and I had to haul Davey along with me wherever I went. He was too little for school and I couldn’t find anybody to take him right then, though all that running around made him awful cranky. Patrick was just grim, he would barely speak. He already knew for pretty well sure he’d be going to prison. The lawyer had told him there wasn’t no use in getting a bondsman, he might just as well sit in there and start pulling his time. I don’t know how much he really saved himself that way, though, since what they ended up giving him was twenty-five years.

  That was when all my troubles found me, quick. The second day after Patrick got arrested, I came down real sick with something. I thought at first it was a bad cold or the flu. My nose kept running and I felt so wore out I couldn’t hardly get up off the bed and yet at the same time I felt real restless, like all my nerves had been scraped raw. Well, I didn’t really connect it up to the fact that I’d popped the last pill in the house about two days before. What was really the matter was me coming off that Dilaudid, but I didn’t have any notion of that at the time.

  I was laying there in the bed not able to get up, and about ready to jump right out of my skin at the same time, when Davey got the drawer underneath the stove open. Of course he was getting restless himself with everything that had been going on, and me not able to pay him much attention. All our pots and pans were down in that drawer then, and he began to take them out one at a time and throw them on the floor. It made a hell of a racket, and the shape I was in I started feeling like he must be doing it on purpose, to devil me. I called out to him and asked him to quit. Nice at first: “You stop that now, Davey. Momma don’t feel good.” But he kept right ahead. All he wanted was a little noticing, I know, but my mind wasn’t working like it should. I knew I should get up and just go lead him away from there, but I couldn’t seem to get myself to move. I had a picture of myself doing what I ought to do, but I just wasn’t doing it. I was still laying there calling for him to quit and he was still banging those pots around, and before long I was screaming at him outright, and starting to cry at the same time. But he never stopped a minute. I guess I had scared him some already and he was just locked into doing it, or maybe he wanted to drown me out. Every time he flung a pot it felt like I was getting shot at. And the next thing I knew, I had got myself in the kitchen somehow and was snatching him up off the floor.

  To this day I don’t remember doing it, though I have tried and tried. I thought if I could call it back, then maybe I could root it out of myself and be rid of it for good. But all I ever knew was, one minute I was grabbing hold of him and the next he was laying on the far side of the room with his right leg folded up funny where it was broke, not even crying, just looking surprised. And I knew it had to be me that threw him over there because sure as hell is real, there was nobody else around that could have done it.

  I drove him to the hospital myself. I laid him out straight on the front seat beside me and drove with one hand all the way so I could hold on to him with the other. He was real quiet and real brave the whole time, never cried the least bit, just kept a tight hold of my hand with his. I was crying a river myself, couldn’t hardly see the road. It’s a wonder we didn’t crash, I suppose. Well, we got there and they ran him off somewhere to get his leg set and pretty soon this doctor came back out and asked me how it had happened.

  It was the same hos
pital where Patrick had worked and I even knew that doctor a little bit. Not that being connected to Patrick would have done me a whole lot of good around there at that time. Still, I’ve often thought since that things might have come out better for me and Davey if I only could have lied to that man, but I was not up to telling a lie that anybody would be apt to believe. All I could do was start to scream and jabber like a crazy person, and it ended up I stayed in that hospital a good few days myself. They took me for a junkie and I guess I really was one too, though that was the first time I’d known it. And I never saw Davey again for a whole two years, not till the first time they let me go out to the Bakers’.

  Sometimes you don’t get but one mistake, if the one you pick is bad enough. Do as much as step in the road the wrong time without looking, and your life could be over with then and there. But during those two years I taught myself to believe that this mistake of mine could be wiped out, that if I struggled hard enough with myself and the world I could make it like it never had been.

  Three weeks went by after I went to see that social worker, and I didn’t have any idea what was happening, or if anything was. Didn’t call anybody, I expect I was afraid to. Then one day the phone rang for me out there at the TOA. It was that lawyer and I could tell right off from the sound of his voice that I wasn’t going to care for his news. Well, he told me all the evaluations had come in now, sure enough, and they weren’t running in our favor. They weren’t against me—he made sure to say that—it was more like they were for the Bakers. And his judgment was, it wouldn’t pay me anything if we went on to court. It looked like the Bakers would get Davey for good, and they were likely to be easier about visitation if there wasn’t any big tussle. But if I drug them into court, then we would have to start going back over that whole case history—