Red Baker (11 page)

I think it was on Broadway, about two blocks from Ruby’s Play Lounge, that I got my bright idea. The rain was coming down harder, and the alley was dark.

I walked back slow, holding the box out in front of me, suddenly realizing he might not even be there anymore at all or, worse, that he might be waiting behind one of the trash containers, hidden under the old bedsprings and walls of refuse.

I got to the end of the alley, and then I saw his place. He’d fixed it up some. There was a great new packing crate, and he’d punched a hole in the side of it for a window.

I held my breath, holding on to the food, and then suddenly I saw him looking out at me from his window. His head was shaved now, and he kept what was left of his nose just below the sill so I couldn’t see it.

He said nothing, but he stared at the box.

He looked like he’d been plugged into a wall socket.

I nodded and stood very still.

“I want to leave this here,” I said. “For you?”

He stuck his head up a little and looked at me. I could see what was almost his nose holes.

He was shaking now, and I saw how thin his wrists were.

I ripped open the box and took out the chicken and then the potatoes and the cheese and bread.

“You’re an asshole for coming back here,” he said, but there wasn’t much anger in his voice. Tears ran down his noseless face, dripped off his lips.

“Are you Him?” he said.

I shook my head and backed away.

He nodded to me very slowly, his eyes opening wide, his face suddenly looking like a child’s.

And then, looking at him there, it occurred to me that I knew him. That he was somebody I knew from way back, but he was too young for that, some friend of Ace’s … but that wasn’t possible either.

“Don’t come back again,” he said. “The next time I can’t tell you what it’ll be like.”

I backed out of the alley. Overhead there was some thunder, and the rain kept moving faster. When I was on the street I saw him scamper out of his drenched hole, pick up the canned ham, and hold it in his arms like it was a tin child.

Then he turned and ran back to the crate, out of my sight.

I turned and headed on down the street, told myself that I’d have just one with Ruby, since she was leaving soon. Just one. Maybe give Crystal a call, and then I’d get home, change, and make it on down to the L and S Parking Lot and grab off that job.

It must have been around four when I hit Ruby’s. In short order I downed maybe six Wild Turkeys. And half a Dr. Raines’s, just to get me over the hump of having to go down to the parking garage.

I thought I was handling it all, but then there was that call to Crystal, just hearing her small voice and laughing with her about what an asshole Vinnie was. He’d hired a guy to be a knight down at Mona Lisa Pizza. Made the son of a bitch wear armor all night while he stood there near those pizza ovens, which were almost as hot as the steel mill.

It wasn’t like I was cutting out on Wanda, or it didn’t seem that way. It was just that I had to hear Crystal’s voice to stay even with the flood that was pushing me down, sinking me to the bottom.

I needed her laughter. Though I know that’s wrong. It was me, living with the likes of me, that killed all the laughter in Wanda, and now I was like a monster from one of Ace’s vampire movies, bleeding all the laughs out of another, younger woman.

She sounded so young and up, and she talked about Florida to me again, the way the trees looked and the way the birds landed on the beach at night, their wings lit up by the moon.

And then I called Dog, and we talked, and the pill and the booze was working; I hadn’t seen him for so goddamned long … Dog, Doggie, Yo Dog, we got to get out and kick a little ass tonight …

• • •

It seemed like some small mercy from God that I had beat Wanda home. I made it upstairs, wrote out a note that I had a lead on a bartending job and had to go scout it out. I wrote it fast, pretending it was some other person who was lying to his wife, even making Wanda herself up in my head as a different person than the one I knew her to be—Wanda the Witch, who wouldn’t let me alone, who killed me with her kindness and understanding, Wanda the Goody-goody, who didn’t understand that I had to raise hell, that I had to get away from it … Wanda the Dummy, who knew nothing about where I really lived … the booze and pills made it easy, so easy, until she came in, caught me on the way down the steps, the note in my hand.

“Hi,” I said, feeling the shame wiping over me again, knowing that it was the drugs and the dope and Miss Motown pushing me out, wasting me away. That and my own blown-up pride.

“I got the letters, Red. You can get down there tomorrow.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I got mine too. But I also got two leads on jobs. One tomorrow. At the L and S Parking garage. It’s crummy, parking cars … that’s why I hope I get this one tonight. Bartending job down at this place called Cap’s, down on North Point Boulevard … Got Dog coming by to pick me up …”

I may as well have saved my breath, but now that I’d played the card I had to keep on raising the bet.

“Wrote you this note. Look, I gotta talk to the guy, might be a little late getting in.”

“Red,” she said, dropping her knit handbag onto the couch and staring right through me. “If you go down the Paradise tonight to see one of those whores, I’m going to be gone when you get home.”

She turned and walked through the dining room into the kitchen.

I followed her in, furious and feeling like she had cut it out from under me, all the glory I’d worked up for the night.

“Goddamn it, Wanda, I’m telling you it’s a job. This place called Cap’s. You want to call there and ask about it?”

“No, Red, I don’t want to embarrass you. I know you feel rotten about us getting taken off unemployment.”

“Hey, I don’t feel rotten, I feel goddamned angry. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I told you three days ago, Red, that you had a letter from them. You said you’d take care of it.”

She had opened the refrigerator and was already cutting carrots up into a bowl.

“You didn’t tell me anything of the kind,” I said.

“Yes, I did. Twice. It’s upstairs on the night table next to your bed.”

I sunk down in the kitchen chair and put my head in my hands.

“Christ, I’m sorry. Look, I screwed up. But one of these jobs are going to come through. Besides, Dog—well you know how he’s been lately. So goddamned moody. You know? He needs to talk some stuff over with me.”

“I know Dog’s been depressed, Red. Carol told me. But you’re not his doctor. What about Ace and me? I haven’t hardly talked to you all week. Look at me. I’m getting old. I smell like goddamned crabs. Men grab at my ass down there, and George the cook, he’s screaming at us all the time … “

“I’ll break his head for him if he bothers you,” I said, touching her arm.

“No, you won’t,” she said, starting to cry. She threw herself down at the table and gave a low moan, like that of a child, and I felt so torn and rotten, wanting to comfort her and wanting to bolt at the same time.

She sobbed deeply now, and I reached over and touched her hair. It was still soft, and I was overcome with tenderness and love, which cut right through the booze and dope.

“I just want you to try, Red. I just need to know that all I’m going through means something to you. I’ve got to know it’s worth it. Does it matter at all?”

“Of course,” I said. “Of course it does. Christ sake.”

I held her to me, patting her on the back.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “You gotta trust me. I’m going to have a job by tomorrow. I swear it … No matter what.”

I held her chin up with my hand.

“It’s you and Ace that matter to me. I won’t let them push us around much more. I mean it.”

“Will you stay home tonight? I’m so tired … “

I wanted to say I would. I wanted to … but then I heard Dog’s horn honking outside, and I could feel the surge shoot through me. It was like a light going on inside my head.

“Look, I won’t be late. I already made these plans. But I won’t be late. Okay?”

“Sure, Red,” she said, and then she gave me the saddest, tiredest smile in the world.

“I mean it, Wanda.”

I kissed her on the head, balled up the note I’d written her, and slipped it into my pocket.

I should have stayed home. I know it. She deserved that, Christ, and much more. But it was like a ghost had come over me, brought me back to life, and if I stayed in that kitchen for one more minute, I’d lose it. I felt that shadow come over me again. Sucking me dry. It was lame, cowardly, and wrong, but if I hadn’t left just then, I would have felt like the man with no nose. I couldn’t tell what would happen. What I might break. It had gotten like that.

• • •

When I hit the street I expected to see the down-and-out Dog I’d talked to on the phone the last few weeks, a mumbling, snarling drunk with a personality like a wolverine.

Instead I got the Dog of old, the ass-kicking, crazed-party Dog, with his new Levi jacket, black corduroy pants, clean-shaven and bright-eyed. He had his tape deck on too, Merle Haggard singing “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” and he was wailing along with it.

“Down every road there’s always one more city.
I’m on the run, the highway is my home … “

“For Christ’s sake, Dog,” I whispered, giving a half look back at the window to see if Wanda was checking us out. “I told Wanda you were down and I had to go talk it over with you. Turn that goddamned thing down, and let’s get the hell out of here before she comes out the door.”

“Hey, hey, don’t remind the old Dog, amigo,” he said. “I just started feeling better about an hour ago. I can’t figure out why, but something just told me that things are looking up. Way, way up.”

He gave this crazy laugh with his head thrown back, which made me laugh but sent a shiver down my back too. He was crazy as hell, I could see it, and I knew, I guess, even then, that as high as he was, he would soon fall just that low.

But I tried not to dwell on that. Hell, I needed a night off from it all, needed to drink some and see my sweet Crystal and just set it aside.

So we took off, with old Merle blasting away and both of us hitting the Wild Turkey, and I even popped a quarter of a Dr. Raines just to keep it moving in the right direction.

It was snowing like hell, snowing and sleeting like it had for days on end, making Highlandtown into a frozen world, icicles hanging off of Rev. James T. Carter’s African Black Nondenominational Church, and Bill’s Foodtown, but now, with the music going and Dog yelling “Oh yeaaaaaaaah, having a party,” it didn’t seem bleak to me at all because it didn’t seem real. Instead I felt like we were two miniature steel men being moved by an invisible hand, exactly like the little men I used to push around in my Christmas train garden when I was a kid. I’d sit there for hours and hours as the Lionel trains went round, moving my “men” to the post office, and the department stores, and the boats by the dock, and I felt protective toward them and happy for them, knowing they were all right, because I was there to keep them from harm.

And now, riding and yelling and drinking until we were out of our own flesh, I had become one of those little men, safe and happy, and crazy as hell.

“I’ve been thinking, son,” Dog said, squeezing my thigh. “I been thinking that it don’t really matter if the mill opens or not. Hell, I can do a lot of stuff, Red. Work as a short-order cook, if I have to, do some carpentry, be a stone mason. I ain’t going to worry no more. Lord, I know it’s going to be all right. The Dog feels it, Red. Yes.”

“I know you do, Doggie,” I said back. “Red feels it too.”

Oh, he was way off the ground. That’s the stone truth of it. He was flying over the rooftops of Charm City, and after a few more hits of the Wild Turkey I just wanted to be up there with him. Let me fly, fly, fly, leap out of this tired and wrinkled skin, fly up there with the smoke from the trains that circled us like some warm, secret coil, holding us all in that cozy, snow-covered village where no one ever cried and a man didn’t ever get old.

I had gotten so far deep into my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice that Dog wasn’t headed for the Paradise.

“Hey, where you taking us?” I said.

“Going down the kennels,” Dog said. “Got to take me a quick peek at Sadie … Grady’s training pups now.”

“Oh no,” I said, “we’re going to the Paradise.”

“Now now,” Dog said, squeezing my arm until the blood stopped, “don’t get yourself into an uproar. I just want to see my new babies.”

There was no use arguing with him. Dog got his name because of his love of dogs, any and all dogs. When we were kids he had eight of them at one time. They tore up his backyard, pissed in his parents’ house, and raised hell with the postman, but no one on this fair earth could get him to give them up.

Now we turned off the North Point Boulevard and headed down to Grady’s Kennels, Dog smiling and raving on as though he had all the confidence in the world.

“Yessir, Red, I been thinking, when this is over I might go in with old Grady down here. Raise hunting dogs … If I could just get a stake. Need a couple grand to become a partner.”

“I thought it was more like ten grand,” I said.

Dog smiled as we turned up the gravel road. Suddenly there were big trees hanging over us, oaks with icicles on them, frozen like phantom hands with long brittle fingers. I felt a pressure released inside of me. Doggie smiled to himself and began to hum in a quieter, less crazed way.

We drove over the rough, bumpy road, shining our lights into the snow-covered bushes. Then we saw Grady’s old house. It always amazed me that it still stood. Only four miles away from all our brick row houses, a taste of the country.

“God, it feels like we’re in another world,” Dog said. There was a clearness to his voice, and he held his head up and looked around him as we pulled to a stop.

In front of us was the farmhouse, all lit up and cozy, like something in a children’s book. We could see Grady’s outline leaning against a porch post, his long, lean body dressed in hunting boots and his shell vest, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.