Cindy stopped at the door and said, “You’re going with me, John.”
“No, I’m not. I see Spanky’s car out there.” I asked Albert to give me a minute and he cleared his throat. To Cindy: “ I asked you nicely to leave.”
Cindy said, “That’s his car, but he’s not with me,” and told Alfred it was nice talking to him. “Can we talk outside, John? Please.”
It was too dark to see anyone inside the Lexus. Cindy caught me staring that way and said, “Trust me, John. I’ve never lied to you before, have I?”
“What you want, Cindy?”
“I want you to go get some clothes and ride with me.”
“Where?”
“To the bus station.” I gave her a look saying that’s not happening. “Listen to me, John. Batman and Spanky are fighting over who gets to kill you. You don’t have a choice. They know you’re here. Let’s go, John, before the sun comes up.”
“How do they know I’m here?”
A car drove down the street, moving slow, and Cindy and I both sighed in relief when a newspaper flew out of it and landed in a neighbor’s yard.
“Let’s talk in the car,” Cindy said, and started that way. I looked in the back seat before getting in. “Spanky’s in another car--I don’t know which. He told me I could drive this. You know why? Soon he’ll ask me to lure you out so he can do something to you.” She started the engine and drove away. “He catch me with you in his car, I’m dead too.” She steered the Lexus onto the interstate.
“Cindy, I’m not leaving Little Rock. Spanky or Batman don’t scare me.”
“You’re not listening, John. You stay here you’re as good as dead. Spanky or Batman can’t get to you they’ll pay someone else to do it. Couple rocks, a crackhead kill you and that nice old man back there. You don’t have a choice, John.”
The seriousness of her tone unnerved me. “I don’t have money to leave town.”
We drove under the sign indicating North Little Rock. Cindy said, “I’ve got a little bit. Not much.”
“Why you doing this, Cindy? I knew if the police busted Batman, you were going down too.”
She took the Broadway exit. “That low I was telling you about? You’re starting to see it now, aren’t you?” I didn’t answer. “That was low down of Fifty turning you on. John, it only gets worse. You think it can’t get any worse than it already has, then it gets worse than that. Day-by-fucking-day. Next thing you know, you’ve no shame, no conscience, no remorse, no soul. Nothing.” Her voice cracked. “You just feel shitty. High, sober, even when you’re asleep, you just feel shitty.”
She made a right on Washington Street and parked in front of the Greyhound Bus Station.
“Shit keeps piling up, something got to give,” Cindy continued. “I sit by and do nothing knowing a friend of mine is fixin’ to get killed, that’s more shit, you know. I’ve got more than enough shit in my life already.”
Two winoes sat on a bench in front of a heavily barred pawn shop across the street. The sun was starting to come up.
Cindy reached inside her coat pocket and pulled out some money. “Nine hundred dollars, John. Not much, but that’s all I got.”
She gave it to me and I counted it. Yup, nine hundred dollars. “No, John. That’s not for recreation. That’s for you to get a bus ticket and get the hell outta Little Rock. Promise me, John. Promise me you’re getting on a bus and getting out of here.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the money. “Okay, I promise.”
“When you get where you’re going you can tell your folks to send your clothes.”
“Yeah. Thanks a million, Cindy.” I started to get out and then thought of something. “You remember Fifty wanting something from me? What was it?”
“It doesn’t matter now, John, does it?”
I watched her drive away before walking to a parked cab. The meter was already at three dollars and thirty cents. The cabbie, a big man with dark keloids blotting his nape, said, “Where to?”
“Oak Street,” I told him.
“Where ’bout on Oak Street?”
I handed him a twenty over the seat and said, “We get there I’ll show you.”
The way I saw it there was no rush leaving Little Rock. Hell, I hadn’t even told Mama good-bye. Besides, Batman was almost a midget and Spanky wore a flamboyant wig and women clothes--I could spot them a mile away. Oak Street made the cabbie nervous and he kept asking me where to. My man wasn’t standing on the corner.
“Park for a minute, okay?”
One rock, that’s all I would do. One measly little rock, and then I would leave town as I’d promised Cindy.
The cabbie said, “Man, you trying to buy drugs. I don’t use my cab to buy drugs. You need to get to stepping.”
It crossed my mind to tear a ten spot in half, tell him to wait. His expression looked too serious for that. I got out of his cab.
The walk back to Mama’s house took an hour and a half. A great day: the temp in the sixties, not a cloud in the sky. I had two hundred dollars worth of crack in my pocket--my last time getting high, might as well go out with a bang.
Alfred took his time opening the door. “This ain’t working,” he said.
“Is Mama asleep?”
“Uh, let’s see. Woman her age work all night. Guess she’d sleep in the day.”
I gave him a look.
In the bedroom I locked the door and opened the window. In the window next door I saw an elderly man and woman watching a soap opera. They would think I was smoking pipe tobacco.
In the brief sharpness I heard birds chirping and singing, dogs barking; I heard my heart thumping; I heard Alfred fumbling around in the kitchen; I heard my mama snoring; and I heard bells, faint at first and then getting louder, coming closer…Then everything went silent.
Later, Mama turned the doorknob and then knocked. “John, are you up?”
I didn’t answer.
Alfred knocked on the door. “Open this door. What you doing in there? Open this door.”
I told him to wait a minute and closed the window. In the mirror above the dresser I saw my image. Shit! Blotches of sweat covered my face and my eyes were bucked wide. He knocked again, harder.
I opened the door, then hurried to the bed and pulled the pillow over my head.
Alfred said, “This shit ain’t working.”
Mama’s voice: “Get up! Alfred needs you to help him with the fence in the backyard. What’s the matter with you?” I told her I had a headache and she said, “A headache never stopped a body from working. Get up!”
“This shit ain’t working.”
A chain-link fence, that’s what Alfred was putting up in the backyard--I thought he was talking wood and nails. Just looking at the post-hole digger and bags of concrete made me tired. He measured and marked the spots for the holes, then went and sat down on the picnic bench.
The sun heated my bare back as I dug one hole after the other. Mama stepped out on the back porch and asked how’s it going.
Alfred said, “Slow, but it’s going.”
An hour later I forgot everything--Spanky, Batman, the rocks under the pillow--and started concentrating on what I was doing. Alfred moaned and groaned each time he got up so I told him to tell me what to do. Near sunset thirty metal posts were standing tall in wet concrete.
I joined Alfred on the bench and he poured me a glass of ice tea.
“You remind me of my brother,” he said. “Once you get started, you’ll work. The trouble is getting you started.” A compliment? “Tomorrow we’ll finish up.”
Mama fried up catfish and homemade fries. Store-bought cole slaw. A lemon meringue pie for dessert. Alfred and I watched a football game on ESPN. A few minutes before ten, Mama left for work…and that’s when I remembered the rocks under the pillow.
Chapter 25
Alfred knocked on the door just as I was falling asleep. It was almost seven in the morning. Mama
would be home soon. Hours ago I’d crawled out the window, walked to Oak Street, and searched an hour before finding a dealer and buying three hundred dollars worth of crack.
“John?” Alfred said. We were on a first name basis now, but I detected irritation creeping back in his voice. “You got company. Again.”
Cindy, I thought, back to bawl me out for not leaving town. No. A man was sitting on the couch. Calvin, looking different, in matching dark-blue denim jacket and baggy jeans, the tags still on. Ratty tennis shoes, though.
“What’s up, dawg?” Calvin said, extending a hand. I shook it and he embraced me.
Something about his clothes? “Man, who you robbed?”
Calvin shook his head and grinned. “Check this out…” He started to pull something out of his pocket but stopped, stared at Alfred standing behind me. “I talk to you outside?”
As I followed him out the door, Alfred said, “Don’t forget we’re finishing the fence today.”
A red Ford Escort was parked in front of the house, a man sitting in the back seat.
Calvin pulled a bag of rocks and some money out of his pocket and said, “Dawg, I’m rolling. I got some baaaaadass bitches at my stoop waiting on me. Four of em. I need some help, dawg. You think you can handle two of em?”
“Who’s that in the car with you?”
“Uncle. I’m dropping him off.”
“Let me put my shoes on, I’m with you.”
“Dawg, you don’t need no shoes. C’mon.”
I told him to wait, and then went inside and got my shoes. Calvin was walking to the car when I got back.
“Let’s go, dawg. Bitches ain’t waiting all day.”
The guy in the back seat was wearing shades, a lollipop stick undulating in his mouth. He watched me hop on one foot lacing a shoe and then turned straight. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
Calvin got behind the wheel. I opened the door and started to get in, but then changed my mind, closed the door. Calvin got out and slapped the sunburned rooftop.
“What you doing, dawg? Let’s go! We got bitches waitin’ on us--get in the car!”
“Naw, I’ma stay here, help my old man put up a fence.”
Calvin started shouting, “A fence, dawg! A damn fence! You can put up a fence anytime. We got dope, we got bitches, money! Dawg, we got it all. Get in the car and let’s go!”
The guy in the back seat said, “Chill, Calvin.” His voice sounded funny. “Cat don’t wanna go you can’t make him go.” He stuck a hand out the window. “Ain’t that right, brother?”
I shook his hand, and he pulled me forward. What the…I pulled back, but he had a tight grip. Something sharp slid across my wrist.
“Remember me, motherfucker!”
Spanky! Oh my God, he defagged!
And he had a knife, a switchblade, thrusting it at me as I struggled to free my hand. Blood was spurting from somewhere. Spanky shouted for Calvin to help him. I put a foot on the door and pushed off with all my might. Spanky came out through the window, slicing the air with the switchblade. We fell to the ground. My hand was free. Calvin ran around the car, but just stood there.
Spanky yelled at him to grab me, but I was already on my feet, running to the house. Damn, the door was locked. I beat on it and shouted for Alfred to open up. He did, took one look past me at Spanky running toward the house and tried to close it…I pushed in past him, told him to hurry up and lock the door. Spanky got an arm through, the switchblade scraping the wall.
Alfred was moving too slow. I slammed into the door. The switchblade fell to the floor. Spanky squealed in pain.
“Motherfucker, you broke my arm! You broke my arm! You broke my arm!”
Alfred said, “Give him his arm back!”
I let off the door a bit and the arm disappeared. Then I locked it and looked out the window. Spanky stood in the yard stooped over, holding his right arm at the elbow, flexing his fingers. Calvin walked over and assisted him to the Escort and then they drove away. My chest hurt and I couldn’t steady my breathing. Both my wrists were bleeding, the right profusely.
Alfred, sitting in a chair, shaking, said, “This shit ain’t working. This shit ain’t working at all!”
At the sink in the bathroom, watching the water turn red, I thought, I’m a crackhead. Doreen was right. I’m a damn crackhead! The opportunity was there, all I had to do was get on the bus, and none of this shit would’ve happened.
Alfred was picking up the phone when I came back with both wrists wrapped in gauze bandages. The right needed stitches, but I didn’t have time for that.
“Put the phone down, Alfred.” He was still shaking. “Please, Alfred, put the phone down.”
He did. “What if those boys come back?”
I trashed the switchblade and got a paper towel roll and started wiping up the blood. “Mama will be home any minute, Alfred. I don’t want her to see this. You hear me, Alfred? Mama don’t need to know about this.”
He looked twice his age now, smaller. “What if they come back?”
“I’m leaving town. They come back tell em I left town.”
He sat down. “You oughta call them, let them know you’re gone. Your mama and me, we old. We can’t handle folks running to the house with knives.”
“I know, Alfred, I know. That’s why we don’t want Mama to know about this. You think you can give me a ride to the bus station?” He cleared his throat. “I’m gone, Alfred, I don’t think they’ll come back.”
* * * * *
In Alfred’s red-and-white ’52 Ford pickup we sputtered down the highway, Alfred checking the side mirror every five seconds for a tail. He asked me why the boy cut me and I didn’t answer.
“Boy didn’t cut you for nothing.” He shook his head and said, “That dope worse than chains on your feet. You can knock chains off with a hammer and a chisel. Dope you need a miracle to knock that off.”
I got out in front of the bus station, got the suitcase out of the bed. “Alfred, please don’t tell mama what happened, okay? It’ll upset her.” He nodded. “Tell her I went out of town, tell her I’ll be all right.” He started to drive off and I shouted for him to stop. I reached my hand inside and Alfred stared at the blood seeping through the bandage. “Thanks, man.”
He didn’t shake my hand.
* * * * *
Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, twice the area of downtown Little Rock, triple the number of skyscrapers, several were faded brick relics built when buffalo and Jesse James roamed freely, triple the traffic and congestion, and quadruple the stench. Little Rock restricted dog food plants within city limits.
A new city, a new start. Find a room first, then a job.
On the corner of Truce and 11th Street I caught a cab and asked the driver where I could find a cheap room. Less the seventy-dollar bus fare, I had a little over three hundred dollars in my pocket.
In five minutes the meter clicked to ten dollars. The cabbie said, “Here we are, the Ritz Motel, the cheapest in town.”
I took one look at the rundown, prison-gray-colored two-story building with cardboard in several windows and homeless-looking people standing in doorways, and almost changed my mind.
It was cold outside and inside the lobby, but the Arabic man behind thick Plexiglas was shirtless, a small fan blowing on his face. In broken English he said, “Nightly or weekly?”
The place smelled like a kennel. Weekly was a hundred and twenty bucks. I paid him and he gave me a key chained to a cut-off broomstick. My room was in back, he told me, ground floor, with a good view of a landfill.
A new city, a new start, I kept telling myself.
The door was open to the room number matching the key, rock music screaming from inside, and there was a naked white boy facedown on the floor, his dirty feet sticking out the door, an empty fifth of Jack Daniels near his head.
I thought he was dead, reached to shake him when a voice said, “He’s b
usted and disgusted, you’re wasting your time.”
I turned. A short, peach-skinned girl stood in the doorway of the room next door, barefoot, in faded jeans and a white shirt with small breasts sticking straight up.
“I thought he was dead,” I told her. Her light-brown hair was snap bean short, but she had a pretty face, big brown puppy-dog eyes, a small nose and thin pink lips.
Her hands on her hips, staring at the bandages on my wrists, she said, “I did, too. Too bad, isn’t it?”
What?
She couldn’t take her eyes off the bandages, which I’d re-wrapped in Lamar, Missouri, but still seeped blood. “Man up front gave me this room. I guess he made a mistake.”
“No, he didn’t. Doug was evicted three weeks ago. Where are you from? Mississippi?”
“Arkansas. Little Rock.”
She took her eyes off the bandages and looked in my face. “Is that right? You talk like a Mississippian. You just come to town, didn’t you?”
I nodded and then she brushed past me, grabbed the white boy by the ankles and pulled him out onto the sidewalk.
“You can’t pay you can’t stay,” she said. I told her he might freeze to death and she said, “It’s not cold enough. Do you have AIDs?”
“Naw. Why you ask that?”
“You’re emaciated.” She held out a hand and I shook it. “My name’s Blue.”
Her hand was soft. “John. How old are you, you don’t mind me asking?”
“Twenty-two.”
I started to explain the bandages she found so fascinating. Instead, I said, “It’s nice meeting you, Blue,” and stepped inside the room, an unmade bed there, dresser, and same cigarette-burned, dirty lime-green carpet as in the lobby--same dog pound smell too. No TV. I clicked off an old stereo next to the bed.
A new city, a new start.
Blue walked in and said, “You say you don’t have AIDs, so you must get high, being as skinny as you are. Crack, my guess. You don’t act like a smackhead. I got half on a quarter if you want to throw in with me.”
Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction Page 22