Back on the Edge
In Los Angeles, Barbara rented a room and started working the bars along Hollywood Boulevard and its environs. She worked alone, freelancing, but over time got to know some of the bartenders, and let it be known that if they threw a little business her way, she would always slip them a few bucks for their trouble.
One such bartender that she particularly liked was Henry Graham, a somewhat bland-faced man with thick, wavy hair that started far up on his forehead. She began to see him after work and he introduced her to drugs for the first time.
"We messed around with some marijuana and some laudanum pills I got from a doctor," Graham admitted years later in an interview about Barbara. But drug use wasn't the worst thing Henry Graham introduced Barbara to; that dubious distinction went to a balding ex-convict with jug ears named Emmett Perkins.
Emmett, Henry told Barbara, ran a couple of illegal poker and dice games in El Monte, a tacky little suburb about eight miles east of Los Angeles. Barbara could make some easy money by shilling for Perkins; taking her pickups out for a little gambling before she took them home for playtime. Barbara naturally thought it sounded like a good deal. Henry took her out to meet Perkins and the arrangement was made.
In the coming months, Barbara and Henry got to be pretty cozy, began living together, and eventually decided to marry. When she became Mrs. Henry Graham, it was Barbara's fourth marriage. Soon after she settled down with Henry, Barbara became pregnant. Early in 1952, at the age of 28, Barbara Graham gave birth to her third son. She named him Thomas James Graham, calling him Tommy.
Dope City
After he became a father, Henry Graham seemed to slip a couple of steps down life's ladder. He was a good bartender, but he couldn't seem to keep a job.
The fact that he had escalated from laudanum pills and marijuana to heroin might have been the reason. Plus, he probably figured, he didn't really have to work anyway since he set Barbara up with Emmett Perkins; she was back doing well shilling for him, as well as hustling a little on her own on the side. They were doing all right -- or so he imagined.
But the stress was all on Barbara: the stress of earning the living, the stress of seeing that Tommy was cared for when she was out, the stress of staying out of the hands of the law (they were after her for violating her perjury probation by writing a few checks on accounts she didn't have; she paid the doctor who delivered Tommy with a bad check).
Occasionally, when the pressure of her nervous life got to be too much for her, Barbara would ask Henry for a short pop of his heroin and he would give her one. Convinced, as people always are, that she could "handle it," Barbara began to look forward to her stress attacks so that she would have an excuse to ask Henry for "a little relief." And the short pops turned into longer ones, until the time came when the last needle mark in her arm hadn't healed before the next one was made. Barbara had joined Henry in dope city. She had become a full-blown junkie, with a hypodermic needle and spoon in her purse at all times, just like her cigarettes and lipstick.
Dopers do well together as long as there's enough stuff to go around. But when the supply begins to dwindle, nerves tense up and suspicions rise. Weren't there four caps left' Did you use an extra one' You son of a bitch, get a goddamned job and buy your own! Don't touch my stash again!
Henry's habit was deeper and wider than Barbara's; he had been at it longer. It got to the point that Barbara's stash was not safe anywhere; the minute she left the house or went to sleep, Henry found it and got it into his arm fast enough that he would be high when she found out and started screaming at him. With enough heroin in him, even Barbara's shrieks sounded like whispers in a breeze.
But Barbara wasn't the sort to put up with such flagrant disregard of her property rights. One day she took all the dope in the place, all the money, a few clothes, and walked out. She went straight to the little house that Emmett Perkins rented in El Monte.
"I left Hank and the kid, Perk," she said. "Can I crash here for a while'"
"Why, sure, doll, sure," Perkins said. "Come on in. Stay as long as you like."
Ferret-faced Emmett's mouth must have been watering. He had always had a craving for Barbara.
No comments:
Post a Comment