by Lutzke, Chad
Later we found ourselves in civil conversation. It turns out Dave had gone to school at one point and majored in business administration but dropped out after his second year and joined the military instead. Less than a year later he’d been discharged but didn’t say why. He said it was for the best and that he never should have signed up in the first place, that he should have finished school and made something of himself.
While we talked, I started to smell the bucket of waste from downstairs. The upstairs used to be safe from the reek but not anymore. It was getting stronger. I asked him about it and told him he should go dump it somewhere, bury it even. He told me he couldn’t smell it and then changed the subject.
I ended up crashing there that night. It was horribly uncomfortable on the wooden floor. When I first fell asleep I didn’t mind either way, but after a few hours I woke up and shifted restlessly the remainder of the night. When I got up in the morning Dave was already awake. He was reading Trout Fishing in America and sipping on gas station coffee.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked him.
“Store down the road. Older lady, Marjorie, works mornings there. Always hooks me up." He pointed to the box nightstand. “Got you one too.”
There on the box sat a steaming, lidded white cup that read “Crystal Flash Gas & Go” on the side.
“Thanks." I grabbed the cup and took a sip. I normally didn’t drink coffee but somehow that morning it felt right. I looked out the window. Everything was wet. It must have rained while we slept. We don’t get enough of it, and I was sorry I'd missed it.
“You like the book?" I asked Dave.
“I do, thanks."
I told him I thought the book was bizarre and that after I had read a few of the chapters I still didn’t get it. He laughed and said that I was thinking too hard, that there’s really nothing to get. That I should just appreciate the odd bits of Brautigan’s brain that he shared with us while he was alive.
“I got these, too." Dave reached into a bag and pulled out two hotdogs and a few packages of ketchup. “They throw them out after a day." He handed the hot dogs and ketchup to me. There was no bun, just the meat, pruned like a raisin from sitting under a heat lamp for too many hours the day before.
I drank the coffee and ate the dogs and thought about my dad and how pissed he must be that I wasn’t home yet with his car. I didn’t care. I’d be moving out soon and wouldn’t have to deal with him or his rules or his lying, cheating ass.
I took my time with the rest of the coffee while Dave read a passage he thought was funny. It was, when taken out of context. One thing’s for sure. Richard Brautigan really liked trout. Or symbolism. Or drugs.
I wanted to bring up Daisy but I didn’t. I knew Dave wouldn’t have any clear answer for me and I didn’t want to put him on the spot, maybe stir up some unnecessary agitation. Things seemed pretty cool between the two of us now and I wanted it to stay that way. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to respect about Dave, but there was. And I’m not sure why. He’d given up on himself and any goal he may have once had, but somehow I was able to look past that.
Empathy.
I told Dave I needed to get going and thanked him for breakfast. He nodded, and the words “I’ll see you soon” slipped out of my mouth.
5: Headfirst
I was right. Dad was furious. He said I was grounded from the car for a month and that I’d be lucky if I ever got to use it again. Mom seemed pretty disappointed in me but stayed out of it. She usually did. In the past four years I can count on two hands how many hours Mom had spent interacting with me. Four years. And that was just small talk in the car when she’d give me rides to school. Apparently for her, parenting stopped around the time my puberty kicked in.
***
Later that night I felt uneasy and antsy, shaky even. I told myself it was stress. I’d been through a lot lately, plus I hadn’t been eating well. I decided that living at home wasn’t for me anymore, that I’d had enough of my parents. I filled my backpack with a few changes of clothes and as many snacks as I could find—I even grabbed a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. I also took two more needles from Dad and every roll of quarters he had. He’d notice them gone this time. It was scary how little I cared.
I saw my cell phone sitting on my dresser. It was covered in a thin layer of dust. I hadn’t had service since I’d turned eighteen—my dad’s idea of giving me incentive to get a job, said he’d no longer pay for the service. So there it sat. I wasn’t one of these people who really got off on staring at that little screen, playing games, looking at other people’s lives. Little did my dad know I actually enjoyed not having the thing stuck to me all the time. I mean, who wants to never be able to get away from people, especially their parents?
By 10:00 p.m. I was on the road and heading to the closest bus stop on foot. The nearest bus route took me about a mile from Limewood so I walked the rest of the way. On the way there, as though God himself was providing, I found a mattress lying off the freeway in the ditch. It was one of those small vinyl ones you stick in a baby’s crib, but it sure beat wood or cardboard. I figured it fell off a truck during someone’s move. I picked it up and carried it the rest of the way to Limewood. I think it was even lighter than the backpack strapped to me.
It was after midnight by the time I got to Dave’s. He was thankful that I’d brought him the mattress but said he liked the cardboard bed and that I could sleep on the mattress if I wanted. That’s the moment I realized I wasn’t going anywhere—something I think he'd known all along.
I asked him if it was too late to score and he said if we wanted the good junk then it was definitely too late, but if we wanted to head downtown and get something else then no hour was too late, so that’s where we headed, via bus. On the way there, Dave shared with me how he’d get his food. Most of it he ate from dumpsters. He said there were a few stores that threw away perfectly good food. He said he’d hit the dumpsters a few days a week and come home with at least two or three days worth, plus there was Marjorie at Crystal Flash.
I asked him about showering and clean clothes. He said he had two sets of clothes, one he’d wear while washing the other in the bathroom sink at Crystal Flash, then bring them home to dry. He’d use the same sink to wash up and shave. He said he kept a razor, toothbrush and paste, and a bar of soap hidden in a Ziploc bag in one of the toilet tanks so he didn’t have to carry it around with him. It grossed me out at first but then I thought it was rather resourceful, ingenious even.
By the time we got back to Limewood it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I was tired and wondered if waiting until tomorrow would make more sense, but it was clear Dave didn’t think so, and so we shot up and enjoyed the rest of the night.
Until Dave thought Daisy was there.
He didn’t start crying like he did last time. He mostly just smiled and whispered, said the occasional sentence that I could never make out. I just let him be. It was clear by now that Dave had another side to him that was unhealthy, and because I didn't know his history I felt it was best to leave it alone. Who was I to try and convince him things did or did not exist.
***
For the next few days Dave and I made trips to Mustang and scored some of the good junk. It would have been nice to get more in one run but the guy wouldn’t sell like that. He told Dave that he never kept much on him, that it was delivered each day. Sounded like horseshit to me. I think the guy was afraid of being robbed, that the wrong people would find out he’s got crates full of liquid gold in there worth millions, or something.
Dave talked a lot about getting a car one day. It was just wishful thinking. Any money we got went right into our veins. I think he’d just talk about it because we both hated to walk and it’s what kept him going, maybe he thought it’s what kept me going with him.
I started keeping my own personal hygiene bag in one of the toilets along with Dave’s. It was nice to be able to brush my teeth nearly every day. I was sure that eventually someone would
find those bags and throw them out, but they never did.
6: Consequences
It took an entire week of staying at Limewood for me to admit to myself that I'd let the drug take me. And I hated myself for it. Up until then I’d made excuses: My parents don’t love me. I’m just a teenager celebrating graduation, living life a little before adulthood. They were all lies and I knew it. I had let heroin become my master. Any delusions I had about being stronger than I really was were gone. And though life was bleak, I had hope that I wouldn’t always be like this, that one day I’d make a stand against the drug and walk away. Just not yet.
***
Another three weeks went by with Dave and me feeding our addiction. It had gotten bad. We were starting to steal from a few of the stores nearby and even staked out a house along our usual route, eventually breaking in and walking away with a few thousand dollars in cash, a bunch of candles, silverware, jewelry, and a guitar. We had no problem unloading the stuff. The local pawnshop was as crooked as we were. They’d turn around and ship the stuff two hours away to their sister store and sell anything there they suspected as stolen merch.
My arms were already in pretty bad shape. My left arm in particular. I had a few areas where open sores had formed, spots I’d tried injecting the heroin when it wasn’t in a vein. Something Dave hadn’t warned me about. Of course it didn’t help that we’d been using the same dull needles ever since I’d left my parent’s house. But I tried keeping my arms as clean as I could. I’d heard about people getting infections, like Dave’s toes. I didn’t want that to happen to me.
I caught myself in the mirror one day at Crystal Flash. I had several small sores on my face. I was convinced they were bed bug bites from the mattress I’d found. Until Dave told me to stop picking at myself one day while high. It dawned on me I’d been feeling my face for tiny hairs and imperfections, then trying to rid myself of them–anything that didn’t feel smooth or natural. Even at eighteen years old I still hadn’t grown much facial hair and normally shaved only every week or so, but I started shaving nearly every day so I wouldn’t feel the hairs at all.
Sometimes I’d think about Eddie and Kent and wonder if they missed me. They’d never think to look here. I mean, who would? I’d picture them down at Boden’s losing money they didn’t have. I thought I’d miss them but I didn’t. We were different people now. I felt like I’d done a lot of growing up that summer and they hadn’t.
I never thought about my parents. They were like a scab that finally healed and now I just ignored the scar left behind, pretended it wasn’t there. The only thing I missed about that house was my bed. The crib mattress was small and I took to using a stack of cardboard at the end of it so my legs were level, otherwise I’d wake up cramping.
Dave and I took turns dumping the bucket, burying it all in holes we dug using a shovel we’d found leaning against one of the other townhomes. The chore was a rather disgusting ordeal, our waste fused together in a white bucket splashed several shades of brown with no way of rinsing it. Now that there were two of us living there, I made the suggestion of pissing outside. I’m not sure why Dave hadn’t been doing that all along, but it certainly helped with the smell.
Late one night, Dave and I partook for the second time that day. We’d blown all but one of the candles out, as the moon was particularly bright that night and planted a beam right there in the middle of the room—God’s spotlight. It was beautiful. The room swirled in oranges and blues and the air smelled of wet earth from a ten-minute downpour we’d had only an hour before.
I had nodded off and was alerted by the sound of gagging, followed by a wet splash. Dave was leaned over his cardboard bed, hovering above a large puddle of vomit, a thick string of saliva connecting him to the floor, glistening under God's spotlight.
I’d never seen Dave get sick before. I asked if he was okay. He never said a word, just puked more; his mouth opening wider than should be allowed. I expected to hear the crack of his jaw as more vomit sprayed, adding to the growing puddle under him.
Making the assumption he was coming down with something, or maybe that day’s dumpster food didn’t agree with him, I nodded off again, listening to the disturbing noises from across the room, incorporating them into my drug-induced dreams. His retching became the rusty swing on a playground, his pleas for help the sound of a child’s laughter. The playground, my favorite place as a child, before mother bored of me.
When I woke, the sun had just begun to brighten the room. The candles now lay flattened in a hardened swirl of unpredictable patterns. And there, where I last saw him, lay Dave. His face buried in yesterday’s meal.
Without getting any closer, I could tell he was dead. His face was blackened from the blood settling. The one eye I could see was still open, the ball itself resting in the congealed vomit.
All at once the smell hit me. The vomit, the bulge in the seat of his pants, the dark, unhealthy urine soaked into the very pants he would’ve had hanging on the clothesline later that day. At first I felt guilty, like I could have done something instead of sit there watching him, then nodding off. But I couldn’t have done anything. He didn’t choke on his vomit. Moving him would have done nothing. His death had been coming for a long time, chasing after him. I just happened to be in the room when it finally showed up.
I sat and stared at Dave’s body for a while, ignoring the smell, contemplating my future. I always thought if either of us was to die from heroin it would be me. Dave was a veteran, knew what he was doing. This was unexpected. I wanted it to be a wakeup call for me, the bottom that would set me back to the straight and narrow where I’d become goal oriented and responsible. But it wasn’t. Forcing myself to learn a lesson here was like trying to run underwater. I was going nowhere, I could feel it.
***
I left Dave there in the room and spent the day making food runs. No way was I gonna try and deal with him in the daylight. On the way to Crystal Flash I passed a nice two-story house with a well kempt garden. I took note that it was the third day that week I’d seen the homeowner leave at the same time; must be off to work. If the pattern stayed consistent I’d be giving the inside a once over.
Marjorie at Crystal Flash asked where Dave was. I told her he wasn’t feeling well and decided to stay in bed. I picked up two coffees to make it look good. I was a little proud of myself for that one, thinking ahead, especially given the circumstances. My head was in a whole different place with Dave gone. Sadly, one of the first things I thought of was how I had no way of telling which house in Mustang was his source. I’d have to go downtown.
I stayed away from Limewood for the day, thinking, walking, even napping under a group of bushes in someone’s side yard. As it grew closer to dark, I headed back to the house to take care of Dave’s body and boot up. I was sure there was enough for one fix left in the last batch we scored.
I dug a hole three buildings over, back behind the house. The hole was shallow, no more than three feet deep and by no means evenly rectangular. But it would do—good enough to keep the smell away. I dragged Dave down the stairs and outside, then over to his grave. I wondered if there was anyone out in the world who was missing him, who was holding onto hope that one day he’d show up again clean and sober, to take back the life heroin had stolen from him.
After Dave was in the hole I tried shifting him into a more natural position. It was difficult. He’d sat dead all day, and by now his limbs had made up their mind how they wanted to remain. I started tossing the dirt on Dave, then stopped. I said a few words, something about how I hoped he was in a better place now and that he was a unique soul. I meant every word, but when it came out it sounded disingenuous so I shut my mouth and covered him up. The earth had obvious markings of a grave so I tried scattering the dirt around, making the area wider. It still looked like a grave. I then took a rock and placed it in the dirt as an unmarked tombstone, and as a landmark for me so I’d never dump the shit bucket on Dave.
I tried cleaning u
p the room as much as I could using Dave’s other set of clothes as rags, then dumped them in the bucket where I’d bury them next time I emptied it. The room still stunk, and honestly I didn’t feel right sitting in there without Dave. So I gathered up his things: the books, the orange tray with our rigs on it, the paper and the pencils, as well as all the candles and my mattress and moved them in another of the upstairs rooms we’d never used. It was smaller but clean.
When putting the books away I noticed a bookmark sticking out of the illustrated book of flowers. I opened to the saved page. At the top, in bold black letters, it read: “Bellis perennis: The Daisy." I could feel my face go pale, my mouth dry. The word was horrifying and sad. I shut the book and neatly stacked it with the others like Dave would have and went straight for the tray. I was right. There was enough H to get off. I prepped and grabbed my needle and made a note to get rid of Dave’s needle the next chance I got.
I’d become pretty good at setting up my own rig. I suppose it’s sad to boast about such a thing. But what else was there? Stealthy thief? Hasty gravedigger? Heartless eulogy giver? I got myself comfortable before hitting up. I felt like this one was an homage to Dave. It was also the last time I’d be able to get the good junk.
I spent the rest of the evening not caring anymore that Dave was dead.
7: Revelations
To get through the next few weeks, I stole from open garages and hit the usual dumpsters. You’d be surprised what kind of valuables people leave in their garage, the doors wide open. I stayed away from Crystal Flash, never went back. Not even to get my Ziploc. I knew Marjorie would keep asking questions about Dave and I’d run out of things to say. I’m not a very good liar. My dad used to say I had a “tell." I wasn’t sure what he meant until I tried playing poker once at Boden’s.
