Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

by James Henderson

  Cindy appeared there, her eyes red and puffy; hesitated before taking a seat near Fifty.

  Fifty said, “Nothing soothes the grief of losing a brat like the smell of fresh crack, does it?”

  Cindy gave him a mean look but took the pipe when he offered it.

  A rock, that was Fifty’s power, Jo-Bo’s power. Without it they weren’t shit. That’s what I thought watching Fifty reload the pipe, watching him take another hit, watching him extend it to me, and then heard myself say, “Naw, I’ll pass.”

  Fifty looked confused, kept motioning for me to take it.

  Although the pipe looked like a beautiful woman thrusting her pelvis at me, inviting me to have a go, I again said, “Naw, I’ll pass.” Fifty shrugged, handed it to Cindy.

  Hands sweaty, mouth dry, I knew I couldn’t sit there much longer watching them smoke without asking to hit it.

  Fifty told me to hold on a minute when I got up, told him I’m outta here.

  “Look,” he said, scraping the pipe with a piece of wire hanger, making an awful racket, “you don’t hafta go. Not yet. Everybody ain’t cut out to be a salesman. Hang round a week or two till you get on your feet, find that job you talking about.”

  Naw, I told him, it’s best I go.

  Fifty finally filled the pipe, lighted it and blew smoke my way. “Man gotta do what a man gotta do. First let me show you something. Won’t take thirty minutes.”

  * * * * *

  Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library was in the rearview mirror, still under construction. I drove down Bill Clinton Boulevard, lined with bars, cafes, art galleries, and expensive restaurants. Expensive cars parked out front. Mostly white people walking to and fro, holding up traffic, pretending they were in a big city. Fifty pointed to a parking spot in front of the main library, a four-story tan building with smoke-colored windows.

  Fifty put on his cheap shades, looked my way, said, “Only reason I’m showing you this ‘cause you my partner,” and got out of the car. “Somebody I didn’t care for I wouldn’t show shit.”

  Louis Armstrong’s trumpet played from an unseen loudspeaker. The aroma of hot dogs and popcorn traveled on a light breeze.

  Crossing the street I asked him the tenth time in the last hour, “What the hell you talking about?”

  Again he didn’t say, and I followed him past the left side of La Harpe’s furniture company, over two sets of railroad tracks, through the iron-wrought gate encircling River Park.

  He stopped at the red-brick steps that led down to a blue awning-covered amphitheater with rows of blue chairs in front. Behind it was the Arkansas River, the Broadway Street bridge to the left, the I-40/I-30 bridge to the right, and the Alltel Arena in the middle, on the North Little Rock side.

  Fifty removed the shades, looked me straight in the eye. “Popeye and Bluto, you remember me telling you? Bluto was out to get what he could get--he didn’t give a damn ‘bout Olive Oyle, just wanted her ‘cause Popeye had her.”

  Right then I decided he wasn’t riding back with me.

  “You brought me way out here to talk about Popeye and Bluto?”

  “Eleven o’clock,” Fifty said, and put his shades back on.

  About sixty feet in front of us a couple was sitting on a blanket in the grass, their backs to us, the woman’s hair in braids roping down a yellow shirt, the man wearing a brown shirt, his arm around the woman. They kissed.

  Dokes and Doreen!

  A sudden headache made me dizzy and I tried to speak but couldn’t.

  Fifty said, “Yes indeed, that’s Dokes and Doreen.” He caught my arm as I was starting their way. “No, no, no, no. You don’t wanna do that. Not here. Let’s go. Let’s go get some spinach.”

  Fifty drove, talking about Popeye and Bluto, a throbbing headache jumbling the words in my mind, Fifty saying something about finishing Bluto once and for all.

  The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Dokes was a fag. Doreen and I hadn’t broken up two weeks ago. Or was it three weeks? Dokes wasn’t Doreen’s type of man.

  “Friends,” I told Fifty. “Dokes was comforting Doreen out of friendship. That’s what friends do.”

  Fifty stopped the Caddy in front of his apartment. “You right,” he said, “friends do comfort each other. But…uh…friends don’t stick their tongues down each other’s throat.”

  He could’ve kept that.

  Fifty said, “You saw what I saw and I saw a snake in the grass, sinking his fangs into his friend’s unsuspecting wife.”

  We sat in the car a few minutes and then Fifty went into the apartment and I sat there for an hour or more thinking about Dokes and Doreen kissing, thinking about Dokes and Doreen naked, thinking about killing Dokes.

  Fifty met me at the door with a loaded pipe and I took it and sucked on it as if my life depended on it, the smoke calming my nerves a bit, but not erasing the thought of Doreen and Dokes naked at all.

  * * * * *

  “I’ll be glad when you shut the hell up!” I told Fifty. “Popeye and Bluto, fucking cartoons, man! This real life!”

  It was a little after midnight. A full moon. We were sitting in the Caddy, parked in front of the pool outside of Doke’s apartment. Smoking crack.

  Fifty couldn’t let it go. “Straight up fight, Bluto kick Popeye’s ass every time. The spinach, that changed shit round, but Popeye didn’t follow through, see what I mean? Bluto kept coming back. Believe me, a woman involved the shit never ends. Never!”

  A white boy wearing swim trunks walked past the Caddy on Fifty’s side, stopped and looked straight at us before going to the pool.

  “Shit!” Fifty said. “Betcha his daddy the police. You oughta go do what you gonna do ’fore he run tell his daddy he saw two jigs smoking dope in a car.” He reached inside a brown bag and pulled out a long black gun. “Spinach,” he said, giving it to me.

  The gun frightened me. Not because I hadn’t handled one before; because I felt a strong urge to point it at Fifty and blow his brains out.

  Fifty must have sensed that. “I wasn’t the one stabbed you in the back. Dokes did.”

  * * * * *

  Dokes opened the door with a smile on his face, told me to come in. “Dude, you’ve lost some weight. Have a seat. Want something to drink? Coffee, tea, soda? You know where it’s at. Fix a meal while you’re at it, you look like a refugee.”

  Cracking jokes. Kissing Doreen and cracking jokes.

  I sat down on the couch, the gun tucked in my pants hurting my tailbone.

  Dokes said, “Where you been, dude? I’ve been looking all over for you.” I didn’t answer and he said, “Something I need to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  Dokes, wearing a T-shirt over his UPS short pants, sat to my right on the chair and said, “The dude you running with, Fifty? There’s things you don’t know about him. Things I just found out myself. Things I feel you should…” He paused, gave me a funny look, and said, “You’re high, aren’t you?”

  “I am or not, what’s it to you?”

  “Dude, that sumbitch, he’s got you wired up. John, dude is a turd looking for a place to dry up. How can you not see that? When we were growing up you and I didn’t deal with dudes like him. Sumbitch won’t work, in and out the penitentiary, selling that shit to kids. A turd not worth digging a hole for, John, you know that.”

  “Yeah, he is, Dokes. And you’re a backstabbing bastard!”

  That stopped him, made him start blinking.

  “So you know about Doreen and me. Who told you?”

  “A birdie. Does it matter? You’re my friend? The second my back is turned you hitting on my wife.”

  “She’s not your wife anymore, John.”

  “The hell she isn’t! We’re still married! You think--”

  “Hey, hey, hey. We’re two grown men--no need you shouting at me. Look, I am your friend. If I thought for a second you and Doreen were getting
back together I’d step back.”

  “Newsflash for you, Dokes, we are getting back together. You might as well step back now.”

  Dokes shook his head. “I don’t think so, John. Doreen filed for divorce. She told me you and her are over. She’s that type of woman. With her, when it’s over it’s over.”

  “How the hell you know? You don’t know shit!”

  “You wanna fight me, John, that’s what you wanna do?” Getting angry. “You’re not going to sit here and talk to me any ole way. You wanna fight or talk like two civilized men? Either way I’m willing to accommodate you.”

  “You doing it with Doreen?”

  “That’s none of your damn business!” Dokes said, and stood up, his fists raised. “Let’s do it. You wanna fight, let’s do it!”

  I leaned forward, reached back and pulled out the gun, then sat back, crossed my legs, put the gun in my lap.

  Dokes looked stunned, his hands splayed now, the frog in his throat hopping up and down.

  “You doing it with her, Dokes?”

  “That’s how we are now? You bring a gun to my apartment, shoot me with it? Dude, we grew up together.”

  “You doing it with her?”

  “Dammit, John, put the gun away! I’m not telling you anything with that gun in your lap!”

  “Answer the damn question, man! Are you doing it with her?”

  Dokes stared at the gun. “No.”

  The cordless phone on the end table rang, startling Dokes. On the sixth ring I said, “You gonna get that?”

  Dokes moved to the phone like it was a rattlesnake. “Hello,” he said, his eyes on me. “Hey, can you call me back, I got company right now…John…Yes, he’s a little upset.” I noticed his hands were shaking. “No, don’t do that. Call me back in--”

  “Is that Doreen?” Dokes nodded. “Let me talk to her.” He gave me the phone and I said in a pleasant voice, “Hello, Doreen. Remember me? Your estranged husband of what, three, four weeks?”

  “What are you doing, John?” Nervousness and agitation in her voice.

  “Dokes and I are having a friendly little chat. Guess the main topic. You!”

  “I’m calling the police, John.”

  “Dokes, Doreen? My so-called friend? Tell me that ain’t skankish! Tell me!”

  “John, listen to me, I’m calling the police.”

  To hell with the pleasantries: “How you explain Dokes to Lewis, Doreen? Married to one man and cuddling up with his friend. I’m sure he’s confused as hell. Not to mention he’s already wondering who’s his real daddy.”

  Breathing hard, Doreen said, “John, you’re nothing but a crackhead. A damn crackhead! You’re nothing to me and Lewis! Nothing but another damn crackhead!”

  Fazed momentarily, I looked at Dokes, just standing there looking at me, and said, “Doreen, did you tell Dokes about your problem? You know, that sex thang that flares up on you every now and then? You tell him about that?”

  Dokes’ eyes bucked wider than when I pulled the gun and he said, “What you talking about, John?”

  Doreen screamed in my ear, called me a few more crackheads and slammed the phone down.

  As I tucked the gun in my waistband, Dokes said, “Were you serious, John?”

  “Serious about what, Dokes? Wanting to shoot you or Doreen having an STD?”

  He didn’t say and I walked out the door.

  Chapter 17

  The Caddy was empty. Good. I didn’t care to deal with Fifty just now. Then, just as I was starting the engine, Fifty strolled up as if he’d hailed a cab and hopped in the back seat.

  First thing he said, “I didn’t hear shots. I get my gun back?”

  Sirens warbled in the distant.

  “Doreen called the police,” I said, and watched him in the rearview hunker down in the seat. Three Little Rock Police cruisers, sirens and misery lights on, zipped past south on Baseline as we were going north.

  Doreen called me a crackhead; I couldn’t get that off my mind.

  “Doreen was there?” Fifty asked, looking out the back window at the cruisers turning into Dokes’ apartment complex.

  “She called on the phone.”

  “You still got my gun?”

  The highway seemed the best bet; Doreen or Dokes might have given the police the tags on the Caddy.

  Fifty inquired about his gun again and I said, “What’s up with you, man? Everybody telling me you bad news. Dokes talked like he knows something about you I need to know. What’s up with you, man?”

  Fifty said, “Old days, magicians used to get killed performing the bite-the-bullet trick. Put a fake bullet in the gun, slip a real bullet between the teeth, and bang! Simple enough, huh? Uh-uh. See, once the magician handed over the gun, he no longer had control. The cat he trusted, the one he called partner, switched the fake one for a live round. Instead of a bang and applause you got a magician with a big hole in his head. Proves you never know what’s on a cat’s mind.”

  “What the hell that got to do with what I asked you?”

  “Nothing,” Fifty said. “Just something I wanted to share with you. What you talking I know nothing about. Seems to me, a cat backed to a wall, a cat drops outside his litterbox, will say anything. Dokes know he played you dirty. He can’t justify his shit he throw crap on me.”

  Lies and more lies.

  It was time for me to get the hell out of Little Rock before I killed someone.

  Fifty said, “You want me to, I’ll hold that gun, put it up for ya.”

  I handed Fifty the gun over the seat and said, “It ain’t mine. It’s yours.”

  Fifty sighed in relief. “A minute there I thought you forgot that.”

  * * * * *

  Cindy was halfway under the couch again when we stepped in. The familiar smell of burnt carpet was stronger than usual. A rock and a pipe were on the coffee table. Toby Keith played soundlessly on the television as snores emanated from under the couch.

  Fifty waved at me as I was getting my clothes out of the closet and nodded toward Cindy. Again her bottom was exposed. Grinning, Fifty nodded and whispered something I didn’t catch. Then he scooted the coffee table away from the couch and knelt behind her.

  “She’s stuck like Chuck,” he said, and Cindy came to life, said, “Fifty, is that you?” and tried to push out but Fifty held her firm with one hand on her bottom. “Fifty, stop it! I’m serious! Stop it! Let me out!”

  One-handed, he unbuckled his belt, dropped his pants and shorts.

  I started for the door, stopped, came back and scooped up the rock and pipe and walked out. The second time in my life my own erection scared the hell out of me.

  * * * * *

  A few miles past Grady, Arkansas, on Highway 65, I saw the lights of Cummins Prison, set back off the highway amid acres of cotton fields. The last time I’d made this trip, almost twenty years ago, my mother was at the wheel, it was daylight, and we rode past groups of mostly black men in white clothes working the fields while austere, portly white men sat on horses with shotguns held at the ready.

  Mama praised the Lord when I called her at two in the morning and told her I needed directions to Uncle CJ’s house in Dawson. She said a new environment and hard work would get my mind off that dope.

  The horizon was turning a bright orange when I finally turned off the highway onto Willie Powell Road, named after my great-grandfather, a sharecropper who parlayed his small plot into a large farm during the black exodus North in the fifties.

  Much had changed since my last visit. A white fence instead of barbwire running the length of the dirt road. More cows. Where once stood two green triple-wide trailers was an expansive three-story log cabin, a cobblestone walkway leading up to it. Several new-model trucks and cars were parked in front. A short distance away to the left was a another cabin, a scale version of the main house, on concrete blocks. Farther, in that direction, was a huge open-bay Quonset hut with big
green machines inside it.

  The stink of cow shit hit me when I got out of the Caddy. A pack of barking hounds, ten or more, raced down the road, two puppies holding up the rear, heading my way.

  I hurried to the front door. Unlocked. Stepped in and said hello to a huge boar’s head above a stone fireplace in the middle of a circular living room. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea after all. A digital clock on the mantle below the boar’s head said five o’clock. Everyone here was probably asleep, and wouldn’t even know I’d come if I left now. Besides, how in the hell could I get Doreen back a hundred miles away?

  Go!

  Go where? Back to Fifty’s? No. Fifty was a crackhead; I wasn’t, contrary to what Doreen said. The rock in the Caddy proved I wasn’t a crackhead: a crackhead would’ve smoked it by now. A crackhead stole; I didn’t. A crackhead begged; I didn’t.

  Man, I wished she hadn’t called me that.

  “Who the hell are you?” a voice said, and I looked in the face of an elderly light-skinned woman with intense gray eyes below a red-and-white polka-dot head scarf. She clutched her lavender bathrobe at the neckline as if she had a real need to hide her chest.

  I told her my name, my mother’s name. “Ma’am, you’re Aunt Jean, right?”

  The left side of her face twitched. Excluding that guy in the Clint Eastwood movie, I’d never seen a face do that.

  “Kinda early for visiting, ain’t it?” she said.

  I remembered why I hadn’t come back here after my first visit. I hit a chicken or a rooster with a board, killed it, and Aunt Jean came outside, told me to come here, offered a closed hand and said, “You want some candy?” her other hand behind her back, a switch sticking up behind her head.

  I ran. And that old heifer caught me and beat the shit out of me, a bar code of long welts on my back. Mama gasped when she saw the abuse, but didn’t say a word, not even when her sister said, “Bring him back next summer, I’ma beat his ass again.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s kinda early.” Changing the subject: “Where’s Uncle CJ and everybody at?”