Three Sides of the Tracks by Mike Addington Page A

bag of pot in there. Go git it, and I’ll fix you
up a little magic smoke that’ll make all this easier to take. Help you see it
straight, so you won’t have no bad feeling towards nobody. Sheeit, boy, yore
momma went through a lot of hell for you. Go on in there. Ole Bernard ain’t gonna
steer ya’ wrong.
    “Oh, yeah, they told me what you done for me the other night. You might’a
kept me from gittin’ kilt. Damn cops love to have a chance to shoot somebody;
hell, anybody; don’t matter none to them. Unless you some rich cat, that is.”
    “Bernard, I really don’t want—”
    “Well, we’ll see. Go git it for me anyhow. All this goin’ on has me kinda
foggy headed. I share your pain, buddy, share your pain.”
    Danny found the marijuana and handed it to Bernard. The rolling papers
were in the bag, and Bernard had a joint rolled in less than a minute.
    “I got a idea. You say the stuff made you cough, so I’m gonna take care’a
that problem. When I motion for you, you put your mouth close to mine and I’m
gonna blow smoke out for you to inhale. That ought’a take the sting out of it
for ya.”
    Danny looked doubtful.
    “C’mon, just do what I tell you. Great gosh a’mighty, you’d think I was
asking you to put a diaper on a cat.”
    Bernard lit the cigarette and carefully put the burning end in his mouth,
then motioned for Danny.
    Danny reluctantly put his mouth close to Bernard’s and took a deep breath
as Bernard blew the smoke out.
    To his surprise, the smoke didn’t bother him, and he held his breath as
he’d been told to do when he tried it before.
    Bernard motioned for him again, but Danny shook his head and sat down in
the rocker.
    A few seconds passed, and Danny felt light headed. He closed his eyes and
rocked. He heard Bernard get up and go in the house then come back out, but
that seemed irrelevant, like it was something happening on TV.
    “Here, this’ll make it even better. Does me,” Bernard said as he thrust a
bottle of Budweiser into Danny’s hands.
    Danny gratefully accepted the beer. His throat was dry as dirt.
    Something Bernard said seemed important. “What did you mean when you said
you were ‘waiting,’ Bernard?”
    “One more hit before it gets too short and I’ll tell ya’.”
    It didn’t seem to matter so much now, so Danny leaned forward in the
rocker and Bernard again blew on the joint.
    Danny inhaled deeply and held his breath. When he exhaled, almost nothing
came out. He leaned back in the rocker and grinned.
    “Um, hmm,” said Bernard and grinned back at him.
     “Well, Danny boy, when you’ve had your time at the big show and you
figure you’ve done ‘bout all there is to do at least once or twice or all you
care anything about doin’ anyways, you slowly begin to not give a shit ‘bout
nothin’ anymore. Kinda sneaks up on you. One day you’re raisin’ hell; the next
day you find yourself talking with your old buddies about ‘remember when.’
    “Then you just kinda get into a routine, maybe go out once in a while,
but you just find things that interest you and you spend your time doin’ that;
that is, if you’re single like me. Married guys got it different. Anyway, every
so often, something happens or comes along to spark you up, and you jump back
in the mix again; what I hear the blacks call a ‘player.’ Heh, heh, heh. They
got a name for everything. If me and you wust to act like they do havin’ fun,
they’d lock our white asses up for crazy. If I come back, I wanna come back a
black man.
    “Oops, got off the subject a little, didn’t I? Anyways, when I say
waitin’, I mean I see something happen that gets my blood up a little. Makes me
take’a interest. Like your situation. I get the feelin’ you’re in the middle of
somethin’, somethin’,  . . . somethin’; hell, I don’t know what to call it.
Just somethin’ big, I reckon. Important to you. You and the rest’a your life.
So I’m payin’ attention ‘cause your my