Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

Say no more, Michael says.

The mission. Back at the spot. This time I tell Michael to let me take the lead. You’d swear Bear’s bigger than he was when we left. I order and he paws a dwindled plastic sack from his crotch. There’s a cascade of sweat on his nose, disks of yellow in his pits.

That’s all you got left? I say.

Not your worry, Bear says. Supplies is my business. Demand is yours.

We could whine about the size of what he gives us but who has the strength? Bear says there’s a crowd downstairs, so sends us this round to the attic. There’s a black tunnel leading upstairs. You wouldn’t be surprised if you fell through a step. We make it up alive. Up here there’s old wallpaper peeling in strips, dusty plastic bins shoved in the corners, a stained-to-death fabric couch, a chipped wood table built too low for an adult.

Tiny windows filter morning, light, and in that light Michael is maimed. Or maybe it’s how I look to him. Or maybe I’m seeing myself in him.

He proclaims we have to make this stretch.

We puff. Spell as long as we can between blasts. Sit and stand. Float to corners where the light doesn’t reach. I press my face against a window, and see far, far up, something metallic twinking by.

Between my last blast and the one to come I may well lose a year of life.

But why stop now, though? How can you stop when you can keep on? When the strongest urge is to reach the end.

Here comes big trouble: a deep pull and no new feeling. Here’s Michael silent, beyond words now, a distance into his next dream.

They say what you do is who you are, and is the only voice to heed, but sometimes, some days, who am I? The Grace I don’t know stands and screams, WHO THE HELL GIVES THEM THE RIGHT? She climbs on the couch, loads a bowl, and strikes a flame. She squeezes her eyes into magic and sucks down her and his share. WHAT DO THEY KNOW? JUST WAIT, I’LL SHOW THEM ALL!

That’s cool, MCA, but get down fore you fall down, Michael says.

He gropes for the pipe, hugs it against his chest, gazes into its black foot. I see, we being selfish, he says. He scrapes the resin and burns it and drops the hot pipe on the table. That’s it, he says. The end of good things. The last dance. Show’s over.

Or encore, I say, and flash the money I meant to keep for myself.

This time I go down alone.

Bear’s eyes are red smears. They make you wonder how he sees, what he sees, if he sees at all. Back, he says. Where dude? Upstairs, I say. Bear this time serves me from a tiny sack in his sock. The pills are anemic. You think you could throw in extra.

We don’t do no extras, he says.

After all we spent? I say.

After who spent what? he says.

That’s how you treat people, I say. Why not be more kind? It wouldn’t hurt to be more kind. You know God has a plan for your life.

What the fuck? he says. What? God ain’t nowhere near this muthafucka. Take that dope and get the fuck out my face.

Bear shoos me and I backtrack with these scant pills cupped.

Michael frowns at my purchase and sighs. He tells me to have at it, hands me the lighter and pipe. The boys make a racket below. Bear’s voice booms through the floor.

The lighter lashes a bright flame and I suck as slow as I can. What I have won’t last as long anywhere near as I need.

What could go wrong? is what you ask yourself, and you could just imagine, or maybe you can’t. The courthouse tomorrow, the Multnomah County Courthouse on Salmon, the same one where, on the first floor, you come to pay a traffic ticket or parking fine or start the process to reinstate your license, where in a second-, third-, fourth-floor room you might find someone crying innocent of theft or pleading guilty on assault, where you might see a boy not much younger than my eldest begging a judge for probation, where in that building so many just like Michael or me, or so near us the difference can’t be ranked, will have their distribution charges dropped to possession. A judge will sit in his chambers studying dockets and sipping plain black coffee while the building fills, while the checkpoint clogs with visitors wearing belt buckles and bracelets and rings and necklaces, stalls from screws in a foot or a pacemaker, while guards snatch others out of line for wand searches, and trash a small thing they huff is within the rules. Visitors will slide or eke by security and reach for papers and slips and copies they brought folded in their pockets or buried in a wallet or purse, stuffed in a legal envelope, notices and subpoenas and warrants and summonses and paternity test results and reccs from a teacher or a pastor or a boss; imagine them slogging into the building with, tucked under arm, probation files and police briefs and psych briefs and transcripts and community service contacts, carrying orders of protection and tax returns and pay stubs and bank slips and W2’s and deeds and judgments and drug program intake and outtake papers and receipts and passports and licenses and SS cards and adoption papers and notarized letters of insurance; imagine them bearing deposition transcripts and affidavits and every other form or letter or printout or triplicate carbon copy you could think of, plus a whole slew you couldn’t — any card or file or scrap they think will swing the law in their favor.

Tomorrow AM who will be among them?

Andrew will arrive first, with his tie Windsor-knotted and shirt tucked perfect in his slacks he’s owned for an age. Picture Champ not far behind, swanking inside in polished black shoes and a dress shirt buttoned at his throat. Picture the pastor floating in. Picture Chris who said he’d show, keeping his word, and, just far enough behind to miss conflict, Kenny and his tramp traipsing in arm in arm with my boys, my babies, in tow. Picture their grinning lawyer toting a briefcase full of lies. Picture all of them filing into the courtroom and the judge taking his bench, and calling Kenny’s name and my name. Picture them all — my babies, Champ, Andrew, the pastor, Chris that man, that woman, their smirking counselor, searching the room for who’s missing: me!

Missions. You know you should stop, but … You end up downstairs, empty-handed, face-to-mask with Bear, and asking for a favor — or is it a blessing, or is it a curse? You end up downstairs and on your knees in every way that counts.

We don’t do no extras and we don’t do no favors, he says.

But I swear I’ll pay you tomorrow, I say. Will give it to you with interest.

He bends the antenna on his tiny TV and turns a knob.

Don’t make me go home, I say. I can’t go home.

Well, you sho in the fuck can’t stay here, he says. We accommodate paying clients.

Just one, I say. Please.

Hell, nah, he says. I let you slide, he says, mize well spot every muthafucka who come in here with a sob story. This ain’t no nonprofit, he says. This a business. And if you ain’t got no bread, we ain’t got no further business.

The voice in the TV says good day to Oregon. Bear dumps a bottle cap of ashes on the floor and rakes me with his rheumy red smears — false spells. I can’t feel my busted-up hand, can’t feel my face. I turn to leave, but his bark stops me cold. He grunts out of his seat and undoes his belt and snorts. Check this out, he says.

We don’t do no extras nor no credit. But what we do got one helluva motherfuckin payment plan.

He plucks a plump pill from a sack in his sock and gifts it into a sacrament.

This thing can’t jack his TV to loud enough.

This youngster that’s out front don’t know me and looks spooked when I ask for dude. He tells me to go around back, where a dude with a blue fitted cap dipped low points me past a group of young Crips camped by a TV. I got my pistol tucked (trust who?) in my waist and the sack of oz’s stuffed in my drawls: reasons A and B, respective, of me stepping hesitant as shit down the hall towards a room at the end of the hall with a TV blasting inside.