Sacred Smokes Read online

  So yeah, this time that Clint shot this King in the head. I thought he shot him in the face the way the light was, but no, there was all this mess and this blood so for sure he shot him in the head and not the face. It was a quiet like night and we were just chillin’, talkin’ about things you know like what’s up with your ma’s new boyfriend I hate that motherfucker (ha! sorry) and he got weed though init and drinking beer not hurting nobody, not even mad that it was a little warm until it sat in the snow for a while. Just doing the talk. Of all the things. Green light to grey light to false dawn not-morning talking. We talked about a white kid we knew, this white kid adopted by a Native family, and you know we were just talking and that shit hardly ever happened, you know when you can talk to your friend and he don’t make fun of you, you don’t talk shit to him, ain’t nobody judging, but you still have to be careful, you think, there’s shit you won’t say because just maybe that jagoff might use that shit on you later, but still, pretty cool. It’s probably the only time you ever want to share secrets, and it’s the one time in your life when you really can’t. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard. Or maybe it’s the dope. Anyway, it was just him and me talking and all cool like, you know, like when you’re reading a book and it’s just you and the writer, like that. There’s always this secret between writers and readers and people never tell that secret either. They say oh yeah you should read that, it’s cool, they never say and then he’s talking about jerking off from the roof all over the city, not complainin’ at all, or how the guy in the yellow coat rapes boys, or how you could turn yourself into a werewolf if you really wanted or any of that shit. You all have got a secret now, you and the writer, and you cain’t never tell nobody. Like that. That’s the shit you wanted to have happen, the shit you wanted to talk about but never really could. You could get close. You could drink, and wanna open up, but usually you’d end up just punching the shit out of each other, ’cause that’s how that shit works.

  We’re sitting there, talking, smoking ’ports, or maybe Kools, drinking these ever-colder Old Style tall boys, feeding this little fire between us, when I look up and see this dude coming across the ice. I say, Clinton, do you know this motherfucker? Nah, Teddy, he says, but he looks like a King to me. Huh, I say. Let him get closer. Fuck that—what the hell for? says Clint. He pulls out this chromed-up automatic with pearl grips. Holy shit.

  We were just talking about Clint’s ma’s boyfriend. He laughed and said she calls him her fuckstick. I say, Who is he? He says, He’s a fuckin’ C$Note, some dude from like ChiWest or Taylor Street, he’s an Italian motherfucker. He don’t beat me up though, says Clint, and he’s usually got dough in his passed-out pants pockets. Plus that weed, right, Teddy? I say, Huh. That’s alright, I guess. I think about that word, fuckstick. Clint’s momma’s kinda big like, and I think that shit is nasty, can’t imagine this Rico Suave jagoff goin’ at his ma, but shit, someone got to pay the rent. And put gas in that ’72 blue Newport Royal she hauls her ass around in. You know they moved in from somewhere else, ’cause they was the only fuckin’ family in the neighborhood with a car. Also, Clint had this cool-ass shirt. It was just a white T-shirt but it had those short sleeves with extra material at the end that made the sleeves tight. I don’t know why they did that, I think to make skinny guys feel like they had muscles, but it said playboy playboy playboy playboy all over in this turquoise color, and after each playboy playboy playboy playboy it had a in turquoise too. I thought, man, that shirt is the coolest, even if he wore it every day. All that playboy. All those bunny heads. Those bunny heads made you think about how every magazine cover had a hidden bunny head. And those covers, well they made you think about what was inside. And all of that made me think of the last time I went to class. That was a while ago, but when I was there, I couldn’t pay attention to my work ’cause of my lab partner, or maybe the weed. Nah. It was Lenore. Dang . . .

  Lenore. That one day I was looking at you in Miss P’s horticulture class, and I was like damn you are so beautiful, lookin’ like I don’t even know who but even better and you got it goin’ on and that body and all, but Lenore, 1955 called and said whoa what’s up with that hairdo? Right this way, young lady, we’re going to need you to be our grandmamom, ’cause that is the oldest old lady fade we have ever, ever seen. And that’s the problem with gettin’ high at school, shit, that’s the problem with gettin’ high period, at least for me, see? You ain’t never serious. Cain’t work, cain’t spell, and cain’t mack on the girls at school. Got no game. Just talk shit and crack jokes that prolly ain’t even funny. Man. Sleeping on the opposition will get you killt anyway. Or at least shot up. No room for the weed in my life.

  And that’s the story I wanted to tell Clint, but I didn’t. And I didn’t tell him what it felt like the other day when I stole this bike and raced that shit down Clark Street, and I went to the comic book store ’cause I had a little money, and I bought the new Hulk and stole the new X-Men and a Thor and would’ve gotten the new Conan except I couldn’t find it, and then I hopped back on that bike and it was warm and this long-ass hair I got was all streaming out behind me as I stood up on the pedals and the opening chords to Barracuda blasted out of this one storefront and I was never, ever, ever gonna die. But because this boy’s life is what it is, I just said some stupid shit like, Yeah, if that bitch ever gets out of hand or treats your ma bad we will fuck. him. up. and Clint laughed and said, Fuck, Teddy, that motherfucker would just as soon shoot you as give you the time of day so I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you, Midget, and then he looked down the sight on that automatic and squeezed off two shots, quick like, while he said plow-plow out loud, and they panged off the ice and that King looked up and he started running.

  Clint sets down his beer and takes aim with both hands.

  Shit, man. Twenty minutes ago Clint came back from grabbing up some chunks of wood and bark and shit from a clump of birches on the side of the tracks about thirty feet away, down and up from the first-base line of diamond two at Pottawattomie. We had just come back with our stuff from doing a cart at the National’s (I don’t know why this is, but in Chicago the grocery stores all end in a possessive “s,” as in “go get some fuckin’ milk from the Jewel’s or the Dominick’s or the IGA’s or the Hi Neighbor’s). We used to do this pretty regularly at the National’s. We would put a bunch of beer in the bottom of a shopping cart, then load it up with shit that we wanted, like lunch meat or hot dogs and bread and tortillas and mustard and whatever, then a couple of us would wait outside while a couple of us just shoved that motherfucker under the bar and turnstile thing by the front doors. The cart would trip the automatic doors and keep rolling on through out to whoever was waiting for it. They would grab all the shit out of the cart and then run through the parking lot to where we had cut a hole in the chain link fence by the steepest part of the hill heading up to the tracks at the top, and then they’d haul ass down the tracks with the beer and whatever else they could carry out of the cart. Then we’d all meet up, usually behind the Jackass leather place, and get to grubbing and drinking. Sometimes, in the summer, if we had Brain with us, we could talk him into going back inside and using his food stamps to buy ice for the beer, which was always warm.

  So, a little bit about Brain. This dude was this massive, hulking, Howard Street Lord, who, for some reason, didn’t get along with his set anymore. I remember humbugging with the Lords, and that motherfucker would be there, and I was always like, man, I need to put space between me and that fucking guy; he looks like on that one Bugs Bunny where Bugs takes the nasty Dr. Jekyll formula and transforms into a giant rabbity Mr. Hyde. Yeah. That’s exactly what this dude looked like. And, bonus, he was obviously mentally unbalanced, and I ain’t saying that just because he was like nineteen and gettin’ food stamps. I’m saying it because one day we were sitting around drinking after Brain had come back with some ice (Brain! I’m the Brain! I get the ice! he would say) and he goes, Yeah, winter is coming. I like that. Why, Brain? we say. Tha
t motherfucker goes, Well, because it gets darker earlier. And I got more time to rob people when they get off the El.

  Jeezuschrist.

  So yeah, Clint and I had just done a scaled-down version of the cart roll, just beer though, not even stuff for sandwiches and whatnot, and we’re chilling the beers in the little snow piles that are left on the side of the tracks in late March and getting a little fire going in a pit we’ve dug. It’s a pretty warm night, but the wind is picking up a little and it’s gonna get cold, but for now we can see the water running on top of the ice in the field under what was left of the high arc lights we were always busting out. Pottawattomie is a big park with three baseball diamonds and a huge football field, and the white guys who ran it were always trying to get us to do stuff, like wrestling, or tumbling, or something. They thought maybe we should be like them, and like hockey, so they iced down a big section of the field. We liked hockey okay, I guess, but we liked the sticks best of all, so those just kind of disappeared, and then no more hockey, but we still had all the cuts and bruises we would’ve gotten if we would’ve played instead of just beaten the shit out of each other, and maybe even learned something. But no.

  Clint pops off a shot. It hits the guy in the foot. I see him jump and try to grab at it to look, but he just keeps running. I’m like, Hmmm, that’s not bad, Clint will just let him go. It can’t be too bad anyway. Well, at least it’s not like in the movies where plow! someone gets shot and bam! down they go, another body in the alley. It makes me think of this time years later when I was bullshitting with these two buddies of mine that worked the door at this punk rock bar on Milwaukee Avenue we all worked at (I was a bartender), standing around out front before the rush, having a smoke, taking a break, and this stupid yuppie/jock/fratboy comes up and starts telling us how he’s been shot—I’ve been shot!—and we’re like, Yeah, whatever. No, for real! he keeps saying, so I’m like, Okay, where? and he goes, Here in my leg. I look at the front of his leg next to the shin about two inches below the knee in his fat, fat calf and I see all this blood soaked into his pant leg and I think, Yup, he’s probably been shot, that’s a lot of blood, and I look on the other side of his leg and, cool, yup, same thing, tons of blood, so I say, Let me see, and he goes, See, right there! and I say, Mmmhmm, and I stick my pinkies in the holes in his leg under the pants and he goes, OWWHATTHEFUCKAREYOUDOING, and I say, Man, it’s a through and through, you’ll be fine, don’t go to the hospital though unless you want to tell the cops how and why you got shot, and, oh, by the way, how did you get shot? I need some water, man, he says, and I say, What were you doing that you got shot? and I give the head nod on the water to the fellas, and he says, Well, I was trying to buy some weed. Mmmmhmmm, I say. Where at? Over in Wicker Park, he goes. That’s the actual park a block over from where we’re chitchatting that he’s referring to, not the now-gentrified neighborhood of the same name where said park is located. I say, Did you actually pay for it, or did you try to beat them out of paying? He says, Well, I shorted them a little. How much? I say. ’Bout half, he goes. I say, Well, then you deserved to get shot. Here’s your water ya dumb motherfucker, Sleazy says. Spanky goes, Now get the fuck out of here, dipshit. I say, Later, dumbass, and, Direct pressure is your best friend. We go back to telling jokes and making fun of Bob for a while and then I have to get back inside and wait on the fucking yuppie tourists.

  Me and Clint wrap it up, I guess. We gotta run down this corona and finish the job. Fuck. I do not want to walk away from all this beer. I cover it up as best as I can using a bunch of leaves and snow and shit, but I still worry someone’ll creep up and find our stash. I know it happens, and I’m a little skittish anyway. Man, there was this one time I had stashed a half bottle of crème de menthe on the tracks. It was like eight in the morning, and it was bright, and already really hot and humid, and I just couldn’t drink anymore. I needed to crash for a minute, so I was like fuck it. I’ll just hide this shit behind Sergio’s. By this time the Jackass leather place had gotten bought up by Sergio and turned into a gym, but we still called it Jackass, but not because of Sergio. Sergio was that Sergio. “The Myth.” Mr. Olympia. The only guy to beat Schwarzenegger in a Mr. Olympia contest, and the only cop I could stand. He was a good guy. I always thought he was particularly good to us longhairs, and now that I think about it, maybe that’s because the village in Cuba he was originally from had a long history with Indians. And the Jackass leather company? Fuck those guys. They made holsters out of horsehide for the CPD and those other assholes on Miami Vice. And they threw out all their fuckups and trash on the tracks behind their stinky factory and then moved to Phoenix or something. Suck it. I wrapped the bottle up in this big old brown paper bag and stuck it in this little ditch in the side of the hill behind Jackass.

  I came back later in that late afternoon / early evening / magic light time of day with my brother (no dust or burglaries that day, at least not yet) and one of his friends and one or two of the Jimmys. Cool. I was like, It should be right over here. They gave me the yeah right looks but followed along anyway. I said, There’s at least half a bottle. We can get buzzed and go do a cart or something. Or head down to Farwell and see what’s up. Hold on. Here it is.

  Sure enough, I found the paper bag. I reached down and picked it up. It was super wrinkly and felt kinda damp, but whatever. Like I said, it had been hot and humid all day, so . . . yeah. But then I noticed it felt light. Shit. I went to open the bag and what? Dang it smelled funny. Huh. Shit. Okay, I thought. Let’s see. Hahaha. I opened it up and the bottle wasn’t in there. Whatthefuckisthis? Instead, I’m looking at a lump of black fabric. I pulled that shit outta there and goddamn. It was a fucking Batman suit. Holy shit. I threw it out on the ground and, yup, a mask fell out with it. We all looked at each other like whu . . . I could feel though that there was something still in the bag. I eeped my face over the top, eyes slowly rolling down, and . . . what? There was a big, used dildo in the bottom of the bag. I laughed and flung it at my brother’s buddy. It hit him in the face with a thwap sound and then we were all laughing. Shiiiiit. His face turned red, even redder than where I hit him in the face with the dildo, and we were just dying and shit. Fuck you! he yelled, and we’re all just, yeah, we can’t even talk. I imagined this Batman prick, drunk on crème de menthe, chasing people down the alley next to the tracks, slinging his dildo around, yelling, Holy Strap Ons! and doing lord knows what to the people he caught.

  So yeah, I’m careful and nervous about hiding stuff on the tracks, but I got no choice and no time because Clint’s on the move, hustling down the side of the tracks to go get this hijo de puta. Who the hell is that, man? I ask him. I don’t fucking know, Teddy, he says. Let’s just get him. Shit. He’s moving again. Goddamnit, Clint says. He pops off another shot, and I see the guy go down like he’s dead. Feet fly out from under him and he falls straight back. I can hear this loud thunk sound when his head hits the ice. Me and Clint move a little slower. We look around, but the whole park is deserted. One or two cars way far away in the parking lot that have been there I think since they built the place. A bus, one of those new double ones, goes by on Rogers Avenue just past the lot. But no cars. No people. Nothing. We roll up slow and cautious. Dude is not moving. At all. Laid the fuck out. Hands flung straight from his sides, feet angled almost heel to heel, showing black Converse hi-tops with gold laces. Clint sees them too and spits on the guy. We look around one more time, and then down at this King, this pinche puto lying in a dark, dark puddle.

  But all that blood and whatnot? Man, we can see this asshole had just slipped and cracked his head open. We could hear him breathing, for Chrissake. Clint couldn’t shoot for shit. I don’t think he even hit the dude’s foot. Nope. Nothing there at all. Dude must have been hopping along to check it like he couldn’t believe he missed either. We sweated walking up to this corona laid out on the ice, big puddle of blood all blooming around his head. We even habla ingles puto?’d and all that shit, but dude was just passed the fuck out.
Clint was gonna kick in his ribs or piss on him or something, but I was like, Nah. Just leave him there. Think about what it’ll be like when he wakes up and the back of his head is frozen to the ice.

  You’re a cold motherfucker, Teddy, he says.

  And we slip and slide back to our spot on the tracks.

  BUMBLEBEE AND THE CHEROKEE HARELIP

  I want to start this out in a particular way, and I have a note to help me; it reads, “Maybe she didn’t love me so much, but she loved my dad.” How do I know she loved my dad, other than the fact that she talked about him for longer than she was married to him? Let’s ask The Cherokee Harelip. Period. Don’t forget the period. And yeah, it’s in bold in the notes.

  Ha.

  It’s supposed to be about, or start out about, a time in Michigan, which for me if I’m just little means it’s summer. Ever been to Michigan in the summer? Central Michigan, in the crotch of the thumb—the place you lick salt from when you’re drinking tequila the fancy way, or where you sniff coke from in the bathroom of the bar in between those rounds of drinking tequila, if you’re so inclined, or have the dough, or the connect—yeah, that part of Michigan? One of my uncles told me once when I was about fifteen how hot it was. And you all know the line and are saying to yourselves, How hot was it? He allowed it was hotter than a dead raccoon’s cunt. Sound hot? Yeah. And it’s humid, too.

  The thing about this story is, I was actually too young to remember it, and so I only know this story like my ma told it to me. It’s hard to get stories out of her. Not because she doesn’t like to tell them, or because I don’t talk to her no more, but because she can’t tell stories without laughing. Now I’m not saying she wasn’t funny sometimes, well, okay, lots of times, but seriously, she would laugh and laugh and snort—ha, she’ll be pissed if she ever reads that—and smoke and tell these stories.