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Member
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 18
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Does this work...????
Pink Medicine
By Austin J. Hubert
“Alright, Jones,” The first doctor yelled from the backroom, “Dim those lights and bring that nigger in here!”
The assistant, whose name was Johns and not Jones, corrected the doctor by way of a polite yell. “Sir, my name is Johns! J-O-H-N-S! Not Jones!” He stood overwhelm by indignant pride and looked back to where the doctors waited in a back room preparing beakers and test tubes to document for their superiors. Johns wore a stereotypic white lab coat which he himself cleaned and pressed each evening upon arriving at his small and cozy apartment, and of which he only had one and viewed as a symbol of the curiosity and intelligence of man. In the afternoons after class he would fastidiously button his coat over his street garb; a light tan almost white heavily pressed button down tucked into heavier starched khaki pants, and head off to the Free Clinic. The creased cuff of the pants met at a pair of very sensible and shined penny loafers. The lab coat served as a shield to conceal his dress from the secretive office experiments, and added sense of mystique as he travel about the small Alabama town causing the locals to refer to him as doctor. Although upset, by the first doctors misnomer, Johns remained very calm at the door of the Free Clinic’s entrance. He closed it gently behind him and drew the shade against the image of three obsequiously quiet and hooded black ruffians going off into the night. When they had been inside the clinic, Johns noted that they were outfitted completely in black and strangely -- this he noted was not a stereotype, they all look alike, right down to their skin tone, and he realized that they were brothers; triplets. They wore black gloves, black pants, and black hoods that matched heavily shined black steel-toed work boots, and all three had the same muscular build, polite mannerisms and hair style of thick tight knots which they did not appear to comb but must have styled in some way or another because all of the tiny sprouts coming up from their heads were independent of the others and gave the sense of chaotic order. Johns noted that each member of the triptych had an identical quarter sized spot of blood on his left boot and at different intervals throughout his conversation with them, he found at least one of the three systematically rubbing the boot across the back of the opposite pant leg, obsessing over the spot as maniacally as a Lady Macbeth. It was when all three raised their boots in unison in an attempt to get out the damned spot that Johns, became worried.
Johns had respectfully requested that they deposit the very large and very drunk volunteer in the back where the other doctors waited, but they in turn had respectfully declined. The progressive thinking white doctor became more nervous in there company than they were in his and didn’t seem to realize that no amount of cordiality would get the three to venture into the back room of the Free Clinic at night or any other time. Moreover, since Johns had made the mistake of paying them too quickly, they felt unanimously, and this they show with the nod of their heads to each other, against staying any longer or moving their victim any further than were he lay. The older of the triplets presented this to the researcher in a polite manner. He took off his hood -- putting Johns only slightly more at ease -- and uttered, “We brought ya da fellah you said signed dem papers, and are sorry that we can be of no mo service to ya, Suh, but moving him like furniture from one part of dis place to the other wern’t part of da deal.”
“Damn it, Jones, where are you.” The second doctor said in jest mocking both his partner and the young assistant. He felt tired and hoped to get home before his wife fell asleep. He’d promised her he’d arrive early tonight in hopes of performing more husbandry duties than the required providing for his family.
Johns dimmed the lights of the yellow spackled waiting room and peeked through the shade of the Free Clinic’s door. He was a bit perturbed at the doctors now, but more especially the Negroes he watched over his glasses and through the blinds fade into the night. He spoke to no one in particular, but loud enough for the two doctors in the backroom to hear him as he moved towards the drunk Negro carpeting the middle of a squared army of orange and white vinyl upholstered chairs framed in cheap aluminum, and a cheap wooden side table that stood as a lone general loaded with magazines titled Ebony, and Negro Life whose pages were filled with some of the most beautiful women that Johns had had the pleasure of surreptitiously taking an issue back to his quiet apartment to peruse. He was perplexed by much of the advertising and hadn’t heard the term “Conk” before and doubted seriously that anything such as bleaching cream existed. However, though the articles were interesting, what he enjoyed most were the pictures. He thumbed one of the magazines while looking at the volunteer who lay helpless and hapless before him. “I have repeatedly reminded these gentlemen that my name is Johns and not Jones.” He bent and squatted over the volunteer several times to position himself for his task. Tugging and lifting, pulling and nudging, yet the seemingly lifeless body did not budge. “Yet they persist in their idiotic malaprops.” The volunteer did however stir and nestle to the comfort of the cold floor as if Johns were addressing him. Johns eventually stood to glance skyward, elbow in hand and hand on cheek a la Jack Benny to Rochester, not to scold, but rather contemplate his career and the moral principles of having to drag a volunteer to where he needed him. He finally bent straddled over the Negro and with all his strength raised him up, saying, “Gentlemen, I need some help in here. Can one of you...” At which point the body sprang to life and made his move running to the door.
The two doctors listened. There was an awkward pause and the sound of a scuffle. Then in a muffled, almost whiny voice Johns screamed, “He won’t come!”
The second doctor glanced at the first and laughed. His body writhed like a giant carp out of water with such a burst of laughter that it made his movements youthful and relaxed and one hardly noticed the heavy bags under his eyes of accumulated years of moonlighting to get his last son of three through college. He had an athletic face. Except for the wearing away of time and work filled nights. It had character and held a hard and chiseled look that had won him his wife’s hand when they were in college. His face did not resemble a researcher’s at all. His wife liked that. She often feigned enthusiastically to friends that she was not sure what exactly he did. None of which stopped her from reporting over tea one day that Charles is a scientist for the government. Though I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’m quite ignorant in regards to his business affairs, which is understandable, I feel, since I’ve dutifully been home all these years to raise the boys and keep them cultured for our return to the city. By city she meant Atlanta. You know, we’ve put two out of three of the boys UGA and little Anthony shall be graduating in another two springs, in addition to that since neither they nor I have ever wanted for anything; Charles being such a good provider, there appear no need to concern herself with what her husband actually did. She would have liked to get out more having grown up in Atlanta and frequented shows and other things that one could not find in small southern towns, but of course did not want to jeopardize her husbands lively hood. In her heart she hated Alabama. “Will one of you please help me?”
The first doctor laughed now too. His name was Fred Gerling and though he was not so handsome and had a haggard almost weather beaten look to him, he was he was much younger than the second doctor. Laughter did not suit him. He had been divorced twice and was childless. He hated Alabama and his job and his wives and thanked god that he didn’t have any children because he believed secretly in his heart that he would hate them too. He did not hate the first doctor however, Charlie Spikes, whose home he had frequented often for dinner with Clara and her sons for as long as he could remember. Charlie was a good friend who Fred envied in a good way. Fred did not know it, but was secretly in love with Charlie’s wife and the life he had, the boys included. It didn’t matter to Fred that Charlie had to moonlight to maintain the world he so envied, Fred only knew that he saw it as ideal. Fred lived in a small apartment not much bigger than Johns’ and cooked his meals over a hotplate unless he was invited to Charlie’s for dinner, which happened at least twice out of the week. He screamed back to the assistant. “I don’t give a fuck what your name is son, just get ‘em in here.”
When Johns came into the room, he held his head back and tilted it so that his nose did not drip any more blood onto his lab coat. His glasses barely clung to his face and were bent horribly so that one end tilted up and the other down. Luckily, his shirt and pants had not been stained during the incident and he would be able to wear them another day after a good pressing. His shoes however had spots of blood on them and would need to be shined. The doctors left the room in a fit of hysterics. After some time, Johns sat against the cold aluminum counter of the research area, holding his head back and wondering why he had to put up with any of this. He thought about traveling. “I’ll go all over the world.” He thought about his experiments brewing back in the cold recesses of his kitchen pantry. “I’ll show Dr. Vonderlehr some of my experiments.”
When the doctors came back into the room they both looked their age, though they hid their discomfort by laughing louder and poking and bragging about each others prowess in subduing the volunteer. Fred dropped his part and the head thumped like lumber hitting a patch of wet earth. “What number was that, Johns?” He roared finally getting the name right.
“T-50, sir.” Johns said, shocked that he had been addressed properly and the back of his spine tingling a bit from the sound the volunteer’s head made hitting the floor. “The last one until next week.”
“Good! That’s the last I wanna see of these coons ‘til the projects over.” Fred kicked the body and it twisted around his foot. He kneeled and pushed the Negro’s face into the floor, then held the lifeless arms while the second doctor prepare the needle. “Come on, Charlie. Go ahead and hit him already.” Charlie gave the injection and when he finished, Fred said to Johns. “Jones,” The doctors slapped each other on the back and laughed, “Get that stinking mess out of here. I believe he shit hisself when I dropped him.” The doctors laughed again.
“And Jones,” Charlie added, be sure and get that paper work done tonight and order some more of the aspirin for the day nurse will you. We’re on a deadline here. There’s an incinerator out back to burn everything we don’t need from this batch and try to be a little low key will you Jonesy, no one’s supposed to know about this.”
One day, Johns thought. One day I’ll have my own project and funding and I’ll get more guinea pigs than fifty lousy niggers.
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Austin J. Hubert
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