Starve the Vulture

by Jason Carney

  “They’re removing me because I didn’t come back from pass,” he says to Michelle as she hugs him.

  “Goodbye, baby,” she says.

  “Take care, Patrick.”

  “Best of luck.”

  “We’re going to miss you.”

  Patients reach out with their words and their arms. I stand at the back and do nothing.

  The attendants keep him moving toward the door. I am about seven feet away from him as they reach the threshold. The rules prohibit patients from going to that side of the nurses’ station; this is as close as I can get to him. While the attendant unlocks the door, he turns and waves goodbye to everyone. I want to call to him or raise my hand, but I do nothing. He waves at Mark, over to my left.

  “See you, brother,” Mark responds.

  The door opens. A gush of air rushes past me as the pressurized seal of the unit breaks. I have goose bumps on my arms.

  He does not see me. I am terrified. I missed my chance to say goodbye.

  The three start to walk out.

  Patrick stops—in an upbeat manner, as if he forgot something vital to where he is going—and turns around. He holds a couple of books, a bag, and a pair of flip-flops in his left arm. His face searches over the crowd. Once his eyes connect with mine, he smiles. Soft and whole. He lifts his right arm into the air, mimics the act of writing something. I nod my head, feeling this simple act with my heart. Then he blows me a kiss, turns back through the door, and is gone.

  Everyone goes back to normal. The lock to the door seals the unit. I just stand there feeling robbed, still not sure what just happened; the whole event seems very surreal. Unprepared, I missed my opportunity to tell him so much.

  8:17 P.M.—06:53

  I TOSS ONE OF THE TWO twenty-five-dollar pieces on the bed. Gather my pipe and the slab I have hidden in the nightstand. The panhandler girl’s eyes light up, seeing the hundred-dollar hunk in my left hand as I remove the drug from the drawer. A strange concoction of excitement and fear bubbles over her. She almost cracks a smile; her face has the sinister quality of a young kid tearing apart dolls. I can tell she wants as much of this drug as I will give her, so much so that she will do whatever necessary to get her hands on it. The number of women who barter themselves for crack is staggering; the number of men who sell their wives and girlfriends for a few rocks is infuriating. I am not looking to barter.

  “Have a seat. That one is yours,” I say, pointing to the rock on the bed.

  They say nothing. I walk around to the other side of the bed and sit in the recliner, next to the air-conditioning unit.

  I ask, “Do y’all have a stem?”

  I load my pipe waiting for an answer. They say nothing. Fear and excitement mix and bubble over me. I study their body movements for a clue. They both stare back. He is blank of emotion and energy. I am happy to have someone to talk with, but fearful that these two panhandlers might rob me. We exchange names. I quickly forget. The quiet of the room belies the voices in my head. Their ages stick better.

  “Thirty-five. She’s eighteen,” he says.

  “How long have y’all dated?”

  “Two and a half years.”

  I thought about how old my parents were when they met. My father at twenty-four seduced a seventeen-year-old virgin, turned her into a mother.

  Thirty-two when he teaches a fifteen-year-old about her body. What do her parents think?

  I take a hit, believing him.

  “Do you talk?” I ask the girl hiding behind her mess of dirty brown curls.

  “Not when she’s high,” he answers for her.

  The homeless eighteen-year-old studies the ground. She is small, no taller than five three and weighing not more than ninety-five pounds. Her hair is cleaner than the rest of her. Black soot cakes her long skinny fingers and hands. The dirt speaks of living in dumpsters, searching pay phones for coins, begging for change in gas station parking lots. They scavenge like birds. Large oily streaks across her skin show that she has not bathed in days.

  The new dope tastes good. Not as potent as the larger slabs, but since I have been smoking the same stuff for days, the new dope has a different effect on my high. I place the large slab on the air conditioner unit just out of their sight. Tolerance levels build up quickly so changing flavors, so to speak, keeps the body guessing. My mind races.

  He slides the chair away from the desk next to the nightstand. As he sits down, a brief look of levity rolls across his gaze. The muscles in his face relax. Close to a few hits, he looks almost human. He pulls out a thin metal tube, shiny like the outer casing of a fancy pen. Crackheads can make a pipe out of most anything. She sits on the bed next to him. Her knees are up so the soles of her shoes are flat on the white comforter.

  I sit in amazement. He gives her the first hit off their pipe. It is rare among heads to control selfishness; it consumes the addict when the drug is near.

  In some contorted, controlling way, he loves her.

  Deep beyond the raging sickness seeping throughout his being, under all the scars built up over his thirty-five years, there is still a flicker of humanity lingering. To me it is an unforgivable sin to hand someone his or her first rockslide. There is no atonement for this; it is similar to taking something from little girls that they can never get back. So small and young, this girl must have been awkward, easy prey.

  How old was she when he first hit her?

  “Hey, I got some snacks here.” I offer. “If you’re hungry.”

  “Hell yeah,” he says, grabbing a candy bar.

  She smiles. Says nothing. He opens the wrapper with his hands, bites the metal tube steady between his lips. She ignites the lighter at the end of the pipe. He inhales as the wrapper falls away. He lowers the pipe, stuffs half the candy bar into his mouth. He chews feverishly; mouth open, caramel and chocolate melting together as he exhales his hit into the air. He is not timid.

  “Pretty good dope,” he says, clumps of candy stuck to his lips.

  “Not bad,” I say.

  I notice the movie on the television is running through the credits. I explain the procedure for ordering another one. “If y’all don’t want to watch porn, the channel list is on the dresser.”

  He orders more porn. She seems indifferent.

  The stuff we are smoking disappears fast. I retrieve the hunk on the air conditioner. Break the slab into two pieces, hand the larger one to them. This gesture of kindness, as twisted as an act of kindness can be, causes them to look at each other oddly. As if they have been here before, the look in their eyes says, When does this turn bad?

  CLAMOR

  1989

  WHEN I BOARD THE FLIGHT TO ST. LOUIS I have a bag, the promise of a new car, and the hope of a college education. I have no other options. This is the moment I’ve always pined for. My dad wants me. The eager enthusiasm with which he has approached this situation takes me by surprise and makes me question the haunting memories of my youth.

  I step off the plane a stranger in my father’s life.

  On the truck ride back to his home, we hold arm’s-length conversations about the weather, my grandmother’s blood pressure, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ woeful record last season.

  When I walk through the door of his house, I will be a brother.

  The excitement of my stepsister’s bashful-eyed greeting bridges the gap of that first moment. My first morning, in this two-bedroom palace, we gather around homemade blueberry pancakes and blueprints of how we are going to remodel the basement.

  This summer I am about to be nineteen. He is trying to be a better father than a long-distance phone call every few years. Since I was five, he has lived in Illinois, running away from a son for whom the state of Texas demanded child support. Within two years, he had a new wife and a new baby girl, far from the teenage mother whose dreams, at age twenty-four, he had shattered with a clenched fist. I was a child of guilt and inconvenience.

  This year’s birthday phone call was about how he was goi
ng to save me. Save me from drugs, the terror that comes from being a juvenile delinquent running the streets, righteous and unchecked, and my mother who is so twisted by mental disorder that she cannot see the escalation of my own. At the urging of my grandmother, frustrated and tired of my hiding in her house in Mesquite, I went. My father is seeking redemption, playing savior to a fatherless boy. I lap up the milk of his bullshit like a puppy.

  Within a week, we transform the basement into four rooms divided by our handyman walls. Run electrical wires and stuff insulation between the two-by-four beams, nail up the Sheetrock, texture and paint the fresh, windowless bedroom confines. A bathroom is planned for the closet area. The living area will be for Melanie and me: a television, a couch surrounded by dollhouses, and Strawberry Shortcake cartoons.

  As a boy, I betrayed my mother every time I said his name. I often took his side, and it was as if my words were his fist on her face. She paid the price for my overcompensating devotion to a false idol. I refused to hear the stories of his cross-dressing sexcapades that bordered on rape. She could not get me to see the monster in the moonlight that would lead her to attempt suicide three times while I was still a child.

  The second week we shop for a car and check out the junior college. I agree to work at the labor hall for three months, to save as much as I can and help pay for the car and insurance. This is the normal existence I have always craved: a family that shares meals at the table every night, and is deeply rooted in the community.

  During the springs and summers of the late ’80s, he has been clowning at Shriner parades, town picnics, and festivals all over Southern Illinois. His wig is a large yellow afro—it starts the weekends in high fluff. The hick convoys rattle down the streets in miniature cars with obnoxious theme-music horns, rainbow-glitter-tasseled minibikes with lawn-mower engines, separated by the out-of-sync high school marching bands. The smiles of the children get lost in my father’s large-shoe laughter as he bounces curb to curb in a zigzag bumblebee dance, throwing candies to the outstretched hands on both sides. By nightfall, the clowns and the haggard blue-collar wives, Busch beer–waddling their Aqua Net hairdos, find their way to the beer tents. The man-made fibers of that yellow wig feel like al dente pasta strands. My father, stranded behind the gooey sweat mud pile of white-face makeup smeared across his drunk-ass reality.

  The first time I met the clown I was sixteen—we had just moved back from California, my life was already discombobulated. He appeared before me on a Saturday afternoon, unannounced and silent, in the middle of the birthday rush at the putt-putt golf course where I worked. Yellow wig, full face paint, ruffled orange collar, floppy shoes, staring at me across the Blue Bell ice cream freezer. I puzzled at this misplaced clown with a look that said, What you want, dumb-ass? as only a sixteen-year-old could. Thinking he was with one of the scheduled parties, I just stood there expecting a question or a name to pop out of his bright red mouth. Nothing but silence and our blue eye beams set on one another.

  Running his face against every name I knew, I finally stumbled across, “Dad?”

  Eleven years removed from Texas, he could not return to my life as himself. The spectacle made him seem heroic to the other parents.

  I got an uncomfortable handshake, a hug, and, “I’ve missed you, son. So what are your plans for the week?” This was his way of saying, I am in town for a visit, cancel whatever you have going on.

  The ensuing itinerary included daily gatherings at my uncle’s house and outings to Dallas/Ft. Worth’s typical tourist destinations: Texas School Book Depository, Six Flags Over Texas, Blue Goose Cantina, and various lakes and water parks. The only thing there wasn’t room for was some time alone with the son that he missed so much.

  * * *

  My Illinois days start at five a.m. Thanks to my dad’s connections through the Masons, I am allowed to put my name on the daily work list at the town local. The hiring hall is dingy, with wood-paneled walls and card tables where dime-hand rummy is played over coffee and work assignments. Farm-equipment ball caps and alcohol-withdrawal chain-smoke exhales are the only decor. During the good weather of summer, families with three generations of workers cram the tables looking for the best game, always determined by the old-timers’ conversations, the room vivid with bloodshot eyes. Blue-collar workers that stuff a year’s pay into a six-to-seven-month season, before the impossible workdays of winter send them to the taverns.

  Every day for a month, I sit and listen to the stories of pouring concrete at the Sam’s Club two summers ago in 110-degree heat. How Big Bill’s son fell off the back of the truck and into the wet mixture as they leveled it out. How the farmland was being eaten up by the yuppies overflowing from the city. They all nod in agreement, casual, without regret.

  My stepmother’s dad, Grandpa Lewis, had owned the biggest pig farm in the county. He called me Dallas instead of Jason. The farm had been in their family for over one hundred years but when he died, none of his three sons or two daughters wanted to or was able to run it. The land was sold away, converted into two hundred thousand–dollar homes that stuck out of the landscape like the Volvo station wagons that crisscrossed the two main roads of town. They ushered in designer strip malls, traffic jams, and fat paychecks for the withered laborers.

  Manual labor in the North is nothing like it is in the South. Illegal immigrants fill Southern roadways and construction sites, without union contracts and workman’s comp insurance, for six to eight dollars an hour. Needing to feed their families, they wait in parking lots or street corners, jumping into the back of work trucks to be underpaid. I am eighteen and getting $19.60 an hour. It is the hardest work I will ever do.

  For eight hours on the sides of country highways I dig ditches with a splinter-handled shovel and then cover them with straw. By the time I arrive home at five thirty p.m., dusty with straw embedded in my sweat-riddled clothes, all I can do is grab a beer and collapse. I have always found the American dream in the sound of a beer bottle cap popping off the glass. Earning a reward is better than having it handed to you.

  This town of the hard-working, soon-to-be-extinct middle class lives for weekend festivals and picnics. Simple traditions that keep memories alive are the heart of every small town in this region. I remember the summer vacation trips as a boy: the fun of the Fourth of July parade, the fireman’s picnic, late-night fireworks, sno-cones, and the whirling octopus ride that caused me to vomit the fruity red syrup all over my shirt and shorts, but never impeded my desire to do it all again.

  The night my father learns I am a man, he is dressed as a clown. Sitting at a picnic bench, the concrete under our feet is a sea of crushed plastic cups and soiled napkins. Discarded cigarette butts resemble peanut shells under the canvas tent of the makeshift basketball-court beer garden. It has been a great Memorial Day parade and carnival by the looks of all the drunken clowns, some of who take turns squeezing the large breasts of one of the wives, and I give them high-fives for their efforts. The proud arm of my father is draped across his intoxicated underage son. By the time we leave, we are too blitzed to communicate across the twenty years of frustrated relations.

  My half-sister, stepmother, father, and I walk back to the house on the other side of the park. Melanie plucks at my skin with soft pinches and teases. I jab back with a twisted, half-hearted, mean smile. I enjoy the annoyance of having a sibling. We are getting to know one another through sarcastic, harmless flirtations.

  As we arrive at the house, breeching the backyard gate with a game of chase, my sister takes a spill rounding the corner. My right hand clutches her left shoulder as she tumbles onto the broken pebble path etched through the lawn. To those behind us, it appears as if I pushed her and then walked away. Only our laughter, trumpeting the small farming community night, suggests our true motives.

  Once in the backdoor, you have to climb four narrow, steep corridor steps to a landing that turns left and climbs three steps higher into the kitchen. Melanie rushes into the bathroom, blood flo
wing from skinned knees. This one moment will hold my deepest satisfaction for years. It is the one single moment of my youth when I feel normal and whole. I am a son. I am a brother. I am convenient.

  The next moment brings me back to the reality of my situation. My father, in generic Velcro-lace tennis shoes and homemade clown suit, catches me on that landing. His forearm rams my throat, pinning me to the wall, while his right delivers bruises to my cheek. Through the buzzed euphoria of disbelief, I hear him clearly.

  “Why don’t you push me, you little shit?”

  The next four or five beats of my heart are like hour-long remembrances, flashing in uncontrolled bites at my consciousness.

  The gun through the mail slot of our apartment when I was four: “Let Daddy in, he’s not going to hurt you or Mommy!” The night he almost killed her, my mother collapsed half-choked against a dumpster in the back of the Safeway grocery store where he worked. The countless nights I was shuttled from my bed to my grandparents’ back bedroom. My stepmother’s black eyes bubbled up under Hollywood sunglasses during summertime visits. The dark weight of my father’s touch on my life.

  His eyes break at the smile restored to my face. With a guttural moan and heave, I turn him. His body snaps to as I shove him into the drywall.

  This moment of reclaiming is like a slow breath, I will always remember the force of my knuckles and the blood of my tears. That busted-lipped clown hunkers to the wall a broken man who created a broken child in a cycle that repeats in ignorant desperation.

  I stand over him vacant, forced back to that place I found myself in the dark as a child. Paralyzed by the same fear that controlled the cowering twelve-year-old boy, hanging on a fence and pelted with rocks. As an awkward friendless teen, I would embrace these demons by dissecting frogs with firecrackers down at the creek bed. Full-circle resurrection at seventeen, a vulture who hunted older men in porn stores and public midnight sex parks, proclaiming his place in this sinister world, a diligent student of the human craving for lust and love.