What Fresh Hell?

It was a tearful afternoon when Ma died and I promised to straighten myself out. It was a whole lot to promise and if I hadn’t been high I might not have promised all I had. But here I am, smoking a cigarette outside of the hospital while they get Ma ready for the funeral home and her final request echoing in my brain like waves trapped in a bottle. “I never could get you off of drugs or get you to stop committing crimes, but if you love me, you’ll do what I never could and get yourself on the straight and narrow.”

“I promise, Ma. I promise,” what was I supposed to say?

She was right though, no matter what she did in her life, she couldn’t ever get me under control. She deserved better than a no good son who never did anything with his life. I stared into the window of a parked ambulance. Long unkempt brown hair framed a beard that covered up a scar I got one night when I caught a glass bottle to the chin. I looked into my own eyes and knew that I had to do the right thing, to do what my Ma couldn’t ever do.

The next few months after the funeral were a flurry of activity. I moved cities, cut ties with everyone I knew, ran out of smack, went looking for more, got clean, went to Narcotics Anonymous, smoked a little crack, got a job at McDonalds, got fired for smoking crack, got evicted, moved in with a new friend, shot some smack with my new friend, lost her number and moved into a homeless shelter, got a job at a warehouse, got offered a line at a bar and turned it down, got my own apartment without a roommate for the first time in my life, felt deeply lonely, felt depressed, tried to buy drugs, but got run off by the cops, and finally, after many many months, I got a job at a tattoo parlor running the cash register.

I liked the job. It was relatively simple and there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic throughout the day. When I got bored I would wipe down the glass or chat with a tattoo artist about the next tattoo I’m going to get and about how I’m never really going to decide what it’s going to look like. The best thing of all was that it was a legal gig and the worst folks I saw come in were stoners who just wanted big pictures of Bob Marley printed on their backs.

Time passed and my apartment became my pride. It was the first thing I’d held down for any length of time. I spent hours wandering the alleys of Bed, Bath and Beyond picking out towels and throw pillows and gadgets for the kitchen. Larry would have said that’s faggot shit, but I have to admit that there’s something blissfully pleasant and gratifying about a brand new fresh towel just out of the dryer and neatly folded onto the wicker hamper just waiting to dry your ass next time you hop out of the shower.

Not, I guess, as blissful as heroin, but I’d left that all behind, see? I measured my new drug in thread count and memorial day coupons.

I started getting new responsibilities at work too. The store manager entrusted me with the keys to lock up and open the store in the morning, the tattoo artists sent me on errand missions to pick up inks. I loved those trips the best because it meant I could spend the whole day driving across town smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio and taking my time eating whatever fast food junk I picked up on the way. The manager even had me work on the books sometimes in the evening.

It was one night like that when I’d already locked the front door and all the tattoo artists had gone home for the night and I was poring over the books on the store computer. Now, this night I happened to notice something in the ledger. Most of the time, I didn’t read the names listed in the book for who was getting billed for what tattoo and whatnot, but today I happened to notice that there were a bunch of entries where the name was listed as AAA or HHH or XXX. I stared stupidly at the screen for a few minutes before the truth of it struck me.

I leapt up from the desk and went into the back. I rifled through the drawers and closets back there, not finding anything at all. I went into the tattoo parlor supplies and almost immediately uncovered ounce sized bags of heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine. My heart raced as I held the stuff in my hands, like my body was readying itself for the most high it was ever going to get, but though I might be a junky, I’m no moron. If I did those drugs, there would be a bunch of bad dudes after me in no time. In fact, I could already tell that this was turning into a set up. Why else would the manager have me looking over the books like I had? If I reveal that I know what’s up, he can more-or-less blackmail me into continuing protecting his money laundering.

I walked back to the computer thinking the entire time about how it was a good job. I liked my apartment. It would be hard to start over again where these folks couldn’t get at me. All I needed to do was keep my trap shut and … then I screamed because what I saw couldn’t have been. There in the dark parlor, sitting at one of the stations, tubes running from her arms and from under her hospital gown, eyes dark and dead, arms bony and bruised, she barked, “You promised me, son!”

I awoke with a start sitting at the store computer, morning light streaming in from the windows and no sign of my mother anywhere. My pants were wet. I decided it was time to move on. As I was locking up the store some stoners came up to ask if they could buy some papers. God knows why they were up so early, or so late. I told them that the store was haunted and they laughed at me. “This fool’s tripping,” one of them said.

It’s expensive re-establishing oneself in a different town, but if I was going to keep my promise to my undead Ma, I was going to have to change the course of my life drastically. However, by now I’d built up something of a life. I was no longer satisfied with the slums and dumps that I once thought were acceptable. I began to wonder exactly how far I could take it, could I become the man that my Ma always wanted me to be? Educated? With a cute girlfriend? Gathering equity in a house?

I cut my hair, I wore long sleeved shirts to cover my tattoos, I went to night classes in business administration and accounting. I would often find myself peacefully watching television at night wondering at how far I’d come in my life. Once I had to listen out for the sounds of police raiding the squat I was staying in and now I could sleep in blissfully on the weekends before going out to brunch with other people from N.A., especially Kelsey. I got myself a job selling investment packages in a certified financial planner office and the stability became intoxicating if I let it wrap itself around my head like an etherized rag.

There were points, I admit, where I was making so much money that I anticipated that Ma would leap into my cubicle and chastize me right in the middle of a call with a client! But she never did, though I missed her terribly, the thought of seeing her again like I did in the tattoo parlor chilled my bones. That apparition was not my Ma, but the vengeful spirit of a promise reneged that I never wanted to call down again.

Kelsey and I were to be married in June and I was busily selling packages here and there to make sure I had enough for the wedding and the honeymoon and all of that. Management took notice and asked me to stay after usual working hours one night. This was a high privilege and also a common sign that you, lucky you, were about to be promoted yourself. We stood around the CEO’s lounge for over an hour drinking expensive booze and laughing at stupid jokes about the news and politics. I was nearly doubled over laughing at one of the CEO’s jokes (genuinely! It was funny!) when he wiped at his eye and said seriously, “You know what, Jim? You’re a stand up guy. You’re getting married soon aren’t you?”

“I sure am, sir. June. Only a couple of months away.”

“I hear that you’re busting your hump getting the money together,” he said.

“Well, gotta earn it somehow, don’t I?” I laughed.

“You sure do. You sure do, son,” he said and poured himself another drink. “But you don’t have to work too hard. You remember Synergistic Solutions?”

“Sure, that little start up in Reno?”

“That’s right, look, you’re going to want to short that stock before Friday,” he said.

I reeled back, realizing what was happening, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t.”

“Whaddya mean?” he said, “We all do a little bit of insider stuff around here. Just don’t make it too obvious and the SEC doesn’t have to find out.”

“No!” I blurted and turned to the exit only to see my poor dead Ma propping herself up in the doorframe with a medical bag stand, eyes and ears bleeding and her hair waving in the supernatural ether. She screamed! “What did you promise to me, son? What did you say!”

“I know, Momma! I’m doing it right! I’m going straight!”

Well, they shipped my crying, gibbering ass off to the funny farm where my fiance woke me up a day later. She was honestly very amenable when I suggested that we move out of the city, start a little odds and ends shop out by the lakes. Maybe we wouldn’t have that big honeymoon after all, but perhaps we’d have a better chance to have a happy ending if we lived a quieter life.

So, the years went by peacefully. My tattoos faded in the idyllic summer sun as I floated along fishing on my days off. Our little store became a popular local spot for people to start on long-distance hikes and enjoyed a kind of success that is frankly unusual for places out in the woods.

I never forgot the promise I made to my Ma on her deathbed and I’ve always kept that promise in my heart. Since then I’ve driven myself to be the man who would make her proud and have raised three good men in turn.

I grow old in these woods and the boys have left the nest. Only Kelsey and I remain to supply the barflies with beers and stock up young hikers for their trips.

Every year, we hold a raffle here in town to see who will win a trip to Hawaii for a week. People from all over the hills participate and buy a ten dollar ticket for a chance to win.

One day, I’m straightening out the register area when I spy out of the corner of my eye my wife of thirty years surreptitiously slip a grip of papers into the raffle bowl. I turn and say, “What’s that now?”

The door chime rings, but I don’t turn to see who’s entered the store.

“Oh hush, you old fart!” Kelsey says playfully slapping my chest, “We never win, what’s it going to hurt if I tip the scales in our favor this year?”

“Oh no,” I say and reach in to pull the fake tickets out. Kelsey gives me a disappointed grimace. “I’d rather just pull the money out of savings for us to go to Hawaii than defraud some participant in the contest. So pack your bags, we’re going to Hawaii!”

Excited, Kelsey ran off to the back room to order our tickets and I went back to organizing the odds and ends drawer.

The door chime went off and in the dusty mid-afternoon air, I caught out of the corner of my eye the backside of an old woman wearing nothing but a hospital gown leaving the store.