by Robert Ward
I began to sweat a little then. I looked behind him at the high window which looked out on one of the three big buildings. Through their windows I could see people that looked like great hunched birds working away, moving slowly, bent in half as if they were in a dull, steady pain. I thought of my dream and felt the back of my throat get dry.
“What did happen to your basketball career, Red?”
“Nothing much. I wasn’t good enough to play pro.”
He stopped and opened his eyes like one of those Japanese actors they got on public television.
“Red Baker not good enough? I don’t remember it that way. It seemed to me you were always being touted as the best player Maryland produced in twenty years. I always wondered why you didn’t go to college on a scholarship.”
“I was married, had a kid,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” he said, walking back and forth. “I’m aware of that. But a man of your talents … they’d make excuses for a player like that. They would have probably given the newlyweds a house of their own.”
I was starting to get uneasy. I didn’t mind all the sarcasm, but he was leading me somewhere.
“Look, Pete, I don’t see what this has to do with me getting a job, if there is a job.”
He picked up a paperweight, one with Harborplace in a snowstorm inside of it. He shook it up and watched the snow settle on the small trapped city.
“I think it might have a great deal to do with it. It seems to me that I remember something about you and your friend, what was his name, the big, stupid one … Dog? Yes, I remember something about you losing your chance to get a basketball scholarship because of some holdup you were involved in. Isn’t that correct?”
I sat still and put my hands in my lap. I took deep breaths and told myself to do nothing, to say nothing. Get it under control, Red, because I wanted to go for him now. I wanted to take his head and bash it with the paperweight a few times.
“There was no holdup,” I said.
“No? That’s not how I remember it, Red. This is no joking business I’m speaking of. If I hire someone who was in trouble with the law, there could be serious repercussions. People might think I didn’t live up to the position of trust and authority the company has chosen to hand over to me.”
I kept my breathing regular, looked him straight in the eye.
“I need work, Pete.”
“Well, Red, I would be less than honest if I didn’t tell you there is a job. It’s in the stuffing division. Eight dollars an hour. But I’d have to know more about this … incident … before I could recommend that you be hired.”
“I was eighteen years old, Pete. It was nothing.”
“If it was nothing … why did you spend two years in the Maryland State Training School for Boys?”
“I was only there for seven months,” I said. I sat perfectly still and looked at him. He was like a long white slug, staring down at me, still working his soft jaw with his flabby hand.
“I’d have to hear the story, Red, before I could recommend you.”
I looked down at my soaked feet and back up at the gray sky, which pressed down on the building like a great lead shield.
“It was a gag. Me and Dog, we were drunk one night, just out tooling around in his old Buick, and we decided for a laugh to rob the Little Tavern. It was just a joke. We went in and told them to put up their hands. We didn’t even take the goddamned money. We just stole all the hamburgers and sodas in the place and gave ‘em out on the street.”
His face lit up now, and his tongue curled around his lips. He rubbed his stomach like he was trying to trim off the fat.
“Did you use a gun?” he said in a high-pitched voice.
“Yeah, but without bullets. It was a gag.”
“A gun,” he said. He seemed to be off somewhere by himself, in one of his Pete Porter fantasies.
But he snapped back out of it quickly.
“That’s all that happened? That’s not the way I heard it. I heard you were involved in some other robberies. Real ones. I mean, I don’t imagine they send boys to the state correctional institution for that kind of prank.”
“You heard wrong,” I said, and there was menace in my voice. He had finally drawn it out of me. In another minute I was going to be across the desk.
“Red Baker,” he said, almost singing the words. “Redddd Bakkkkker. Well, I’ll tell you what, Red, I’m going to have to give this some thought. Yes, I’m going to have to give this some careful consideration.”
“You are?”
He turned and smiled at me slowly. “Don’t you approve of my methods? What do you think this is, Baker, high school?”
I didn’t say anything. I knew he hadn’t wanted to say that. He was enjoying playing the big man, but it had slipped out anyway.
“There’s no job, is there?” I said suddenly, knowing it as sure as I know steel. It caught him off guard, and he gave a nervous little laugh.
“As a matter of fact, no, there isn’t,” he said with a look of surprise on his face. Then he started to laugh. A long, high whistle.
I got up slowly, feeling my heart beating, a hot red flush in my face, adrenaline pumping through me. I turned and started to walk toward the door, knowing that if I didn’t go now, without saying anything, I wouldn’t leave until I broke his head.
“Red Baker,” he sang in a high-pitched whistle as I swung the door open hard and walked out into that gray, long, mud-splattered hall.
I must have been in a trance, some swirling blue fog, as I walked across the mushy lot to my car and climbed in, dripping on the frozen seat. I don’t remember starting my car, don’t remember much at all except going down Broadway past Lana’s Lingerie, where they had something in the window for THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS, black-lace panties with an open crotch. Another nightie with buckskin fringe said SAVAGE. Then the light changed, and I was turning down Madison and stopping the car and getting out, walking across the garbage-littered streets, and suddenly I knew I was heading for Dr. Raines’s.
I didn’t want to be there, almost called it off, but once I was only a few houses away in the failing gray-slush light and saw the lines of men waiting there, I knew there was no turning back.
I needed what the dead-eyed croak had to give me, wanted to feel the white pill dissolving in my blood; let it make me fly, Lord, out of the last five hours.
No one knows what Dr. Raines puts in his pills, but it’s clear it’s the heaviest speed around. It takes maybe fifteen minutes for it to start, and then it can go either way, lift you out of the black-trash streets, give you the confidence to walk through walls, or it can turn against you, make you sweaty and clammy at the same time, cause a man to misinterpret the slightest smile or wave of the hand. Send you round the bend, oh Lord, yes. But now, with the day I had, I figured it was worth the risk. Ruby moving and the man with no nose and then Porter dumping on me, bringing up my criminal youth, working me like that, and me having to sit there and suck it in.
Though the Good Book tells us to be humble, I’ve never taken much stock in it. I wanted to wait outside the mattress factory underneath the sleeping fifty-foot blonde and grind Pete’s face into the sidewalk. But then, what good would that have done me? The idea was a job, not revenge.
I stood in the line of men in the gray twilight, watching the cars slide through the slush, sending a spray of it up on our pants legs, covering the white marble steps. If there was one thing I was grateful for it was the gathering darkness, because I didn’t want anybody to see me here. Nobody who stands in the Dr. Raines line wants to be there. No one can take his stress pills without feeling shame. But there were a hell of a lot of guys I knew trying to act casual about it.
“Hey, Ralph. Hey, Teddy, what’s happening?”
Ten years ago when we thought we knew the world, these same guys were ready to kick kids’ asses who were on dope. Commies, queers, scum.
I think we may have been right about some of it, even now.
I re
member when the hippies said live for today, tear it all down, start a new world, we were the guys who screamed remember your families, remember what made the country great, remember who died in World War II to give you your freedom, but now we were in the dope line, and I don’t know how it happened. Somehow we had all become the just-live-for-today guys.
Nobody understands this.
I stood in the line, the wind whipping over my soaked clothes, and I took out a bent, wet Marlboro, and Jackie Gardner in front of me cupped his hands around it while I lit up. Trying to stand there looking like a man. But it’s hard to feel strong waiting in a dope line for thin, blank-faced Dr. Raines. I prayed that Ace wouldn’t come by with his friends and see me here. Maybe he was getting to the age when he knew. Of course he was.
Whatever happened to me, don’t let Ace come by here now, God.
“Hey, Bill, yeah, going up to see the old doc. Got a little flu.”
I moved up another step, inch by inch, watching my buddies come and go, making quiet small talk, everybody with their hands stuffed way down in their pockets, guys looking down at the ground, shuffling their feet, pretending it’s a voting line, a movie line, a nightclub line, a ball game line, anything but what it is, which is a dope line.
Shame moved up and down my arms, giving me the old electric tattoo.
Damned shame, like a shadow over the lie that promises you can forget the shame and pain itself.
I waited, the cold cutting through my coat, my teeth chattering. Lines, endless lines, and Porter playing with me, knowing about my record. Knowing all along, knowing that I couldn’t even afford to break his head. Ruby leaving town, Crystal waiting for me, Wanda counting on me. Ace.
A black Merc pulled up to the corner. It was Choo Choo Gerard, and I put my head down in my coat further and turned my face to the snow.
But Choo Choo is sharp. He saw me. Called out my name.
“Hey, Red, you getting the health food diet?”
Blazek was with him. Broken nose and big split lips. He laughed, sending a spray of spittle out the window.
“Yeah, Red. You look a little fat.”
“Why don’t you get an operation and have a brain put behind your face, Blazek.”
“You cocksucker. You junkie cocksucker. I should bust him right now, huh, Choo?”
Choo Choo reached over and touched Blazek lightly on the leg, and The Animal froze.
“Red, come on over here a minute.”
“It’s all right,” Jackie Gardner said. “I gotcha covered.”
I walked over to the side of the car. It made me jumpy to talk with Choo Choo. I felt like Wanda or Ace was hovering over me, watching my every move.
“So how’s it going, Red?”
“It’s going.”
“You hear the news? They might not be opening up down there at all.”
“I heard.”
“Talks like a tough guy,” Blazek said. “You a tough guy, Baker? Or just another junkie?”
“You might find out sometime.”
“Shut up, Blazek,” Choo Choo said softly. “You aren’t talking to an asshole. Red is a friend of mine. Though I don’t see him as much as I’d like. Listen, Red, how’s Ace going?”
“He’s okay.”
“Hey, I know he’s okay. I seen him the other day up to St. Mary’s.
This is no shit. He played Bobby Mason. I mean, what’s Bobby, three inches taller? And you know Ace beat him one-on-one by something like sixteen to seven. Ate him up. What’s he, fourteen?”
“Sixteen,” I said.
“Kid’s good, Red. Hope you can hold it together so he can go to a good school. How’s Wanda doing? Getting tired down the crab house, huh?”
I had had all I could take of this.
“She’s not bitching. Look, see you later, Choo Choo.”
“Maybe about ten tonight at Slap’s? Buy you a few beers, keep Dr. Raines’s pills knocked back. Say hello to the old croaker for me.”
“Yeah, junkie,” Blazek said. “I bet your kid would like to know that.”
That did it. I moved for the car and grabbed his black raincoat.
“You fat cocksucker … “
But Choo Choo stepped on the gas, and all that was left was me and Blazek shouting at each other as they wheeled down the street.
I looked at Jackie Gardner, who moved up to let me back in.
“Fat piece of shit,” he said. “Somebody ought to feed him to the fucking crabs.”
“Thanks,” I said, stepping back in line. I was trembling all over, tapping my feet, and my temples were pounding. More than ever I wanted to see Dr. Raines, and more than ever I felt sick at the thought of it.
I left Dr. Raines’s with my package of white pills, feeling just like the piece of junkie shit that Blazek said I was. But that didn’t stop me from going directly across the street to the Oriole Tavern, ordering a Wild Turkey and a Boh, and popping one of Dr. Raines’s whites. As soon as it went inside me I thought of Wanda and Ace, and I suddenly wanted to go into the back of the bar and stick my fingers down my throat. Don’t let it get into my bloodstream.
But I didn’t do anything of the kind. I sat there and talked to Jackie Gardner, who was there for the same reason but fifteen minutes ahead of me.
“How you feeling, Red?” he said, smiling.
His eyes were lit up in a way that I knew mine would be in a few minutes. Feeling that speed, or whatever it is, pumping through you, giving you the charge. Taking you up to where your shame didn’t matter.
“Not yet,” I said.
He smiled and slicked back his black hair.
“Will be,” he said. “Got to give it to the doc, stuff’s got a ride to it, you know? Used to go to a guy down in Brooklyn, and the stuff made you want to go out and strangle puppies. Doc’s got first-rate dope. People put him down, but I’ve always liked the doc, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was grateful for Jackie holding my place in line while I was talking to Choo Choo, but now hearing him rave on like that, just motor-mouthing off speed, looking glassy-eyed and dumb … he was ruining it for me.
I began to dread it coming on. Told myself not to just start yapping away, don’t let it make me act like an asshole …
“Plant’s going to open up soon. Things getting a lot better. You know what I’m talking about? Things gonna be all right, Red.”
I looked at the deep lines in his face, at his slick-backed black hair and remembered when he played shortstop at Patterson, good little athlete and not a bad guy. Could turn the double play. Now he was into speed, screwing up, had an accident at the plant last year, mishandled a roll of red-hot steel, which about burned his left leg off.
I could feel the speed coming on, and I wished to hell I wasn’t here with Jackie. I shut my eyes and held my hands to my temples and saw Porter staring at me, rubbing his jaw, and Choo Choo looking at me from the driver’s seat.
“Hear about Billy Bramdowski,” Jackie said.
“Sure,” I said. “His wife’s having a kid.”
“No, not that. About Billy.”
“What about him?” I said, putting my left palm on the bar.
“Killed himself this morning,” Jackie Gardner said.
I felt like an electric prod had been jammed into my ears, right through my brain.
“What the fuck you talking about? I saw him, what, three days ago, shopping in the Giant.”
“Well, you won’t see him there no more. Did it with a shotgun, Red. Out back in his toolshed. His kid found him, came running out of the place with a garden trowel in her hands, blood and brains and shit all over it.”
I felt my mouth go dry, the speed coming on. My hands got cold, and my neck muscles bunched up, sending this wild pain down my back. I drank the whiskey fast and asked the kid behind the bar for another one.
“I woulda told you in line, but I thought you knew,” Jackie said. “It’s already been onna TV.”
“Billy Bramdowski?” I sai
d, taking another hit of Wild Turkey.
“Yeah,” Jackie Gardner said. “That was his name.”
I tried to breathe but felt paralyzed. My nose has been clogged up for years from the dust down the plant, so I have to breathe through my throat, and now I couldn’t swallow at all. I got up and walked shakily to the back of the bar, past the shimmering jukebox, which was playing George Jones.
The steam pipe was making a groaning noise, and I started thinking about Billy Bramdowski, shy Billy. I should have known the night I saw him at the Paradise.
I swallowed hard and threw water from the tap on my face and looked at myself in the dirty mirror again. My eyes were red, I could feel the pill working; it was too damned strong …
Jacking me up, jacking me way up …
I turned on the tap again, stuck my head under it, and took a drink. The water tastes better coming straight out of the pipes. I told myself it wasn’t me, it had nothing to do with me. It was Billy. In the toolshed.
I wiped my face off with a paper towel and walked back out into the bar.
“Hey, Red, you all right?” Jackie Gardner said, smiling. “Feeling better now, babe? Dr. R’s shit treating you right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah … Look, Jackie, I gotta go. See you.”
I started to pay for the drinks, but he wouldn’t let me. He was sailing out there now, not even feeling Billy’s death anymore. No job worries, no panic, no sweat.
I walked out of the bar and headed up the street. It was getting dark, and I could feel the speed shooting through me, and I kept seeing Billy’s kid coming out of his toolshed with that garden trowel with Billy’s brains hanging off of it.
I got into my car and wanted to scream, to start smashing my dashboard, but the pill was floating me up above it all, so I couldn’t quite feel it. It was like … like television somehow, when you watch the crime news and see people being scraped off the street.
I tried to remember Billy. Blond. Heavyset. Pink face. Quiet. Good singer in the choir at church. Had a bass voice.
Liked to eat oysters. Balding. Went to Patterson, played baseball, I think. Not anybody I knew real well.
