Sacred Smokes Read online

  Me and Freckles are looking at Gooch strapped in this contraption that looks like what they call now an elliptical machine but it’s a bed that revolves around or whatever because Gooch is paralyzed and they have to rotate him or something. I don’t know. What do I know? I’m a fuckin’ kid.

  Get me the fuck out of here, now, he says. Clench, unclench.

  Gooch can’t go nowhere without us, and he knows it. We know it too. That doesn’t make it any less scary, but I’m starting to get the feeling we’re gonna be stuck with him if we do this thing.

  He’s paralyzed. From the waist down. He got that way when some Harrison Gent put six bullets in his back, said fuck it, reloaded, and gave him one more for luck. His jaw broke when one of the bullets, maybe that last one, tore up through his shoulder and into his face. He’s been this way for just a little while, but he’s been in the hospital for way too long. I can see it in his face. Him and his brothers all kind of look the same, but different. Gooch is the oldest, and hanging there, looking down on us a little, from that big rotating bed, his face is drawn, but really alive. His hair hangs down kind of on the one side, but I can still see he’s using Vitalis in it. I think him and his brothers have parents who must’ve rowed over on the very last cases of it in the world when they moved here from Ireland in the ’50s. They all look like , and at least one of them actually was, from Howard Street. A couple of the others were , and Gooch here, he of the gaunt, and haunt, well, Gooch is a .

  Freckles and me, we’re not . Still though, we spin the bed around, the elliptical part, but not too fast. I tried. Was all,

  Hey, Gooch,

  wanna go for a ride?

  He gives me the look,

  that one that says,

  I’ll fuckin’ kill you, Teddy,

  but his mouth never even moves.

  No clench, no unclench.

  So we take it easy, get him spun around to where he’s lying on his back.

  Prop me up, fuckers. He starts the wwwnnnnnnnnngngnggnn motor thing and the bed raises up slow like, Gooch looking like a resurrection, I guess, I think. We’re in a semi-private room in St. Francis. Seems like as good a place as any for a revivification.

  Give me that bottle of Jack, he says. I know you brought it.

  Freckles, that ginger ass-kissin’ hillbilly double, gulps his too-pointy Adam’s apple and almost fuckin’ says,

  Yessir.

  Does this motherfucker have Vitalis in his hair too? I ask myself, looking at that greasy red mop (and this red hair ain’t like Muck’s, which we all know—because we always tell him—is red as the head of a dick on a dog). Have some self-respect for fuck’s sake, I say.

  What? Freckles says.

  Nothin’.

  Help me get this pillow behind him, I say.

  Gooch is just chugging that Jack with the side of his mouth,

  straining it through his teeth,

  spilling just a little.

  Goddamn, Gooch, I think,

  but instead I say,

  Hey, Gooch,

  you want some pop with that?

  Yeah, he says.

  A coke or something.

  Freckles, go get Gooch a coke or something, dipshit, I say.

  Fuck you, Teddy. He stomps off down the hallway.

  Gimme a smoke, Teddy, Gooch says. Clench, unclench.

  I don’t think we can smoke in here, I say.

  Fuck that, Gooch says.

  What are they gonna do? Take away my legs and strap me to a bed?

  Clench, unclench.

  What about your buddy over there, I say. Isn’t that an oxygen tank?

  So? Gooch says. Just don’t smoke by it.

  Hahaha. We laugh and light up some smokes.

  Doesn’t the nurse ever come by? I say.

  Yeah. Sometimes, but not much. There’s a couple of ’em that are okay, but the day shift one is a bitch, he says.

  Clench, unclench, clench, unclench.

  Hunh, I say, and flick my ashes in a plastic water cup.

  Freckles comes back with a can of coke.

  Here you go, Gooch, he says.

  Get me some ice, bitch, Gooch goes, and gives me a wink as he hands the bucket to Freckles.

  Freckles stomps back out and down the hallway again.

  So what are we gonna do? I say.

  Get me the fuck out of here, like I said before, he says.

  Clench, unclench.

  Shit, man, I think.

  He was fuckin’ serious.

  What do you want me to do, man? Just put you in a chair? I say.

  Yeah. Like that, he says. Just put me in a chair and wheel me the fuck out of here.

  I clench, unclench.

  I do this, because Wacker.

  A couple of years ago, on my thirteenth birthday, Wacker got out of jail. I didn’t know him then, had never met him. We were all hanging out at State Park (before the city took it over and made a golf course out of it—what the fuck?) and there were like these two KKK guys who were bugging me to paint a mural for them, pressing me, because I had some definite skills in the art department, could even write upside down just as fast as right side up and draw any gangbanger shit you wanted. Telling me they would take me here and there. I could draw, so, yeah. And Wacker, who had just been sitting there, being quiet and saying nothing, says,

  Man, get the fuck out of here with that shit.

  Nobody wants that shit around here,

  fuckin’ Klan shit.

  Fuck you.

  And these two redneck fuckers just backed away,

  took off,

  looked back,

  and

  Wacker made

  this face

  that made

  them not look back again.

  It wasn’t exactly a reverse of that time the Choctaw took up a collection to help the Irish, but yeah, it was close enough, and the sentiment was the same.

  Thanks, man. What did you do that for? I say.

  Fuck those guys. Stupid-ass Klan.

  Draw murals for us, he says.

  Fuck them.

  Forever.

  Damn straight, I thought.

  Yeah, I say.

  Fuck them.

  Somebody told me it’s your birthday, Teddy, he says.

  Yeah, I say. I guess so.

  Shit. Well all right.

  Open this, he says

  and

  hands me a brown paper bag with the coldest quart of Old Style I’ve ever had before or since. Shit. I can taste it right now. We had other shit to drink, wine and Mickey’s and whatnot, but all I can remember really is that brown glass bottle full of beer, sweating in the bag.

  Damn.

  I chug a bunch and

  hand it back to him.

  We don’t talk really. Or not much. Or actually, we talk like guys talk when they meet each other. We say what’s up and hey not much and yeah. I think we think a lot, but we don’t say what we think. We all look like we’re making James Dean face, or Michael Beck from The Warriors face, or one-thousand-mile-stare face, any and all the faces not our own. Your face is the cover to your book. And if you look out and off to the side from it, under the scratched-out title, well, no one can read that, can they?

  How old are you, man? he says.

  I say, Thirteen.

  Hunh, he says. Well all right.

  We finish the bottle.

  Better get some more, he says.

  Yup, I say.

  We’ll do whatever, I guess.

  He’s buying.

  We walk around, check shit out. It’s not too hot out—it’s just starting to be summer in the city, still nice, especially in the early evening. That smog-inflected pinkish sunlight, and the nighthawks, and the cool breeze, the not-yet-hot winds that tell so much, full of food smells and little kids laughing up on third floors. That light. Not much is happening here. It’s a park that’s been kind of abandoned by the state. You have to hop a barbed-wire fence to even get in. It’s ove
rgrown and cool, with a big lightning-struck willow in the middle that sits over what we called a lagoon. I always think Saruman would totally hang out here and boss around hobbits. There must have been a spring to feed all that, because there was a little river attached, and you could Huck Finn that shit if you wanted. Me and Idiot tried it one time on this old, green-painted section of fence, but it didn’t really work out. I started thinking how no one would come looking for us, and that made me say fuck it. I didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of me being right.

  We get bored after a bit and need something to do. I know this guy Marty who lives close by. I remembered some things about him that you could always count on: food in the house, a hot sister, a stepmom from Mexico who smoked much weed, and an out-of-town dad. Plus Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, and Cheech & Chong albums. The first time I ever smoked weed was at Marty’s house. He used the cardboard tube from a tampon and some tinfoil to make a pipe. I think that’s where I learned you could just make shit you needed and that you didn’t always have to have the store-bought crap.

  We head over to Marty’s. We’re kind of drunk, and I’m thinking pickles or something. Marty’s is the first place I had hot—like spicy hot—food. Hot homemade pickles. That are super hot when you’re high. That would be alright.

  We’re almost there when we run into this dude. I can’t remember his name—it’s like Dave, or Rickey, or Carlo, or some shit—I don’t know. Chunkychubby whitish guy.

  What’s up, we nod at him.

  Nothin’, he says.

  Randall goes,

  Hey, you still got that sweater?

  Which one? he says.

  He’s got more than one? Wacker says.

  Apparently, I say.

  The Imperial Gangster party sweater, Randall goes.

  Yeah, Dave or whatever his name is says.

  Randall says, Well let’s check it out, fucker, and then makes this weird cackly laugh like he would sometimes. He looked like Justin Timberlake. But he could, because his brothers all boxed Gold Gloves.

  The sweaters he’s talking about—I don’t even know if they make them anymore, but back then those cardigan-style sweaters were the shit—they were everything. Those were your colors. Man. And not like that boring LA-style duo-color shit they would try to bring later on, that shit that we told them, yeah, we’re all set with the whole club thing here in Chicago. We been gangbangin’ for about a century or more here, so thanks anyway. Yeah, sure they were your colors and that meant the same and all, but our colors were colors. All the sets had two colors—most were black and another color (except for —theirs were red and blue—ha—LA style). War sweaters were mainly black, and your secondary color would be at the cuffs, shoulders, lapel, and for chops (rings) around the arms. Green, grey, turquoise, orange, brown, white. You name it. Party sweaters were a reverse of that pattern, and in this case, this particular sweater we were wanting to see was a mostly pink party sweater that Dave or whatever says he gangstered off someone on the West Side. My eyebrow goes up a little there looking at this guy when he says it, but whatever, sure.

  He comes out of the hallway of his apartment building leading with the sweater. Man, that fuckin’ thing is pink as hell. Not hot pink and black, but powder pink and black. Nice. Has a big old upside-down banana-yellow and black crown patch on the front and Latin King Killer embroidered across the main belt on the back. Crazy Gangster shit.

  And I keep staring as Dave or whatever rolls up holding that party sweater and wearing a war sweater. This fuckin’ guy. Yeah. ’s colors are black and purple. Man—that is a nice-looking sweater. Dave or whatever has no idea that we were gonna gank that fuckin’ party sweater from him, but yo, this motherfucker has just added a bonus.

  Dave or whatever, Wacker says. Are you a Gent? You ride ?

  Yeah, Dave or whatever says.

  Thought you were , I say.

  I used to be, he goes.

  Wacker says, You a fuckin’ club hopper, Dave or whatever?

  Nah, man. Just, you know.

  No. No I don’t know, Wacker says. He don’t know, he says, Teddy.

  Fuck, man, I think.

  I know, I say.

  Wacker looks at me and his eyes say, Yeah, I think I know too, and

  he busts Dave or whatever clean in the mouth with a Mickey’s green

  hand grenade bottle and

  I think, Well, that’s gonna need some wiring and shit,

  then everyone beats the ass off of Dave or whatever.

  Randall takes the sweater and

  Wacker gets that fine war sweater and

  we all drink a bunch of Mickey’s Big Mouths and

  listen to Dave or whatever recover.

  And

  Wacker is Gooch’s younger brother.

  We drop acid. Gooch loves taking acid. He also loves drinking and smoking weed, and doing tic, and hitting the rag, and everything else he can think of that I think can take him out of this . . . chair. We drink for a while, waiting for this blotter to kick in, and then right when I feel the corners of my eyes tighten up and my face reach out into the universe, Gooch says,

  Teddy. Tell us a story, man.

  Yeah, Midget, tell us a story, someone behind me says. I don’t see who it is because the whole back of my mind just turned purpley black, and tiny, pale-blue braided lightning pops behind my eyes. I say,

  Sure.

  This is what happened, I say.

  This is what I tell them.

  Cold ash drifted down, solemnly and slow, like the late autumn traces of a paper wasp party favor. From where he stood, he saw light seeping over the ridgeline, thin bars of yellow and orange that began to light the faces of the men who muttered and turned things in the mud, the tilt of their heads and tone of their voices subtle tells that described their confusion.

  Had it rained mud, rolled ball lightning, had hot air forced hotter air from his lungs, he would have been accepting of the situation and remembered more . . . interesting times. This, though, he could not abide.

  He called for his dogs.

  One by one, curs of all colors came silent over the spine of the ridge. Eyes dully glowed, muzzles nuzzled the blackened earth. Blues and brindles stopped and cut their ears toward whines unhearable by human cohabiters of the shattered woods.

  With low moans that turned to quiet howls they moved like twists of carbon black through the flowing smoke, their eyes winking embers that flashed and faded. The men gave them an ever-wider berth.

  The dogs nodded and paused among themselves. Heads lifted and dropped; paws turned and padded. Men muttered. The troop considered the growing pack. The soldiers were silent. No stray potshots erupted from the picket.

  The light reddened, then began to blue.

  How many were lost? asked woefully green Lieutenant S. L. Hubbard, a couple of months out of West Point.

  Quite a few, said Sergeant Isaac Uncas Lonegan, a man whose braids were turning grey when this young artillery battery section officer was just learning to read.

  Well then, let’s get a burial detail, Sergeant Lonegan.

  Sir, if I may, there’s protocols, sir, what need to be followed here.

  What need to be followed, sergeant, are my orders.

  As you wish, sir.

  The sergeant strolled out of Lieutenant Hubbard’s tent and angled toward a mass of questioning men.

  He had watched them curse and tug and wrestle the two cannons up and over the hillocks that would become this small range. Observed the day’s and night’s grinding routines that marked the dull progress of soldiers. Smelled the horseshit and the burnt moldy beans before and after they made their way through this outlying company. He wondered at their location, how and why they were so far from the nearest large encampment.

  He wondered if they’d be missed.

  The lieutenant wants us to form a burial party, boomed the sergeant.

  The men laughed nervously and stamped their feet against the cold.

  T
he sergeant reared his head back, cocked his scratched glass eye down at the troop, and bawled,

  That would be now, yer royal highnesses! Let’s get to it! an odd and hitching urgency in his bellowing.

  No whines of, Sarge, we haven’t been ta mess yet. No bullshit under-the-breath comments about him being an Indian. No hustling smokes. No name-calling, no grabassing, skylarking, horseplay, or shenanigans. All stern these boys were tonight. A work party for burial detail was serious business. When it was proper. It was an age-old duty, and an age-old honor. The duty NCO, Corporal Sprouse, called the squad to order, and off they went.

  They tramped by Sergeant Lonegan, who was licking a pencil and composing what looked to be the very last letter from the earth, or at least the last one from him that would be delivered to his reservation back in Connecticut. He tapped a dirty finger on his prosthetic orb as he carved the shapes of words into the paper. His face worked hard as he squinted and sighed. Hut one hut two went the men going past.

  Letters appear from soldiers never heard from again. Killed in action. Missing in action. Spirits make their way back to their loved ones, but the bodies don’t come home. Chapters for those families don’t close, and the wounds throb and linger, worse sometimes during storms, when the flash of blue and the whine of white in the sky send the mind far off, reeling in places where we picture the thrumming rains washing the mud from the faces of long-buried loved ones, those untended, those who gave all. Bleached and picked-clean bone reaches into our warmed family spaces, says its peace—remember us—and returns to its churning resting place, never quiet, marker of maddened souls who forever follow camps of men who fight and bleed and die, in the end none of them ever quite sure why.

  From high in the swollen sky a purple thunderbolt arced down to split an old, greying willow. He walked through the smoldering leaves and the blackened heart of the now-dead tree. Owls called from the thick damp of the tree line, wet cotton hung from branches of beech and buttonwood, hickory and chestnut. Frogs carried on about their business, and crickets ran out of their way while cicadas wound down for the evening. Vermin and detritus skittered behind him through the dry, dead leaves. He trailed his long, thin fingers along the trunks of the sugar maples as he walked, leaving oozing, sap-filled scars that chrysopoeiacally filtered the dying light of day. The dogs, now gathering on the hillside, shuddered and whined, black lips pulling back from wet, white teeth.