Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

by James Henderson

  A panhandler stopped me going into the liquor store on Wright Avenue.

  “Yo, man, you come out spare any change?” he said, and I recognized his face, Willie, couldn’t remember his last name but we went to school together.

  I ignored him, went inside and purchased a pint of Smirnoff vodka, a bottle of cranberry juice and a cup of ice.

  Outside, Willie said, “Yo, fifty cents, a quarter? Help a nigga out.”

  I reached inside my pocket, found a handful of change and tossed it at him.

  “Yo, what, I’ma dog?” he said, stepping up to me. His breath stank, too much cheap liquor and too little toothpaste. Sleepy was crudded in the edges of his eyes. “Throw money at me, you must think I’m some kinda punk!”

  Holding the Smirnoff bottle by the neck at my side, I said, “I think you need to get out my damn face, is what I think.”

  Willie assumed a boxing stance, his ashy fist held up. Rocking his head sideways, he said, “C’mon, motherfucker, let’s rock. Swang on me! Come on, motherfucker, swang on me!”

  A small crowd gathered around and someone said, “Willie, kick his ass!”

  Willie, ducking and weaving now, said, “I want him to swang on me. Swang, motherfucker! Swang!”

  I stepped forward, ready to swang, as he called it, the bottle at his head. But then a buncha what if’s stopped me: What if I missed? What if he kicked my ass? What if the crowd decided to offer a few licks while I was on the ground? I’d seen that happen once.

  Some guy stepped in between us, his back to me, both hands on Willie’s shoulder.

  “What you doing, Willie, all out in public?” he said, and pulled a wallet out of white silk pants. “Huh?” He gave Willie a five spot. “Go get you something to cool off.”

  Willie said, “Thanks, Fifty,” and started for the liquor store. He stopped at the door, looked at me. “Boy, you lucky, I was ’bout to beat you down.” The crowd dispersed.

  The guy Willie called Fifty turned and I remembered him from the party Friday night. “Why you fighting the locals?” he asked me.

  “A long story. Thanks for stepping in when you did. It was about to get bloody.”

  Fifty laughed and I noticed the gold chain under his white silk shirt. A Panama straw hat on his head.

  He indicated the bottle in my hand. “A shame to waste a ten-dollar bottle on a ten-cent nigger.”

  I got into the Caddy, started it up.

  He hunched down, said, “Ain’t in your business, but how come you ain’t at work?”

  “That’s another long story.”

  “Say, if you ain’t doin’ nothing special you can share a drink with me and my girl.” He pointed at a black convertible BMW parked on the side of the liquor store, the top up, the tint too dark to see inside. “I owe you that much for the other night.”

  Remembering the crack rock he’d given me, I said, “Nah, thanks but no thanks.”

  I started to drive off and he said, “Hold on a sec,” and waved at someone inside the BMW. A white girl in a black bodyslip got out. She looked like that girl on Seinfield, same hairstyle and features, but when she walked over I saw wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. “This my girl, Cindy,” Fifty said. “Cindy, say hi--what’s your name again?”

  “John.”

  “Yeah, John. Say hi to John.” She nodded. “Baby, ask him to have a drink with us.”

  “Come drink with us.” she said, no heart in it, simply repeating what Fifty said.

  I followed the BMW to a cream-colored stucco apartment complex on Markham Street, across from the Arkansas School for the Deaf and Blind, a few blocks away from the state capitol.

  To my surprise their apartment was clean, almost identical to Doke’s, the color of the furniture gray instead of white. Oil paintings covered every wall, a few in wooden frames: Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Space Ghost, Superman, Lil Abner and Daisy Mae, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, The Hulk, Tom and Jerry, and one whom I couldn’t place.

  “You like the work?” Fifty said, coming out the kitchen with a coke and two glasses of ice.

  “Yeah, where did you get em?” I asked, taking a seat in the recliner.

  Cindy bent down and turned on the television and a stereo encased in a tall mahogany entertainment center with books in the middle shelves. I stared at the back of her thighs.

  Fifty handed me a glass of ice. “You like what you see?” he said, smiling. I looked away. Waving his glass, Fifty said, “I didn’t buy these masterpieces, I painted them.”

  Cindy sat down beside him on the couch. Lenny Kravitz played on the stereo. Oprah was on the television but the volume was inaudible.

  “You kidding me?” I said. “You’re a professional artist?”

  Fifty slapped the bottom of a Crown Royal bottle. “To you and everybody who’s seen my work, I’m a professional. To people running museums and art galleries, the people who can jumpstart a career, I ain’t shit.” After pouring his drink, he slid the bottle across the table toward me. “See, I didn’t go to school. Should’ve, but I didn’t. Got caught up in other things.” He sipped his drink, added more coke. “What do you do?”

  That brought back everything I was trying to forget.

  I ignored the Crown Royal, poured my glass half full of Smirnoff vodka, added a smidgen of cranberry juice. “Right now, to be honest, I don’t have a job.”

  Fifty said, “Today? You got fired today?”

  Looking at them sitting there on the couch, his arms around her shoulder, her right leg in his lap, I realized they were at least ten years older than myself. A middle-aged, black-and-white dopehead couple who kept a clean apartment.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  “Yeah, sort of,” I said, not wanting to get into it. “Quit one job thinking I had another. It didn’t work out.”

  “That’s why you were raising hell with a nobody like Willie, right?”

  “Yeah, maybe so.”

  Fifty whispered in Cindy’s ear. She got up, went into the kitchen and came back with a cellophane bag in her hand.

  “Cindy’s going to smoke a joint,” Fifty said as she sat back down. “You mind?”

  “No. This your apartment, you do what you want.”

  One more drink, I thought, and I’m outta here. Go home and face the music. Tomorrow look for another job.

  The burnt rope smell of marijuana filled the room as Rascal Flatts played on the stereo. Dr. Phil had replaced Oprah on the television.

  Fifty was saying something as I refilled my glass, but I wasn’t listening, wondering how long it would take to find another job.

  “You got a light?” Cindy said, and though I knew I didn’t have one I patted my pockets.

  “No, I don’t.” There was something in my breast pocket. A piece of paper.

  “Get a light off the stove,” Fifty told her, and she said she didn’t want to do that, needed a lighter.

  Doreen’s handwriting on the paper read: John, the last two days were the happiest of my life. I love you so much. Your wife, Doreen.

  A lump, a big one, lodged in my throat, made my eyes water a bit. Doreen’s heart would break into a million pieces when I told her the news.

  All that money she spent on the surprise party, the new clothes, and the dinner at Red Lobster. All for nothing. Shit! Berry, once I caught up with him, his ass was grass.

  “Can I hit that?”

  Cindy stared at me, the joint hanging on her lip, her eyes saying, “Huh?”

  “You heard the man,” Fifty said. “Let him hit the damn joint!”

  She handed it to me and I stared at it before putting it to my lips and inhaling. The smoke burned my throat, made my chest hurt. Coughing, I handed it back to Cindy.

  “You okay?” Fifty said.

  Another drink, this time Crown Royal and coke, and I was okay, feeling just fine. Fifty was rambling about something or the other when I interrupted him.

  “Fr
iday night you showed up at the party, Doreen, my wife, she flipped out. What did you say to her?”

  As some white girl sang about being beautiful on the stereo I watched Fifty’s expression go from a frown to a grin…then he started laughing.

  “I didn’t say a word,” he said, still laughing. “I don’t know why she did that.”

  His laughing got me to laughing, his not knowing why Doreen freaked out on him the funniest thing he and I had ever heard.

  The laughing subsided and Fifty got up and retrieved a six-pack of Coors from the kitchen. Cindy told me where the bathroom was. Sparkling clean, with one of those disinfectant cones hanging on the rim of the commode.

  When I got back, Cindy and Fifty were arguing and there was another cellophane bag on the coffee table, this one a quarter-filled with yellow rocks, along with what looked to me a homemade metal pipe.

  One more drink, maybe two, and I’m out the door.

  Fifty ended the argument with, “You ain’t running a damn thing round here!” He looked up at me. Smiled. “I’m sure you’re wondering about this here.” Picked up the pipe. “Let me explain something to you.” Took a rock out the cellophane bag and put it in the pipe. “You stepped in the look on your face you were surprised, weren’t you? Thought you’d be walking into a pigsty, didn’t you?” He turned to Cindy, motioned his thumb for a lighter, and she shook her head. “Go to the car and get one then,” he said, and she got up and went out the door.

  Gesticulating with the pipe, he said, “Didn’t you? Don’t answer, but I know you did.” Cindy came back, locked the door, and gave Fifty a red lighter. “You right, most people smoke crack live like shit.” He lighted the pipe, inhaled deeply, held it, and blew a stream of white smoke my way. “Right now you thinking to yourself, ‘Jesus, he’s a crackhead, a bona fide crackhead.’ Don’t fit, does it? My car, my clothes, the way I live, and I got a crack pipe in my mouth. Why it don’t fit? You wanna know?” He sucked on the pipe again.

  I took a sip of my drink. “Tell me.”

  Exhaling he said, “There’s two kinda people who smoke crack. New Jack City, you’ve seen it, haven’t you? The one scene Chris Rock sitting alone, chewing on a pipe, crying and looking all ugly? Anybody look that ugly shouldn’t be smoking shit.” He paused and stared at the pipe in his hand. “See…” He looked over his shoulder at the door, got up and checked it, then looked out the window.

  I remembered Mookie in the same pose. Looking out the window must be a side effect of cocaine.

  “See,” Fifty said, “that crackhead Chris Rock played is one type of crack smoker--fucked up, all ugly and shit. Crack or no crack, you know he’s on his ass one way or the other, you know? Impulsive, can’t deal with rejection, got a problem with authority, can’t handle failure, resentful toward mama or papa or some sumbitch who ain’t thought about his sorry ass in a long time.”

  He put the lighter to the pipe again and took a long puff, grunted while keeping the smoke in. Coughing, he said, “You looking at the other kinda crack smoker. Me! Not fucked up, can take it or leave it. Look round, you see I ain’t hurting for shit. Not shit!” he said, and put another rock in the pipe and lighted it.

  Returning from my third trip to the bathroom, the hallway getting more difficult to navigate, I saw Cindy with the pipe in her mouth. She looked embarrassed, but didn’t stop smoking.

  “Let me try it,” I said and thought: What the hell am I doing? Trying to impress this dopehead white woman?

  Fifty nudged Cindy and she handed the pipe across the table to me.

  Cindy said, “You sure you want to do this?”

  A slight hesistation and then I put the pipe in my mouth…and inhaled. Exhaled. Nothing.

  Fifty, laughing, said, “What ya think?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and gave Cindy the pipe. “Nothing. It doesn’t do anything for me.”

  “I know it didn’t,” Fifty said. “See, the way it works, you gotta light it, draw up some smoke. Cindy, light it for him.”

  Cindy loaded the pipe with two rocks, put the flame to it and puffed until Fifty tapped her on the back and said, “Give it to him, not smoke it up!” Cindy handed him the pipe, shook her head.

  Fifty gave her a look before taking the pipe and handing it to me. “Try it now.”

  This time I inhaled warm smoke and felt a tingling in my throat. “Nothing, not a thing,” that’s what I was going to say, but…Everything paused, the music, some guy singing about walking in Memphis, the Ford truck commercial on television, all of it paused, even Fifty and Cindy appeared frozen as they stared at me.

  Something was going on…All my senses seemed sharper, more perceptive…Bells rang, faint at first but slowly getting louder, coming closer…Something was about to happen, something new, something wonderful…Then that fast it all disappeared.

  Fifty, grinning, said, “Tell me you don’t feel nothing now.”

  Reaching for the lighter on the table, I said, “Let me try that again.”

  Chapter 9

  It was almost midnight when I parked the Caddy in my spot, dark clouds passing under a full moon. No lights on in the windows of our apartment. Doreen usually went to bed before eleven on weeknights, but what if she was up waiting for me? Damn! I couldn’t believe I’d stayed there that long, over thirteen hours.

  At the door I hesitated. All that drinking and smoking, Doreen would smell it on my clothes; she’d want to know where I’d been. The truth, she deserved that. I didn’t get the job. Berry the Klansman called the bank, messed it all up. Distraught, I hung out with a guy I met, got drunk.

  She wasn’t in the living room. I tiptoed to the bathroom, took off my clothes and took a long shower. Brushed my teeth. Gargled with Scope. Stuffed my clothes in the bottom of the clothes hamper though Doreen said not to do that, she’d take them to the cleaners.

  I got into bed as quietly as possible and Doreen said, “John, were the hell have you been?”

  “Out…with a guy I met.”

  She sat up. “With a guy you met!” Getting loud. “John, I was worried sick. Lewis and I drove around hours looking for you. I called everywhere, the jail, all the hospitals. Why the hell didn’t you call?”

  “Time got away from me.”

  “What? And you smell like a liquor store. What’s going on, John?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You go to work today?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d it go?”

  What the hell am I doing? “Not too bad.”

  She lay down, and then, a few minutes later, just when I figured the inquiry was over, she said, “Who’s this guy you met?”

  That pissed me off. She couldn’t drop it, had to know every aspect of my damn life.

  “A guy work with me,” and got to wondering what was Fifty’s real name.

  “Black or white?”

  My back to her, facing the the door, I saw Lewis stroll past the hallway and then heard the hiss of the refrigerator door opening. An urge told me to get up, go catch him stuffing something in his mouth, tell him to put it down and take his fat ass to bed.

  Closing my eyes tight so I wouldn’t see him coming back, I said, “Hispanic.”

  In the morning, Doreen shook me, told me to get up, said it was almost seven-thirty. She was already dressed in a light-brown shirt, dark-brown vest and skirt and matching leather sandals.

  Hanging on the closet door were another set of work-at-the-bank clothes. That brought yesterday’s nightmare to mind: losing the bank job, getting drunk, smoking crack, lying to Doreen, and wanting to do something to Lewis.

  Damn, did I really smoke crack?

  Doreen left the room, came back a minute later. “You getting up or what?”

  If I told her the truth I could rest all day. Tomorrow go look for another job.

  “Well…?” Doreen said.

  I sat up on the edge of the bed. Shit! If I told her now her entire day would be sh
ot.

  Doreen said, “You tell your friend you’re married, you can’t stay out all night drinking. You hear me?”

  Forty minutes later Fifty opened the door to his apartment in green pajamas, squinted at me as if he wasn’t sure who I was. “A tad early, ain’t it?”

  “Just happened to be in the neigborhood,” I said, and stepped in.

  He locked the door, told me to have a seat, make myself at home. “Anything you want you welcome to it,” he said and went back to bed.

  The pipe, a lighter, and several crack crumbs were on the table.

  An hour or so later Fifty, still wearing the pajamas, came out. The pipe and lighter were on the table, but the crack crumbs were gone. He did say make myself at home.

  He went into the kitchen. “You didn’t tell Doreen you lost your job, did you?” Came back with a glass of orange juice and sat down next to me on the couch.

  “No, I didn’t. How you know?”

  “The clothes you wearing.”

  “Yeah, I guess that gives it away.”

  “I see a problem starting here,” he said. “Already.”

  “What’s that?”

  He set the glass on the table, sighed, and crossed his arms. “All that went on yesterday, that was an abnormality, you know what I mean?” He saw I wasn’t following, said, “Okay, to be blunt, crack ain’t free. You might not know it, but you smoked up three hundred dollars last night. Then you--what was it, seven, eight in the morning? You’re back, picking up the crumbs. Me and old girl don’t usually get up till noon. That’s dis--”

  “No problem, it’s on me today.”

  “--respectful. Very disrespectful. That tells me you see me as a--” He stopped, looked at me. “What you say?”

  “It’s on me today. You laid it out yesterday, I’ll lay it out today.”

  “How much money you’re talking?”

  Three hundred dollars, I told him, the same amount he said I’d smoked up, thinking I would settle the debt, even the score, and then tomorrow get my shit together, go look for another job.

  Fifty shouted for Cindy to get out of bed when I told him I didn’t have the money on me, would have to go to the bank and get it.