Free I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive by Steve Earle Page A

he encounters notice only an incongruous chill, it being a typical sunny South Texas November morning, but they shake it off and go on about their business. There are those lost souls with one foot already in the grave who perceive a shadow falling across their paths, but they shrug it off as too much of this or too little of that and stumble along to their doom. Hank can see them, all right, and worse, he can hear them, whining and crying like babies about nothing, but he can't make them hear him no matter how hard he tries. Only Doc can hear Hank, and Doc's nowhere to be found.
    Hank's having one hell of a time keeping up with Doc since he's taken to pretending that he doesn't hear him when he calls. Laying off the dope some too, not that he's taken the cure. He's a hophead to the bone, Doc, but lately he's not hitting the old medicine like he used to do. Just dibs and dabs to keep sickness away. Hank knows that the higher Doc gets, the better he listens, and more than anything else, the dead want to be heard.
    So Hank just keeps searching, up and down the street, eaten from the inside out with rage; not the white-hot, short-lived kind that exorcises lesser demons and affords a body some kind of relief, but the slow-burning, festering strain that neither time nor distance can ever heal. He checks all of the traps, over and over again. Doc's not in his room or at his usual table or anywhere in between. When Hank comes to the railroad track and tries to cross over, he discovers, to his horror, that without Doc to hitch on to, the other side's closed to him now.
    That's the last straw. Doc's given Hank the slip and gone off somewhere he can't follow. Hank throws back his head and he opens his mouth. And nothing comes out. Nothing at all.

VII
    That night Marge, Dallas, Doc, and Graciela gathered around the TV in the boarding-house parlor and watched the coverage of the day's events on the ten o'clock news.
    "I thought I saw you for a second there, Marge!" insisted Dallas. "You was way in the back and there was some kind of a shadow across your face but I'd swear it was you. I'd know that big ol' head of yours anywhere!" Marge snorted and Doc chuckled and excused himself.
    "I reckon I'll turn in early tonight. We've all had a big day and I could do with a good night's sleep."

    It wasn't to be.
    Just after midnight somebody banged on his door.
    "Who is it?" Doc called. From the other side a female voice answered, soft and hoarse, obviously in distress. "It's me, Doc! Helen-Anne!"
    "Coming!" Doc said, but Graciela, whose cot was a step closer to the door, got there first.
    When she opened the door, a statuesque redhead stood there. She was speaking, the words interspersed with sniffs and sobs, but Graciela understood only the tears. One arm around the taller woman's waist, she guided her to a chair and offered a handful of tissue, which was gratefully accepted.
    Helen-Anne said she was in trouble again and that there was just no way she could have another baby. Her elderly parents were already raising her little boy and they were barely getting by on her daddy's disability and whatever she could manage to wire home. Like most of the girls on South Presa, Helen-Anne had two habits to support, her own and her boyfriend's, but she had managed to scrape together all but about twenty dollars of Doc's fee, which she offered to let him take out in trade. Doc declined and told her not to worry about it.
    "You got any dope, honey?"
    "Yeah, Doc, I had a pretty good weekend so I bought a
quarta
last night; how much you need?"
    "It's not for me!" Doc chuckled. "I'm fine, but you're going to need a good lick. But not too much, now. I don't want you going out on me. Uh, you best get out of that nice dress first. You got a nightgown or something you can put on?"
    "I'm sure I can scare up somethin', Doc," offered Dallas, who had suddenly materialized in the open door blinking and yawning, with Marge right behind her looking more than a little