The Cure

by Athol Dickson

  Long after the girl had left the building Riley Keep stared at the fuzzy shapes beyond the stockroom window. Then he remembered where he was and what he should be doing. He took a deep breath and pushed the swinging door and passed into a world where some might think they saw him clearly even though he was nothing but a ghost.

  With the hesitation of a blind man in an unfamiliar room he went stoop-shouldered down the aisle until he found the proper spot. He knelt to get the box unpacked and merchandised like Henry the pharmacist and part-time pastor told him he should do, but he was not really there, not really doing what it seemed. His glimpse of Bree had unleashed a relentless avalanche, tumbling memories of appalling failures rolling over him all that morning and afternoon, right up until five o’clock had come and gone, crushing Riley down into himself so deeply that he could not notice what had happened, not until that night when he lay down on a musty mattress in the homeless shelter after a meager supper of chicken soup and freeze-dried mashed potatoes and it suddenly occurred to him he did not have the empty caved-in feeling anymore, not even just a little. In fact, although the landslide of Riley Keep’s pathetic history still threatened to bury him, he had not even thought about a drink all day. The enormity of that was unbelievable, so at first he told himself there must be some mistake, but he thought about it long into the night and no matter how he turned it in his mind, in the end it really did seem he was completely, inexplicably, and astonishingly cured.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WILLA NEWDALE PASSED A STAINLESS LADLE underneath the faucet of the three-compartment sink, scalding her right hand. With a cry of pain she dropped the ladle and jerked her hand back from the water. She crossed to the freezer, shaking her head with frustration, and removed a small chunk of ice to soothe her wound. Willa knew she couldn’t last much longer. She had not slept in forty hours. She had no place to sleep, unless it was out on the streets like those she could not save. She had given her own bed to the man with delirium tremens last night. She had no choice. She could not let him go on screaming in the bunk room while the others listened from their places on the temporary cots and bunks and floor, all of them aware his fate might well be theirs the next night or the next. Four of them had carried the man up to her tiny room on the second floor and laid him in her narrow bed and then returned below in blessed peace and quiet, leaving her to sit and hold his sweating hand all night with impotent frustration.

  When a drunk was that far gone she could do nothing more than give him lorazepam to control the seizures and keep him warm and sheltered. She could no longer even do that much for most. There were just too many now. And because she had let things come to this, last week one of them had died. Right there in her shelter, right there in the one place where the poor soul should have been safe, she had let him sit down on the laundry floor and die.

  Now on top of everything, it was time to go. Every morning and evening she watched the news on television, expecting an announcement. She was surprised it had not come. Probably they did not yet believe, but they soon would, and when they understood the truth she should be far from here. She simply had to go—her life depended on it—but she couldn’t seem to take the final step.

  Who would care for all these poor, dear, helpless people?

  Leaning on the counter as the pain began to rise beneath the ice, Willa’s hard brown eyes shed tears again. They did this against her will. Always resolute in front of witnesses, she could not seem to stop her private weeping. To come so far, endure so much and wait so long, only to see the filthy drunken face of failure as she had last week, to have that man walk in and prove with his degenerate condition that her dream would be forever incomplete, to see the other one dead on the floor . . . what else could she do but weep? She could not make space and food and soap and clothes from out of nothing. She had to sleep sometime. She was not God Almighty, even if she had presumed to act as his right arm. If there had been any strength at all, in the end it had been his. She herself was shamefully weak, unable to wait until the proper moment, unable to postpone deliverance as the Lord so often postponed justice. She had lately learned a new kind of respect for her creator. To hold peace in your hand and yet withhold it for a higher good was a discipline she simply could not match.

  The ice had nearly melted into nothing when she heard someone running down the hall outside the kitchen. No one ever ran inside the shelter unless there was a problem. No one had the energy. Willa wiped her eyes with her good hand and went to meet the trouble.

  In the hall she heard excited voices from the men’s bunk room. She paused outside it, peering through the doorway. Several men stood clustered in a far corner, all of them turned away from her, their attention clearly captured by something or someone Willa couldn’t see. “Take your time, take your time” came a secretive voice from deep within the closeness of their huddle. “I think there’s enough for everyone.”

  Suspecting drugs or booze, Willa Newdale stepped closer to the gang of homeless men. It did not cross her mind to fear them, not when she had lived so long in fear of so much worse.

  “Careful!” said the same voice, louder this time. “You’ll spill it!”

  Willa thought about her options. She could charge right in between them, surprise them in the hope of getting to the bottom of the situation before anyone could pocket whatever they were using. But she knew her chance of laying eyes on it was slim. These were masters of concealment, world-class magicians who could make a mountain of crack cocaine or a sea of booze vanish in a second. Besides, she was too tired. Her heart and mind were willing but her body didn’t have the strength, so instead of breaking up the party she settled wearily on a bunk beside the door and watched.

  Desire so totally consumed them that they did not even notice. She listened with a heavy heart as their voices echoed from a damned place deep beneath the surface of the world. Willa Newdale believed in hell with the total certainty of a woman who had been there.

  “Hey, I told you just a little! That’s all it takes.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Seriously, that’s enough. Pass it on.”

  “You sure this stuff works?”

  “Did for me.”

  “How long does it take to kick in?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Like I said, I passed out.”

  She saw one of them—a very small man, almost childlike—lean into the huddle, and heard a sudden snorting intake of breath and then some chuckling. “Ha. What a rush. Ha ha.”

  “That’s not how you do it.”

  The little man said, “What?”

  “Put it in your mouth.”

  A pause and then the tiny laughing man said, “Ha. Thanks, man. Ha ha.”

  “Tastes funny. Like candy.”

  “Hey! Come on, man, gimme some.”

  They went on like this for maybe five more minutes and then, “I guess that’s all.”

  “Everybody get some?”

  “Yeah, man. Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “So . . . I don’t feel nothin’.”

  “Give it time.”

  “How long?”

  “I keep tellin’ you I don’t know.”

  They began to peel away from the huddle in ones and twos. A man saw Willa sitting in the shadows. To her surprise he did not pretend shame. He simply looked the other way, crossed to a bunk and lay down fully clothed. She waited as the others milled around, wondering who would be revealed as the ringleader when the last of them had moved back from the corner of the room. She thought she remembered who had used that bunk the past few nights, but could not be sure. She waited, hating the thought of sending someone out into the cold, but knowing she would have no other choice. Willa could not have this in her shelter.

  Now there were only three of them across the room. When one of those stepped aside and at last she saw him, her heart sank. She knew who he was, all right. He called himself “Livingston” and hid behind that ridiculous long beard and hair, but she knew who he
was, and he was the last of them that she would want to send into the cold.

  She sighed. He had brought such great disappointment to her when he came; she should have known he would leave it with her when he went. Standing up, she called the name he had been using. “Stanley.”

  He smiled at her. It was surprising. Surely he could see what had to happen now.

  “Get your stuff and come with me,” she said.

  He rose from his bunk. With an aching heart she led him down the hallway toward the lobby.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You got to go.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know the rules. You got to go.”

  “What for?”

  Willa shook her head with disappointment. Would he insult her intelligence on top of everything else? “No second chance on bringing dope in here.”

  “I don’t do drugs.”

  “I was there the whole time. I saw everybody passing it around.”

  “That wasn’t dope.”

  “Don’t disrespect me.”

  “I’m telling you that wasn’t any kind of drugs. Nothing you’d care about, anyway.”

  In spite of herself, this interested her. “All right. What was it, then?”

  He looked away. Up to then he had been looking right down at her, his eyes direct and piercing, but now he looked away. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “You can either tell me everything or get out of here right now.”

  He looked at the front door. She figured it was maybe twenty-five degrees outside and falling. She knew what she was doing; she knew what it meant, and hated it, but it simply must be done. He looked back at her, looked right at her eyes. “It was a cure for drinking.”

  It took everything she had to stand steady. “There’s no such thing.”

  “There is. I took it, and I don’t want a drink anymore.”

  As the fear rose up she said, “Show me.”

  He seemed reluctant as he dug his hand into a pocket. “I just gave it all away.”

  “Get out of here, then.”

  “Hang on.” He was still digging in the pocket of his baggy trousers. He pulled out a plastic bag and gave it to her. “There might be a little left.”

  She took the bag with a sinking feeling. It was an ordinary plastic bag, the kind you might get at any grocery store for sandwiches. In it was a tiny bit of white powder that could have been anything. There was only one way to be sure. She rubbed a callused finger on the inside of the bag and put the finger in her mouth. She tasted something much like chocolate. So it was not cocaine or speed or heroin or anything like that. It was instead the end of yet another chapter in her life, the final step, come right then and there in spite of all her hesitation.

  Willa let him stay the night, of course. It would have done no good to make him go. With the other poor man past hallucinations up in her room but still too weak from his withdrawal, she made a pallet of sheets and blankets on the cold tile floor beside the kitchen sink and lay herself down there. Even though it had been two days since she slept, she remained awake for quite a while. She thought about the hopes that she had brought to Dublin. She thought about her strategy, shot to blazes in more ways than one by this man who lied about his name. She could wait and try again of course, but even as the thought occurred to her she knew she did not have the courage. She thought and thought, searching for a way around it, and when the weakness in her could no longer be denied, at last she fell asleep.

  The next day Willa felt the weight of her body in every horizontal joint as she went about her business, and every time she stood or bent or climbed the stairs her muscles complained that a woman of her age had no business sleeping on tile floors. Other than that, everything seemed normal. She had pretty much expected it: the calm before the storm.

  She directed several of her charges as they prepared a hot breakfast of oatmeal and coffee. It had been nearly two months since she’d been able to afford to feed them eggs or bacon. There were just too many now, plain and simple. After breakfast she set a couple of the men to cleaning up and then disappeared into her tiny office. It was important to get the paperwork up to date. She made her way through the necessary correspondence and paid what bills she could, waiting all the time. Lunch came and went. She did not feed them all; lunch was just for her and a couple of the ones who had been here the longest. “Trustees,” they called themselves, although she did not like the word, a word they used in jail.

  At two in the afternoon she put one of them to work on the laundry and went upstairs for the third time that day to check on the man in her bed. He lay awake and calm. He claimed that he could make it fine if she would only help him up. She laughed at that and asked if he was hungry. He allowed it might be so, and she had someone take him up a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of powdered milk.

  About five-thirty, while she was getting dinner ready she heard a whoop come down the hall and went to find a shaggy man standing in the lobby with his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross. “I’m free!” he shouted to the half a dozen others who were waiting for their dinner. He spun himself around and around, a lightness in his face, and Willa felt a little leap of joy inside of her, in spite of what was surely coming, what she had been waiting for.

  “Settle down,” she said.

  “I’m free, Willa! I don’t need no drink!”

  “All right. That’s fine. Now just settle down.”

  He laughed and danced around her and skipped and hopped to the front door and flew outside where he could holler unrestrained.

  By the time she started serving franks and baked beans the word was fully out. There were nearly thirty people in the line and five or six had claimed the miracle. Excitement spread through all the others like the Spirit at a camp meeting. Willa tried to keep a lid on things, but it could not be contained. Those who claimed they had been healed were surrounded by the others, fielding questions. Some seemed content to be the objects of the blessing; others were intent on taking credit, telling lies to give themselves the glory. This caused some confusion as to how the miracle had occurred. Willa supposed it might be possible they truly did not know, having been too drunk or stoned the night before to remember. She tried to pin some hope on that, but knew she would not be so fortunate.

  The man who pretended that his name was Stanley Livingston came in late for dinner. By that time most of the others were already through the line and seated at the folding tables, eating. The man made it all the way to the serving counter before one of them looked up and said, “Hey! Ain’t that the guy?”

  Everybody in the room was staring at him now.

  The so-called Stanly Livingston said, “What?”

  “You healed us, man. It really worked!”

  “Hey, that’s great.” The poor man smiled, and Willa pitied him for his foolishness.

  “I wanna get healed!” said a woman sitting near the wall.

  “Me too!” said the woman next to her.

  The man’s smile faded. “I wish I could help you.”

  “Just give us what you gave them.”

  “They already took it all.”

  A big man across the room stood up slowly. “But you can get more, right?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Come on, man. You know how bad we need it.”

  “I wish I could. I really do.”

  The big man flung a vicious curse across the room ahead of his demand. “You go get some more!”

  With many others rising to their feet, the poor man took a step back. From Willa’s place behind the counter she called out to them. “You people need to settle down.”

  “He could heal us if he wanted!”

  “Settle down, I said!”

  The big guy moved around his table, and those who had been sitting near him followed. “I come all the way from Houston for this.”

  “But there’s nothing I can do!” said the frightened man beside the serving line.

/>   Willa watched them come, thinking she had seen it happen once before, seen men and women feed on each other’s desire and seen it make them into something less than men and women. She had to stop the momentum of it, yet she felt the old familiar fear returning. For some reason, she pressed one hand against the burned place on the other, causing punishing spikes of pain. She must overcome her fear. She must stand, for once.

  Willa spoke quietly to the so-called Stanley Livingston. “Get out of here.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up and get going.”

  With a strange reluctance Willa did not understand, he put his tray back down on the counter and turned toward the door. A skinny man with hunger in his eyes rose to bar his way.

  “Where did it come from?” asked the big one, moving closer.

  “I found it.”

  “How’d you know what it was?”

  “There was a note.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Just that it would cure us, and it had a bunch of symbols and things.”

  “Symbols? Like a formula?”

  “I guess.”

  “So you could make some more.”

  “No, I—”

  “He could do it! He works at that drug store!” shouted someone from the back. “I seen him over there!”

  The big man stepped even closer to the poor fella by the counter. “That true? You work at the drug store?”

  “Just the last couple of days. I can’t—”

  “He probably made it his own self!”

  “Let’s go,” said the big man.

  “Go? Where?”

  “Drug store.”

  “It’s closed.”

  “Open it.”

  “I can’t do that! I just work there.”

  “Then we’ll open it.”

  The big man took hold of the one who would not use his real name. The impostor tried to shake free, but the big man was much too strong. Another one grabbed the poor man’s other arm and the two of them began to walk him toward the door. As the crowd parted to allow them through, the man’s feet went out from under him. The two who had him by the arms did not pause but dragged him with his legs trailed out behind as if he were a corpse.