Heroin Chronicles (15 page)

“So what do you do?” I wanted to know.

“We'll cook him, probably,” was his deadpan reply. “You ever had duck?”

“Yeah. Not a big fan.”

“Hey, you got a garden, right?”

“I do. A small one,” I answered.

“Why don't you take him home with you? They make good pets … and they eat snails,” he tossed in, trying to sweeten the deal.

Normally, I wouldn't have acted so impulsively, but Jorge was a good kid and I felt guilty about my part in exposing him to the darker side of adult behavior, so I said, “Tell your dad to get me a box.”

Jorge grabbed the duck which sat calmly in his arms as he stroked him, and we walked back to the yard. “He says he'll take the duck, but he needs a box.”

First things first, I handed over the cash to Johnny Gato, who pocketed it and went around the side of the house and came back with a cardboard box. He was poking holes in the side with a folding Buck knife.

“How far you going with him?” Johnny asked.

“To Marina del Rey.”

“This should be okay then. But maybe we'd better tape the box.”

“Nah, we can just weave the flaps. He won't be able to get out.”

“Dude, they're pretty strong,” cautioned Johnny Gato. But as we put the duck into the box, it settled right in and grew still. “Maybe you're right,” he said, sounding awfully unsure.

But now that I had my dope and felt it weighing down my pocket like a two-ton anchor, I wanted to get home, get high, and put the week behind me. I was antsy and needed to go.

“All right, man, I'm gone. Tell Rose thanks for the birria. You boys stay out of trouble,” I said. Everybody was used to my quick exits after I copped and they barely looked up from their game of dominoes.

“Just go through the side yard,” said Johnny, and slapped my back again.

I walked around the house and into the front yard. I could see that Junior and Angel hadn't washed the truck. “Dude, you didn't give us enough time to even get started!” cried Angel.

“Don't worry. You still get paid … but next time I'm here, you give me a wash, right?” I said, and handed them each ten dollars.

“What's in the box?” Junior asked.

“One of Jorge's ducks.”

“Good luck with that,” said Angel, and made a mock Catholic blessing.

Smart-ass kids, but they were entertaining.

I should have shoved the duck into the bed of the truck, but I didn't want any accidental escapes, so I placed it on the bench seat instead. I walked around to the driver's side, got in, and drove in the direction of the freeway.

Everything was cool until I popped in a Captain Beyond cassette tape as I hit the 605 on-ramp. The duck didn't dig the noise and got agitated. Even after I turned off the music, it only got wilder.

“Shut up, Quacky!” I said as I knocked on the side of his cardboard prison with my fist. That was a mistake that only made the duck more determined to get out.

Once its beak pushed through the cardboard, followed by its head, the duck saw its new surroundings and didn't like them. A tremendous ruckus kicked up as it started flapping its wings, kicking its feet, and pitching a fit. This was a dangerous situation. I kept looking in the rearview mirror to make sure I hadn't picked up the Highway Patrol.

There was no shoulder on the 605 on which to pull off. I took the transition to the eastbound 60 toward Los Angeles as the duck managed to get one twitching wing out of the box. I knew there was a shoulder dead ahead so I eased over and stopped. The duck did not, and kept up its fury of hisses, quacks, and near convulsive efforts to escape. I set the emergency blinkers, got out, and walked around to the passenger side. As I opened the door, Quacky finally burst from the box and shot toward the first avenue of escape it saw. All I could do was get out of the way.
Well, fuck him
, I thought. He could take his gimpy webbed foot and the rest of himself down to the San Gabriel River that lay right below us.

I tried for a minute to shoo the duck over the bridge and into the river, but realized I presented a target of suspicious activity to anyone passing by. Best to let nature sort it out. I got back in the truck and merged into traffic. I looked in the side mirror and saw Quacky take a short and panicked flight right into the front grille of a Mack MH Ultra-Liner. There he stayed, pinned to the chrome like a figurehead on an old-time seagoing freighter. As the rig passed, I gave a solemn wave to poor Quacky. I muttered a quick prayer of thanks that no cops had seen me and continued my drive back home to hearth and high.

There wasn't anything else I could do … except to make sure to always tell young Jorge that his duck was doing just fine, strutting in the garden, eating snails, and living the waterfowl high-life.

It made the kid happy.

E
RIC
B
OGOSIAN
wrote the plays and films
subUrbia
and
Talk Radio
(in which he also starred). He often acts on stage and screen, last appearing on Broadway in Donald Margulies's
Time Stands Still
. His most recent novel is
Perforated Heart
.

godhead

by eric bogosian

A strip of white light falls across a man seated in pitch-black, holding a microphone. He speaks in a slow, deliberate voice with a New Orleans accent
.

The way I see it, it's a fucked-up world, it's not going anyplace, nothing good is happening to nobody, you think about it these days and nothing good is happening to anybody and if something good is happening to anybody, it's not happening to me, it's not happening to myself.

The way I see it, there be this man, some man sitting in a chair behind a desk in a room somewhere down in Washington, D.C. See, and this man, he be sitting there, he be thinking about what we should do about crime rate, air pollution, space race … Whatever this guy supposed to be thinking about. And this guy, he be sitting down there and thinking, and he be thinking about what's happenin' in
my
life … he be deciding on food stamps, and work programs, and the welfare, and the medical aid and the hospitals, whether I be working today. Makin' all kinds a decisions for me. He be worrying about how I spen' my time! Then he lean back in his ol' leather chair, he start thinkin' about da nukular bomb. He be deciding whether I live or die today! Nobody makes those decisions for me. That's for me to decide. I decide when I want to get up in da mornin', when I want to work, when I want to play, when I want to do shit! That's my decision. I'm free. When I die, that's up to God or somebody, not some guy sittin' in a chair. See?

I just wanna live my life. I don't hurt nobody. I turn on the TV set, I see the way everybody be livin'. With their swimming pools and their cars and houses and living room with the fireplace in the living room … There's a fire burnin' in the fireplace, a rug in front of the fireplace. Lady. She be lyin' on the rug, evenin' gown on … jewelry, sippin' a glass o' cognac … She be lookin' in the fire, watchin' the branches burnin' up … thinkin' about things. Thinkin'. Thinkin'. What's she thinkin' about?

I jus' wanna live my life. I don't ask for too much. I got my room … got my bed … my chair, my TV set … my needle, my spoon, I'm okay, see? I'm okay.

I get up in the mornin', I combs my hair, I wash my face. I go out. I hustle me up a couple a bags a D … new works if I can find it.

I take it back to my room, I take that hairwon. I cook it up good in the spoon there … I fill my needle up.

Then I tie my arm [
caressing his arm
]… I use a necktie, it's a pretty necktie, my daughter gave it to me … Tie it tight … pump my arm … then I take the needle, I stick it up into my arm … find the hit … blood …

Then I undoes the tie … I push down on that needle [
pause
]… and I got everything any man ever had in the history of this world. Jus' sittin' in my chair …

[
Voice lower
] I got love and I got blood. That's all you need. I can feel that blood all going up behind my knees, into my stomach, in my mouth I can taste it … Sometimes it goes back down my arm, come out the hole … stain my shirt …

I know … I know there's people who can't handle it. Maybe I can't handle it. Maybe I'm gonna get all strung out and fucked up …

… Even if I get all strung out and fucked up, don't make no difference to me … Even I get that hepatitis and the broken veins and the ulcers on my arms … addicted. Don't make no difference to me. I was all strung out and fucked up in the first place …

Life is a monkey on my back. You ride aroun' in your car, swim in your warm swimming pool. Watch the fire … I don't mind. I don't mind at all. Just let me have my taste. Have my peace. Jus' leave me be. Jus' leave me be.

[
Turns in toward the dark
]

J
ERVEY
T
ERVALON
is the author of several books, including the novels
Serving Monster
and
Dead Above Ground
, and coeditor, with Gary Phillips, of
The Cocaine Chronicles
. He is currently directing the Literature for Life project. Literature for Life is a new kind of forum: part literary magazine, part educational resource center, part salon. Writers, journalists, artists, and educators come together to ignite young minds while celebrating the diversity of Los Angeles.

gift horse

by jervey tervalon

H
eroin didn't blow up in the neighborhood, not like red devils and weed. We held out for rock cocaine to go insane and then we burned shit up until there was nothing left to burn. But heroin did make a run at us—one fine spring the white devil drug appeared with the help of a banged-up Nova turning the corner, tires squealing as it fishtailed along Second Avenue and the fool at the wheel with the big afro flung a brown bag out the window, and then a roller took the turn
French Connection
–style, and should have caught that knucklehead in the Nova before the next corner, but he drove like a nigga who had nothing to lose but doing life.

I sat on the porch with Sidney sitting across from me with his nice-ass leather jacket on, sipping a Mickey's Big Mouth; ignoring my comic book–reading pootbutt ass like I was invisible. I knew he was waiting on my brother to make a run for weed or red devils or whatever. I wasn't surprised that he didn't have a spare word for me, and I didn't mind because I hated motherfucking Sidney. He wasn't obvious about being a dick to me except for the time he broke my finger because I made the mistake of trying to save a seat on the couch. Should have figured that he'd ignore my hand and flop down, and yeah, he broke my little finger and I knew he didn't care even with all those fake apologies to my mama. Sidney and my brother just kept watching the Rams while I had to go to the hospital to get a splint. He was my nemesis, though it wasn't much of a contest with me being fifteen. I couldn't hang with just throwing a punch at his smug face. Jude, my brother, didn't have a high opinion of me, saying I started shit and pissed people off so I shouldn't be expecting him to have my back.

The roar of the big engine of the roller drifted away and my attention turned to the brown bag at the curb. Sidney gave me a sinister grin and sauntered over to it, hiked his pressed jeans a bit, glanced about as though he was daring the police to roll up on him, and nonchalantly picked it up and returned to the porch. He examined the contents of the paper bag; about a hundred little baggies with powder inside.

“What's that?” I asked.

“What's what?”

“What's inside the baggies?”

“Nothing,” he said, and walked away like he was on top of the world, and Sydney always looked like he was on top of the world.

Though I hated him, I couldn't help admiring his style. He didn't fight, or carry a gun, he never engaged in open hostility. He won a lofty position in the neighborhood because of his ability to get along with anybody who was worth anything to get along with, and his ability to make everybody trust him completely, except for me, and I didn't count. Once they trusted him, Sydney would get in on what was good, and leave the rest. He had a great talent that made everything work; he talked better than anybody and he knew everything. He knew how to sell drugs in such a way that he never seemed to be dealing, and thus, he had an understated pimp-splendor thing happening. He rode a tricked-out metallic blue chopper with an airbrushed image of a flying saucer hovering over Los Angeles on the gas tank; and this was before his heroin windfall.