Red Baker by Robert Ward Page B

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