Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (20 page)

Not there?
Where the hell is she this time of night?

Dialed again, this time Doke’s number. Three rings before a kid picked up and said hello. Wrong number. Wait a minute. “Lewis?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s me, Lewis. John. Where’s your mother?” I heard a TV in the background.

“I got suspended at school. Wasn’t my fault. Boy took my lunch sack, wouldn’t give it back. I hit him in the nose.”

The kid was lucky: messing with Lewis’ food was a life-threatening stunt.

Lewis then said something that took me by surprise: “John, you’re not mad at me, are you?”

“No, Lewis. Touch a man’s lunch sack you’re begging for trouble.” The disturbing sight of him crying, running toward me with the hammer, played in my head. “Lewis…I’m…” Too hard. Way too hard. “Lewis, where’s your mother?”

“She’s asleep.”

I remembered whose number I’d called. “Asleep? On the couch?”

“No, she’s in the bedroom.”

“Uh, Lewis…where’s Dokes?”

“He’s asleep too.” I felt a headache coming on. “Mama told me not to tell anyone we’re here.”

I was right all along. Dokes and Doreen were doing it.
Damn!

“Lewis, do me a favor. Go tell your mama to come to the phone. Don’t tell her who it is, okay?”

He said yeah and a few minutes later Doreen said, “Hello.”

“Doreen, baby, I still love you,” I said, and the line went dead. A major headache working now, I called right back. The line was busy. Tried again. Still busy. One more time, and while the busy signal syncopated with the throbbing inside my head, a voice said, “Who you calling this early in the morning, Rock Star? Your agent?”

The last thing I needed now was her needling me. I turned and said, “Let me tell you one damn thing…” And stopped short. In the crook of her arm was the much talked about shotgun, pointed at the floor.

Aunt Jean, her right eye twitching, cocked her head and said, “I’m listening.”

Either she had a closet full of lavender bathrobes or she was getting her money’s worth out of the one she wore every day. The same for the red-and-white polka-dot head scarf.

Hand trembling, I put the phone down. “Aunt Jean, did you find your money?”

“You know I did. Was that a collect call?”

“Oh no. Phone card. The pin number, that’s all you need. Comes in handy when you’re away from home.”

“Uh-huh. Who were you calling?”

“My wife.”

A thin smile appeared on the witch’s face. “’Less she’s silly you can forget about her. You pop a woman’s head, a crack pipe hanging out your mouth”--she shook her head--“you can forget about her. That’s what got you loping round here like you constipated, ain’t it?”

Put the gun down, Witch, and tell me that.
“Uh, you mind I go back to bed?”

“Go ’head. Now on you use that phone card when everybody up, you hear me?”

Sleep was an impossibility; I just sat on the edge of the bed thinking about Dokes and Doreen doing it and the rock in the trunk of the Caddy.

* * * * *

The sun hovered just above the horizon when I started my walk back to the house. Even here, inside a stand of pine trees, almost a mile away from where the cattle grazed, large cow patties were scattered here and there on the ground.

The rock was no longer in the Caddy.

The house in view now, I saw Uncle CJ and four other men, probably his three sons and Shep, in front of the house. Several four-wheelers were parked in front, one of them needing oil or a tune-up, the engine rattling noisily.

Something was wrong with this picture. I slowed my gait. One of the men pointed a rifle in the air and fired it, a sharp crack that echoed in every direction. That made me stop.

Chances were good the witch told them an embellished version of our conversation a few hours before and now they were mustering a posse to exact country justice. Powell style. With rifles and four-wheelers.
Damn!
And here I was standing out in the open, nowhere to run.

One of the men pointed toward me, yelled my name, and another started my way on a four-wheeler.
Shit!
Sweat rolled down my face, and I couldn’t decide whether to run or play dead.

Vince drove up and shouted over the roar of the engine. “Hey, we’ve been looking all over for you. Where you been?”

“What you looking for me for?” A rifle stock was sticking out of a plastic holster attached to the four-wheeler. “What’s going on?”

Vince said, “Hop on, I’ll ride you back.”

Really didn’t want to do that, but didn’t have any other choice.

Driving faster than necessary, going airborne twice, Vince shouted, “We’re going hunting! You wanna go?”

Vince cut a circle eight before stopping in the front yard, and I hopped off.

Uncle CJ asked where I’d gone and I said, “Took a walk.” He gave me a funny look and I looked away. Just then the witch came out of the house.
Damn, did she ever sleep?

“You hunt?” Uncle CJ asked me, and, feeling Aunt Jean’s eyes burning the side of my head, I lied: “Sometimes.”

“Ride with Shep,” Uncle CJ said. To Isaac, his youngest son, the one in high school: “Give John your twenty-two. Go get one of mine out my room.”

Isaac handed me a rifle and hurried inside the house. Too close to Aunt Jean, I went and hopped on the four-wheeler and stared at Shep’s orange back. Uncle CJ came over and snatched the rifle out my hand.

“Don’t carry it like that, you’ll shoot somebody!” he said, and gave it to Shep, who holstered it. Aunt Jean joined us.

“CJ, you changed crops without telling me?” she said. “You see this boy’s eyes?”

Uncle CJ said, “Yeah, I saw them.”

“Lord have mercy, I know the land is fertile, but I didn’t think it could grow crack. What will the neighbors think?” She started laughing. “CJ, you sure you wanna take him hunting?”

Uncle CJ didn’t respond, and when Isaac came out of the house, he hopped on a four-wheeler and took off. Shep and I were the last to follow.

I looked back at the house, getting smaller by the second, the witch standing in the yard, and wondered if I could hit her with the .22 while riding.

Oops, didn’t mean to shoot her--I thought she was a deer.

When we drove over a log instead of around it, I realized who I was riding with. Shep. Rail thin. Middle-aged. Phobic of soap and water. Fond of wearing the same clothes--camouflage shirt and pants, army boots--every day. Shep who showed up at every meal. Shep who couldn’t talk. Shep who, according to Vince, was a Gulf War veteran. Aunt Jean, of all people, was his guardian.

Uncle CJ and the others had stopped near a small pond, barbwire strung across it to dissuade fishing.

When we stopped I said, “Uncle CJ, can I talk with you for a minute?”

“What’s the problem now? You worried about the game warden? My land, private property; he’s not coming out here.”

“No, I’m not worried about that. Uh…” The hell with it: “Shep, I don’t wanna ride with him.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t wanna ride with him.”

“I asked you why not!”

“Not trying to be rude, but I don’t think he should have a gun.”

“You don’t, do you? Shep’s been hunting these woods all his life. Today’s your first day. You feel strongly about gun control, being the authority and all, I suggest you get off and walk back to the damn house!” Then he drove away.

This time no one followed him, everyone going in different directions.

Though Shep’s mental abilities and personal hygiene were impaired, his hearing was fine. Now he was pissed off. Vrrrrooooom, he accelerated the engine and started off before I was ready. That not knocking me off, he pulled back on the handlebars and rode on two wheels for a while.

A quarter of mile or so he stopped inside a clearing, hopped off the four-wheeler, grabbed a rifle and took off in a goofy gallop.

“Hey, hey, hey!” I shouted after him, but he didn’t stop. “Hey, man, wait!” He disappeared.

A shot rang out, from which direction I couldn’t tell. Again I was a sitting duck. Shep was probably out there somewhere aligning me in crosshairs. I ducked down behind the four-wheeler. Three shots rang out in sucession, the echos overlapping.

The ground was cool, damp. Birds, one sounding like a dog barking, made a commotion in the trees. Another shot rang out, this one sounding the closest, evoking the birds to take flight.

A setup. The bastards had set me up. No one mentioned I should wear an orange vest like everyone else had on.

“Ride with the neighborhood nut; he’s been hunting these woods all his life.”

Yeah, right. Shep popped me, he’d unlikely face a murder charge. All he had to do was lay his mental ID card on the table and the interrogation would stop.

I remembered the .22 in the holster.
Get it! Shoot back!

The second I stood up, Shep came running out of the woods to my right. He stopped, leveled the gun in my direction and fired.

Certain I’d been hit I dropped to the ground. Shep walked past me and came back holding a limp wild turkey. He extended a hand and pulled me to my feet. Sniffing the air, he looked around before settling his eyes on me.

Grinning ear to ear, most of his teeth rotten, he said, “You shitted.”

“Take me back to the house!”

* * * * *

A transformation had taken place. Shep, who rarely opened his mouth unless to stick food in it, was now a raconteur. Inside my room, where I’d sought refuge after taking a shower, I could hear him entertaining the Powells with the adventure of my soiling my pants. Again and again.

Oh, the joy and laughter that spewed forth. Aunt Jean, from the sound of it, was close to a stroke.

It was time for me to go. My clothes in two plastic bags draped over my back I walked through the living room where Shep, Aunt Jean, Beverly, Jackie, and Isaac were sitting. Aunt Jean was still laughing, her face wet with tears.

I asked Beverly where was Uncle CJ. Aunt Jean put a hand under her armpit and made a noise. This started another round of raucous laughter. Aunt Jean laughed so hard she started choking.

Make me laugh, Granny, give up the ghost.

Beverly said, “He’s in his office.”

I put the bag in the Caddy and walked to the cabin that was Uncle CJ’s office. Before I could knock he said come in. A red flanned shirt on, he sat behind a desk covered with papers, family pictures, and a computer.

One of the hounds lie behind the door, which explained the feral smell stirred by the ceiling fan. To his left, a few feet from the desk, was a safe, black, chest high, the door open, stacks of money and rolled coins on all four shelves, a sealed money bag on the bottom.

Uncle CJ broke my trance with, “Have a seat.”

I sat down in the chair before the desk and said, “I’m leaving, Uncle CJ. Wanted to say good-bye before I go.”
And get my pay.
“I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

Uncle CJ nodded, stared at the hound licking itself. “You tell the family you’re leaving?”

“Not yet.” They would figure it out once they stopped laughing.

Uncle CJ opened a drawer and handed me an envelope across the desk, a thick envelope, my name written on it. He knew I’d be leaving.

A lack of anything else to say, I said, “Aunt Jean let up on the jokes and ridicule I think it could’ve worked out. I’m not used to being made fun of twenty-four-seven.”

“You came back to this house high.”

I didn’t comment, saved the lie. I realized then that he hadn’t anticipated my leaving; he was going to tell me to go.

Uncle CJ turned his chair to the small window behind him. “Not long ago there were about a million black farmers. Now I doubt if there’s fifteen thousand. Different reasons why. Mainly more headaches than money.

“Thirteen years ago a tornado came through here and wiped out a half-million dollars worth of equipment, destroyed the crop, scattered those trailers we used to live in a mile away, killed all the hogs, a buncha cattle, a few we had to put down. A disaster. My insurance didn’t cover acts of God.

“David Dickerson, the white man at the bank, told me the loan I applied for was rejected. My credit was good. Had a deed to the land. It didn’t make sense. I got mad and stayed mad a long time. Even thought about doing something stupid--show the white folks I wasn’t a black man who could be pushed around. We were staying with Beverly’s husband at the time, up in Pine Bluff, and one day he told my son to use the bathroom outside.

“That’s when I woke up. Next day I sold two hundred acres. Rented a rundown shack in town while we built the new house. A lawyer from Memphis showed up and wanted me to file a lawsuit. I told him no. Nobody could understand why. Yes, like so many other black farmers I’d been discriminated. But I wasn’t into playing the victim anymore. See, John, there’s a thin line between a victim and a fool, a very thin line. The minute you start feeling sorry for yourself, you’re way over.”

Was he finished? I started to stand up and he said, “Most of the guys I grew up with turned out drunks. A few of em don’t speak when they see me, say I think I’m better than everybody else. No, I don’t think I’m better than anybody. But I know I’m better than a drunk.”

He turned to face me. “You’re a young man, a good-looking man. Smart too.
You
’re better than a dopehead, John. I hope you realize that soon. Time flies. Before you know it, the opportunity to make a change was a long time ago.”

We shook hands. Uncle CJ told me to tell Mama to call him. I said I would and then walked out to the Caddy. Aunt Jean stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, a solemn expression on her face. As I was driving away she waved.

She was walking the southbound side of the two-lane highway. In jeans, a blue pullover shirt, and mountain shoes, she walked with a purpose, as if she had somewhere important to go. Her hair was short, uncombed. Flat chest. Ass even flatter.