Season of the Witch by Timothy C. Phillips Read Free Book Online

can’t get it. It’ll be damn hard, I know. You’ll need somewhere to go where Big Daddy and his thugs can’t find you. Do you want to do that?”
    “I . . . yes, I do. So bad . . .” Her shoulders fell and her voice faded.
    “Is there anyone who could help you? Here in the city, I mean. Not part of the drug scene. Staying in this place is out of the question. You’ll never get clean as long as Steve’s in your life.”
    “There may be a place I could go.”
    “Someplace where there are no drugs?”
    “I know a girl who’s straight now. She’s married, with a kid. She and I used to be close; we both . . . you know, saw people for Big Daddy. She might put me up.” She wiped her eyes as she spoke. I saw how quickly the tears were drying, and the strength returning to her face. She had probably gotten used to crying since she had come to Birmingham.
    Lena spoke suddenly in a low voice, a voice that seemed oddly disconnected, distant, objective, like a medium channeling her own dead soul.
    “It was Steve who introduced me to Big Daddy, and he was the one who got me involved in drugs.”
    This statement would have seemed surreal had I not known whom she meant. Ricardo Lorenzo, possibly the greasiest, scummiest little man in a part of the city that overflowed with greasy, scummy little men. Big Daddy ran the houses in the Zone and provided desperate young women to the homemade pornography industry that ran in the basements there. All made possible with the marvelous miracle of heroin, which he dispensed in ever growing volume, until he had grown into a mythical figure, a giant saccharine sandman that blanked out the minds and self-respect of his hapless clientele as though he were wiping chalk scribbling from a kindergarten blackboard.
    “I know Big Daddy.” Was all that I said.
    “I don’t guess you think too much of me,” she whispered. “But you don’t know how it is.”
    “I know how it is, Lena. I . . . I spent a long time in a bottle.”
    She looked up at me, and almost smiled. “You?” Her voice was skeptical.
    “Yeah, me. I was never a saint, but I once could have a beer or two with the boys. Not any more, though. I stayed too drunk for too long. It’s nice to meet someone who’s surprised by the idea. Most people remember me the way I was.”
    “Which was?”
    “Drunk. All of the time.”
    “For how long?”
    “Over two years. I lost a lot of good things. Wife, house, career. You know. Everything, basically.”
    She smiled at me, and moved over next to me. “And you . . . got better?”
    “Yeah, but it wasn’t easy. An alcoholic is never cured. You can’t really be, not when you are constantly confronted by the drug you’re addicted to. I can never have a beer with the guys again, not one. I can never drink a toast at a wedding. Sometimes not drinking is the hardest thing in the world. But I know that if I do drink again, my life, the one I have now, and any life that I ever will have, is over. I might as well go sit in front of the liquor store with my hand out.”
    Which is where I very nearly ended up last time.
    She looked down. I thought for a few minutes that I had offended her. Maybe hanging out in front of the liquor store didn’t seem like such a bad occupation when you were selling your body to strangers. But every kind of addiction has its own private hell. Sometimes it isn’t easy to empathize with someone else’s.
    “I hope that you don’t mind, but since I’m being so nosey already, I was wondering about the scar. How did you get it?” She blushed a little, but her eyes looked like they had in the photograph, dark and full of wonder. She then nervously reached up and traced the scar on my face with her fingertips.
    My hand went reflexively to the crescent-shaped scar that ran from the corner of my right eye to the corner of my mouth. Our hands touched briefly; her face reddened slightly. A powerful feeling came over me, and I remembered the feel of the knife in my