8--A Chance to Start Over

I always fed the pets at 9:15 at night. The cats would get their canned food, and the dog would get his canned food. Then the dog would get the left-over cat food for dessert. One Saturday night while the pets were eating, I thought I heard a gunshot. There was a large apartment complex near my home where a lot of poorer people lived. A neighbor rang my doorbell about the time the pets finished eating. My truck was parked in front of my house, facing the direction of the traffic traveled. I usually parked across the street as that was the direction I was coming from. I had gotten a ticket once for being parked in the wrong direction. My truck had been plowed into by a passing drunk driver. He ran into the front bumper and the wheel well and bent the frame. My insurance totaled the truck out.

My friend, Frank, stayed at my house from then on. He was doing this, he said, at the request of my mother. Before she died, she asked Frank to take care of me if I needed help, and she told me to ask Frank for help if I needed it. What ended up happening was not at all what she had in mind. Frank's little red truck had permanently died, and he was driving his father's old Cadillac. After the Cadillac was stolen, he got an old '74 rusty red truck. The doors wouldn't stay closed, and the seat belts didn't work either. Riding with Frank was dangerous.

I didn't replace my truck. Lyft and Uber filled my needs. I was working as a writer from home. I only needed a ride to doctor's appointments, the pharmacy, and the grocery store. The trust arranged for me to have a True Link debit card to pay for my transportation. It was a waste to spend $20 to go to the store for a pack of $10. cigarettes, so I always got at least two packs when I went to the convenience store. I knew it was a waste, but that's how my situation had worked out.

My friend Lisa, Guerro her son, and Lisa's brother Walter came to visit me one night at my new apartment. I met them out front and brought them in a confusing way. I had a new home, and this was an excellent opportunity to get their bad influence out of my life.

Guerro had aged out of school. Lisa, his mother, said he'd had lots of jobs. He didn't stay at one job very long. He was now 18. He contracted HIV somewhere among his personal relationships. At that time his future didn't look very bright. I lost touch with Lisa and assumed Guero wasn't long for this world.

Lisa was an alcoholic. At night she saved one of her beers so she wouldn't have delirium tremors and a bad hangover the next morning. She was the first person I knew who had an alcoholic way of life. Frank was another, but I didn't realize it until later. He would go to the convenience store at 7:00 in the morning and buy his first beer. One morning his daughter saw him, and she cried all the way to work. Frank didn't care what his drinking did to his family and friends. If he wanted a beer, as he always did, he would drink a beer. The only time he wasn't drinking was when he was sleeping or out of money. I didn't intend to support his drinking habit, but he would ask me for gas money to get to his home. He used the money for beer. He always ended up getting money from somewhere.

I did some business with D, my crack delivery man, after I moved to the apartment. I hadn't intended to smoke any more, but I craved it. He delivered to me for a long time, ever since I had been in the white brick house. He would also take me to the grocery store if I needed to go. His cousin was in the car with him sometimes. They looked like brothers and were as close as brothers.

I'm sure his problem was some kind of drug deal gone bad. One day, when I was planning for him to make a delivery to me, he called, said his cousin had been shot, and that he was in the emergency room at Baylor Hospital. An hour later he called back and said his cousin had died. Even with the passage of time, D couldn't get over his cousin's death.

Eventually, D made regular deliveries to me again. I didn't lose touch with him during my move as I had planned. Crack is a difficult drug to let go of. He never encouraged me. He was just available and would usually deliver within 15 minutes of calling him. Sometimes it was longer, but he always came through when I called.

I opened an Internet page one day to a news article about D. It was an article with his whole real name, which I never knew, in the headlines. He shot the guy who had shot his cousin. Afterwards, he dropped the gun and waited for the police to come. He knew what he had done. He waited for the consequences.

D had a three-year-old son. He won't see his dad as he's growing up. D committed murder with a reason, but it was murder. He was in jail without parole. He'll be in prison a long time. That was the end of my crack smoking. I didn't have or want another connection.

By then Frank had been staying with me for a couple of years. He had an old house in an inner-city part of town. It was a three bedroom, with a formal dining room, plus a one-room cottage attached to the garage. He rented out the extra rooms in his house to construction laborers in the area to supplement his income. He never advertised but his home was always full up.

He smoked cigarettes and pot, and so did the guys in his house. Frank's cigarette habit and his lack of money changed his behavior. He saved his cigarette butt contents and he rolled his own cigarettes. That is the behavior of a person with a serious nicotine habit. One guy he rented to spent a lot of time in the bathroom. I asked if he'd noticed any bent spoons in his kitchen. He said he had, and I realized he had a heroin addict in his home. Frank made him move. He didn't want a heroin user in his home.

As time went on, the Mexicans he rented to started shooting heroin. These guys had become his friends, so he overlooked the problem. He was high on pot or drunk, or both, most of the time. When he was messed up, he wasn't responsible. He had gotten to the point that he was never responsible. His bills went unpaid.

Frank and I had parted ways several times before. This time we broke up for good. I was moving from my white brick apartment, and I needed to get him out of my life. I told him that I was done smoking crack, but he brought it over from his house anyhow. He would hand me a loaded crack pipe almost every time he came over. I couldn't refuse, and my life seemed to be going into the gutter. I couldn't shake his influence. This was not at all what my mother had planned.

Frank had his own mechanic's shop, but he didn't pay the rent, and he lost his shop when we had first gotten together. He had always worn a uniform, and when he wasn't working anymore, he dressed in really ratty looking clothes. He looked homeless. My mother would've wanted him to look better. When we went out of the house, we didn't look like we belonged together because I always dressed presentably. I got him some nice clothes on eBay. He dressed better but his attitude was one of homeless clothes. He didn't have the mind set of being at all responsible.

He lost his business for not paying the rent. He had a bookkeeper friend who kept his books for him. She died from what was probably a pain pill overdose. His financial stability ended with her death. They had been friends growing up. He said their last conversation wasn't pleasant. He always regretted what had happened to her, he missed her doing his books, and he missed her as a friend.

Frank was staying at my house most of the time. Every so often I got to the point that I couldn't stand him when he had been drinking. He was verbally abusive. He left himself open for an argument and I couldn't miss the opportunity to let him know what I really thought of him. Every few weeks he would go home to collect the rent and take care of his business at the house. Every few weeks he would come back to my house. His house was depressing, and there were responsibilities.

He fancied himself as a handy man. The washer went out, the water heater went out, and the electricity had a problem. He planned to fix everything, but somehow, he never got around to it. He spent most of his time smoking something. His renters had to take a cold shower in the winter. On the other hand, he took a shower at my house. He ate at my house. He slept at my house. He took up day residence in my garage where he always had some kind of project going. He was taking advantage of my good nature, and I let him. I couldn't find the heart to make him stay away. He was my excuse for not straightening up.

One night when he was at his house, Hugo, his renter, had him drive across town to score some rock. They stopped at a convenience store to get a beer on the way back. Frank had left the car running. When they went back to the car a few minutes later, the car was gone. Also, gone were his wallet, his driver's license, and the smart phone I had gotten for him a few weeks before. Several days later, the police found his driver's license on a man who had been hit and killed by a downtown DART train. The police contacted Frank's ex-wife, and they told her that he had been killed. That night his ex-wife and his daughter came to his house with the police to verify that he was dead. Frank was asleep but woke up to the noises on the street. He went outdoors in his boxer shorts, carrying a bat. His ex-wife seemed surprised that Frank wasn't dead. They were no longer in close touch. They had been divorced for 20 years, but Frank still loved her. They had children together, so Gweneva kept in touch with Frank. She knew his situation was not good, and she imagined that he was close to dead. She was only a few weeks off the mark.

Each of his renters had been paying $350 for a month of rent. At first, they paid it all at once. Then they were paying for two weeks at a time. Finally, Frank was letting them stay in his home in exchange for rock. He had no money for food, so I fed him. i ordered food from Amazon for him when he was gone from my house for several days. He got food from the food bank. His pants were falling off of him from all the weight he had lost. He looked like death warmed over.

When I moved from my white brick house to the apartment, I didn't tell Frank where I was moving. He knew I was moving but he didn't know where. He went to his house and stayed there because he finally understood that we were over.

In the throes of drunkenness Frank had told me that he intended to hide in my bushes and stab me in the neck with a screwdriver. The death threat happened when he was drunk, but the reality of his threat stuck with me. The plan was too detailed for me to ignore it.

The trust made arrangements for me to move from my house. Additionally, the rent on my house was going up $300 per month because of a tax increase the homeowner had been hit with. I realized that I needed to make a change for several reasons.

The trust arranged for "Two Men and a Truck" to move my possessions from the white brick house to my new apartment. I had a professional organizer help arrange my possessions before my move. I told him to trash everything in the garage because I would have no room for the garage contents in the apartment. The organizer threw away everything in the garage. I was broken hearted. I thought he would use some discretion in throwing things out, but he took me at my word. When I realized what he had done, I followed him through the house saying, "You killed Christmas." This was a emotional bipolar response to the situation. I couldn't stop telling him what he had done. He packed up his belongings and left in five minutes. My Christmas tree and ornaments were gone. I had nothing left to celebrate the season.

During the day of my move, the assistant trust manager stayed at my new apartment and directed where the furniture and boxes should go. I had given her an overview of where I wanted things, and she did a good job of settling me into my new home. I was, once again, unpacking boxes for some time. I had lost my pain doctor because I had cocaine in a blood test. I had to use over the counter pain meds, aspirin, Tylenol and Advil. My back still hurt.


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