The Judgment

by William J. Coughlin

  I’d first discovered that out on Clarion Road when I’d gotten a glimpse of little Catherine Quigley, wrapped in plastic, lying in the snow. And the lesson had been rammed home to me the night before in that filthy basement on John R.

  It occurred to me then to wonder how and why it was that I had reacted so much more violently to my first murder victim than to my second. There could be no doubt, after all, that what had been done to Tolliver’s “pigeon” was far more hideous to look at and contemplate, yet it hadn’t made me vomit nor had it put me immediately into some sort of spiritual crisis.

  But why? Why had Catherine Quigley’s death hit me immediately harder? Was I just getting used to it? If you saw violent death frequently enough, as a cop did, did it eventually stop affecting you? That wasn’t the way it was with Sue Gillis. Or, for that matter, with Bud Billings, or even Stash Olesky.

  Maybe my friend and counselor, Bob Williams, had been right. Maybe it was Catherine Quigley’s innocence that made the difference. That poor butchered bastard whose guts had been spilled over the floor, whose tongue had been cut from his mouth—he was certainly no innocent—a bagman for one of the big drug dealers, probably a murderer himself, or Tolliver wouldn’t have had the hold over him that he did. But how do you measure these things? Certainly a seven-year-old girl was the more innocent of the two, but they were both still dead. And death, not innocence or guilt, was the problem, wasn’t it? Death was the great problem of life.

  Did they know that up at St. Jude’s chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous? Maybe I ought to tell them. For whether violently, or in our sleep in a warm, comfortable bed, death would come to us all. If that was the case, why even bother to stay sober?

  That was the nasty question that wormed its way into my brain at some point along the way. Or maybe it was there all the time. The day before, I’d wondered why I wasn’t happier. In a way, I’d always been happy during those drinking years. I laughed more, talked more, saw more people, lived a full life, until it all came crashing down on me, nearly burying me in the wreckage. But Ismail Carter was right. I’d done a pretty good job of it, making a comeback in Pickeral Point. I seemed to have things pretty well under control. Maybe I could ease off and enjoy myself a little. Who knows? Maybe I could even have a drink every now and then, like any other normal human being. What could it hurt?

  Just about that time, of course, an alarm sounded in my head. Every alcoholic knows that line of reasoning. Every member of Alcoholics Anonymous knows from a painful process of conditioning what it could hurt: everything you’ve achieved, all the resistance and resolution you’ve built up, all the self-knowledge you’ve gained.

  All this I knew more or less instinctively by now. But all I could come up with in response to all those “why bothers” and permissive “maybes” were a few of the old AA slogans and buzzwords that had been so deeply ingrained.

  “Easy does it.” Sure, I knew everything I’d accomplished had been done by increments. I know that I’d discovered a lot about myself in the process and managed to discard a lot of superfluous material baggage along the way.

  “One day at a time.” That’s how I’d done it. That’s how I’d been winning my cases, too, by preparation and planning, rather than trying to think on my feet and depending on oratory, as I had when I tried cases half crocked.

  “Broken shoelaces.” That’s what Bob Williams would call my ruminations on happiness, or, really, my wish for it. He’d say there was no guarantee that sobriety would make anyone happier, just that it was the only way for people like us to live. And after all, happiness wasn’t guaranteed as anyone’s inalienable right, only its pursuit. I think I’d heard him say that once.

  Who knows how long all this thinking took? But before I knew it, the time had come to get ready for the Sunday matinee meeting.

  I might have stayed away if I’d known in advance an open meeting had been planned. Just about every AA chapter throws open its doors from time to time to outsiders. The question is, of course, who is an outsider? Predictably, visitors fell into two categories—“heavy drinkers” who said they were “curious” about the program; and the relatives or close friends of such “heavy drinkers,” whose presence was necessary to get them there. The general rule seemed to be that if they came under their own steam, it was a pretty good bet they’d come back again and join the program/If they had to be escorted, it was anybody’s guess.

  And then there were the unpredictable visitors. In a way, you never knew ’quite who might show up. In the years since I’d been coming to the meetings in St. Jude’s basement, there had been a few journalists, a couple of Ph.D. candidates, one in social anthropology and the other in social psychology, both of whom left disappointed when they learned that they would not be allowed free access to regular meetings, simply as observers. Father Phil LeClerc, the pastor of St. Jude’s, sat in from time to time at the open meetings just to make sure things were running smoothly. But when he showed up that Sunday night with Father Chuck in tow, I felt a little funny about sticking around. But I couldn’t leave. I’d made a postsession dinner date with Bob Williams.

  There was a pretty good-sized assembly there in the basement, well over twenty. Most were regulars, but there were four or five who were obviously first-timers. You could tell by their uneasiness, the way they kept looking around without making eye contact. One of them had an escort, and probably a good thing, because he was drunk. You don’t have to be sober at an AA meeting, you just have to have the desire to stop drinking. The woman with him, wife or girlfriend, could barely keep him awake.

  Bob Williams, who had been buzzing around and getting things ready, was involved in a brief conversation with the two priests. When he left them, he walked my way.

  “Hey, Charley. I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

  “Always glad to oblige.”

  “That priest with Father Phil is from Our Lady of Sorrows in Hub City. He’s been asked to start a chapter at his church and wants to see how things work. I wonder if you’d get up and share when the time comes, just so he can get the feel of it.”

  I must have responded with a pained look because Bob read it immediately.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “I know Father Charles Albertus.”

  “Professionally?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I can see that might be kind of awkward. Okay, I’ll ask somebody else.”

  No offense taken, he left with a nod of his head and went right over to someone I knew only as Steve. He evidently put the same request to him and got a positive response, for Bob left him with a handshake and went up to the front to start the meeting.

  Was I being difficult? Squeamish? But the second A in AA stood for “Anonymous,” after all. Just being here I’d blown my cover. I didn’t feel up to blurting out my story to a priest.

  Bob convened the meeting in the informal way he always did.

  “Hi,” he said. “My name is Bob, and I’m an alcoholic. We’ve got a little formula we start the meetings with here. Since this is an open meeting, and there are newcomers and observers present, I’d like you to listen closely.

  “The primary purpose of this organization is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety,” he said. He went on to explain that AA was for, by, and of alcoholics; that in practice we had discovered that alcoholics could help other alcoholics far better than priests, ministers, psychiatrists, or therapists could and that we call each other only by our first names.

  He went through the 12-step program and concluded: “Is any one of these more important than the others? Maybe. Maybe one is. And that’s the belief in a Higher Power. Call It God, Allah, Hashim, whatever you want, but without the help of that Higher Power, an alcoholic just can’t make it. You’ve got to believe in Him to get His help, and there are times when you will only be able to make it with His help.”

  Was it my imagination, or did Bob’s eyes come to rest on me as he spoke those last
two sentences? No, it wasn’t my imagination. He was addressing me directly.

  After some comments from the floor, there was a ceremony for Steve, whose anniversary cake this was. The cake’s single candle represented his first 365 consecutive days of sobriety. Since I’d seen him at meetings for a good two years, I knew the effort of will that cake and candle represented.

  As I turned away, I came head on with Father Chuck, who looked eager to talk but didn’t seem to know quite what to say.

  . “Imagine meeting me here,” I said with a nervous laugh. I felt like an altar boy who’d just stolen a buck from the collection plate. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, I guess. “You’d be surprised how many of us they let out on the streets,” I went on awkwardly, “doctors, lawyers, electricians, cops. A regular secret army.” I didn’t mention bishops.

  “Charley, please, I’m not that naive. I’ve counseled a lot of people with this”—he hesitated—“problem. I’m aware of the statistics.”

  “Sorry, Father, I don’t really make a secret of my problem. It’s just that every once in a while it makes me feel a little like a freak. Maybe today is just one of those days.”

  “I understand,” he said, and I actually think he did. “I remembered when we got together at the rectory and I offered you a drink, you turned it down.”

  “I turn down drinks on a regular basis, Father. Actually, it’s one of the things I do best,” I said.

  “But I went ahead and had one myself. That was at the very least rude of me, if not unfeeling.”

  “Think nothing of it, Father. I’m a big boy. We go to parties, some of us even go to bars. We live in the world, and it’s a drinking world out there. We’re not trying to change that; all we’re doing is trying to stay sober.”

  He clapped me on the back and gave me the high-intensity smile. “Thanks, Charley. That was very well put. I take it you’re very much in favor of the program.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? And all I can say is, it works for me.”

  He nodded in the direction of Steve and the anniversary cake. “How many candles on your cake?” he asked.

  “I don’t keep count that way,” I said, which was an out-and-out lie; I knew the day, the month, and the year, practically to the minute. “I do it one day at a time. That way I don’t get discouraged.”

  “Right. Got it.” He gave me a wink and a nod. “Like I said before, you’re a good guy, Charley.”

  As he went off to find Bob Williams, I figured it hadn’t gone so badly. Hell, he was a good guy, too. Like most priests, he was a bit flat-footed socially. Living up there, all alone in the rectory in that decaying town, how could it be otherwise? But he was earnest and well meaning, and there was no doubt Hub City could use another AA chapter.

  And then we were called back to our seats by Bob. After the shuffling and shifting had stopped, he addressed the visitors in particular. “Even though I’ve talked a lot about the program,” he said, “I’m afraid I haven’t given you a very good idea of how the meetings work. The meetings belong to the members. They get up and have their say, give inspiration to one another, and manage pretty well without me.” When he called on Steve to speak, the result was less than inspiring.

  Touching as Steve’s story was, his was the kind of performance that seemed to discourage others from making comment, or telling collateral stories. That was ordinarily how it worked. Facing a stony silence, Bob looked around hopefully, asked out loud if anyone else had something to share. Not a peep. Then he focused an unspoken appeal on me.

  With a sigh, I rose to my feet. “My name is Charley,” I said, “and I’m an alcoholic. Those of us, like Steve, who have celebrated that first anniversary remember what an occasion it was in our lives. Those of us who haven’t yet achieved three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days of sobriety know how hard he worked to put them together and can imagine his sense of accomplishment.

  “But as one who got his cake and candle a couple of years ago, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that it really does get a little easier as you go on past that first anniversary. Day by day, and as we all know, that’s the only way to measure progress, I keep busy in my line of work, and as long as I’m busy, I don’t miss the stuff like I used to. And I’ve drunk enough coffee and Diet Coke to float an aircraft carrier.”

  Laughter and applause at this. I was glad to get it. In order to continue, I needed some encouragement.

  “But now for the bad news,” I said. “I’ve had a couple of experiences recently that have shaken me pretty badly.

  Each of them had to do with death, violent death, as it happens, but maybe for purposes of this discussion, that’s irrelevant. Maybe it shouldn’t matter how death comes, whether it’s expected or unexpected, because the point is, it’s going to come, no matter what. Death doesn’t go away. Early or late, death awaits us all. And drunk or sober, too.

  “Just because all of us in AA are in the program to build new lives for ourselves, in the end we’ll all lose the game, just as everyone does. So I did a bit of arguing with myself. I said, on the one hand, if we’re all going to die, what does it matter whether I die drunk or sober? Maybe I liked my life better the way it was. But I had to admit I liked living sober better than I liked living drunk.”

  At that point I paused, waited, because what I had to say next was going to be more difficult. I wanted to word it right.

  “There’s a rabbi out in the East,” I began, “who’s written a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I want to know what he has to say because I need an-explanation. Bad things? I’m talking about the kind of stuff you read about in the paper every day—the grandmother who’s raped and robbed, the five-year-old who’s hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting, the young woman who loses her life to cancer.

  “One of those experiences of violent death I mentioned in the beginning really shook me up. It was the death of a seven-year-old child. She’d been murdered. I saw the body, and it made me sick, literally. I vomited. I came away wanting a drink the way I never had before in my life, because that’s the way I’d always dealt with horrors in the past. I didn’t deal with it in the old way, didn’t go out and get drunk, didn’t even have one drink and then catch myself after that. But the truth is, I haven’t dealt with it at all.

  “My point is that even though we meet together to help each other solve a problem we all have in common, we shouldn’t think we can isolate ourselves from the kinds of problems that face us every day: old age, death, the murder of innocents. We can’t escape them. We shouldn’t even try. We have to face them. But for people like us, the only way to face them is sober.”

  Exhausted, I sat down. It was a pretty lively meeting from that point on. It seemed as though everyone had something to say—a comment, a story, an opinion. It was all Bob Williams could do to bring things to a close, but he handled it well—passed the collection plate, led the Serenity Prayer, and sent them on their way. Then he beckoned me over. “There’s a slight change of plans on dinner tonight,” he informed me.

  This was disappointing. “What’s the matter? Can’t you make it?”

  “No, nothing like that. I can make it, all right. It’s just that priest you know from Hub City.”

  “What about him?”

  “He wants to come, too. Says he’s got a lot of questions that didn’t seem appropriate during the meeting. When I told him I’d made a date with you for dinner, he was eager to come along.”

  I really couldn’t back out of it now, could I?

  At first it seemed as if all those questions he wanted to ask were janitorial in nature. Who prepares the room? Who cleans up afterward? How often would it be necessary to make a room available for AA meetings? How large a room? Was tonight’s turnout at St. Jude’s about average for this chapter? Was it necessary to provide ashtrays and allow smoking?

  While Bob and I together would probably have settled for the back booth at Benny’s Diner, out of defe
rence to our guest, we had proposed the Pickeral Inn; our proposal had been accepted quite without argument. To make things easier, though, each of us went over in separate cars.

  It was still early when the three of us convened at the table in the main dining room, and the place was quite empty. There were diners at three or four other tables, but in a room so big you felt kind of lonely unless it was at least half-filled. The first thing Father Chuck did was order a Red Label on the rocks.

  Since most of the questions were directed at Bob, and some of them only he could answer, I picked away quietly at my lake trout and studied the interrogator. Father Chuck showed no ill effects from his two Scotches, not talking louder or slurring his words. I wouldn’t have either in my drinking days. I supposed that what I’d said during our coffee-break conversation had more or less extended him permission to drink when he sat down with us here. If so, he had certainly—

  “… wouldn’t you say so, Charley?” It was Bob. I hadn’t been listening.

  I looked questioningly from one to the other. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t catch that.”

  Father Chuck beamed indulgently. “I asked Bob here why you people were so shy about using God’s name. This ’Higher Power’ business seems so vague and, oh, I don’t know, New Age or something.”

  Bob leaned across the table toward me. “And I said it was because we wanted to bring people in, rather than keep them out. Wouldn’t you say so, Charley?”

  “Of course I would. I’d also say that religion has become a more divisive factor in society than it used to be.”

  “You mean we used to be a Christian nation,” Father Chuck said.

  “Something like that. But alcoholics are people who share one problem. We want to concentrate on that. If we introduce other elements—maybe just naming the Deity—aren’t you potentially introducing other problems?” I shrugged. “But that’s just another way of saying what Bob said a moment ago.”