This River

by James Brown

  “I don’t feel so good,” she says.

  “Don’t throw up here,” Eddie says.

  R ising slowly from the couch, holding her stomach in her hands, she weaves her way across the room. By now, Eddie has worked up a sweat from cleaning up her blood, and to calm himself he depresses the plunger of the syringe hanging from his shoulder, the one containing the dark fluid. Down the hall in the bathroom we hear Crystal retching.

  “She gets sick every time,” Eddie says. “Never fucking fails.”

  Even some of the most practiced addicts are cursed with this malady, but it doesn’t stop them from using. Once the stomach is emptied, you’re clear again to enjoy the heroin high, and further injections, so long as they’re not spaced too far apart, don’t typically trigger the same loathsome reaction. She takes her place again on the couch. I can smell the peppermint-flavored toothpaste she used to wash out her mouth.

  “How’s your wife,” she says in a dreamy, faraway kind of voice.

  “Good,” I say, “though she wouldn’t be too happy knowing I’m here.”

  “I hope you don’t get in trouble.”

  Of course I’ll get in trouble if my wife finds out. But she’s visiting relatives in Tennessee, and my sons are spending the week with their grandparents in Northern California. Tonight I have no schedule. Tonight I am accountable to no one, and frequently these are the occasions when I mess up, when I’m alone and the bright idea to get wasted suddenly pops into my head.

  “She’s so pretty,” she says in that dream voice again.

  By no means is this Crystal’s way of flirting with me.

  She’s genuinely interested in my wife. At every A.A. meeting, when we were all still clean and sober, and whenever my wife accompanied me in support, which she did often, Crystal would stare at her from across the room. And there was something desperate about it. Something sad. Something pathetic. It was the way a young girl stares admiringly at a beautiful older woman, the one the girl wishes to be like, the one she might’ve hoped to have had for a mother. And because she did not, because she lacks the confidence and self-esteem that is every child’s birthright, because narcotics steal any fleeting hope of a better life, Crystal trades, as her mother still trades, on her sexuality.

  “Can I have a little more?”

  Her request for dope is directed at Eddie this time, but he ignores her. He has made a fist of his left hand. Even with the syringes still dangling from his shoulders, he is searching for a vein between his fingers, to mainline, to get the most powerful, immediate rush possible, and he cannot be interrupted. Again and again he misses, extracts the needle, then jabs it back in. Blood fills the crevices between his fingers and curls around his wrist and drips onto the carpet. Crystal reaches for another chunk of heroin, a piece he set aside from the scale, because it tipped the beam over a gram, and soon she too is looking for a vein, again between her toes. Soon she too is bleeding.

  I press my hands together.

  So they can see better, they kneel on the floor before the table lamp. They search, and in the dim light, heads bowed and blood leaking from their wounds, it looks to me as if we are all engaged in some grotesque act of prayer. Though I’ve seen worse, junkies stabbing into an oozing abscess or sticking the jugular, even I’m repulsed by all the blood.

  “Eddie, man,” I say. “Forget it. You’re making a big mess.”

  But he ignores me as he did Crystal; that or he’s too obsessed with finding and hitting a vein to hear me. Finally he succeeds. Crystal isn’t far behind. Their eyes roll back into their heads and then their lids slowly close. They’re faraway now, in a fine place where no one can reach them. Neither will miss me. Neither will notice when I gather up what I came for and leave.

  RELAPSE

  My head is full of pictures. A pillow heavy with blood and teeming with maggots. My sister’s cracked skull on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. Holding my father’s cold, dead hand. My head has been full of these pictures and others like them for years, and for years I’ve rarely slept more than four or five hours a night.

  I am sitting at the kitchen table with my family, two months after the needless death of my ex-wife, and there is a void. An insidious quiet surrounding her absence. We are all in mourning, still dazed and shell-shocked by her sudden passing, when I have what is commonly referred to as a breakdown. In the field of psychiatry, it is generalized as a psychotic episode. For me, it is simply the overwhelming compulsion to stop the picture-making mechanism.

  Dinner is lamb chops, baked potato, fresh green beans.

  It is a good meal made by a good wife for good children.

  But the man at this table is neither a good father nor a good husband. He is and has been for most of his life mentally ill without knowing it. Also, he is and has been for most of his life an alcoholic. He is a black-out drinker. He drinks to erase the memory, to wash the slate clean of all thought, but as the drinking progresses, so does the sickness of the mind, and the gruesome pictures, instead of fading, become increasingly vivid. The decision is and is not my own, for I am no more capable of rational thought than I am controlling the scenes and images that replay themselves over and over in an endless loop in my head. I don’t yet have the clarity of mind to see the act as the ultimate in selfishness. I don’t yet have the clarity of mind to realize that my life is not solely my own.

  I’m a chronic relapser, putting together six or seven months of sobriety here, three or four months there, and twice I’ve made it over a full year. Before Heidi’s death, I almost had another three hundred and sixty-five days clean and sober, just a few weeks shy of taking my third one-year chip. Fact is, I’m back to my old ways again, drinking heavily and daily for over two months now when I push the dinner plate away from me and rise from the table.

  I go to the kitchen drawer.

  I take out the box of garbage bags. Paula and the boys stare at me. Nate is six. Logan is twelve. Andy, my oldest, is out with his girlfriend, but he will be home soon enough to intervene.

  “What’re you doing?” she says.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Though I’ve consumed a fifth of Smirnoff over the course of the afternoon, I don’t feel drunk, and I walk steadily up the stairs to our bedroom. I grab my wallet off the dresser so I can be identified. I grab my keys and go to the closet. In the corner, behind the shirts and pants my wife has washed and neatly hung for me, are several long-range hunting rifles I inherited from my father, but I choose his Remington twelve gauge. I am a believer in the definitive power of the shotgun.

  I have no intention of using it here. Even in my deeply troubled state, I would never impress on the memory of those I love what is permanently etched in mine. Instead, the plan is to drive out into the forest near our home, double-line two garbage bags and pull them over my head before placing the barrel in my mouth. My brother did it this way, only with a .38, but he lacked the consideration, or maybe it’s foresight, of first covering himself. Cleaning up the aftermath is one of the pictures I can’t shake. I reach for the box of shells as Paula comes up behind me.

  “Give me those.”

  She grabs my hand. The flimsy cardboard splits open and shells scatter across the carpet.

  “Get out of here,” I say.

  I stoop to pick up the shells and she kicks them away. But I manage to hang onto one and that’s all I need. My rifles are propped up in the corner of the closet and I have to push aside my clothes to get at them. Before I can take the twelve gauge, however, she’s scratching at my back, my arms, digging her nails in deep. Then Andy and Logan are on me, and together with Paula they’re able to corral me outside and into the car. I don’t recall what was said in the process, though I’m sure there had to be plenty of shouting. I don’t see myself going peacefully.

  On this night, I find myself in the front seat of Paula’s car. Logan sits in the back but he has his arms wrapped around me from behind. Andy, I’m later told, stays home to look after his little
st brother. The destination is Ward B of the San Bernardino County Jail. Ward B is the way-station for the 5150s, California Welfare and Institution Code for an involuntary psychiatric hold, and a part of me believes this is where I belong. But another part, a stronger part, resists. I’ve heard about this place. I’ve had friends from A.A. and N.A. who have wound up here and their stories are ugly. Paula has gone to open meetings, when they allow in non-alcoholics, and this is where she also learns about Ward B.

  “I hope you realize what you’re doing to me.”

  “I just want you safe until you can see a doctor.”

  “This place is for crazy people. The real crazies, the drooling, the catatonic. I’m messed up,” I say. “I admit I’m messed up. But I’m not crazy.”

  “Just calm down,” she says.

  “Pull over.”

  But she doesn’t. I feel Logan tighten his arms around my chest. He is a physically strong boy but I am a physically strong man, and as Paula slows to turn onto Rialto Street on the outskirts of San Bernardino, as we’re approaching our destination, I break my son’s grip. I open the door and jump.

  He opens the back door and follows.

  My adrenalin is pumping, and with it my mood changes from one of fear and confusion to elation. Every nerve is alive. My senses are preternaturally keen. I run across an open field, Logan at my heels, and I smell the mustard weed, sweet and pungent. I feel the dampness of the tall grass brushing against my pant legs and the rhythm of my strides seems in perfect sync with my breathing. The skin on my arms is prickly. It’s a rush heightened further still with the knowledge that I’m soon to be hunted. Paula, I’m certain, will continue on to the police station and tell them her husband has flipped and is running the streets with her twelve-year-old stepson.

  A decent father, and a mentally stable one, would never put his child in harm’s way, but I’m neither a decent father nor a stable one. Although it has never been my intent to hurt my son, I’ve been sabotaging his childhood, and that of his brothers, long before this night. Worrying, damaging, terrorizing those closest to us, intentionally or not, is what alcoholics, addicts, and the mentally ill do best. Careening into a depression after a long run of sleeplessness, drug induced or not, I can go from being a kind and gentle man to a raving bastard in a matter of seconds.

  For now, however, I am focused only on my freedom, and in the distance, maybe three or four miles away, I see the big bright red letters of the Hilton in downtown San Bernardino. Logan and I slow to a walk. We’re breathing heavily.

  I point to the sign.

  “If we make it there,” I say, “we can lay low until tomorrow. We’ll figure things out then. Right now we have to watch out for cops. Can you do that? Be my lookout?”

  Logan nods.

  Though I am sure he is scared for and of me, though I am sure he would much rather I seek help than run from it, he is loving and loyal. And when I’m sober we have moments when we really connect, father to son. He knows this, and after the last court battle with Heidi, when I could pass a drug test, the right to have my kids on the weekends was returned to me. But tensions rose between Logan and his mother. She would tell our children bad things about me. Logan, I understand, grew tired of hearing it, and once, when he stuck up for me, it enraged her. She struck him again and again until he struck back and blackened her eye. That’s when she allowed him a choice: to live with me or her.

  He chose his father.

  So Logan is my ally. So Logan is a confused young boy used to obeying his father rather than confronting him. So Logan becomes my partner in this getaway and a hostage to my madness. That he recently suffered the sudden loss of his mother and is already in great pain and anguish does not, at least for the moment, enter my mind. I am and am not unaware that I’m inflicting further psychological damage on him. I am grateful that scrapes and bruises are his only injuries from jumping out of the car. We are both lucky.

  The glowing Hilton sign is a beacon in the night. Getting there, however, is a treacherous adventure through the gang lands and ghettos of a city best known as the meth capital of our nation. Crack and heroin and prostitution belong to the mix, and the neighborhoods are divided by turf and race. Black and brown. That my son and I are white means some view us as potential customers, or enemies, and others as easy muggings. One or two might enjoy killing us for sport. My son is rightfully scared of the lanky young boys loitering on the corners, waiting for a car to pull up and do business, and as we’re crossing a street he witnesses a transaction.

  “Dad,” he says. “That guy just gave him some money and the other guy gave him a matchbook.”

  “Don’t stare,” I say.

  “But I think it’s a drug deal.”

  “We mind our business,” I say, “they mind theirs. Simple as that.”

  Judging by his reaction, it’s likely the first deal he’s ever witnessed, and being the son of a father who’s spent the better part of his life under the influence, I’m grateful he’s shocked by it—that this isn’t a common occurrence in his life, as it has been in mine. I hope none of my sons follow in my footsteps, that the cycle of addiction stops with me, but I fear the worst. They have seen too much. They have been hurt too deeply, too often, and that pain can well up with a vengeance later in life, warping and destroying everything.

  Because I know these parts well, because I’ve scored if not in this exact location then somewhere nearby, I’m not so much nervous as alert. I’m comfortable here—in my element. The underworld of dope and sin. But I also know not to trust these kids, that some have no conscience or morals and will turn on you quick, so I pack with a load in the chamber when I score around here. It’s a last resort, buying dope off the street, and not necessarily for the danger, but because the stuff is usually heavily cut, its potency diluted.

  Two hookers linger at the end of the block. One wears fish-net stockings and heels. The other is in short-shorts and a T-shirt tied in a knot under her breasts. They’re past their prime, road worn and strung out.

  “Hey,” one says.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “What’s your hurry?” she says. “Come here, talk to me.”

  “Later,” I say.

  They’re standing under a street lamp, and I see her make a face as if she’s hurt, a cute sort of pout. That I’m with my boy doesn’t seem to matter. Some tricks must just make their kids wait. Maybe I’m a mental case, but I’m not that fucked up. Despite evidence to the contrary, in intervals I can and have been a decent father, coaching my sons in freestyle wrestling, weight lifting, taking them camping and fishing, telling them bedtime stories, kissing them good-night, teaching them manners, and reminding them how much I love them. All this pales, however, in the morass of shame and guilt associated with my drinking and drugging and the attendant madness. To love without hurting them is a delicate balancing act.

  When we’re down the block, out of earshot, Logan looks at me.

  “Those were whores.”

  “Working girls,” I say. “Or prostitutes. Whore is a dirty word. They’re just doing a job, trying to get by like everybody else.”

  “Cops,” Logan says.

  “What?”

  “Cops.”

  “Where?”

  He points.

  A cruiser approaches from up the street. I can make out the rack of lights on top. We’re just about to cross an overpass; there’s a dry creek below, and we jump the railing and hide behind the concrete pilings beneath it. Someone has built a shelter here made of cardboard and plywood, and we squat beside it in the dark. Though my adrenalin is still pumping, the elation has given way to fear again.

  “Think they saw us?”

  I’m breathing hard and I try to steady it.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Logan looks at the cardboard and plywood shelter. He’s uneasy, though not because of the cops. There’s a rustling, the crinkle of newspaper, from behind the makeshift walls.

  “I think someone�
�s in there.”

  “We mind our business,” I say, “whoever’s living there minds his. I’m sure he doesn’t want trouble any more than we do.”

  Above a car passes, probably the cruiser, and we wait until the sound of the engine fades before we continue on our way. The Hilton sign is like a mirage. It looks like it’s only a couple of blocks away, but it’s still a good mile or so. We don’t run. We walk but we walk quickly, vigilant, hyper-aware, constantly looking around us. It must be near ten p.m., and at this time of night the streets are mostly empty except for a few homeless and every now and then a hooker or a kid or two, high maybe, with nowhere else to go.

  Finally, without further incident, we reach the hotel. We’re exhausted, but I feel my spirits lift because I know there’s a drink waiting just for me at the hotel bar. There will also be a room with two double beds and fresh clean sheets and a nice warm shower. There will be a TV, and for a nightcap or two, a mini-fridge stocked with little bottles of vodka and whiskey.

  The electric doors slide open for us and we head through the high-ceiled lobby to the reception desk. I brush my hands through my hair, trying, impossibly, to make myself appear presentable. I’m sure we both look a little beaten and scruffy, but for what the clerk knows we’ve been traveling all day and night.

  “My son and I’d like a room for the night,” I say. “One with two double beds.”

  “Do you have reservations?”

  “No.”

  “Give me a second.”

  The Hilton is the last decent hotel in downtown San Bernardino, and because of the area, how it changed from a city of relative prosperity to a ghetto when the local military bases were shut down and the enlistees’ apartments were turned into Section 8 housing, I know they have plenty of rooms.

  I look at Logan.

  “Let’s do it in style. It’s been a hell of a night.” I look at the clerk. “Give us a suite with a mini-bar,” I say. “Top floor. By the way,” I say, “how late does the lounge stay open? The boy’s starving and I wouldn’t mind a drink.”