Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

by James Henderson

  Thirty minutes later we pulled up to an ATM machine in Fifty’s BMW, at a Commerce Bank on Capitol Avenue, and I withdrew three brand new hundred dollar bills out of Doreen’s and my savings account. Not a problem. Once I started working I’d put it back. Fifty said it was unwise for a man of my stature going to a dope house, said he and Cindy would put their freedom on the line, go get the stuff while I waited at the apartment. Made sense to me.

  Two hours later we were back at the ATM, but this time the machine didn’t spit out money: three hundred dollars was the maximum ATM withdrawal amount in a twenty-four-hour period. Not a problem. I went inside to a teller and withdrew four hundred dollars.

  Once I started working I’d ask for all the overtime I could get.

  At four-thirty-two we were back at the bank. Too late. It was closed. The sign said 8:30 pm to 4:30 pm. I shook the glass door, waved at a silver-haired white woman in a gray skirt that looked like a teepee standing near a desk, shouted at her…She ignored me.

  Woman, please, two minutes late! Open the door!

  She didn’t.

  From then on I couldn’t get her out of my mind. When I drove to my apartment, when I watched TV with Lewis, when Doreen said, “John, are you okay? Your eyes, you look shot?” when I lie in bed, all I could think about was slapping that silver-haired fat heifer, asking her why she didn’t open the door, “Your big ass saw me!” and slapping her again.

  Wednesday morning I woke up before Doreen and wondered was I losing my mind. When Doreen checked the account all hell would break loose. And what if she found out I wasn’t working the same time she discovered the money missing?

  Armageddon.

  The digital clock beeped and Doreen got up and turned it off. In a white slip she trudged off to the bathroom. I got up and dressed, talked to the bathroom door, “Doreen, I’m gone,” and heard her in the shower, heard her say wait a minute. I didn’t wait.

  To show that fat heifer at the bank I wasn’t a bum, that was my reason for going to Fifty’s apartment. This would be the last time. Tomorrow I’d look for a job. It was seven-thirty, an hour before the bank opened.

  This time Fifty, dressed, opened the door before I knocked, grinning, looking just like Eddie Murphy. Cindy, also dressed, was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.

  “I was wondering when you were coming,” Fifty said. “You had breakfast? Cindy will cook you something. She makes a great western omelet. Cup of coffee?”

  No thanks, and he said he wanted to show me something.

  A seventeen-by-twenty oil painting he got from behind the couch showed a fat yellow duck wearing a diaper, a big safety pin holding it, a blue shirt that was way too small, and a baby bonnet on its head.

  “Did this yesterday,” Fifty said, “after you left. It’s yours, take it home with you.”

  I’d seen this cartoon character before, but couldn’t place it.

  “Baby Huey,” Fifty said. “A cat named Marty Taras created him in the forties.”

  I leaned the painting against the couch. “I remind you of a duck? A fat, goofy duck?”

  Fifty laughed. “Remember, Baby Huey wanted to play with the other ducks but he kept busting up shit ’cause he was so fat? See, he wasn’t aware of his limitations. You reminded me of him when you were raising hell at the bank, trying to get them to let you in, acting all desperate and shit. The police hadda come you woulda had a hard time explaining what you were doing.”

  I didn’t see the connection but said thanks.

  The silver-haired white woman wasn’t in the bank. Didn’t matter because the second the teller counted four hundred dollars in my hand I forgot all about her.

  Fifty had suggested that we withdraw more than before. “So we won’t have to keep coming back.”

  We?

  We weren’t dipping into our savings account. I was. Getting into the small back seat of the BMW, I decided I would spend this four hundred and cut these clowns loose.

  All my thoughts and concerns--Doreen, the savings account, these two jokers smoking more than their share--disappeared in smoke when I took the first hit, felt that sensation of coming close to something wonderful but not quite getting there.

  A few hours later the four hundred dollars disappeared too. Cindy was on all fours looking for something in the light-brown carpet. Fifty stood by the window peeking out the curtains. Janet Jackson was dancing on the television. I sat on the couch staring at my left arm. It felt swollen.

  “Cindy,” I said, extending both arms out. “Look at this. Don’t it look like my left arm is bigger than the right?”

  Cindy stopped and looked at me as if she’d forgotten I was there. I repeated the question and she studied both my arms, nodded yes and then went back to searching for whatever she was searching for.

  Her affirmation frightened me. My damn arm was swelling up by the second. How long would it be before it got all huge and fat, too big to carry, noticeable to everybody?

  Goddamn!

  “Fifty, tell me something.” He didn’t budge from the window. “Look, man, look!”

  He turned, blotches of sweat covered his face. “What?”

  “Look, man, my damn arm swelling up!”

  He gave a cursory glance at my arm held out to him and returned to looking out at the parking lot. “Ain’t nothing wrong with your arm, you geeking.”

  “Geeking? What the hell is that? Is it fatal?”

  He turned, a grin in his eyes. “Not usually. Some more stuff, that’ll fix it.”

  Back to the bank we went. Fifty’s logic made sense to me. If smoking crack made my arm swell up, then smoking more crack would make the swelling go down.

  Again Fifty suggested that we get enough money so we wouldn’t have to come back, and don’t forget, he reminded me, what happened yesterday. Now that made sense too.

  The teller gave me a funny look, asked to see my driver’s license, walked away with it, came back with a stiff-looking black man who asked me was everything okay.

  “You give me my damn money and everything will be okay.”

  That got his temple twitching.

  I walked out with fifteen hundred dollars.

  * * * * *

  Dokes came by that evening, sat down and ate with Doreen, Lewis and me. Lasagna and hot water cornbread. After, he asked me to step outside with him. Three boys Lewis’ age were skateboarding in the street. Though the sun was still high, it wasn’t that hot; but I couldn’t stop sweating.

  Dokes said, “You okay? You sweating like a hog.”

  “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  “Something wrong, dude, and you know it. Doreen asked me to talk to you, see what’s the matter. I thought she was exaggerating till I saw you. Dude, you look like refried shit. And why you keep looking at your arm?”

  I couldn’t explain that.

  “The job? That’s what Doreen thinks. She thinks the job is stressing you out, the pressure is killing you?”

  One boy tried to hop his skateboard up a curve, like the other two had done, but flipped, landed on his ass.

  “Yeah, Dokes,” I said, “the job certainly caused problems. You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Tell me.”

  I shook my head.

  “You got a mouth, don’t you?” Dokes said. “Talk to your supervisor, tell him what the problem is. Some people take longer to catch on a new job than others. It’s not that they’re not smart enough, you know, they just need more time. You don’t speak up soon, the way you look, you won’t make Christmas.”

  More shit to worry about I thought as I watched Dokes cross the street heading back to his apartment. Doreen might call the bank, tell them to lighten up on her husband, and that’s when she would find out I didn’t work there.

  When she came to bed that night I said, “Doreen, the bank job, it’s causing problems. Next week I’m going to look for another job.”

  After a silence she s
aid, “Baby, I’ll love you wherever you work,” and rested her head on my shoulder. “My fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you. You said you were okay working at the mill, I should have left it alone. I just thought…Will you accept my apology?”

  “Yeah, baby, I’ll accept it.”

  A way out. An opportunity to lay it all on the table. I played the dialogue in my head: Doreen, I didn’t get the job. She’d say, What? Why you pretend you did? What have you been doing all day? I’d say, I dunno, I just dunno. She’d say, What’ve you been doing for money? I’d say, Nothing, really, a dollar here and there out the bank. She’d say, How much? I’d say, Uh, a tad over two thousand dollars, and she would hit the damn roof.

  When Doreen fell asleep I got up and went to the bathroom, took out the pipe and the rocks I’d hid in the shower rod earlier. After smoking those up, I couldn’t sleep, and had to fight the urge to go over to Fifty’s to see if he had anything left.

  Then I remembered the rock Fifty gave me after he crashed the party.

  On my knees I searched every square inch behind the loveseat. The damn thing wasn’t there. Doreen had cleaned up the morning after the party; she probably vacuumed the rock. Not a problem. I poured a pound of dirt from a vacuum bag onto the kitchen table and began sifting through it with a spoon.

  Lewis, in Pokemon pajamas, came into the kitchen. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, he said, “What you doing, John?”

  Sounding like he was my stepfather.

  “What you think? Take your ass to bed.”

  “I’ma get a glass of milk. Why you talking to me like that?”

  “No, you’re not. Take your ass to bed.”

  He ignored me, opened the fridge, took out a quart of milk. I got up and snatched it out of his hand. “Take your ass to bed!”

  He stared at me and then ran, right to Doreen. I resumed my search and then looked up to see Doreen staring at me, her mouth wide open. Lewis was behind her, clutching her nightgown, staring at me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Doreen said. “Why you pour that shit on my table?”

  “I’m going to clean it up,” I said, and kept sifting.

  She got Lewis a glass of milk, which he took a long time drinking, and then they went back to bed.

  Damn. And I never found the rock.

  Chapter 10

  Saturday and Sunday I stayed at home, but Monday morning I was back at Fifty’s apartment doing opposite of what I’d promised myself not to do: smoking crack and running back and forth to the bank. In one week I’d gone through, with a lot of help from my new crack-smoking friends, almost five thousand dollars. Sunday, Doreen had mentioned Brad Davis, the white man with the house she wanted to buy, said Friday we would go see if he’d made it back.

  Sooner or later she was going to find out, but, I thought as I handed the teller a withdrawal ticket for three hundred dollars, what could she do? Even Fifty supported that conclusion: “You the man. She can’t kick your ass, can she?”

  Fifty and I were sitting at the kitchen table handing a pipe back and forth while Cindy was in the living room, combing the carpet, an activity she seemed to enjoy.

  “Look at that, will you?” Fifty said. “There’s dope here on the table and she’s pilfering for crack crumbs on the floor. Do that make sense to you?”

  “No, it don’t,” I said, and lighted the pipe.

  Cindy said, “I heard that, Fifty.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you heard!” Fifty said. “You ain’t running nothing round here! I’ll put your ass out--you hear that?” He shook his head, looked at me. “You don’t put up with this kinda shit from Peaches, do you?”

  “How you know that? Doreen’s nickname? How you know that?”

  He gave me that unctuous grin again, eyes smiling but mouth a thin line.

  “You musta told me. How else could I know?”

  “I don’t remember telling you. That time at the party, you and Doreen acted like y’all knew each other. How she know ’bout you?”

  His eyes weren’t smiling now. “Something I forgot to tell you about crack. It makes you paranoid.” Gestured toward Cindy. “The overgrown rug rat over there, she thinks somebody dropped a piece on the floor. Ain’t nothing there, but you can’t tell her that. I were you I’d know what I’m talking ‘bout before I start accusing someone of my wife.”

  “Huh? I ain’t accusing you of nothing. I’m asking did you know Doreen before the party?”

  Fifty got up, crossed the room, grabbed a handful of Cindy’s hair and pulled her to her feet. “You’re embarrassing me,” he said. “You got John thinking I want his wife. Get in there and get you a piece off the table.”

  I watched him lead her to the table, watched her pick up the biggest rock there and walk off with it, and then heard the bedroom door slam shut.

  “Stupid bitch!” Fifty said.

  The second trip to the bank Fifty and Cindy reconciled their differences, Fifty all over her now, making a show of it, hugging and kissing her as he drove.

  The teller insisted on writing down the balance of the savings account. I didn’t look at it; threw it in the trash on my way out the door.

  When Fifty and Cindy came back from wherever they got the dope, they left several rocks on the table and headed to the bedroom. Hearing loud sex noises, I smoked a rock, then put the rest in my pocket and left.

  While driving and concentrating on my swelling arm, I realized something I should’ve realized from the get-go: I could save a buncha money if I bought the dope myself, smoked it myself.

  Doreen was standing outside near her car talking to Sasha McDonald, our St. Bernard-loving neighbor, when I drove up.

  Thinking now was a good time to go lock myself in the bathroom, I said hi to both women and started for the stairs.

  Doreen said, “Wait a minute, John. I bought a computer from Sasha’s mother. I doubt if it’ll fit in my car, but I know it’ll fit in yours. You mind?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “When you want to go?”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Sasha rode with us, she and Doreen in the back seat talking about the television show Will and Grace, reciting episodes they thought particularly humorous. A fag and a beautiful woman living together, I couldn’t imagine how that was funny.

  At Sasha’s mother’s house, near the Little Rock Zoo, I picked up a used, dusty modem, keyboard and monitor, all of which could have easily fitted in the back seat of Doreen’s Camry, and started walking to the car, telling Doreen to pop the trunk.

  “There’s something in here,” Doreen said, looking inside the trunk. “You want me to take it out?”

  The load getting heavy, I said, “If you don’t mind.”

  Doreen pulled out the oil painting Fifty gave me. I dropped everything in the trunk and turned to see her looking at the painting, her face screwed up.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her. She didn’t respond and I took the painting out of her hand and tossed it into the trunk and closed it.

  The drive back Doreen didn’t say a word, not even to Sasha, who repeatedly asked her if something was wrong.

  Inside the apartment she went into the bedroom and locked the door and didn’t come out once. Not a problem. I went into the bathroom and entertained myself with the pipe.

  In the morning, an hour earlier than when she usually left, Doreen was heading out the door with Lewis in tow. I jumped off the couch.

  “Doreen, wait…wait!” She stopped halfway out the door. “What’s the problem?” I put a hand on her shoulder and she pushed it away. “You mad at me? Why?”

  She started to say something but didn’t. I watched her hurry down the stairs, Lewis almost tripping trying to keep up.

  * * * * *

  A lousy day, intermittent rain, gray skies, and not a crack dealer in sight. I steered the Caddy up and down Oak Street, a notorious drug haven. The few people I did see didn’t look l
ike crack dealers; they looked like homeless people looking for shelter.

  Finally a man in a hooded jacket flagged me down. Good, I wasn’t quite sure how you approached a crack dealer. “You sell crack?” or, “You know where I can purchase crack,” or, “You in the crack business?”

  The automatic window on the passenger side rolled down and a girl who I’d mistaken for a man stuck her head inside, her hair cut low, snot dripping out her nose, a big bump on her top lip.

  “What you wanna do?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “What you wanna do? Ten for head, twenty for ass. Let me in, the law be ridin’ by any minute.” She pulled on the door handle.

  “Wait a minute!” Head? Please, with that bump on your lip! “I’m just looking to buy some crack.”

  “Let me in, I’ll show you where you can get it.”

  No way. “Just tell me--”

  There was a tap on my window and I turned to see a guy wearing shades, his blue short pants way too big, sliding down his hips, exposing blue boxers.

  I rolled the window down a crack and he asked what I wanted.

  “Crack,” I told him, and he said, “No shit. What you want?”

  The girl with the big bump on her lip said, “I got this, Buck.”

  “Girl, if you don’t get away from me…” Buck said. Not loud, but that got the girl moving, walking down the sidewalk. “What you say you want?”

  Not sure what to say, I said, “A hundred dollars worth.”

  The guy arched an eyebrow. “Okay, give me the money. Make a block, come back. I’ll go get it.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “That’s the way we do it, dawg. Johnny Law catch me going to my stash we both going down.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that either.

  Still I poked a hundred out the window and watched him disappear between two houses. I drove around the block, came back, and that sonofabitch was nowhere to be seen. I waited and waited, hoping he’d have a change of heart. He didn’t. It started raining again. Shit!

  * * * * *