Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (6 page)

“What?” Doreen said. “Where did you hear that?”

“John told me.”

* * * * *

In black satin bra and panties Doreen danced near the bed, in the red glow of a Santa Claus nightlight. This will be a long night, I thought. Prince’s
Erotic City
was playing on the radio on the floor. A whiff of strawberry Boone’s Farm wine in the air, the empty bottle in the trash in the kitchen.

A natural dancer, Doreen worked it, moving rhythmically, a sensous smile on her ruby-red lips. She hopped up on the bed, her hands on her knees, and rolled her hips and shoulders. She was beautiful, her body long and slender. And no doubt the average man would gladly pay to see her perfom in such a manner…but I couldn’t stand it.

Why? Not exactly sure, but there was a list of things I believed that a wife who didn’t marry as a virgin should not do. Lap dancing was way up there on the list.

Prince faded out and R. Kelly’s
Sex Me
came on. Doreen stepped closer, straddled me, and lowered her gyrating butt close to my package.

The one time I tried to explain why I didn’t get all worked up when she danced sexy, she got hot, said something was wrong with me, said she was just trying to please me.

She stopped dancing, and pulled my boxer shorts down. Ours eyes met and she grinned. I tried to pull her to me but she resisted.

“I love you, John,” and started kissing the inside of my thigh.

A very long night, I thought. Oral sex was another thing on the list, at the top of it.

Doreen was kissing her way up, getting very close.

We’d discussed this too, had even tried it once or twice the first year of our marriage, but I didn’t like it, either way. Doreen said whatever married people did in bed was perfectly okay.

Right there now, rubbing her face against me.

What happened to being saved?

I thought to tell her that married or not, if God looked down and saw her with my package in her mouth He wouldn’t be too pleased.

When she took me in her mouth I sat up and pulled her to me. “Uh-uh,” I said, and heard her sigh.

Slurring slightly she said, “Let me love you, baby. Please.” The scent of wine rode her breath hard. “I don’t understand why you don’t want me?”

“I want you--you know that.”

“Let me do what I want to do,” she said, and tried to kissed me. That wasn’t happening; I turned my head. “What? You won’t kiss me now?”

“Doreen, you’ve been drinking.”

“I had two glasses--Vida drank most of it. Give me a kiss.”

I kissed her on the cheek and said, “There you go,” and hugged her tight.

Bobby Womack was singing
If You Think You’re Lonely Now
. I heard Doreen sniffle, followed by a wetness on my shoulder where she was resting her head.

Damn! All my fault now.
Still she could’ve cried her heart out, I wasn’t kissing her. Wherever she’d studied the art of fellatio she should’ve finished the course, learned what you were not to do afterward. No kissing. None whatsoever.

Doreen got up and I watched her get a blanket out of the bedroom closet and walk out, leaving the door open. I heard her gargling in the bathroom.
Why didn’t she think of that a few minutes ago?
Moments later I heard the television in the living room.

Eminem was rapping on the radio now, dissing his mother, telling the world he wouldn’t let her see her grandbaby. What the hell did she do to him?

Yeah, just like I thought, it’s going to be a long night.

Chapter 6

The molding machine made a different noise when one board rolled through it than when boards ran continuously. Berry, closeted in his office, could distinguish the difference better than anyone. Usually the second time he heard a single board rolling out of one of the two molding machines he’d come out and speak to the man feeding it.

Daydreaming, this was my fourth time letting a board roll alone, despite trying to jam the next one in to catch up. Out came Berry, his eyes wide and angry behind thick bifocals, wearing his customary red-white-and-blue flannel shirt, jeans and black steel-toe workboots. In one hand he had a sheet of paper. I saw it was the handwritten two-weeks notice I’d given him earlier.

Tuna fish on his breath, he said, “Thinking ’bout your next job, Jim?” Any name that started with J--John, Jerry, James, Johnny, Jesus--Berry reduced to Jim
.
Not expecting an answer he said, “You think you can screw the duck here till you start your new job? Not on my watch, buddy.”

Saying
buddy
like a curse word.

“Go relieve Ali on the ripsaw,” Berry said. “I doubt he’s dreaming of his next job.”

No doubt, Ali was work release; he was happy to do anything except prison work.

I stood in the entranceway to the ripsaw room watching Tucker feed one twelve-inch-wide board after the other into the ripsaw as Ali grabbed the planks that slid out the other end on a waist-high table and assorted them midair into one of three wheeled buggies, and thought to tell Berry to kiss my ass.

Upcoming rent squelched that decision.

Ali, sweating profusely in prison-issue light-gray shirt and dark-gray slacks, patted me on the back and handed me his gloves. Once he’d lifted up his boot, showed me the V-cut in the heel, told me that was for tracking escapees.

Tucker, almost seven-foot tall, three hundred pounds plus, midnight-black with the pinkest lips I’ve ever seen on a black man, waited for me to give the ready signal. He was smiling. I’d never seen him smile before. Tucker didn’t like anyone who wasn’t work release, and now he had what he called a free-world fool at the other end of the ripsaw.

I knew what would happen the second I waved him to start.

The molding machines ran a ten-foot two-by-four through in about fifteen seconds; the ripsaw ran a ten-foot twelve-inch-wide board through in a fraction of that time, faster than you could say, Oh shit.

The trick was to grab the oncoming planks before they got to you, which bought a few seconds before the next set came through, then with two hands bounce the planks off the end of the table and assort them midair into either the ready-for-molding buggy, the handsaw buggy, or the strap buggy.

So far so good: I was working it, sweating my ass off but working it, the ripsaw zinging, Tucker bending over and picking up thirty-pound boards and sending them through like a madman…
Zing Zing Zing Zing…

The thin trim that came off ash, birch, and pine wood would curl up and slide off the table down the aluminum siding slanted against it into the conveyor that rolled to the chipper on the outside of the building.

Zing Zing Zing Zing…

Red oak, what we were working with now, didn’t do that: the thin trim bunched up near the crack where the table met the ripsaw. I waved at Tucker to stop so I could push the trim into the conveyor.

He saw me, but acted like he didn’t.

Zing Zing Zing Zing…

I shouted at him and he pretended he didn’t hear.

Zing Zing Zing Zing…

Now the accumulation of trim was causing the planks to come out curved. Tucker kept sending them through. A moment of indecision, not sure which buggy to bounce a handful of curled planks into, I got behind.

Zing Zing Zing Zing…

Planks hit the floor, planks caromed off the wall a few feet behind me, planks piled up all around me, fell into the conveyor and clogged up the chipper--and that silly country bumpkin who detectives had convinced a hole was in one of the socks covering his hands during a burgalary kept sending them through.

Zing Zing Zing Zing…

Through a rectangular opening in the mountain of wood engulfing me I saw Berry motion Tucker to stop.

I don’t remember what Berry was saying to me as I cleared a path, nor do I remember picking up a two-by-four, but I do remember getting in Tucker’s face, pointing the two-by-four at him, saying, “Man, you could’ve got me hurt! You heard me tell you to stop!”

Those pink lips thinned into a smirk, Tucker looked me in the eye, inviting me to try him. Berry came up behind me, asked Tucker what happened, nodded as Tucker lied that he didn’t see I was in trouble and said Ali kept up.

“You a lie!” I said. “You saw me. You know you lying!” Tucker shrugged and I said, “Convict!”

That got a look from him. Then I got to thinking: Tucker would think twice before fighting and risk getting sent back to the farm. But if I pushed him far enough--and in any other setting I wouldn’t be pushing him at all, whether he tried to kill me or not--he might say to hell with it and kick my ass.

Berry said, “That’s enough, go back to work.”

“I’m not working with him again,” I told Berry, noticing everybody had stopped working, staring.

Berry put on his tough face. “Go back to work!”

Tossing the board onto the table, I said, “Forget about it, Fairy,” and walked off. Got to the Cadillac, I turned and went back in, having forgotten to clock out.

An hour ago I was relishing the fact that I had only eight more working days at Goldenwood, had even considered telling Berry to kiss my ass after receiving my last check.

Now, driving home, I was more than a little worried. Berry might call the bank that I unwisely named in my two-weeks notice, tell them I quit, tell them I was a bad employee.

Mostly I worried what Doreen would say. Goldenwood would drag their feet mailing my last check; we’d have to get the money out of our savings account to cover rent. She wouldn’t like that at all.

* * * * *

Lewis and I sat in the living room while Doreen was in the kitchen whipping up a pot of chicken and rice. Thinking no need to aggravate her before dinner, I decided to break the news later.

Lewis looked up from his coloring book and said, “What’s the matter, John?” I told him nothing, but he persisted. “You sure?”

That brought Doreen out of the kitchen.

“What’s the matter, John?” she said. “You haven’t said two words. What’s wrong?”

“I sorta quit my job,” I said, and then told her the abridged version of Tucker, a psychopathic convict, and Berry’s sinister plot to kill me.

To my surprise, Doreen said, “Don’t worry about it. You were leaving that rotten job anyway, don’t worry about it.”

“You know Goldenwood won’t let me pick up that last check and they’ll mail it when they feel like it. We’ll hafta get the rent money out of savings.”

Returning to the kitchen she said, “No big deal. We’ll do what we have to do.”

All that time worried she’d throw a hissy fit.

“John,” Doreen said, “you’ll be here in the evening. Lewis could stay with you after school, if that’s not a problem.”

Lewis grinned at me and said, “Aw, man, that’ll be great!”

Next to his coloring book was a stack of lemon cookies. I watched him pick one up, lick it and then pop it in his mouth. Noticing me staring at him, he grinned again, cookie crumbs rolling out of his maw. He then tilted his head back, fingered his gums, and stared at the haul, looking somewhat surprised.

“Doreen, honey,” I said as Lewis sucked the goo off his finger, “I was thinking…I might do some volunteer work. Maybe go over to the hospital, wheel a few patients around. You know, to avoid getting rusty.”

* * * * *

That fast it was over. I tried to make it last by thinking about baseball, but then looked down and saw my package disappearing between Doreen’s thighs, and I lost it.

Doreen sighed when I rolled off her. I said, “Give me a few minutes and we’ll do it again.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Doreen said. “It was just fine.” She moved over and lay her head on my chest.

I removed her hair from my mouth and said, “It has been a long time, you know? Two weeks. First time that long that’s a warmup.”

“I said it was fine. Trust me.”

A good meal was
fine.
New clothes were
fine.
A good-looking woman was
fine.
But sex was either lousy, all right or great; not
fine.

“Hank at Goldenwood, he told me he tells his girlfriend, ‘Come now or come when I get back.’” I laughed, but Doreen didn’t find it funny at all.

“With that attitude,” she said, “I doubt Hank will have a girlfriend long.” Changing the subject: “Will Lewis be okay with you tomorrow? He can go to mama’s if you don’t want to deal with him.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “I’m sure we can find something to do.”

“There’s a problem, call me. I’ll talk to him before I leave in the morning, tell him not to act up. You don’t mind, let him eat what he wants, okay? Mama lets him do that at her house. Might be a problem if he stops all a sudden.”

In other words, don’t whoop his butt and let him gorge himself silly.

I imagined Lewis stuffing himself above maximum capacity, rolling on the floor, holding his stomach, wailing in pain, pleading for me to call his mama, the paramedics. Uh-uh. Fat chance.

Doreen, reading my mind, said, “John, take care of my son.” She found my hand and interlocked her fingers in mine. “Don’t let anything happen to him, please.” Sounding if she were about to cry.

“I’ll take care of him.”
Use the earplugs from the job while he’s eating.

Doreen said, “We were little, Pooh and me, when Daddy got sick. Lewis’ age. Mama told us Daddy had lung cancer--we didn’t know what that was, thought he’d get better. Mama knew. She got a job, went to night school. Told Pooh and me to look after Daddy. Soon as she left Pooh took off, went over to his friend’s house, came back a few minutes before Mama came home.

“Pooh was scared. Daddy all skinny, a skeleton, was a big, burly man before he took sick. The chemo took his hair out, he went blind. Pooh couldn’t handle all that. Daddy moaning in pain, sometimes forgetting who we were. Me? I was right there by his side till the last time they took him to the hospital. Rubbed his back, tried to make him comfortable.” She paused, cleared her throat. “God, I prayed he’d get better.”