Page 13 of Jealous of the Clouds
“Okay.” A jolt was coming.
“My real name is Karl Baker.”
I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything to me,” I said, even though alarms were clanging in the back of my mind. The namedidsound familiar, but I couldn’t quite reach why.
“Karl Baker,” he repeated. He looked to me for some recognition of the name, I suppose. When I didn’t give him any, he leaned a little forward and went on, “Baker?” He drew in a deep breath, looked down at the table, and then back up at me. He raised his eyebrows in question. “I was Reggie Baker’s older brother.” His eyes shimmered. He pressed his hands to them for a moment, then peered back at me.
My jaw dropped. The world tilted on its access, just a little bit.
Chapter 6
Podcast transcript, “Meat Locker: Cold Cases” Episode No. 44
True Crime Audio Presents: The Case of the Unsolved Hate Crime
(Opening Credits and intro music)
Bailey Anderson, Host: And now, dear listeners, it’s time for me to come clean.
You see, I have a vested interest in the murder of Reginald Baker, unlike any interest I’ve had in other cases I’ve covered on this show.
Reginald Baker’s death, for me, was personal.
And heartbreaking.
Bailey Anderson is the name I use for this podcast. The use of a pseudonym was never meant to be deceptive, but simply as a way to separate my private life from my public one.
But now, I see no reason not to reveal my truth, since it is very much a part of this season ofMeat Locker.
I’m Reginald Baker’s brother, Karl. Reggie was my baby brother, eleven years my junior. And with this episode, I want to tell you a little more about him, from my perspective as a brother and grieving loved one.
Reggie was always my baby.
We grew up poor in the foothills of the Appalachians, in the little town of Newell, West Virginia, on the Ohio River. Its biggest claim to fame is the fact that it’s home to Homer Laughlin, manufacturer of the famed Fiesta Ware.
But I digress…
Reggie and I grew up more like mother and child than brother and brother. My mom worked in the color room atHomer Laughlin, dipping plates and other pottery in various glazes before they went to the kiln. It was hard, on-your-feet labor, and she often came home too exhausted to do much more for her two kids than whip up a batch of tuna fish salad for us and collapse on the couch.
Our dad died of a heart attack when he was forty-three. I was twelve and little Reggie was still in Pampers.
Guess who picked up the slack raising him? Yours truly. But I’m not complaining. He was a godsend. He was the savior I didn’t know I needed in my teenage years. I was the underweight, acne-ridden, bookish kid no one at school deigned to talk to. I wasn’t teased. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t anything.
I was invisible.
That is, until I came home to Reggie. Oh, that kid was a lifeline for this lonely boy. He was a powerhouse of manic energy and I kept up with him, reading him stories, inventing games, taking him for hikes in the nearby wooded hills. We’d disappear for hours.
When he was of school age, I supervised him getting his homework done. I saw to it that he made friends and wasn’t like his older brother. I chewed him out if he got a B on his report card, made him ice cream sundaes if he brought home all A’s. I watched him play Little League and, in the fall, Pop Warner Football.
It broke my heart when he graduated high school. I had a lot of trouble hiding my tears at his graduation. I was both swept up in pride and grief as I watched him walk across the stage to claim his diploma.
Graduation represented a turning point. Big changes, not all welcome, waited just around the corner. I like to think that, partly because of my influence, he did so well. Reggie was class valedictorian and a remarkable cross-country runner. He had his pick of scholarships based both on need and on his prowess.
He picked DePaul University in Chicago because, he told me, it was in a big city and he longed for big city life.
It wasn’t until he got settled in Chicago that I realizedwhyhe craved that big city life so much—he was gay.
I never saw it coming, but you can bet, after a tiny period of adjustment, I was the most devout cheerleader for him and the gay community that’s ever been seen. No PFLAG dad was ever more supportive.
