Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (17 page)

Looking me straight in the eye she said, “John, you might be able to walk away from it now. You haven’t been smoking long. There’s a low, you hit it, getting up is damn difficult. The way you were looking a minute ago you haven’t hit that low yet.”

This was the most she’d spoken to me. I said, “Fifty wanna show me something when he gets back.”

A long moment we both stared at the rock on the table.

Cindy said, “To hell with Fifty! You don’t owe him a damn thing. Listen to me, John, Fifty cares for Fifty, nobody else. His ego dwarfs his heart. You walk away now, he won’t give you a second thought, I guarantee you.”

“I figured that much. When he gets back I’m gone.”

“I hope so, John. You don’t, you’ll regret it. Look at me, ain’t I living proof? You heard the lyrics to the song…I can’t remember the name, but it goes ‘What low do you know? You ever kissed the floor?’ If you just hit the floor you’d be lucky. Once you start falling there’s no telling how low you’ll go.”

“Cindy, you know that much, how come you’re with Fifty?”

She laughed. “Ain’t it obvious? I got a few connections, but Fifty’s got the juice. You didn’t think we were in love, did you?”

I told her I hadn’t given it much thought and she said, “The first day you over here you came out of the bathroom, Fifty and I were arguing. He was telling me to turn you on and I was having none of it. I’ve done a lotta shit, but I’ve never turned nobody on. And I never will.”

“Yeah, I remember. I was drunk. Asked to hit it ’cause…” I couldn’t tell her I was trying to impress her.

“John, think about it. Why would anybody invite you to their house, lay cocaine out for you?” I said I don’t know and she said, “Fifty wants something from you.”

That made me chuckle. “I don’t have shit.”

“I know what he wants, but if I told you he would kick my ass. Give it some thought, I’m sure it’ll come to you.”

“I’ve no idea what you talking about. Tell me--I won’t tell Fifty you told me.”

Cindy chewed on the tip of her thumb. “John, I want to tell you, but I can’t. It’s right there in your face. Look at the big picture.”

The Caddy came to mind, the only thing of value I owned. It rode better than Fifty’s BMW. Looked better too. Except for the scratch on the left side, the Caddy was immaculate, inside and out. The BMW had a black neck bone under the seat and had made one too many trips through an automatic car wash, which everybody knew scratched up a car.

Cindy said, “Let me show you something,” and went into the bedroom and came back with a picture of a smiling toddler in a cowboy getup, the hat too big, sitting on a Shetland pony. “My son.”

“He’s handsome,” I said, giving the picture back.

Cindy said, “Justin Brown. Four-years-old. Deceased.”

The way she was looking at the picture stopped me asking how did he die.

“Murdered,” Cindy said. “His daddy was black. Nathan Brown. Sweetest man I’ve ever known. My daddy couldn’t stand him, told me I married a spade he’d disown me.” Still looking at the picture, she laughed, shook her head. “You remember that big flood in eighty?” I nodded. “That was two days before our wedding day. Nathan, damn fool, he couldn’t even swim. Jumped into flood water trying to save a woman in her car. She lived, he was found two miles away, deader than a doorknob.

“Three months later Justin was born. Looked just like his daddy. Same personality, too. Sweet as candy cane. Baby that sweet I couldn’t put him in daycare. So I moved back home. Just like that Mom and Dad fell in love with him. I should’ve left well enough alone. Two years later I started dating again. This white guy, ED Watkins, worked for my daddy, seemed nice enough. Said he wanted to marry me, adopt Justin.

“No income, living with my folks, a child to raise, I jumped on it, even though I didn’t really like him. Two years we’re living together, no ring on my finger, and Ed dropping hints he don’t care much for Justin.” She paused, bit her lip. “Then he lost his job. Daddy filed for bankruptcy, couldn’t keep him on. That’s when I should’ve moved my ass.

“Instead of looking for another job he sat around bitching and drinking beer. I got a part-time job cleaning up at a Catholic school. Four to seven, three funky hours. Not even a hundred dollars a week. All the asshole had to say was, ‘I don’t wanna watch your baby,’ and I would’ve dropped Justin off at my folks.” She started crying. “How does a four-year-old get on your nerves in three hours? I was cleaning the bathroom when a Sister came in, and I knew from the look on her face something had happened to my baby.

“The doctors couldn’t understand why Justin suddenly had a seizure. That’s what Ed said--Justin was playing and suddenly had a seizure. That didn’t make sense, but then I was just worried about my baby. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t hold his head up, kept throwing up. They did a CAT scan. Subdural hematoma. His little brain was bleeding. Shaken Baby Syndrome, that’s what the doctor told me. Two days later he died.”

Cindy laid the picture on the coffee table.

I started to say something and she said, “At first Ed claimed he didn’t do anything. They kept after him and he admitted shaking Justin. In court he said he was coerced into confessing. He’s got life in prison to figure it out. I asked the prosecutor to lock me up too. He said no, suggested I seek counseling. I’ve been getting high ever since. That low I was telling you about I hit it a long time ago.”

In the awkward silence that followed I heard the fridge humming in the kitchen, and then Cindy started shaking, tears rolling down her face. I held her, rubbed her arm, and tried to think of something comforting to tell her.

Just then Fifty walked in.

“Look at this shit!” he said, staring at the picture on the table.

Releasing Cindy, I said, “It’s not what you think.”

“The hell it ain’t! Didn’t I tell you to ignore her? Huh? Didn’t I tell you not to entertain her bullshit?”

Cindy said, “I was just telling John what happened to my baby. Unlike you, he’s sympathetic to my situation.”

Fifty said, “He wants to fuck you, that’s why. Hadda been me, I woulda straight up asked for a blowjob. Damn sure wouldna’ve sat listening to a sob story ’bout a dead baby. Baby dead, let it stay dead!”

Cindy jumped up and ran into the bedroom, crying.

“Man, you wrong for that,” I said. “That was too cold.”

Fifty glared at me. “In Houston you chest up against me, told me to keep your woman’s name out my mouth. I asked you not to indulge old gal, you did anyway. You wanna fuck her, ask for the pussy. When you leave it’ll be me dealing with her whining and sniveling about that damn dead baby. I’m sick of that shit as I am of her.”

“Damn, man. She’s a woman, a mother, her kid was killed.”

Fifty gave me a look that said, So what? “Know how many times I heard the sob story ’bout that damn baby? A million. No shit! A million times! Each version different than the one before. I’d be willing to bet he ain’t even dead. Probably looking out the window of an orphanage wondering when she coming back. Hell, she mighta sold him for a rock.”

We both could hear Cindy wailing in the bedroom.

Fifty snatched up the rock on the table, pulled out a pipe and lighter, said, “Watch this,” and put a flame to the pipe. He inhaled and then blew smoke toward the hallway.

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?”