The Dope Thief

by Dennis Tafoya

  Ray parked and got out and stood looking down at the place where someone had burned his car. There were greasy stripes of black where the tires had been and pools of melted plastic set with bits of broken glass fogged white. He tried to think about the sequence of events and tried to dope out if it had been before or after the barn, which was two nights ago. Maybe. His head hurt and his thinking was furred and had a lot of broken lines and gaps. He felt like he had been in the room getting high for a week, but that was junk for you.

  He got back in the car and drove back down Easton Road. When he got to his street he slowed and began looking into each parked car for someone who didn’t look like he belonged there. Not that he would know. From half a block away he could make out the broad back and white- blond head of his landlord, Mrs. Gawelko, and a tall kid in his early twenties with big shoulders and a buzz cut. She was pacing and making broad motions with her arms, acting out some kind of opera for the kid, who Ray thought was her son.

  He considered just driving on and coming back to deal with what ever it was later, but the urge to find out what was going on won out over what he felt was the more commonsense plan of action, to just keep going down to 611, get on the turnpike, and drive west until he saw red rocks and tumbleweeds. He parked the car and walked slowly across the lawn, flashes of muscle pain lighting up his arms and legs, bright spots and clouds in his eyes.

  When she saw him crossing to her, she started shaking her head and pointing at him and then the door of the little apartment over her garage. “Men came for you. I told them no.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. G.”

  “No, it’s not okay. These men are big, they have . . .” She brushed her hand down her arms. Tattoos. Yeah, he thought. I bet they had tattoos.

  “I thought police, but they’re not police. I can’t have this.” She turned and gave a stream of Ukrainian to her son, who nodded and looked sage, not wanting a part of this now that he had gotten a closer look at Ray. She paced and ranted while Ray smiled and edged closer to the door, his hands up.

  “I know, Mrs. G. They won’t be back.”

  “No! It’s you. You won’t be back.” Then there was more Ukrainian and she poked her kid hard in the stomach and pointed at Ray.

  “Okay, Ma. Okay. Jesus,” the kid said. She wandered off muttering, and Ray stood looking at the kid, who shrugged. “You see how it is? She wants you gone.”

  “I see it.”

  “Whoever those guys were, they scared the shit out of her.”

  “Ah, just some . . . friends. It’s nothing.”

  “Yeah, but she’s an old lady.”

  Ray said, “Let me just get some shit and I’ll get out of here.” He moved up the short flight of stairs and turned around. “Tell Mrs. G,” he said, but then shook his head. There it was again, his face burning, his breath coming short, not enough air to inflate his lungs. He put his hand on his chest, and the bits of light through the trees danced in his head. He watched the big kid cock his head.

  “Man, you okay?”

  Ray grabbed the banister, held up a hand. “I’m fine. Just tell your mom I’m sorry, and thanks for putting up with . . . You know.”

  He turned back up the stairs and saw boot prints on the door,

  but the lock had held, and he let himself in. Everything looked the same, all his stuff was untouched, but it all looked shabby and unfamiliar in the hard sunlight. He stood for a while, then went into the bedroom and got his duffel and threw it onto the bed. He packed his clothes and looked around. What did he want? His music, some DVDs. On the wall were movie posters he had gotten from the mall. Nothing he couldn’t replace in ten minutes. There was nothing of him here. He flashed on standing in a cell upstate on the day they were gating him out, a CO watching him while he looked at a couple of pictures stuck to the wall with the tacky bits of putty they made you use.

  There was almost no one who would look for him here and no one who would realize he was gone. His money and his guns were all he had, and that was in the car or locked away. He threw a handful of CDs and movies in with the jeans and underwear and T-shirts and left quickly, without looking back.

  He drove aimlessly around for a few hours. Over to the river, down to Oxford Valley. Across the bridge at Trenton and back up 29. Looking for a place to be.

  AT DUSK HE collected Manny, and they went back to Monk’s and got more junk. They spent the night in another motel, this one in Lahaska. In another room somewhere a man and woman made lovemaking sounds that were like a terrible anguish. They paid for three days in advance and stayed high as much of the time as they could, breaking the fall off the heroin with coconut rum and hash. Ray would do coke out of the one- hitter to get straight enough for runs to a Wawa to get Tastykakes and soda and hoagies they’d pick at and then throw away.

  It reminded Ray of when they were young and boosting cars and they’d get four or five hundred bucks for a car and blow it all in a few days on CDs and movies and dope and clothes and buying girls drinks. Seeing the same movie over and over. Terminator 2 and Predator 2 and a long list of crap they watched back to back for the explosions and the guns, the sounds echoing around inside their dope-hollowed brains.

  But events kept going, even if the two of them were stuck in a groove. Sherry and Theresa came home from the shore. Sherry needed her car, so Ray told Manny to buy her something and take it out of the money at the U-Store It place in Warrington and he kept the Honda. One of the bikers burned at the barn died, and the story faded off the news. No one seemed to be looking for them. What ever it was that had happened didn’t seem to be ongoing.

  On the fourth day Manny went home to Sherry’s, and Ray called Ho Dinh.

  “Man, how the hell are you doing?” How da hell. Ho’s accent was more pronounced when he was agitated, and his words were clipped short now.

  “I’m good, you know. I’m cool.”

  “Yeah? We were worried. Tina showed me the paper, all that shit that happened up there.”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “You sound high.”

  “Well, good and high.”

  “Well.”

  “No, man, I wanted to say thanks.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “For hooking me up with, you know.”

  “I thought maybe you had a problem, Ray.”

  “No, no. I guess it all worked out.”

  “Man, are you all right?”

  “Really, I’m good. Really, Ho.”

  There was a long pause on Ho’s end. “If you say so.”

  Ray wanted to tell him the truth, but what point was there? He wanted to say his head was full of death and fire and he couldn’t close his eyes without being drunk or high and he wanted to start screaming and never stop. He wanted to tell him that one night while Manny was fixing in the bathroom he’d taken out the old army Colt and dry- fired it into his mouth. But there would be something in there that Ho might see as aimed at him for setting him up with Cyrus. He didn’t want that. What ever Ho had done had been to help him out and protect Tina and the kids.

  “No, I’m just taking a little vacation, really. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I’ll come over, bring some wine. Tell Tina.”

  “Okay.” Ho didn’t hang up. “Just so, you know.”

  “Thanks, man. I owe you big on all of this.”

  “Ray.”

  “Really, man. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  AFTER MANNY WENT home Ray moved to a cheaper motel, one of those places that used to be a real motor hotel back in the forties, with little cabins set apart down a short drive. He was stuck somewhere. He sat and watched the tiny TV in the room, flipping through dozens of programs about life on another planet. He would go to the car, stand there juggling his keys, not knowing where to go.

  Ray called Manny’s guy Monk again for dope, but he said he was short and gave him a name in Fairless Hills. Ray drove down around dusk into a neighborhood of
close- set houses, pickups and cars showing Bondo and rust. Sprawling neighborhoods of postwar homes elbowing each other for a little sun, a little air. He sat outside, watching the house while it grew dark. There were kids’ toys in the yard and a blue plastic turtle filled with sand and empty beer bottles. After a while he walked up and knocked. An older guy with prison- yard eyes answered and stood holding the door between them. Ray had the feeling he had something in his hands behind the door.

  “What?”

  “Monk gave me your name.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Was he wrong?”

  “Monk is always wrong. He’s a punk.”

  “I don’t want to get into anything, man. I just want to get what I’m looking for.”

  The guy shook his head and slammed the door. Ray had started walking back up the cracked walk when the door popped open again. A small woman in shorts was standing there showing tattoos snaking up under a tube top. Her hair was a colorless brown, and there were lines etched around her mouth, but she seemed hopeful.

  “Come on, get off the street.”

  He stood for a minute, thinking it wasn’t a great idea, then fi-nally walked back in. The yardbird was in a seat watching a Phillies game, a green bottle clenched in his fist as if he expected somebody to make a grab for it. There were more toys around, which Ray tried to see as a good sign. Though he knew better. The house stank of mold and stale beer and cigarette smoke.

  The woman smiled at him and nodded, like a helpful clerk in a pharmacy. “What you need, doll?”

  “I’ll take what you got. Black tar, china, what ever.”

  “Okay, hon. How much?”

  “A gram, two.”

  “You make small talk with Heston. I’ll be right back.”

  The man, Heston, looked over his shoulder at him, then back at the TV. “You get your shit and keep moving, got it?” On the walls Ray saw swords, throwing stars, and pictures that looked like they had been cut out of magazines of women tied with ropes. Somewhere a baby started crying. Heston moved in his chair and turned up the sound on the game with a remote. Ray saw that what looked like a heap of wool blankets on a couch was a young obese woman with a black eye and a fixed stare. The noise from the baby was a resonant whine that pried at Ray’s head like somebody was trying to get it open with a screwdriver. Heston banged on the arm of his chair.

  “Goddammit, Rina.”

  The woman came back in carrying the baby, a wet rag of a kid with brown stains on its jumper, its face contorted in a now silent howl. Ray dug at his jeans and pulled money out, his body jerking with the need to get out and on the road. He saw Heston turn and throw the remote hard at the woman on the couch. She made no move to block the throw, and the remote hit her in the temple with a hard clatter.

  The woman with the baby scooted Ray outside with her body, his hand with the money still extended. Her eyes were wild and full of something Ray couldn’t imagine, fear or hate or something, so amped that it became something else, a wounded animal vulnerability leaking out of her eyes.

  She held the baby out to him. “Take her.”

  “What? Do what?”

  “Take this baby. You got to.”

  “Lady, what? I’m, uh, I use dope. I can’t’”

  “Take this baby and get her away from here. Give her away, do something. He don’t let me out of his sight, and she’s going to end up dead or in the hospital. Mister, these people are crazy.”

  Ray held his hands up and shook his head. “I don’t understand.” The woman shrieked and shook, and he retreated another step, waving the money like a flag of surrender.

  The woman hit herself on the forehead with an open palm. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, won’t nobody help me?” She turned the baby to stare into its startled eyes and it was silent, and for a long and terrible moment Ray thought she was going to throw it away from her onto the walk. Finally she lowered the child back to her chest, where it folded itself against her. She turned away, her eyes unfocused, and slowly moved back inside and shut the door.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  RAY DROVE AWAY and got lost in Fairless Hills in the new dark, the endless developments leading one to the other, and he kept making aimless turns to try to find Route 1. He thought about the woman and the baby, and his heart knocked in his chest. He felt a hot hand on his neck, his conscience working on him in some way he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t take the baby. It couldn’t be wrong to turn the woman down, but he did get a flash of himself as he often did, heading west on the turnpike, the dying sun filling his windshield and maps of the western states fanned out on the seat. Only this time there was a bundle beside him on the seat and he wasn’t alone, and couldn’t there be something good in that?

  When he was back heading north, the moon was just beginning to show. His cell rang, and he picked it up.

  “Raymond?”

  “Hey, Ma.”

  “I’m home.”

  “Good, did you have fun?”

  Theresa’s voice got quiet. “You sound tired.”

  His eyes clouded over, and his breath hitched in his chest like it was caught on the bones of his ribs. “I am, Ma. I’m so tired.”

  “Why are you out?”

  “I was just, I don’t know.”

  “Come home. Come on home for a night and just rest, hon.”

  “I want to.”

  “Ray, I have to tell you something.”

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “No. No, nothing’s wrong. Your father’s here.”

  Ray didn’t know what to say. The rage he had felt for so long was as burned out of him as everything else.

  “He’s sick, Ray, and he’s just lying down. He wants to see you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know he’s going to be gone soon.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, just come over and have a meal with me and you can sleep in your room. He’s all doped up anyway, and you don’t have to see him until you want to.”

  “I, uh. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

  “I’ll see.”

  “Okay, hon. I love you. He loves you, too.”

  “Don’t. Don’t say that.”

  “Okay.”

  HE STOPPED AT a CVS on Old York Road and bought himself a toothbrush and toothpaste and a bottle of seltzer, and he brushed his teeth sitting half out of his car in the lot behind the store. He spat and swigged from the bottle and threw it back onto the seat and got out to throw away the toothbrush. He stood for a minute, looking at the traffic going by on York and rattling the change in his pocket, and finally went back into the store and bought a box of candy and a tiny spray of flowers and threw them onto the seat. The clerk was a young girl, maybe Spanish, and her skin was caramel colored and smooth. Ray smiled at her when she gave him his change, and she smiled, too.

  When he finally pulled up to the house it was full dark, and for the first time since the spring he could feel the slightest cooling when he got out. Ray did math in his head, trying to remember the date. He got out and started to close the door but then remembered and reached back in for the flowers and candy. He wanted a cigarette for the first time in a while. He stood and looked at the house and listened to the motor on the Honda ticking and heard dogs barking up the street and then Shermie started up inside. The sky was full of stars and roaming clouds and the blinking lights of airplanes. Ray walked up the sidewalk. The cell he had left in the car began to ring again and he turned to see if it would keep ringing and should he get it or just let it go and a shape unfolded itself from the dark yew at the border of the yard and stepped into Ray and stuck a knife in him and he went down.

  FROM A DISTANCE it must have looked like they were in an embrace. Old friends finally meeting. The man leaning into him and Ray clutching at the moving arms. Ray made a sound, something like a scream, and then he couldn’t catch his breath. He had a flash of the face, t
he goatee and long hair, and he knew it was the guy from the midnight blue Charger, and the guy was saying something but Ray couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t important. Ray had heard it all before, about how he had it coming and that he needed to pay, and he had heard it and he had said it even about himself and now it was prophecy coming to pass.

  The pain was like a note so high it passed out of hearing. The only thing that hurt after the first seconds was his left leg, though that didn’t make sense. The guy must be swinging wild with that knife, he thought. He heard Shermie, louder now, and the door opened and there he was, the old dog moving faster than Ray had ever seen before. Shermie tore into the guy and Ray wanted to laugh but he couldn’t make sounds anymore and then there was Theresa and she began to scream and stuck her hand into her mouth and there was more he couldn’t follow, but the guy stopped to look at her. Scott, that was his name, he wanted to say it. They were both looking back at the door, at Theresa, and Ray wanted to tell her to go back inside, to get away, and the young guy had hold of Ray’s shirt with one hand and when he turned he turned Ray, too, and he saw Theresa take a step back and say something about the police and then look back into the house.

  And here was Bart. His old man, looking tired and small and weird in one of Ray’s T-shirts and pants turned up at the cuff. The old man, out of prison a day, maybe, and he came through the door and the glass in the door broke and Theresa gave a little shout again from the fright of it. Bart moved right over to where Ray was on the ground and Scott crouched over him, turning back to raise the knife when Bart jerked back the kid’s head by the hair and raised Theresa’s cast- iron frying pan and brought it down hard with a hollow noise like two rocks cracking against each other. Ray dropped back and lost sight of the kid but saw Bart’s arm going up and down twice more with a harsh energy like Ray’d seen him use to kill a spider in the basement once when Ray was young.