Coming March 8, 2015
Chapter One
~Hendrix~
When you think of Motor City, you think of poverty, but what Detroit lacks in culture and entertainment, we make up for in dive bars. You got the Two Way In on Mt. Elliott, Nancy Whiskey on Harrison, Old Miami on Cass, Greenwich Time in Cadillac Square, Kwicky on 8Mile, Marshalls on Jefferson, Jumbo’s on 3rd, The Painted Lady up in Hamtramck, My Dad’s Place on Kercheval, and Caldwell’s on Atwater.
You know the kind of places I am talking about—windowless joints on the corner with the High Life sign blinking because you know the sign is as old as the paint chipped building it hangs off. The blinking sign beckons you. You have to go inside to see what the hell is going on ‘cause you can’t see in the windows, and it sounds like you may be missing something if you don’t.
They are boarded up tight because they got busted out two nights ago when the place got robbed by the fucking thugs who walk up and down the streets, selling candy one minute and panhandling two hours later. The pieces of shit are inventive—I will give them that—but my suggestion is get a fucking job, slob.
Back in the day, when the auto factories dominated the area, things didn’t look so broken down, although the area was still peppered with bars. Bar owners were making mad cash, too. At the end of every street, there was a bar that served ice cold High Life on tap and two-dollar shots. There was entertainment and fun to be had everywhere. You could always get a decent, quick meal on your lunch break; a live show at night; and the bartenders made you feel like you belonged, like you were family.
My Pops won the title to Hooligans at a dogfight. With it being a great location in the Rivertown district near Chene Park, he truly got a prize that time. He was instantly banking money and banging women. That is when he met Mom.
She was a one-woman show. She sang, played guitar, and had a decent following. He was thirty, and she was twenty two. She sang at his bar every Wednesday night and eventually tended bar three nights a week. Like many of his barmaids, she fell for his bullshit, and that ended up in her pregnant with me in less than two months from the time they met.
He moved her in to his apartment above the bar and embraced becoming a father. He wanted to do it better than his old man had. Isn’t that the truth in life, just do it better? Don’t we all strive for that?
Eventually, the novelty wore off. He started fucking around on her. When she confronted him, he beat her down emotionally. She busted her ass keeping the bar clean, and he busted his ass drinking the profit. Two more boys later, and she was busting her ass to raise their three kids on top of keeping his business afloat.
When the economy in Detroit deteriorated, he lost what was left of his mind. He started coming after us for stupid shit like spilled milk, a Lego on the floor, you name it. Hell, the wind blowing in the wrong direction had him on us.
Mom started stepping in with, “Boys, go to your room.”
Sure, we did as we were told, but we heard the shit. We heard him hitting her. It was no better than seeing it. We were helpless as the sounds of each blow became increasingly deafening to our tiny ears. Funny how, in the moment, adrenaline kicks in and instincts go into overdrive. Every noise becomes louder, clearer, and sticks with you for longer. I can still hear that shit in my sleep.
As I grew older and stood taller than him, I began to step in. He and I would go at it, fist to fist, until one of us wasn’t moving. At first, it was me. Then, when I was seventeen, it was finally him. Fucker knew it, too.
I begged Mom to move out, but she refused to leave her home and family. She made excuses for him, said that’s how he was raised.
He stopped coming at us when I busted his nose. I hated the bastard, and when Morrison was big enough, I moved the fuck out. Still saw Mom every day. Couldn’t go a day without seeing her or my brothers. I needed to make sure they were okay. I also knew, though, if I stayed, I would kill him and be in the state pen within a year.
He lost Hooligans, because the fucking asshole bet against the wrong underground fighter. Who was the fighter he bet against? My brother, his own son. Who did he lose it to? Me. Fucker didn’t even know it was me, either, until a week later.
I let him stay in the apartment above the bar, not for him, but for Mom.
I had been working for a contractor, fixing up old warehouses and making them into apartments for years. Even made enough to buy my own place. I fixed up the second and third floors, making them livable. Wide open space, two bedrooms, two baths on the second floor, the third is my loft. The first floor houses a bad ass garage. It’s where I spend the rest of my money—on my tools, my toys, and my rides.
I roll over to find my pit-bull Floyd is hogging the bed as usual. She—yes Floyd is a she—is an obvious bed hog.
When I found her, she had on a pink spiked color that was digging into her neck. I squatted down and pealed it off of the poor girl, and she let me. Then she took off. I followed her to an abandoned warehouse and walked in to a fucking scene that makes my stomach churn to this day. Fucking dog fights.
My dad loves those godforsaken fights, while I despise them.
I called the cops from an outside alley and waited. The cop I called was a friend from high school. When the fuckers running the circuit were taken in along with the spectators, I watched the SPCA take the dogs. Floyd looked at me, I looked at her, and I knew she was mine.
“Floyd, seriously, bitch”—I laugh as she licks my face—“get down.”
***
I walk in the bar on a Friday morning after my morning run with Floyd along the riverside. We don’t open until noon, but I have orders to place for next week.
I start up the coffee pot in the kitchen and walk out behind the bar. The place looks like hell; it better have been a busy fucking night.
I wipe off the nicked up old oak bar that is still sticky from last night. Lola, the weekday evening barmaid, is getting lazy. I swear to fuck, she spends more time applying that glossy shit to her lips than she does doing the job she is paid for.
Work ethic is sorely lacking nowadays. Everyone wants something for fucking free. What happened to hard work, perseverance, dedication, and determination?
I watched my momma bust her ass for years. Even though I heard a million damn times, “This is my bar,” come out of Pop’s mouth, it was Momma who held those qualities—the ones it takes to run a business—not him.
One of the four sinks under the bar hasn’t drained completely, so I reach down, pull out the lime wedges, and throw them in the trash, the trash that wasn’t taken out. The coolers aren’t stocked, the fruit trays are sitting in the melted ice under the soda tap, and I am ready to fucking explode.
I walk around the bar and look around. The fucking floor isn’t swept or mopped, and there are full ashtrays on the pub tables. What’s more, I have more than an hour’s worth of paperwork and orders to place before I can even start the damn clean up. Orders that have to be placed, or I won’t get a delivery on Monday when the bar is closed, and I will be fucked.
I decide the priority lies on getting the order in, so I head back behind the bar and walk up the steps between the kitchen and the back of the bar to my office.
I walk in, and there is old Lola, bare-assed, lying across my old man’s waist.
“Get the fuck up,” I yell.
She startles and jumps. “Oh, God. Oh, Hendrix—”
“Get the fuck out of my office. You, too, old man.”
“You watch your tone with me, boy.” He glowers at me as he sits up.
“I ain’t gotta watch shit, old man. What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing with my employee?”
“I think it’s obvious what I’m doing here, son,” he slurs as he stands.
“Get your pathetic ass out of here.” I point to the door. “Lola, I’m sorry about this—”
“We love each other,” she says and starts crying.
“Is that so?” I force a laugh and shake my head as I look at my pop’s pitiful ass as he buttons up.
“Yes,” she answers and grabs his hand when it is free. “We’ve been in love for a year.”
I look at him, waiting for him to deny this ‘love.’ Hell, as long as I have been alive, I have never heard him say that word to Mom or any of us. The denial never comes.
“A year? So Mom was still alive?”
Still no answer, and at that moment, charity ceases to exist.
“Get your shit out of the apartment. And, Lola, you’re fired.”
“You can’t do that!” he yells at me.
“It’s done. Now get out.” I don’t yell, don’t fight. This is actually fucking perfect.
He had been under the protection of my mother for all my life and stayed that way through grief’s numbing after effects.
When Mom was sick, I tried to figure out a way to deal with the diagnosis.
“The cancer is terminal,” Momma told us all when she insisted on us coming to the apartment for dinner. She had two months.
My dad was as close to tears as I had ever seen him while she told us three brothers that it was okay, that it was better than dying without notice, that she was happy to be given the chance to say goodbye.
The first step in the grieving process is denial and isolation. My brothers and I hit denial from word terminal, but with a two month eviction notice, there wasn’t time to go hiding out.
All of us went with her to the doctors—Dad, Jagger, Morrison, and I. The doc showed us the brain scan and explained the size and how the location made it impossible to remove. He suggested we take the rest of her time here as a gift and make the most of it. We fucking begged her to get a second opinion, and she said she had.
Our mother had known for two weeks that she was dying, and she had only told my dad fifteen minutes before we walked in. Looking back, I think it was her first and final jab at the old man. It was her life, her way. The last few days she was alive, she was miserable to him, picking fights and shit like that. I remember him telling us it was the tumor ‘cause his girl would never treat him like that.
His girl? I wanted to break his beak again that day.
Two days before she went to the hospital for the last time, she told him to leave, and he did without argument. The day before she died, Jagger went and found him, told him he needed to come make peace with her. She insisted Jagger not do that, and she never knew he tried. The bastard wouldn’t come. His final blow to her, sick motherfucker.
The next step in the grieving process is anger. I have been stuck on that one for a while now. There are even stages to this particular stage. I get pissed, and then I am numb. Then, before I know it, I am right back to angry again.
Lola is wiping the smudged mascara off her face when she leaves the bar.
“Lost another one?” Jagger strolls in and laughs.
“Maybe,” I answer noncommittally.
“Seriously, bro, you need to learn to play nice with others.”
“Look, unless you’re here to take on another night, step it up a bit, I don’t wanna hear shit.”
“I liked Lola,” he says as he sits down on the other side of the bar.
I hold my finger in front of my mouth, keeping him quiet, and point up. “You hear heals clicking up the wooden stairs into the upstairs apartment?”
When he looks at me like he has no clue, I raise my eyebrow and shake my head.
“No shit?” he asks when he catches on.
“Just found ‘em in my fucking office. Told him a month ago, when I caught him skimming from the till, he was out. Not to step foot in my fucking place again, or he could pack his shit.”
He nods and then shakes his head. Then his fists ball up as he takes a moment to look down.
“What are you gonna do?” he asks finally.
“He’s packing his shit.”
“You for real, man?” There is mischievous look in his eyes, and my kid brother looks kind of happy. Looks good on him. Ain’t seen it in awhile.
“As fucking terminal cancer.”
Some people wouldn’t find that the last bit amusing, but they aren’t Caldwell’s. If we aren’t able to laugh at our misfortunes, we would never laugh a day in our fucking lives.
I look up when the door opens to see my buddy Johnny, the cop. It isn’t unlike him to stop by on a chilly morning and grab a cup of coffee.
Jagger stands to greet him. “Got bail?”
“You’re fucking joking, right?” I shake my head as I look at his knuckles, and nah, he wasn’t joking.
“Jagger, you know I have to take you in.” Johnny is pissed. “You beat the shit out of your landlord.”
“His kid was crying. Heard her through the wall, opened the door, and she’s running down the hall. Fucker came out chasing her with a belt.”
“So you beat him to the ground?” Johnny asks, taking the cup of coffee I slide across the bar. “How about call 911? That’s my job, man. Now she’s so scared she’s not talking and won’t press charges—”
“What do you mean, won’t press charges.” Jagger’s vein is popping out of his neck. “She had switch marks across her ’goddamned neck, Johnny. She’s a fucking kid; she needs someone—”
“She’s seventeen. Can’t make her do shit, you hear me?” Johnny states and points to the door. “Restraining order, so you got nowhere to live, and when the judge asks where you work, what are you gonna say? I smash people up in abandon warehouses while people stand around and watch? It’s fucking illegal.”
“Nah, man, I got a job,” Jagger chuckles. “I’m a motherfucking astronaut. Just got back from the moon last night. Shit looks good up there.”
“Last time, you told the judge you were a fucking OBGYN apprentice and that got you a week in county.”
Jagger smirks and looks to me. “Do I have a place to live?”
“Of course you do.” I lean against the bar and cross my arms over my chest.
“I work here, right?” Jagger winks.
“Yeah, man, you do. Call me after your photo shoot and fingerprints. I’ll be down to pick you up.”
I watch them walk out. Only Jag can climb in the back of the squad car like he is getting in a damn taxi. Then I see the old man and Lola the bar whore walk by with garbage bags.
I feel a weight lift off my shoulders just before the guilt washes over me. I should have booted his ass years ago. Then, maybe Momma would have paid attention to the headaches. She wouldn’t have thought they were just everyday stresses. The everyday stresses that I knew damn well came from dealing with his sorry ass.
I wish I could go back so fucking bad. You know what the third step to grief is? Bargaining. Right now, that is what I am doing. If I only had done this… God, if I do this, will you make the loss less?
Yeah, that shit is what I am doing right now. Does it bother me? Hell yes. But I also embrace this new stage in life.
Bring. It. On.