I Have a Daymare

Wilmington, Delaware, Summer 1988

His foot crushed another vial. The sound of the cracking glass did not faze him as he walked through this daymare. He picked up his pace and ran away from the walking dead, essentially. Young kids brought dollars into their pockets from the sales. All Dr. Horace Best wanted to do centered on visiting with his father. He looked distinguished like a minister wearing all black. He was forty-three-years-old. With the degrees to his name, one in oncology the other in psychology, he earned a doctorate in both studies. Hands reached out to him and attempted to grasp his black skin. He kept marching on to his childhood home. Once he reached his destination, the smell of crack smoke hung in the broad daylight. It smelled like the mixture of chemicals and burning plastic of the famous Delaware companies that pumped out plastic products.

He knocked on the door. His father answered clutching a baseball bat. He looked left then right and then invited his son into his home.

“It’s getting horrific out there,” Pearson Best remarked. His tallish figure and natural dark brown hair with flecks of gray made him look younger than his seventy-two years.

“I know. How are you, though?”

Pearson shrugged. “What can you do? This whole country’s going to hell. That drug does something to people, makes them into animals.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve been able to just go a few blocks from where I parked and I’ve taken in a hell scape that is like smelling death. In fact, I think I actually smelled the dead body of one of the people out there. It could’ve been the crack, though,” Dr. Best explained.

“You’ll be back right?”

“That’s right, Pop. It will be a recurring thing for me to visit you since you and mom split,” Dr. Best reassured.

“Every time I think about Dr. King’s dream, I think that twenty years have passed since his death and it has become a complete daymare out there,” Pearson acknowledged.

“That’s the sad part. It’s a failure for everyone involved over the age of twenty.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m going to keep coming back and just brave the addicts and the pushers. That’s what I’m going to do to make sure you’re alright.”

“I appreciate it, son,” Pearson replied. His voice seemed strong and stiff as corn liquor, as if he didn’t need his son to visit but invited his company nevertheless.

“I’m going to keep coming and you stay safe and cool in this heat,” Dr. Best instructed his father.

“I know,” Pearson grinned and let out a little chuckle.

“So, I’ll be back next week.”

“Okay.”

As Dr. Best left, he moved to his car, he found it intact and he entered it. He couldn’t, however, just drive off right away. He looked at the scene…fathers hunched over glowing pipes, young men walking around in a daze with no care for their posture, their spirit, their morals. When he finally sped off he took care to ensure that he had enough stomach to return and to one day get his father out of that house.

NEXT WEDNESDAY

The same daymarish scene caused Dr. Best to sprint to his father’s walkup.

“Pop, we’ve got to get you out of here,” he implored.

“No, I’m not going. Let them go. Let them leave this place. I bought this house in 1947. Nothing’s going to turn me around from living here. I appreciate the suggestion, but I’m staying here no matter how rough it gets.”

Dr. Best opened up the window. “It’s in the middle of the day and we have open hand-to-hand transactions. Look right there…” Pearson looked away in a snap. “There’s a pistol toting youngster about to blow the brains out of rival competition.”

“I’ve seen worse. This is nothing like my time in the Pacific.”

“This place is becoming a war zone. But this doesn’t have to be your home. I can build you a place in Newark.”

“I’m not going to Newark. I’m living right here in Wilmington where I was born and where I’m going to die.”

Dr. Best shook his head and made a slight grin. “You’re going to want to move when one of these people comes rushing through the backdoor.”

“I’m still good with my slugger.” He pointed to the bat in the corner.

“They’ve got guns, now. Big ones. The kind you used in combat all those years ago.”

“Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Dr. Best took in his father’s rhetoric. “I’m still going to visit. I’m just making sure you’re alright.”

“I’m alright...alright?” he chuckled. A smile crossed Best’s face. He got up to leave.

“Son?”

“What is it, Pop?”

“I need to run to the store to pick up some brew.”

“You stay here, I’ll go get it for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be back.”

Dr. Best felt the heat of the day. The sun baked the area in the summer sizzle. Everything around him seemed dire and filled with despair. Black minds that could still be entrepreneurs in medicine or thinkers in great halls of study traded these ideals for a sale of illicit substances and crack stems. This hurt Dr. Best’s spirit. The blistering heat was no match for the stifling understanding of how this happened to a generation of human beings. He drove off with anger clouding his mind but grace also there to clarify. He reached the store and came back with the beer. With a simple wave, he let his father know he’d see him next week.

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY

When he reached the house, he knocked on the door. No answer. He went to a pay phone and dialed the number to his father’s home. No answer. He rolled around to the back of the house and noticed the door ajar. He quickly entered the home and found his father dead. The home invasion looked like a struggle and that his father might have had a few blows to his credit but he had sustained gunshot wounds. The TV had been stolen. Dr. Best held his mouth and struck his forearm against the doorjamb. Once the responders had arrived, the place looked ghoulishly vacant. Glass in the street along with the red, purple, clear, blue, and green tops littered the area. Like a kaleidoscope of drug paraphernalia, such items seemed to clutter Dr. Best’s mind. He tried to focus on reality as the police asked questions, he saw his father carried away in the coroner’s van.

He told the cops all that he knew based on the limited amount of knowledge he could understand. During the motions of exchanging what he had previously experienced, he felt wings burst through his back. He stepped forward and took flight. He looked over the city. West Side, East Side, North Side, and Southbridge all registered on his mind’s radar screen. He peered at all of the hustlers and the users scurrying about the city. The businessmen Downtown rushing to go to the various banks in Wilmington seemed like a brief salve given the fact that his father had expired. Dr. Best flew all around the town and followed the trail of the coroner’s van to the funeral home. He flew down to the ground and landed. With each step closer to the vehicle he felt pangs of sadness and regret. “What if I had just moved him out of there earlier?” He thought of something different. This daymare appeared to be interwoven into his psyche as the men wheeled his father into the building.

The wings disappeared. The darkness outside reminded him it was morning. He looked at his alarm clock buzzing “3:00.” Of course he would have this horrid dream during the day. Everything he sensed, the smells, the taste of death, the sound of the crackling rock cocaine, the sight of emaciated mothers with their babies clinging to them, the feel of the imperious sun on his back made him reach for his phone.

“Hey, Pop.”

“It’s early, Horace.”

“I know, Pop. I know.”