by Chris Rush
* * *
WHENEVER I CAME back from Flow Bear’s mansion, my brothers would rush to the basement like it was Christmas morning. What do you have? What do you have? I never told them about the heroin. I want to remember this as nobility—that I was trying to protect them from the worst of it. In truth, I just didn’t want to share.
* * *
I’M STONED, WAVERING.
I watch her from the bathroom window. Mom’s in bicentennial red, white, and blue, smiling like some sort of nutty cheerleader. It’s her fiftieth birthday, and she’s surrounded by family and friends. I can see the mad glitter in her eyes, the look everyone interprets as pep!—but which I know to be something else. It’s the same light I see in her eyes when she’s shouting at my father or vacuuming the carpet like she’s digging for gold.
Mom’s animation seems superhuman to me, since I’m nodding out on junk. But watching her, I want to go outside and wish her well. Thinking it’s a pool party, I put on my flowered bathing suit. I have no idea what I look like—I’m thin as a beggar boy, a wreck with red eyes and hair tangled to my waist. Six foot two and I weigh only 125 pounds.
I see my mother’s face change as I approach her—the sparkle freezes. It’s a deflector shield—no possibility of getting through. So, instead, I wade into the pool, only to find myself alone in the water. The guests stand above, on the concrete—not one in a bathing suit. They’re all watching me. Conversation falters—falls to whispers.
Is Chris unwell?
I hear my mother then—her voice loud, directing people toward the food table. Everyone moves across the lawn, away from the pool. There are piles of presents, screaming babies, birthday candles. I see my mother lift her arms, as if she’s trying to fly—and then the crowd begins to sing.
* * *
JULIE WAS THE ONLY ONE who said, Chris, you look a little green. Chris, I’m worried about you. Lightly touching my face—Chris, are you listening? She would say, You have to stop—and in the next breath, Do you have any more coke?
Coke was not a problem for Julie. She managed it fine—managed to do it while holding down a waitress job and taking care of her dad’s house and little sister. Even during her worst binges, Julie was always impeccably groomed and desirable. She told me she’d been on a date with some musician I’d never heard of, named Bruce Springsteen. “He’s nice,” she said, “but way too short.”
One night, Julie and I drove to a Hot Tuna concert at a Long Island roller rink. Once the band came on, I got out a big bag of coke. Julie said, I love you. As the audience tore the place up, my heart swelled with compassion. I felt tenderness for everyone, especially the young men stomping on the bleachers.
That night with Julie was by far the most coke I’d ever done. I felt expansive, brilliant—the blood Julie wiped from my nose a badge of courage. Flow Bear had been right: this was the future.
But after six or seven hours of snorting, I began to feel quite ill. The drive home was awful; neither one of us could even talk. The bag was finished—and as its effect wore off, I felt as if my skull were collapsing. There was no place left to exist.
The next morning, my arms and legs were numb and swollen. I tried to ignore the feeling of doom. Smoking weed only made me feel worse. It took me a week to feel like a human again.
When I think back on this time, it amazes me that such awfulness was happening in my parents’ immaculate house, and not in some filthy cave. Everything happened among my mother’s collection of happy turtles, under the gaze of my father’s glass-eyed deer. I waited for someone in my family to say stop; they waited for me to say help.
But no one said a thing.
38.
Cottonmouth
WHEN I ARRIVED AT FLOW’S house with a bag of cash, he was on edge. He didn’t count the money or offer me a sample of new product. He got up to take a call in another room. My bag of money lay untouched on the table. I considered taking it back.
When Flow returned, I began to rattle off my grocery list—but he cut me off.
“Chris, I can’t sell to you anymore.”
“What?” My mind flashed on Judge Thompson. “Is there a problem?”
“No, baby, I’m just moving serious weight right now. Too busy for this small-time shit.”
I told him I could buy more, but he shook his head, claimed he had to put his attention elsewhere.
I couldn’t understand why he was being cold. Had I done something to offend him? The last time I’d been here, I helped carry him to bed. And then I remembered how his girlfriend had asked me to stay and how I’d refused her.
“What do you want me to do?” I said. I was freaking out, begging him to reconsider. When I asked if he wanted a blow job, he laughed.
“You are such a sweet kid.” He shook his head and gave a look of pity. “Here—” He wrote down an address. “Go see Kenny. He’s one of mine. He’ll take care of you. Do not show up before Monday, though. We’re doing some business out there this weekend.”
When I tried to take his hand to thank him, he waved me off.
“I’ve got clients coming. You gotta go.”
* * *
THE ADDRESS was a trailer.
Up a long driveway, past a concrete gnome and a wheelbarrow full of pansies, stood a tiny dark-haired man, waving a cane at me, screaming.
“Get the fuck off my property!”
I rolled down my window. “I’m Chris. Flow Bear’s friend.”
He put down the cane, but his scowl remained. He pointed to a flattened trail of grass. “Pull around back.”
Kenny was young, midtwenties maybe, but he walked with an old man’s shuffle. Short hair, mustache, bedroom slippers, boxer shorts. As soon as we were in the house, he handed me a sweating can of Coors. We sat down at the kitchen table, looking out on an acre of rolling lawn, the middle of nowhere. Kenny chain-smoked Camels and interviewed me about Flow—making sure my story checked out. Once he was satisfied, cocaine appeared on a silver tray. We both partook.
Then Kenny’s voluptuous wife, who also had a mustache, swept in. She was wearing short-shorts and a tube top, bare feet.
“I am Carmelita.”
She gave me an outlandish kiss. I blushed.
Kenny winked. “Carm’s from Colombia. She kisses everyone.”
“You look like a wee-zard,” she said to me. “Kenny—don’t he look like, you know, with the pointy hat?”
“Wizards have beards, honey.”
“I know—but look at his clothes.”
I had on a brocade tunic and velveteen pants.
Kenny told her to get him another beer, and when she was gone, he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you, Chris.” He said he could give me better prices than what I was used to.
I was confused. “Don’t you work for Flow Bear?”
“Sure, sure. He’s a great guy, I love him, but he’s a greedy ma-ma-motherfucker. I do my own bi-bi-business on the side.”
Kenny, I realized, was not well. In addition to the cane, he had trouble speaking. With each line of coke, his stutter got worse. Before long, he was skipping indefinitely on single syllables. As he snorted more, his neck twitched and his hands trembled. I acted like nothing was strange. Like Mom, I just put on a fake smile.
On a trip to the bathroom, I saw into an empty room stacked with cellophane-wrapped blocks of white powder. Immediately, I understood. This was one of Flow’s stash houses. I felt honored to be there—and a little frightened.
I drank more Coors, snorted more coke. Bought a few ounces and left.
* * *
AS SUMMER WORE ON, I came to think of Kenny and Carmelita as friends—though, really, I knew almost nothing about them. It was better not to ask questions. They lived in the woods, in a borrowed trailer full of someone else’s cocaine. Their job was to stay there at all times, and, I think, they were bored out of their minds. They never wanted me to leave. Carmelita showed me pictures of her family in a moldy photo album, while Kenny played jacks
at the table—his spastic motions often swiping the pieces onto the floor.
I never saw Flow Bear at the trailer, though I did a lot of business there with Kenny—Thai sticks, opium, a little heroin, and increasing amounts of cocaine.
One day—it must have been the very beginning of September—Kenny and I were standing at the edge of the pond on the property, with our pants rolled up. We were there because Kenny said his feet hurt and he needed to soak them. As we talked business, Carmelita—who was picking flowers nearby—started to shout. She pointed toward something, and when Kenny and I turned, we saw a huge cottonmouth swimming toward us, its awful mouth wide open, white as death.
Before we could move, the snake swam right between Kenny and me, onto the shore. Carmelita dropped her flowers and fled, screaming all the way to the trailer.
* * *
WHEN I GOT HOME, Mom was screaming, too, something about her poor mother. Dad got her into the bedroom and tried to calm her down. It was Steven who explained to me that there’d been a theft at the cemetery, that Mom’s family mausoleum had been broken into. All the skulls had been stolen.
“Dad says Satanists. They broke in and took all the heads.”
* * *
AT OUR HOUSE, everything seemed to be tilting. At least once a day, someone broke a plate or a glass. Outside, there were shady characters waiting in cars—new customers there for cocaine. None of them were hippies, no teenyboppers either. My coke clients were usually older, and always a little too intense. I was in uncharted territory, and I knew I was being reckless. Some customers showed up two or three times a day. My parents, worn out, chose to ignore the traffic.
I owed Kenny tens of thousands. I needed to pay him, but I dreaded the long drive to his trailer. I asked my brother Steven to come with me, for company, for sanity.
Before the trip, I snuck to the boiler room, grabbed a stepladder, reached up to a gap in the rafters, and slipped down a cardboard box. I was quiet; no one knew where I kept my cash, not even my brothers. I’d learned from Lu that drugs are the easy part; it’s the money that’ll get you killed.
We took my mom’s Cadillac. The trip up to Kenny’s trailer was always long, and I was glad Steven agreed to come. He rambled on about soccer, his girlfriend—a glamorous brunette who looked like a movie star. I knew I should be glad for his happiness, but his joy felt like a stone in my chest.
We had miles of mountain road—windows open, music loud. The headlights slashed through black and buggy air. But summer was ending; the leaves were tattered, the flowers fading. I let my brother off in a patch of woods not far from the trailer—he knew he couldn’t come in. I handed him a joint, promised I wouldn’t be long.
Kenny and Carmelita were sitting on their couch, exactly where I’d left them two weeks before. The same show blasting on the TV, the same reek of pot and pizza and beer. Carmelita went to one of the bedrooms while Kenny and I counted cash on the kitchen table.
He offered the ubiquitous silver tray. I declined.
“What? Why not?”
“My nose is fried. I just can’t do it.”
“Then let’s shoot up. I’ve got works in the other room.”
“Nah. Not tonight.”
Kenny looked insulted, and when I apologized he said, “If your nose is fried, why don’t you just put a chunk in your mouth and swallow it. That works.”
He put a rock in front of me, a tainted pearl, the color of wax.
I hesitated, but habit kicked in. I popped the far-too-large chunk into my mouth. It dissolved instantly—and instantly I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.
My face went numb, then an awful freezing sensation overtook my whole body. I could taste my blood—ice and metal. My flesh began to tingle and various parts of me began to disappear. I fell into a desperate panic. Seeing my reflection in the dark window behind the table, I told myself: I exist. I’m alive. I tried to hang on to the tiny bubble of consciousness that the poison couldn’t reach, but it was hopeless.
“Hey, ma-man, what’s wrong?” Kenny’s voice, impossibly loud.
“I feel…” I couldn’t breathe. “Really bad.”
“It’s just the coke. It’ll wear off soon.”
I saw my reflection again, tried to believe it was me: blue eyes, yellow hair. But the reflection was failing, fading like an old photo. My heart was racing, and then it vanished. I felt nothing. I knew I was dying. Everything went white, white—no breath, nothing.
I was gone.
39.
Black World
MY NIGHTMARES BEGAN when I was four, the year after my uncle John was decapitated. I’d be in bed, my real bed, but everything was terribly wrong. All around me was chaos, screaming, wind, and voices. As my bed shook, I kept my eyes desperately shut, knowing monsters were in the room with me. Demons. My bed was about to be thrown into space, into an endlessly black world.
The only hope was to keep my eyes closed; if I kept them closed I might survive.
But even the next day, I knew I wasn’t safe. The demons were still waiting and could take me whenever they wished.
* * *
I COME TO on the floor, in front of a screaming television. Sharp pain, a knife in my gut. I can feel my body again, but it’s terrible. I’m trembling, disoriented. I struggle to get up, but the pain is too much.
A man with a mustache leans over me. He’s bizarre, a monster, his face too small, a rodent or a mouse. Then he disappears. Whispering from another room. A woman’s voice: Get him out of here. He’s going to die.
When finally I manage to get to my knees, the man says, “No-no-no, stay on the floor.” He’s stuttering. “Stay ca-ca-calm.”
I barf green on the rug, double over in agony. A crazy woman appears and frantically tries to clean up the carpet. The man is drinking a beer now and pacing.
I can’t stop shaking.
The two people have left, or I’m blind. I try to call out. I need to go to a hospital. Please take me to a hospital. I can’t tell if I’m speaking.
But then the man says, “No. No hospital. No-no-no can do.”
I understand where I am now—at Kenny and Carmelita’s. I know why they won’t help me. They’re protecting the twenty kilos of coke in the back room. “You have to take me!” I scream.
But I don’t persist. I’m too weak. I’m going to die on a filthy carpet, watching The Tonight Show.
* * *
ANOTHER MAN IS in the room now. He takes me in his arms. He’s thin but strong. My father? I smell his sweat; feel the bristles on his face. I whimper as he scoops me up and carries me like a child to the bathroom. In the light, I see it’s Flow Bear.
“Take your clothes off,” he says. He runs a bath.
“Hospital,” I say again—but he ignores me, pulls off my shoes, my shirt, my pants.
When he places me in the hot tub, I scream. He forces me to drink glass after glass of water.
“Steven,” I say. I remember that he’s been hiding in the woods for hours, or days—I don’t know. “The car,” I say. “My brother.”
Flow Bear tells me they know, they’ve sent him home.
I don’t believe him, I think they’re going to hurt him. I want to get up, run into the woods, but the pain shuts me off again.
* * *
I WAKE UP in cold water. Out the window, it’s morning. The trees flutter in golden light. But the sickness has not faded. I stumble out of the tub, knowing they’ve left me here to die. I start to cry.
In the kitchen, Flow Bear and Kenny are sifting rocks from a huge mound of powder. For a second I think they’re baking bread. When I realize it’s coke, I feel faint, ready to fall over.
The men stare at me.
Kenny says, “He’s alive.”
Flow Bear says nothing.
When Carmelita appears with a blanket, I realize I’m still naked. She wraps me and tells the men, “Take him away.”
* * *
WE’RE DRIVING. To a hospital, I think.
Leaning against the door, I look out at the trees, a stream, the indecipherable patterns of black birds. Flow Bear, jangled on coke, switches the radio station a hundred times. I have a lot to do, he keeps saying. He drives fast. I can tell he wants me out of his car.
And then I see where we are—not at the hospital but at Donna’s house. My sister. Again, I start to cry.
“Get out,” he says. But I can’t move. The ground seems to be speeding by, even though we’ve stopped. Am I supposed to jump? Is that what he wants?
I remember I’ve done this before—jumped from a speeding car.
I open the door but still can’t risk it.
“Chris, come on—get out.”
Flow Bear pushes me, and I fall onto the lawn.
40.
Waves
DONNA AND I ARE SITTING, watching the waves. She is seventeen. I am eleven. We’re in our bathing suits, on the white sand of Island Beach. Out to sea, a storm blows past, washing the sky clean. Everything becomes sharp and ultra-real, every breath is a thrill of cool air. In my child’s mind, I think: Donna is amazing. On cue, she says, “You’re the coolest kid ever, I’m so happy you’re my brother.” We get up and run into the waves. The water is perfect, warm and rough, and we swim out too far, bobbing up and down, laughing so hard we should have drowned. But that August afternoon, we float in the blue like angels. Below us, a school of fish flashes—a million lucky coins.
* * *
BEFORE I COULD even knock, Donna was at the door. She grabbed on to me and we immediately started to sob. I could hardly stand, and my weight dragged both of us to the floor. I tried to explain what had happened, but words fell from my mouth in senseless jumbles. Her babies were crying, too—actually screaming—tiny beasts in the shadow of a doorway. She gave them cheese and crackers, and then put them in some kind of cage.
