Red Baker

by Robert Ward

  The doctor assured him it was just a little painkiller to help him relax, but suddenly Dog grabbed the doc by the lapels and began to pull him down toward the table.

  “Maybe I don’t want to fucking relax, asshole, you ever think of that?”

  A nurse named Miss Pritchard, a beautiful brown-haired girl with big green eyes, looked at me as though she were going to scream and ran to get an attendant, but the doctor reached out and grabbed her by her thin tanned wrist.

  “I’m on your side, Mr. Donahue,” the doctor said calmly. “Now lie still and rest. Nobody can bother you while I’m here. The medicine I gave you is already starting to act. Do you feel better? You do, don’t you?”

  Dog looked up at the doc, his mouth hanging open and a strange puzzlement in his eyes. He began to laugh a little, and spittle drooped from the corner of his mouth.

  “Feeling better. Like a warm hand coming over me, Doc. Got that old soup running through me, right?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Donahue,” the doctor said, letting go of Nurse Pritchard’s arm.

  “You with me Red?” the Dog said.

  There was a child’s panic in his eyes.

  “Red, you here, Red? You still with me?”

  I grabbed his arm, and he looked up at me through the cloud behind his eyes.

  “I’m with you, Dog.”

  “Yeah. You my buddy, Red. You and me kick their asses …”

  “You know it.”

  He shut his eyes then and drifted off, and the doctor and I let him go. Looking at him there, silent and breathing easy, I envied him that peace.

  • • •

  When the Dog was asleep I asked the doctor to come to talk with me for a minute. He nodded and took me into a narrow room filled with bottles of blood that dangled from gleaming steel hangers.

  “What is it, Mr. Baker?”

  “It’s my friend, Dog. He’s out of work, like me, but that’s not what’s worrying me. It’s more his moods. I don’t know who’s going to show up when I see him—Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.”

  “He has rapid and seemingly unmotivated mood swings?” the doctor said, running his hand through his beard.

  “I guess you could say it that way. Yeah, one minute he’s up, I mean flying, and then a second later, like tonight, he’s heading across the room ready to kick ass.”

  “You say he’s out of work?”

  “Yeah, and he’s forty-two and he thinks his wife maybe has an eye for other guys, but still this is different. He had a tumor about a year ago, too … in his neck. But he seems to be okay from that.”

  “Your friend may need psychiatric help,” Dr. Swartz said. “There’s a condition controlled by a drug called lithium … The condition is called mood swing, and it can happen due to a variety of reasons, some physical, some psychological. I’d suggest you get Mr. Donahue into therapy at Meyer Clinic.”

  I looked around at all that plasma and thought suddenly that the whole world was nothing more than a sea of the stuff, running in our bodies, trapped inside our veins. And that Dog’s was bursting to get out … The strangeness of the thought made me sit down on a stool. After a time I looked up at Dr. Swartz.

  “Look, Doc, Dog’s an old-fashioned guy. He won’t go to any headshrinker.”

  “I think maybe he has to,” Dr. Swartz said. “I could talk to him if you like.”

  “Yeah … but not tonight. Let me bring it up first. We’re old friends, maybe I could convince him. Except he doesn’t have any money now either.”

  “You pay on a sliding scale at Meyer,” the doctor said. “Look, Mr. Baker, you don’t have to be crazy to need help. But your friend is showing all the signs of somebody who could get in some serious trouble, hurt himself or someone else. You ought to really give it a try.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll talk to him soon.”

  “Good. Now I’ve got to get back to my less interesting patients. Just your average gunshot wounds and stabbings.”

  We both managed a smile at that.

  I got a prescription for Dog from the doctor for pain pills and sat in the waiting room, staring at the patients—a black man who dripped blood from his right arm and kept saying “Mercy, Lord, mercy” and a young girl whose face was black and blue, held up by her mother, who lectured her on “seeing that no-good bum Frank again.” And winos and hookers, one red-haired, her right arm dangling like a broken chicken wing, and then at the back of the room I saw him there too, the Man With No Nose.

  He wore an old Army jacket and a blue knit cap on his head. When our eyes locked, he cocked his head to the right like a puppy, as though he knew me but couldn’t remember from where.

  The sight of him there, with no apparent injury other than that of his gross ugliness, scared me through to the bone. I turned back toward the front and waited, waited for his hand to come up behind me, touch my cheek.

  I knew him. I was sure of that. Knew him like I knew Wanda or Dog or Ace.

  I knew what his fingers would feel like. I knew that he’d lightly touch my ear. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  Slowly I turned to see him again.

  But the seat was empty. He had slipped away. Out into the dark night, back to his home in the streets, his narrow alley guarded by the great, drenched pile of trash.

  • • •

  The next morning was so quiet around our house that it felt like Wanda was already gone. I didn’t even try getting up and explaining; it wouldn’t have done any good. She hadn’t even been awake when I got home around 2 A.M., didn’t grill me about where I’d been, but just lay there asleep or doing a damned good job of faking it.

  Either way it scared the hell out of me. When Wanda’s screaming at you, or crying, or just telling you how it is, well, you know you’re still in the ball game, but the silent treatment is something else. Lying there that night I felt that I was dead and buried as far as she was concerned. Or, like the Man With No Nose, something not quite human.

  If I had any chance of holding my family together I had to find a job, and I had to do it today. If it was the parking lot, then I’d have to hack it no matter how pissant low it made me feel.

  As soon as Wanda and Ace were off to work and school I put my new checked shirt on, some cleaned and pressed corduroys, and my work boots and headed out down ice-covered Aliceanna Street.

  On the way down to the lot I told myself it was going to be a snap. I’d have the job in no time. Hell, I knew Mr. Morris, the fat guy who owned the place, had known him since I was a kid, and there probably weren’t that many guys going for the job anyway.

  Dead wrong again, because by the time I’d gotten down there, eight guys were standing around in that white cement underground tomb, five of them white guys I knew from the mill, and three blacks, only one of whom was over twenty-one.

  Something must have already gone down too, because the blacks and whites were standing off in little separate clumps and were staring holes in each other. I saw one of the guys I knew from down the mill, Spike Ladd, and he told me that Morris was picking three new guys on account of he just fired his whole parking team for slamming the cars around.

  “Buncha spades,” Spike said under his breath. “You know, they all think cops are chasing ‘em when they go up those ramps. We got a good chance to get this job, Red.”

  “Great,” I said. “What’s it pay?”

  “Three bucks an hour.”

  “Jesus Christ. With this and three more gigs I can maybe buy a can of Spam.”

  “Know what chu mean,” Spike said. “You going to the union meeting Friday?”

  “Sure,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking union. I was watching the black guys looking us over, staring at us with all this fire in their eyes. I’m no racist, but frankly these young black dudes scare the shit out of me. They don’t know nothing but television, and a lot of ‘em think if they shoot you, they’ll get up and walk off and be right back after the commercial.

  “Hey, look at all these white
boys,” one of them said, a big black cat with a scar across his cheek.

  “Old mutherfuckers too,” said a little one next to him, wearing an Army jacket.

  “Yeah, too old to be parking cars,” the big guy said. “Why don’t you dudes do something else, man? Leave these jobs to the men who know how to drive.”

  Spike shot the big spade the finger. “Sit on this, asshole!”

  “Hey, man,” the black guy said. “You want to get fucked up? You come down here to get fucked up? ‘Cause I can fuck you up. You know what I’m saying? I don’t want to hurt you ‘cause you an old, feeble mutherfucker, but you give me any shit, and you could go home in a ambulance.”

  Spike stepped forward, but I grabbed his shoulder and gave him a good jerk back.

  “Hey, let me go, Red. This coon don’t scare me. I’ll stick his head up his ass for him, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I know. But you ain’t down here to get in a battle, man. You think Morris is going to hire you if you’re in a brawl?”

  “Yeah, okay. But I hate to be pushed around by any fucking nigger.”

  I looked over at Ray Barnes, another one of our boys; he had a screwdriver in his hand and was whacking it back and forth in his palm.

  “Ray, put that son of a bitch away.”

  “Man, you going to have that up your nose, you don’t get rid of it,” another big black guy said. This was the only adult in the gang.

  He moved forward, and I stepped out in front.

  “Hey, man, look, this is bullshit. We’re all down here to get jobs. For Chrissakes, think of that.”

  The black guy looked me up and down.

  “How’s that jump shot?” he said.

  “What?”

  “You Red Baker, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Leroy Carter. I played summer ball over Patterson Park with you. You was on the Ramblers, weren’t you? Good jumper, man. Hurt us in that game. I’m on the Jive Bombers.”

  “Hey, yeah,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “But I’m not talking to you today, Leroy, ‘cause I don’t hang out with guys who kick me in the shoulder when I go up for a bound. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Shit,” Leroy laughed. “Hey, man, I didn’t want to start no trouble here today, it’s jest hard times, you know?”

  He looked at Spike and put out his hand.

  “Let’s forget it, man, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Spike said, but he sounded too goddamned surly. I personally wanted to slam him in the head for that. Leroy was a good man. The truth is blacks are probably better guys on the whole than white people at forgiving shit.

  “Yo be playing this summer?” Leroy said.

  “Hey, if I don’t get a gig I may be too weak to play this summer.”

  “I hear you, man.”

  We slapped hands, and I thanked God for my jump shot.

  A tense half hour later Morris showed up and got out of his car. He drives a big-assed Lincoln Continental, and he’s got this huge gut, which he hides under a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar overcoat, with some kind of fur around the collar. He’s got these tiny little feet, and when he walks he sort of bounces around. He looked at us, and when he came to me, his eyes opened wide.

  “Red, what you doing here?”

  I felt a hot flush of shame, and right behind that my breakfast flipped in my stomach. Forty fucking years old, oh man, I just wanted to run out of there.

  “Just need a job, Mr. Morris” was all I was able to come up with. I sounded weak and puny, like Ralph Kramden after he’s realized he’s treated Alice like a shitheel.

  “Well, Red, come over here a minute, will you?”

  I shot a look at Spike and Leroy and walked over to his car with him.

  “Red,” he said, “this is a job for niggers. You don’t want this.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want it. But I need it bad, Mr. Morris.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the mill. They’re not going to reopen, are they? Red, you need to make some long-range plans. You’re not a youngster anymore.”

  “Don’t I know it. Look, Mr. Morris, you own the market, some other stuff, is there anything you can help me with?”

  He shook his big shaggy head and looked down at his well-polished shoes.

  “Red, I’m laying people off. I’m only hiring here because the last boys were hot-rodders. You know how to drive carefully, right?”

  Jesus Christ, I thought. I was starting to sweat, sweat just pouring off of me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and that there was witches’ fingers clawing at me from the inside.

  I told myself I wasn’t having a heart attack.

  “Yes, I can drive very well, Mr. Morris.”

  “You used to be a kind of wild kid yourself, Red. Remember stealing the ham from the market?”

  “Mr. Morris, I was seventeen then.”

  “There’s a saying, Red, once a thief …”

  “Mr. Morris, look, I’m honest, I’m straight. That was a long time ago.”

  “You walked in with that friend of yours, what was his name?”

  “Dog Donahue,” I said.

  “And he’s laid off too, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah, but he’s straight. We were just kids. You know.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. Sweat was pouring down my face, soaking through my shirt. I felt my breath coming in short, hot spurts.

  “You two waltzed right in, took the ham off the hook, and walked right out. I guess you thought that was funny.”

  “No, Mr. Morris. We were too dumb to think about it at all. It was a stupid thing to do. I don’t do things like that anymore.”

  He looked me up and down.

  “You’re sweating, Red. It’s cold in here, and you’re sweating. I have to think maybe you’re sick. Maybe you have that flu that’s going around. Then I have to ask myself if I should hire a sick man.”

  “I’m not sick, Mr. Morris.”

  “No,” he said and smiled a little, “I guess you’re not. Maybe you’re nervous. Maybe you’re scared, huh?”

  I said nothing again. I prayed quietly for the Lord to give me strength not to pick Morris up by his collar, turn him around, and bash his head over and over again into the trunk of his car.

  “Okay, Red,” he said. “You got the job. I tell you what, I’ll make you the boss of the crew. You pick the other guys. And meet me here tomorrow. I’ll show you the ropes. I have a meeting now.”

  “Hey,” I said, “Mr. Morris, I don’t want to pick those guys …”

  “No?” he said.

  He stared down at me and smiled. He had yellow teeth, and his lips looked like they belonged on someone else’s face.

  “All right,” I said. “All right, for God’s sake.”

  “Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain, Red,” he said. “I need three guys. One of them has to be a nigger, or I’ll have trouble with the goddamned NAACP. Take your pick. But don’t let me down.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Morris,” I said. “What about my hours?”

  “You work seven to three one week and three to eleven the others. Just make sure you show up. And don’t steal nothing. I’m taking a chance on you, Red, a big chance. I’ll tell you what, since you’re the boss, I’ll give you four dollars an hour.”

  He sounded so delighted with himself that I was surprised a sled with reindeers didn’t arrive to take him away. Four dollars an hour. It occurred to me that one summer, when I was seventeen, a pal of mine and I went out to Guilford to the posh houses, with front lawns. We had a couple of mowers and some clippers, and we cut grass for four bucks an hour. This was in 1958, and I was fifteen.

  Morris got into his big Continental, backed out of the garage, and left me standing there to face the others.

  “Well,” I said. “It’s like this, boys. I need three guys. I’m picking guys I know, who I figure I can trust. There’s no more to it than that. I want Spike, Ray, and Leroy. The rest of you guys I’m sor
ry about.”

  The black guys mumbled “shit” under their breaths and gave me some bad looks, but sort of wandered out of the garage into the cold. You could tell that both of them hadn’t really expected to get a job anyway.

  But the other guys from the mill—Jeff Foreman, Harvey Miller, and Steve Malachek—just stood there looking at me. I had known them all for years, though none of them were really in my gang. Still, they looked pissed, and who could blame them?

  “Hey,” Harvey said, “you chose this black mutherfucker over us? Man, what the fuck is wrong with you? How could you pull a stunt like that?”

  “I had to,” I said. “Mr. Morris told me one guy had to be black.”

  “Bullshit, when did Morris become a bleeding heart?”

  “When the NAACP come down on his ass, that’s when!” Leroy said.

  “You coulda talked him out of it,” Jeff said. “I know you, Baker, and you could talk a crab right out of its shell. Maybe you didn’t want to, huh? Maybe you and this nigger are real close pals. Basketball buddies.”

  Now Leroy stepped forward, but I stood in his way.

  “Get out of here, Jeff,” I said. “There’s nothing here for you.”

  “I won’t forget this, Baker. You fucking nigger-loving asswipe.”

  He turned around and walked with Harvey and Steve out of the building. Spike and Leroy stood there looking at me. Ray put his screwdriver back in his pocket.

  “Well,” I said, “that was great. Two shifts, morning and night. I’m taking one of the morning shifts this week, who else wants it with me?”

  “I take it if nobody cares,” Leroy said.

  “You got it then,” I said. “You two guys work at night. Don’t wreck the cars, all right? We got to all meet Morris here tomorrow, but we might as well get a head start. Come on in the office, and we’ll look at this ticket-punching stuff.”

  They followed me across the parking lot.

  I had a job. Parking cars.

  • • •

  Ten days of parking people’s cars in that white, ice-cold, walled maze, and I felt as though I had never known anything else. There was no escaping it, even at night, when I would dream of being driven blindfolded in chariots, spiraling around and around, and knowing that somewhere, just around one of the bends, there wasn’t going to be any more concrete, and I would fall off the edge of the world.