It’s best she didn’t come.
Doreen’s voice drops: “John, I was young and naïve when I met him. At eighteen I thought I knew everything, but I was clueless. He was a shyster in nice clothes, driving an expensive car. He told me he graduated from Morehouse College, was a business consultant. I believed him. His parole officer showed me his rap sheet. He didn’t even finish high school. He’d committed every crime but murder.
“No way could I allow my son near a man like him. The day Lewis asked me about his father I intended to tell him he was dead. He was, as far as I was concerned. You and I got married and, to me, you were Lewis’ father. His true father. Dokes treats him well, but Lewis will always regard you as his father. Not a week goes by he doesn’t talk about the barracuda you guys caught but let get away.” Her scent comes closer. “He loves you, John. I do, too.”
A year ago I would’ve snatched that up and run with it, thinking she and I had a chance to get back together. Now I want to tell her to go on with her life, don’t feel guilty about what happened to me, it isn’t your fault, enjoy yourself, take care of your family.
Dokes comes back and says, “Doreen, are you ready?”
Doreen says, “Good-bye, John,” and moments later I hear the sound of her heels grow faint down the hallway.
A fantasy starts playing in my mind.
When I fully realized that I would spend the rest of my life imprisoned in my own body, whenever I started feeling sorry for myself, each of the twelve times a nurse coded me and shipped me off to the hospital--three times for pneumonia, two times for blood clots, three times for dysreflexia, and four times for decubitus ulcers--the fantasy got me over the hump.
Fifty is sitting somewhere, usually at a bar, laughing and grinning, telling a group of people how he and his friend got away with attempted murder. Then I walk up. The laughing and grinning stop. Fifty looks at me in shock, wondering how I got there when I was supposed to be bedridden in a nursing home. I seize him by the throat, one hand, choking him. He takes a long time to die. A very long time…his eyes never leaving mine.
I open my eyes.
Several of the white tiles above look pissed on, a dingy-yellow. On the far wall, gray cinder blocks, there is a jagged hole the size of a man’s head, probably made by a mentally ill resident attempting an escape. To my right is a window showing the front of Dean’s Nursing Home: a circular driveway, picnic tables, a handful of smoking residents out there puffing away, a line of trees in the background, dark gray clouds threatening rain. To my left a faded, green privacy curtain blocks my view of the cantankerous Mr. Tubbs.
Lewis comes running into the room, holding something in his hand, something metallic that I lose sight of below the bed.
A hammer?
“John!” His voice panicky. Tears flowing freely.
The first time I notice he resembles Fifty. Same peanut-shaped head. Same nose, though Lewis’ is a little broader. Same mouth, thin lips. Same brown eyes that grin all on their own.
“John, I got something for you!”
Lewis removes a plastic tray from the stand near my bed. “John, you deserve this.”
Too frightened to close my eyes.
Lewis puts something on the stand. It isn’t a hammer, but the moment I realize what it is, my head feels like I’ve been hit with one.
“John, I haven’t used it much. It’s almost like new. I want you to have it.”
It’s a DVD/CD player, the exact same model I bought for him and later sold for crack.
Lewis pushes a button and a cartoon appears on the small screen. Monster Inc.
“This the only movie I got. I got some CD’s I’ll bring you next time I come see you.” He wipes his nose with the collar of his white shirt. “I gotta go, John. Mama waiting for me.”
He turns to leave.
Blowing hard, I free my mouth of the vent, muster everything I have inside me and say, “Lewis…I’m…sorry!”
It’s more of a wheeze than actual speech, but he hears it, understands it.
Lewis moves to the bed and gently puts the vent back in my mouth. “It’s okay, John. You hang in there, okay? I’ll come back to see you.”
I watch him leave.
In the window lightning streaks across the sky. Seconds later thunder quakes. The lights flicker off and on. And then it starts raining, soaking the pillow behind my head.
The End
Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction Page 29