“We used to come up here and fish for the weekend on the Santiam, me and my buddies from the navy. I don’t know if we ever caught anything, because the whole point was to get as drunk as we could.” There is a howl of laughter, led by Leslie McCarthy, who everyone calls Les, with his huge muttonchops and red suspenders where he hooks his thumbs when he speaks. His wife Diane sits by his side and laughs with him. Mom says it’s good I met Les because I need male role models, ones that know how to talk about their feelings not just ride motorcycles or watch sports. It’s basic Child Psychology.
Frank’s voice sounds like a tire on gravel, like the Vega as it goes up the driveway at the house, low and patchy. It’s like listening to a mountain talk. “We drank in the war too. One for courage, we would say. So I figured if one brought courage, what would four bring? How about seven?” More howls of laughter. “It got to the point where I hardly even got up unless I’d already finished a fifth of whiskey. Any drunk here could probably do goddamn brain surgery if he had a drink first.” Somber faces, reflecting the orange warmth of the fire, smile and nod as they stare into the past. “You can do anything when you’re drunk. You’re the smartest person who ever lived and anyone who don’t agree is a son of a bitch for sayin’ so. Damn it if I couldn’t have flown a B-25 over Tokyo and ended the whole goddamn war if I’d just had the money for the whiskey.” The laughter floats in the air with the smoke as the circle closes in. It starts to feel like we are physically connected, all of us through the story that AA calls a “share.”
I close my eyes and listen to the gravelly voice.
“Somehow I made it through the war without killing myself.” He spits on the ground and wipes his face. He takes a pack of red-and-white Lucky Strikes out of the front bib of his overalls and lights one while he talks, the smoke falling out of his nose and mouth like a leaky chimney. “I honestly don’t know how I did it. And when I came back, well, the world didn’t make much sense. Found myself married, had Frank junior.” He pauses, gathering himself. “All this was more reason to drink. If I was happy ’cause I was home with the baby, I would drink to celebrate. If I was upset, I had to drink to feel better. And if I was deep in the national forest, I would drink to pass the time.”
My feet are warm and I like these stories. The alcoholics are better storytellers than the women in Al-Anon, which is mostly for wives. It’s all fights in the street, calling Child Protective Services, divorces, phone calls from bars on birthdays, all the ways a man can mess up.
Mom says to me, “You see? That’s why you can’t ever drink.”
But those men. The husbands. I wondered about them. All these old guys sitting around with battle scars and cigarettes talking about run-ins with cops and speeding down highways and fights in jail and war, hunting, tractors driven while drunk that ran into houses, boats capsized, guns fired, faraway homes filled with wives and children waiting for them, begging for them to come back. I wonder if I’m going to grow up to be one of them.
“People talk about rock bottom,” Frank says. There’s a shift in the circle, a tightening. “I don’t even know what that is really. I once heard someone say, ‘Rock bottom is when you drank up all the life in you, when you look down and the only thing you see is death.’ Well, I wake up one morning alone in the house. My truck is in the driveway, the door is still open, my head is split in two, my face covered in filth ’cause I’d been throwin’ up all night drinking that rotgut I kept in the shed. And I knew. Right then I didn’t think, I damn well knew if I didn’t stop drinkin’, I would die. Every drunk knows he’s got a problem, but the drink is his God and his mistress so he thinks, aw shit, I’ll figure it out because you can’t betray your God and mistress. Gotta have that flask. But then, sitting there alone in my house, I knew it was time. So I cleaned myself up and called my buddy Don, who said he’d been to a couple meetings in something called AA, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the basement of the Catholic church listening to drunk after drunk tell story after story that coulda been straight from my own life.
“They gave me a book. The big book by Bill W. and I was determined, so I read it, read it all in one weekend with a jug of bourbon.” A low rumble of laughter. “Showed up at the Monday night meeting and Don said, ‘Frank, you drunk right now? ’Cause you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.’ I said yeah. So he gave me a cup of coffee and sat me in the back. After the meeting was over, he said, ‘You got to break some habits.’ So he said he’d take me to ninety meetings in ninety days and that’s what we did.
“I got sober and got a new wife. Chose right this time.” He grabs onto Barb’s thick fingers. “And now we come up here and I ain’t got a need to drink. Turns out, I like fishing. I like the cool water and the way the wind sounds when it picks up a gust in the trees. That’s called serenity, I guess. I made my peace with it. I look around this fire and I know these faces: Joe and Les, this new guy Paul and his woman, Gerry. Gerry, we gonna have to get you a little less coffee, I think.” Everyone laughs. Mom blushes, beaming. “But I’m glad I’m here with you and not somewhere drinkin’. I ain’t got a mistress no more, but I got a God, a higher power, and he’s in control now and it’s better that way ’cause he knows what he’s doing better ’n I do. I’m not saying everything is perfect. We all know we got our struggles.” Heads nod, a low murmur of agreement. “But I got this woman, got Frank junior here, got a bucket a fish I caught and we fried some up to eat, got these trees, this fire, all of you, and I didn’t drink today. That’s all.” He goes silent and we listen to the crack of the fire. Sparks fly up and disappear into the night sky.
“Thanks, Frank,” Les says.
“Thanks, Frank,” comes a chorus of quiet voices.
I feel warm there in the circle because everyone is happy to be together and sitting here is better than sitting at home eating rabbit for dinner. Everyone is so glad to be sober and it seems to me that alcohol must be the worst thing in the world since there are so many stories about it. All the kids left to freeze, all the women crying in the dark. There’s a strange magic to the word since it’s said constantly as the root of all evil as in “Well, in those days, we were drinking, so we didn’t give a shit.” People say, “It’s good you guys are here so you can learn not to ever drink,” as if we’re getting a flu shot. And I wonder why everyone needs to drink so bad in the first place.
I think about the kids in all the stories, sitting alone in a truck shivering while their dads drink in a bar, left alone after school, on birthdays, Christmas, children hiding bottles from their parents, doctor’s appointments missed, and I wonder if we are those children. Tony and me.
Everyone is so certain it’s a “family disease” and we all have it whether we want to admit it or not. And so far I was born in Synanon and sent to the School because my dad did drugs and now we go to AA because my stepdad drinks. Grandma can hardly get out of bed without her Dutch so I can’t help but wonder: Am I next? Which will I grow up to be? Because it seems like my choices are limited to being the one who leaves to use drugs or the one who stays home and cries about it. And that’s no choice at all.
At the end of the meeting we all stand up in a circle and recite,
Our father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On Earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day, our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Keep comin’ back, it works!
There’s a short silence and I’m proud of myself because I memorized the words to the Lord’s Prayer from a pamphlet in the backseat on the drive up to the mountains. It was comforting to think about heaven and bread, to pretend we were one of those families who went to church on Sundays instead
of three people who’d escaped from a C-U-L-T or a commune that went bad like old milk who met up with a drunk who raises rabbits. I didn’t know what the words meant except I knew alcohol was the temptation because everyone knew that. And I wished I had more daily bread because we were usually out of bread.
I like the power of knowing the words themselves, as if knowing the prayer is a kind of shield that protects me. If I only know the words, that means I know God and I know how to bring him to life in his judgment and forgiveness, his kingdom which is bigger than everything. This God is more vivid than the vague and mysterious “higher power” I am always hearing about in meetings, the silent blue sky that goes on forever. And even though I didn’t know him very well, I knew God was on my side because otherwise what was the point?
After the meeting Mom asks me if I liked listening to the stories and if I understood now that alcoholism is a family disease that affects everyone and I say I liked Frank’s story the best because he’s funny and talks like a mountain. Tony says, can we roast marshmallows now?
Everyone hugs each other, just walks around the fire finding a new person to squeeze. I get a hug from Paul first and a few of the other women. Les McCarthy walks up to me and says, “I guess they’re letting you stay up tonight!” He picks me up and squeezes my chest hard. “It’s good you’re here with your mom.” He puts me down and he tells Paul they’re going to have a poker game later. “Nickel ante, sound good? We just play for fun.” Paul says he doesn’t know poker very well but he’ll come. Tony is already in the car getting the marshmallows that we were told we could roast on the fire after the meeting.
Mom lets me stay up with the men for the poker game. I sit next to Paul at a table with Frank and Les and a few others. Frank smokes his short Lucky Strikes with no filters and says, “Let’s play draw this time. One-eyed jacks and suicide kings wild.” Or, “This one’s Omaha, like Hold ’Em but with more chances to screw it up.” I memorize the phrases knowing the kids on Breys Avenue will be impressed. Paul shows me his cards and makes bets with the small plastic chips in front of him. I study the men. They seem like buffalo to me. Proud and quiet, hairy and enormous. There’s no small talk. When Mom has Diane over, they gab and gab and sometimes they’ll play gin rummy but the game isn’t as important as the talking, the sharing of feelings and thoughts and secret stories. The men burp and eat chips. They smoke and scratch chins. They say, “I got the aces this time, gentlemen,” in a low rumble that sounds like a bowling ball rolling down a sidewalk. “Aw shit, I missed my straight.” Cards are slammed down onto the table. “Who’s got the old lady? I know one of you two chumps is holding trips.” They don’t mind explaining the game to me. Paul even lets me ante when Frank says, “Ante up, Seven-Stud Black Mariah with deuces wild.”
The words are part of it. The way they’re spat. There’s power in them, like the Lord’s Prayer. And like the prayer, they bring something to life. I think about those suicide kings. Why did they kill themselves? Who took over the kingdom after they died? What happened to their queens? What about their sons, those one-eyed jacks? How did they lose their eyes? Did it have something to do with their dads who committed suicide? Did they drink too much? Is that the point of the game? It’s all so quick and violent, the phrases spat without effort. “I got the flush to the ace, so unless you’re holding a boat, you better ship ’em,” and “Sheeit, I think you’re bluffing, but I ain’t got the hand to call you down, pardner.”
I fall asleep in the kids’ tent next to Tony in my sleeping bag, repeating the phrases. “I got the aces, pardner. You better ship ’em … Well, shit, I missed my king … Okay, who’s got the bitch?”
The AA campouts become a fixture in our world. Once a month we pack up Paul’s truck with gear and head to Detroit Lake along the Santiam River or the Deschutes National Forest where the ground is red everywhere you look. We go to Beverly Beach where we camp right in the sand and spend mornings running down the Oregon coast next to the huge rocks that guard the coastline like kneeling giants, looking for seashells, racing Pepper down the shore, dodging the waves as they break against the sand. We got a new puppy from Pepper’s litter that winter and named it Mork after Robin Williams’s alien in the TV show Mork & Mindy. We call him “Mork the dork.” He is a yappy black Lab mix, and when we take him to the coast, he jumps in the water then runs out away from the crashing waves up into our laps then tears off to search for crabs and starfish. Afterward, Tony and I pile into the back of Paul’s camper-shell truck with all the gear for the ride back to Salem. We fall asleep on the mattress in the truck bed somewhere in the winding highways of the coastal Cascade Mountains—a big pile of sand and salt, dirt, seaweed, kelp, pillows and wet dog.
We are happier in nature. All of us. We take long walks through the woods, stopping to smell the scent of pine in the air, the distant snowcapped peak of Mount Washington or Three Sisters reminding us we are small and young. Paul teaches us to light campfires, to create pockets of air for the fire to lick the wood, to keep our faces away from the flames and blow on the bursting red coals when we want the fire to grow. We eat lunches of hot dogs and baked beans, roasted potatoes that we wrap in tinfoil and throw into the smoldering coals. We sleep hard at night, getting up to pee outside the tent, worried about bears, wondering at the stars and silence except for a nearby stream or the dull hoot of an owl. We wake up at dawn, toasty in our sleeping bags as we eat cereal or scrambled eggs and bacon that Paul fried up over the morning fire.
Out in the woods we are able to crawl into that word: F-A-M-I-L-Y. To let it provide shelter like the blue tarp we hang from the branches over the tents on rainy weekends. Perhaps it’s that we’re too busy to fight or because we can forget about the house on Breys Avenue or the fact that in Synanon we were alone and didn’t even know what an F-A-M-I-L-Y was.
In a campground, everyone is cold, everyone sleeps in a tent and wears dirty clothes, so we’re not ashamed. Maybe it’s because Paul is so capable with his gear, his endless knowledge of trees, tents, tarps, fires, fishing and outdoor cooking. Mom is calmed by this. We all are. At the AA meetings, people say you can feel God when you walk through the woods, that he’s everywhere: in the fallen logs and bird nests, in the beehives, the grass, the meadows and trees, an unseen force that surrounds you, connecting you to other living things, reminding you that you’re part of something.
Maybe that’s family too.
CHAPTER 13
HOW TO ESCAPE A MEXICAN PRISON
Dad drives with his middle fingers sticking out, rocking the steering wheel back and forth like he’s flipping off every car on the freeway. We are heading south toward San Diego. He does this, he says, “for the assholes. So they know they’re assholes.” He yells at the cars that cut him off or tailgate or switch lanes without a signal or break too fast or cruise steadily in the blind spot of Bonnie’s silver Honda Prelude. He says, “Learn to drive!” over the music from the radio while Bonnie sits next to him in the front seat. She reminds him that none of the other cars can hear him so they don’t even know what he’s saying. Dad shakes his head, “They know they’re assholes. They know.”
The 405 freeway stretches out in front of us, twelve lanes of white concrete and cars, the busiest stretch of freeway in the world. We pass through fields of flame-capped smokestacks, storage tanks like massive white aspirin pills, pipes, catwalks, scaffolding, and industrial lighting, the refinery wasteland of Carson with its factories and fast-food joints. We’re on our way to see Dad’s family: Grandma Mary, the saint, and our uncles Donny, Pete and Wes. Tony and I are in the backseat with Egg McMuffin sandwiches. We don’t care where we’re going because we can’t believe we get hash browns and orange juice from McDonald’s which Mom says is an evil corporation that’s trying to destroy America from the inside by making everyone fat.
Dad likes to tell old stories when he drives, as if the point of the trip isn’t the destination but the long journey in the car, the education we receive on family history, a kin
d of classroom where we sing, listen to music and eat junk food while we talk. He’s got a slight smile on his face. “He likes having his boys around,” Bonnie always tells us.
“All the true badasses are either dead or in prison.” Dad is telling us about his brother Pete, who has a black belt in karate and does tai chi every morning. He was once an instructor in hand-to-hand combat for the Mexican federales who worked with Bruce Lee.
“Pete wasn’t scared of nobody. I once saw him take on a whole carful of guys by himself.” Pete did time too, four years in Folsom State Prison. When I ask what he got busted for, Dad laughs and says his usual line: disorganized crime.
Grandma Mary was born in San Francisco but then settled in the Little Italy area of San Diego in 1917. She worked as a hotel maid and raised four boys in a small house in East San Diego. She’d met Howard, my grandfather, but he only “stuck around” long enough to give her three wild boys “before he split.” She eventually met Don, her second husband, who gave her a fourth wild boy, my uncle Donny. Things calmed down. But it was too late for the boys. “We went a little crazy,” Dad says. He tells us that “a lot of I-talians” (pronounced “eye-talyuns”) got houses in the area so the neighborhood was filled with “dagos” walking around with spit curls in big seersucker suits. Dad had some crazy clothes: baggy pink suits with huge shoulder pads and a long wallet chain. He looks out over the asphalt and overpasses. “We needed money, so what else could we do? We ran numbers, smuggled drugs, stole some cars. You know, your basic nonsense.”
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