Snitch - a short story

 

Snitch

 

            They jail their five year old daughter. There are no concrete walls or clanging doors. Instead, they stuff an unruly toddler inside an ad-hoc prison built from detached playpen walls, thick cardboard, and a plastic storage tub lid roofing her cell. A trash bag of clothes full to bursting stops her from standing and pushing away the lid. I remember seeing her moist, narrow eyes staring out at me from between the rails whenever Marty visited for methadone. I wonder if her parents ever see her staring at them while they cut drug deals in the living room.

            Marty is selling me pot ten years by this time and more in the six months since I quit drinking than the last three years combined. We grow closer than ever during that half-year despite drowning our respective brains in smoke and pharmaceutical-grade narcotics. Once upon a time we do nothing but exchange wadded up cash and half folded sandwich bags of weed, but now watching television and talking music makes our list. I listen to him moan about so-called whores who just want his drugs, spit and swear about the aunt he rents from, and drive him to pick up methadone when my money’s low. He lays free weed on me for the trip. The five year old’s parents, a young couple, are heroin addicts off the needle and driving twice a week to an Indianapolis methadone clinic. Dad sells weed too and trades some of their “take home” supply for ounces of Marty’s marijuana. We talk about their five year old after each visit and take turns suggesting someone call Child Protective Services. Neither of us volunteer.

            “That’s just fucked up though, man, you know? Who does that shit to a little kid?” Marty says.

            I shake my head. “I don’t know, dude. Look at their place though. It’s obvious they aren’t managing shit at this point.”

            He snorts. “That’s for fucking sure, Karl.” I recall him turning up my car radio and the sinewy strains of The Rolling Stones’ “Stray Cat Blues” filling the interior. “You like the Stones, right?”

            I shrug and say, “Yeah, I go through phases.”

            He turns his head and stares out the passenger side window. “My mom, man, huge fan. She listened to albums like Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers all the time. I know you read music bios. You ever read that one Keith Richards dope man wrote?”

            I remember skimming it once in an used bookstore. “Yeah, Down and Out with the Rolling Stones?”

            He smiles and nods at me. “Yup, that’s it. She made me read that book when I was twelve ‘cause she got all offended I liked that poppy Toto tune ‘Rosanna’.” I can still see his downcast gaze when he snickered. “I lost that fucking book at school, first day I took it. Wasn’t supposed to leave the house with it. Oh fuck, she was pissed. Whipped my ass with her boyfriend’s belt and took my music for a week.”

            The freezing violence of his memories paralyzes me and my silence makes him squirm in his seat. He looks out the passenger’s window again. “It’s no big deal, really.” The words come slow. “I feel sorry for that kid. That shit with their kid, a fucking song on the radio, I’m ready to get high… you know.”

            I do know. Marty punctuates that year’s summer with methadone runs and mid-grade marijuana. I turn thirty that April and live in a glorified closet at my parents’ while he bears down on thirty-six, lives in a double-wide add-on to his aunt’s sagging A-frame, and staggers through each day in a narcoticized haze. He’s like a misshapen boulder rolling downhill. I say nothing about it though; it isn’t what we do. I want to, I think about how to say he worries me in a way that won’t annoy him, but no one calls anyone out over anything and for every finger I might wag, three point back at me.

            Marty stares at methadone tablets like a child admiring a cookie. He holds them between his fingertips close to a light and scans each side while tracing a free finger around its edges. I watch him drop a pill in a glass of water and remember it hissing like a basketful of snakes. When the dissolving stops, Marty empties it fast. He closes his eyes and rolls his head.

            I see a thin line of white powder stretching above Marty’s upper lip, let loose an outsized cough, and run a fingertip across my own upper lip when he looks at me.

            “Missed some,” I say.

            Marty’s tongue shoots out from between his lips and licks off the powder. “Leave no grain undigested,” he says and laughs. I am still waiting to hear another laugh like it. Laughter bubbles deep within his belly, jolts his frame, and pistons out of his mouth in bursts like salvos from small artillery.

**

            I don’t hear from him again for two days. I’m filling out a thin pile of job applications late Friday morning when he texts. His message is brief: downtown at the park I gotta get out of here man. His words are packed with implied urgency more involving than any job application and, besides, my latest bag of weed is half empty. Riding to his rescue likely means more pot.

            He’s waiting in the alley behind the park when I pull up. I can still see how he looked that day and remember how we always referred to our lifestyle as “partying”. I don’t know why. If battering your brain into a blackout is your idea of a party, you’ve never known happiness. Parties are celebrations and we never celebrate anything. He definitely doesn’t look festive.

            There’s always some dishevelment defining his appearance, but that fall day brings a different breed of disarray. He’s pale and sweating. It’s a sunny day with temperatures in the mid-fifties and the perspiration covers him in a slick gleam. His matted blonde hair looks pasted to his skull. Slamming my door like someone yanking their hand from a fire rattles the car and fills me with a warm flush of annoyance.

            “What the fuck, man?”

            He frowns and straightens against the seat. “I’m sorry, just get me the fuck out of here, okay?” I can still hear him nearly shouting and recall how emotion cracked his voice. I nod and drive away. We are no more than a half a block out before he speaks again.

            “Just take me home, alright? Cool. I’ve been waiting downtown all morning for this one guy to deliver on some ‘dones and I’ve got fucking nothing to show for it, then all these fucking leeches down here, always Marty get me high, Marty kick me down some bud, fuck all those motherfuckers, kick me down some fucking money or narcotics, bitches. Fuck!” He slams a clenched fist down on the door arm rest and blows out a rush of air. “Sorry again, fuck.”

            “Chill out, just chill out. The guy didn’t show. What are you going to do, you can’t change it.”

            “Oh, I got a hold of him. I’ve got to wait until around five.”

            “Then you just go home and hang tight.”

            He snorts. “Yeah. Easier said than done.”

            We drive through the city in silence. It isn’t that long ago when I felt the same as he did then. My drinking life ends with days of hearing demonic voices from an air conditioner, vomiting, and recurring nosebleeds. I dream of slobbering hellhounds turned inside out chasing me down when I sleep. I want to tell him I lived through those things and don’t anymore. I want to say he’s killing himself. And so what if I did? I know even then, there’s no transformative moment coming on the heels of my supposed sage advice. I will not see him arch his eyebrows, widen his eyes, and swear off narcotics.

            I settle for saying something safe. “Marty, you’ve gotta start taking better care of yourself. It’s no good getting this strung out. You know that, bro.”

            I speak slow, soft, and measure my words. He is looking at me when I glance to gauge their impact. I tell myself it is too late to talk like this. He hears me, but does not listen. His milky skin, sweaty sheen like bubble wrap, and red-rimmed eyes tell me what I don’t want to know.

            “I’m alright, Karl. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be alright.”

            We pull to a stop in the short gravel driveway flanking his trailer. I just want to get away and go smoke a joint. I don’t even care if he has pot to give me.

            “I’ll just drop you off and see you later. I’ve got some crap I need to go do.”

            He nods and opens the door. “Cool, man. Thanks for the ride. The ‘dones guy is bringing me a quarter pound too. I don’t have any bud to give you right now, but get with me tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got you, bro.”

            “Okay, I will.”

            I watch him shamble to his door and step inside before driving home. When I’m home, I smoke a small joint and go back to filling out job applications. He sends texts later that night full of nonsensical rhapsodizing about his buzz. I call and text many times the next day and there’s no answer.         

**

            I check my phone when I wake Sunday morning. There’s an unanswered call from Marty and an unheard voicemail. Seeing those notifications opens my overheated valves and blows off an enormous cloud of mental pressure. I can get more weed because he isn’t in jail. I’ll see him soon because he isn’t dead.

            Someone else called me from Marty’s phone. “This message is for Karl. I’m Marty’s stepdad Don. I stopped by today to talk with him and found him in a coma. He’s at the hospital now. They say there’s no brain activity. I called the police. We know he overdosed, but we don’t know what and how much. If you know, it may save his life. Call me back at this number.”

            I disconnect. The calm voice stripped clean of warmth echoes in my memory. I hear no worry spiking every third word with an anxious quiver. He talks, instead, about cops and says way too much after that. We know he’s overdosed, we don’t know what or how much, it’s too much for me. Marty’s inbox holds a running record of my recent drug use and I’m sure good old Don read every word. I’m certain he passed along my eighty character pearls to law enforcement.

            My first thought is fuck calling him back. Instead, I want to delete the voicemail and texts, smash the phone with a hammer, and pray police aren’t soon knocking at my door. I sit on the bed’s edge staring at the floor. The stepdad says he called cops and I believe him. It’s an overdose. I picture Marty’s latest quarter pound of marijuana in plain view or sitting on a detective’s digital scale. If he says the cops know, I have to believe him and believe they know everything.

            Telling his stepdad what I know may deflect any legal blows I might absorb. You’re a rat. You’re going to snitch him out to save your ass. The thoughts explode in my consciousness. Imagining Marty’s blind anger towards me for telling his stepdad anything sits me up wincing. Word will spread. Everyone will know. It’s betrayal.

            I need to live with myself though. I remember once digging cash from a dying pill addict’s pocket. His shallow breathing never dulled my thirst for another bottle and I told everyone, including myself, he passed out. I never tell myself no in those days. Climbing over dead bodies for what I want isn’t new. Enduring new casualties demands the scale of my scamper isn’t too steep.

            I will call him back and cherry-pick details. Parse facts to form a self-serving narrative. Isn’t parsing unpleasant facts a skeleton key to sane adulthood? I will snitch but not snitch. I tell myself Marty will understand my situation. With zero irony.

            “Hello?”

            “Yeah, is this Don?”

            “Yes, it is.”

            “Okay, good. This is Marty’s friend Karl. I just got your message and wanted to call back hoping I can help somehow.”

            “Yeah? What drugs did he take, Karl?”

            “All I know is he complained a lot about foot pain and told me he’d been eating painkillers to deal with it. He never said what kind. I didn’t ask.”

            Silence. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

            I’m pressing the phone hard enough against my temple that it aches. Yeah, man, I want to end this call right now. “No, I don’t think so.”

            “Okay. Thanks for your call.”

            The conversation ends within a minute. I hear the same icy degrees present in the earlier voicemail and doubt he believes anything I say except my name. Why should he? I didn’t snitch on Marty. We snitched on ourselves. I roll my last joint and keep telling myself that while smoking.

            Law enforcement never visits then or the next day. The tension machine guns my thoughts and makes my skin tingle. I drive to Marty’s methadone dealer hoping to buy more pot. He waits for me to bring up the obvious before telling me Marty died that afternoon. I watch him break apart thick marijuana buds while he speaks. The five year old is still jailed and watches me with wide, wet eyes when I leave.

            Our capacity for codas contracts after thirty. Time compresses and collapsed connections resist reconstruction. We tumble, instead, through years of hard stops dreaming of days when experiences ended with an ellipsis. I want to say I remember his funeral and wished his family well. I want to say I remember something healing. I called him friend and drug dealer and he died. Marty courted death, campaigned for it, but no suicide frees the hook from my tongue. No code or credo absolves me from my part, however small, in leaving him a corpse. His mom and stepdad bans everyone but family from Marty’s funeral excepting one woman he gave drugs to with vain hopes of fucking her. She claims to be his girlfriend and Marty’s mom, embracing the thin veneer of pathos only a breathing grieving girl provides, offers her front row seating. He waits a year for a gravestone.