Oldie but a Goodie

This is an old one. A couple of you still around from the Myspace days may remember it, but I couldn't weave a tale back then like I can now. A couple of you are more intimate with the story. My sister will roll her eyes at having to sit through it again, but I can't help it. It is a good story.

I was working at Mother's. The late shift. I went in around 6:00 pm and closed the kitchen at 3:00 am. This particular night I wasn't feeling too good. I had shot some dope before my shift, but it was starting to wear off. It doesn't last long enough. Never does. It was about 12:30 am when the story starts.

I went out to the bar to see what the dining room looked like. Even though we were open until the wee hours, on the weekdays we rarely had any action after midnight. My father was sitting at the bar. I went up and started talking to him. Things were not going so great at the time. I had recently left Indiana, my sister coming to pick me up and bring me back home. I was living with her in Riverside. (Anybody notice a pattern here?)

I had a good conversation with my father, though most of my part of it was lies. I felt guilty, but that only goes so far when you have a heroin addiction to feed. You feel things like guilt and remorse, but you can't act on them. Guilt and remorse, if acted on, will stop you from achieving you goals. OS you block them out. We talked about me turning it around, the old other side of the leaf talk. He told me I could do it, but it was up to me to be honest and quit with the bullshit. He asked me how I was getting home, and I said probably walk. Mother's is on Virginia Street on the West Side. It is a long walk to Riverside. In those days, I would usually head over to the Old Pink after work, find a friend to give me a ride home, or, more likely, find some kind, drunk woman who was willing to share her bed with me. If I struck out, I waited until 5:00 am, when the buses started running. He gave me $20.00 for a cab.

To this day, I think my father knew what I would do. All my lies weren't bullshitting him. He is an old pro. Maybe it was a test? Maybe it was a sympathetic gesture. I don't know.

I finished cleaning up. I was ready to go by 2:30, and stared at the clock for the last half an hour. The anticipation was evil.

I left and walked a few blocks to this guys house, someone I had met, who always knew where to find dope. He was nodding out on his couch. He told me the usual spot was closed down for the night, and to just hold on for a couple hours until the McDonald's on Niagara Street opened. There used to be a couple of old guys who sat there every morning from six in the morning until they sold out for the day, usually around nine. The usual spot never closed down, but he didn't need any dope, so he wasn't going to go out of his way. Had he been sick, he would have jumped up.

Dana (real name, sure he will never read this, even if he is still alive) said I could always go to Sisco's (also real name, same circumstances). This was a sketchy idea at best. Dealing with Sisco was always an adventure. The last time I had been there, he was hanging out his window (the same window which will feature prominently later in this story), pointing a shotgun at anyone who happened down that particular stretch of Maryland Avenue, and talking about how "They" were coming to get him. But, he had a shitload of crack, and was being very generous that night. Before long, I was pointing out suspicious parties for him to train his shotgun on.

Some background on Sisco. Two weeks prior to this night, at about two in the morning, I was sitting on Dana's porch, enjoying the warm spring night and the heroin strolling through my body. Because that's what it does: Strolls. People always say coursing or rushing through my veins. That is crack or meth. Heroin strolls. It is a thinking man's high. A gentleman's high. Anyways, we were sitting there, on the porch. A few blocks down a man was crossing Maryland. A car comes, slowly, around the corner, lights off. Anyone who has ever seen Colors or Boys in the Hood, no matter how white you are, knows what it means when a slow moving car is cruising around the hood at two in the morning with its lights off. When the car got parallel with the guy crossing the street, a flash and a loud burst, then the squealing of tires. The guy flew from the middle of the street to the sidewalk. One of his shoes was still in the street. he was dead before he landed. Point blank shotgun to the chest. This was about a week after I had sat at Sisco's watching him wave a shotgun.

The next day the rumors started. And they weren't too hard to believe. The one part that I know was true is that the victim was Sisco's little brother. His brother was a higher up in the local drug game. More truth was that Sisco's brother had been fronting him large amounts of drugs, and Sisco had been doing more than he had been selling. The rumor was that Sisco had pulled the trigger to erase his debt, and now his brother's boys were coming after Sisco.

So, this was a sketchy proposition to go to his house at 3:30 am. This was always a gamble as to what insanity would be going on, and now it was a potential homicide scene. And I would be the only white boy for miles around, not the type of witness likely to be left living.

But Sisco always had dope. I needed dope.

I walked down to Sisco's, walked up the stairs, and knocked on the door. After he asked who I was, he let me in. He kept a beam across the door, and only opened it for people he knew. Everyone else put their money through a hole in the door and got their drugs the same way. I was one of the privileged frequent shoppers.

I got my dope and started to cook up a shot. When I was done with my shot, there was a knock at the door. Sisco asked who it was. "Mike," was the reply. Sisco must have known this guy, or at least thought he did, because he removed the beam and opened the door.

Mike didn't look exactly happy or sane. He was pointing a shotgun at us. He was a fat black man with nappy looking dreadlocks and gold teeth. He had a glassed over, been up for too many days smoking crack look about him. This was not a good situation. I have had this experience a couple times in my life, and it is not something you get used to. Maybe if you are a Navy Seal or a trained assassin, but I doubt it.

Sisco stalled, then started wrestling around with Mike. I went to the living room and out the window the shotgun was usually pointing out of. There was a wooden awning over the front door, and I stepped down onto it. I jumped off the awning, maybe eight feet. I hit the ground, fell, and knew something was wrong, but the adrenalin and dope kept me going. For a minute. I stood up, ran about ten feet, felt the worst pain of my life, and fell flat on my face. I couldn't stand back up.

I crawled around the house. The shotgun went off. I had visions of police, crime scene investigators, that police tape strung all over, and Mike coming upon me in the backyard, while making his escape, and finishing me off. I crawled to the end of the backyard. No police came. No Mike. There was a fence and a telephone pole at the back of the yard. I had to climb up the telephone pole, get on top of a garage, then hang and drop, trying to avoid my feet. This was the worst pain I have ever been in. When I dropped off the garage, and hit the ground, I thought I was going to pass out. I had to crawl the block and a half to Dana's house. It took me about two hours. I had to stop every few feet to keep from passing out. I heard sirens nearby and hid under a car, but they passed. When I came out from under the car, some chick was walking by. It scared the shit out of the both of us. All I could say was, "I think I broke my ankle."

I finally made it to Dana's and convinced some guy to drive me to the hospital. My ankles were the size of my thighs. Swollen, angry purple and black.

When I got to the hospital, they made me sit until eight when the orthopedic surgeon came in. He looked at my ankles and said, "Oh yeah, they're broken." Finally a nurse came in with a gigantic needle. "You're not allergic to any pain medicine, are you?" She said. "No. Please hurry," I said. She gave me a shot in the ass, and I drifted off.

I had shattered my left heel, broke my right ankle, and broke my right foot. The doctor said it was the worst break he had seen in quite some time. All from an eight foot drop. I would dive head first off shit like that when I was a kid.

Where does it all come back to? You guessed it. My sister. The nursing staff had to call my sister into fill out my paperwork. Due to the huge amounts of opiates required to control my pain, which was due to my inhuman tolerance to them, I couldn't hold a pen or answer basic questions without falling asleep.

Good thing you don't have any kids, Jess. They wouldn't get much attention with me around.