by William Lobb
Frankie sat there. His mind was made up for him. He was no longer on the fence. He hated indecision. There were times when he would jump in with both feet, knowing it was a bad decision but, to him, a bad decision was better than no decision or indecision. Frankie was okay now, maybe for the first time since all of this church involvement started. He’d clearly made up his mind. Don and Tom got up, quite content with themselves that they had successfully saved another soul. They patted Frankie on the back and went around to the back of the church to get dressed.
Frankie walked into the chapel. He smiled and waved. Bianca, the voodoo shop lady, had joined Zara and Payton in the back row. He looked up and saw David and a few of the guys from the leather bar. These were his friends and this was New Orleans. In any other place in the world, this group, this eclectic group of friends might seem impossible or strange. Here, it all made sense. No questions asked or explanations expected. It was just the Crescent City.
Frankie sat in a front pew alone, then he said to himself, “Fuck this,” and he got up and went back to sit next to Zara and Payton. He thanked everyone for coming.
Zara took his hand and said, “There are people in this world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Then she said, “Do you know who said that? Gandhi. Think about that today as you speak. Today, now, at this moment I need you to think about what you truly seek. I support your path and your decisions, but consider those words. God will appear to you when and how you need him. This is not your place or your path, Frankie, but this decision today, whatever that decision is, does not decide your fate.”
He smiled, for what seemed the first time in days, and thanked her.
Dave came out from the back and walked to the pulpit. Tom followed to the right. He put his hands in the side rails of the rich, brown wooden pulpit. He smiled that smile that Frankie found a little disconcerting; he could never quite figure out the deal with Don. Tom was a little more transparent, but Don had an edgy arrogance about him. As hard as Frankie tried to follow him, more often than not he thought about hitting him, although he knew it wouldn’t be much of a fight. Don seemed to Frankie the kind of guy who would call a cop before he’d fight back. Frankie had little use for guys like that. It became more and more apparent to Frankie that this experiment was over. He decided he would “testify,” but he was sure no one would be very happy when he was done.
Don droned on about how he met Frankie, how he “saved” him, or led him to salvation, and the struggle to bring him to God. Frankie sat there, listening, and thought to himself that Don was talking about someone else. He made a passing comment about people “addicted to their sin,” and glanced to the back of the church at Zara and his friends gathered there and Frankie’s anger grew.
Tom stood up and led them in prayer. Frankie stared at the polished hardwood floor. The room went quiet and Don introduced Frankie. Frankie stood up from his friends, where he was still holding Zara’s hand, and walked up to the pulpit.
He didn’t like public speaking. It was a deep fear of his. He spoke once at a friend’s funeral and he swore he’d never do it again. He really questioned why he decided to do this, but he knew he was doing this at the bidding of the warrior who lived inside him. The warrior lived in there right next to the demon; they seemed to coexist. At times, it appeared they supported each other.
Frankie dug in deep and took his place behind the pulpit.
He began to speak, “I am a drug addict and a murderer. I’m a criminal. I can kill you as easily as I can talk to you, standing here right now. That’s what I am and that is what I’ll always be. That’s my introduction, so now you know me. Some of the people in this room seem to think that I have suffered some great salvation. I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth,” and he looked at Don. “These men over here,” and he pointed at Don and Tom, “they jumped right on me when I was sick and lost and broken and they tried to make me be like them. Then they sent me out into the streets to preach the Word and collect money for them. I can assure them as I assure you, I am not like them. I have nothing at all in common with them. I am what they fear. I’ve robbed their homes and killed their friends and fucked their wives and sisters and daughters. These men over here are as criminal as I am. They’re the ones who prey on the weak and the sick; it’s a business to them.”
Tom started to approach the pulpit and Frankie’s eyes lit up like burning embers. “Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. If you approach me, you won’t like the outcome, not one fucking bit.”
Zara looked at David and Payton. David said, “I’ve seen this guy before. He’s in full-on demon mode.”
The demon was out and having a fine moment.
Frankie continued, “I need to find God. I need to connect with a higher being, with the Creator of the universe. I know this and I feel this, deep inside. The desire and the want and the need is very, very real. I have no idea how to proceed. I thought these two men had some secret they wanted to share, but they lied.”
He pointed to the back of the church. Zara and Payton and the voodoo lady and David and the boys in leather looked incredulous, somewhere between shocked and nervous and completely amused.
Frankie continued from his pulpit, “Do you see those people back there? They are my friends, those prostitutes and drug addicts and homosexuals. When I was so sick that I was close to death, when I was insane and a danger to myself and everyone else, they took me in. They cared for me. They didn’t know me. I was a drunk who showed up in that leather bar filled with scary homosexuals. The guy right there, David, took me to the local brothel and that lady and her friends cared for me. But these clowns, these guys right here, they have a conditional relationship with God. I have tried, tried hard for two months. I’m trying to stay sober and sane and I’m trying to find God, but all these bastards can do is tell me that all I do is wrong. I don’t pray right, I don’t think right, and this morning after he dunked me in the muddy river, he said I needed to turn my back on my friends to find their God. You know what, Don and Tom? I don’t want your fucking God.”
Tom approached Frankie from his left and behind. Frankie spun around and connected hard to Tom’s face, with his right hand. Tom fell back. Frankie reached down, pulled him back up with his left hand, and connected again, hard, with his right. Frankie held Tom’s limp body in his left hand and looked out over the congregation and he started to growl and groan. Frankie seethed and sweat ran down his face. He slammed Tom’s body into the pulpit like a rag doll, let go, and watched his limp body slam to the floor.
David and a couple of the leather boys came running up and grabbed Frankie. They dragged him out of the church and into the alley at the back of the church. David laughed a little but tried to look somber and concerned. Zara, Payton, and the others followed.
David spoke first, “Dude, we need to get you out of here, fast!” Zara agreed. They all moved en masse out of the alley and down the street, toward St. Peter’s and back up toward the bar.
Frankie finally spoke. “I’d better get out of town. I know they’ll call the cops and I can’t go to jail. That was stupid, but I just lost it.”
David looked at Zara and as they walked quickly, she spoke. “Frankie, we have enough on these guys that they won’t call the cops. I’m going to go back there now. You go to the bar and stay there with Payton. I’ll be back.”
Zara turned and headed back toward the church. Frankie and the rest of the group walked through the batwing doors and everyone sat down at the bar. David was especially welcoming to the voodoo lady, Bianca. He told her it was an honor to have her in his bar.
He offered everyone a drink. Frankie had a Coke, and so did Bianca and Payton. Everyone else had a beer. It was now early on a Sunday evening, two weeks before Thanksgiving in New Orleans.
Frankie asked David what he thought. “Do you think I should pack and get out of here?”
Frankie looked at him and said, “About what?”
David said, “They’ve done some bad stuff. That girl who’s always with Tom? She’s eighteen now, but he has been fucking her since she was very young. There are so many rumors about Don with young boys. Things no one anywhere would condone. Trust me, they don’t want any more attention than you do. I’m pretty sure Zara will take care of it and of them.”
Frankie got up and said, “David, you’re a good and true friend, but why didn’t anyone ever tell me these things?” He was a little angry.
David replied, “Frankie, everyone needs to find their own way, their own path. Zara and I discussed this many times. We decided that as part of your journey, you had to find these things out on your own. It looks to me like you did. It was a Hell of a show there, too, by the way”
Frankie said he was going back to get Zara. Payton joined him, and, reluctantly, so did David. The three of them walked quickly back to the church. Frankie saw Zara outside the church with the other parishioners. Tom and Don were still inside.
Frankie walked past the crowd and Zara and into the back office where the men sat. Tom’s face was still bloodied. Zara, Payton, David, and now Bianca all followed him in. Frankie stood in the doorway and looked at the two men.
Frankie spoke to Tom, “So that girl—your ‘assistant’—have you been fucking her since she was a little girl? Don, you have a thing for young boys? How did I miss these details? You didn’t share this with me. I should kill both of you. I could do that, you know that, right? I could kill both of you right now and drag your dead carcasses into the swamp to let the alligators and crows eat you and no one would ever know.”
He walked over to Don, pulled him up to standing from his chair and put his hands around his neck. “I want to kill you. It would feel so fucking good to end your life. I can’t. I can’t do this now. You two scumbags are challenging my sobriety. I won’t let you compromise that. I’m here to tell you this: you will never go to the cops about what happened here. You tell your congregation we worked it all out. Make up some of your bullshit forgiveness stories. You tell them whatever you want, but we shook hands and it’s all good now. We parted ways as friends. The cops never find out. If they do, I will come back here and I’ll kill both of you and I’ll fucking enjoy doing it. Do you understand me?”
Chapter Thirty-six:
Say It Again
He saw Payton outside the church in the alley. He walked up to her and without saying a word, he hugged her. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back hard.
She pushed back and smiled at him, “I’m proud of you Frankie. All that was part of your process.”
He said, “I feel like I screwed up my only chance. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t follow along.”
Payton smiled, “Frankie, I’ve only known you a few months, but I knew early on that you’d never take the easy path. You tried a path a lot of us would never try and you gave it a good shot. Don’t dwell on it.”
Frankie replied, “It wasn’t the failure to find their God that got to me; it’s the beast, the demon, the anger, the rage. I thought I’d somehow lose that as I started to become sober. I think it’s more real, more terrifying then it was before. He presents himself to me as a stronger being now. If I ever get past the drug addiction, he’ll still be there, waiting for me.”
Payton asked him to go to a meeting with her. Frankie thought it wasn’t a bad idea. They met Zara and Bianca and David and they walked away from the church and Don and Tom. Frankie knew now he’d have to find another path to God.
Zara took one hand and Payton the other. They walked down the narrow street all feeling a sense of relief. They walked together down to Ursuline’s Avenue. Payton had been to meetings there before, but Frankie had only gone to meetings at Tom and Don’s church. He wasn’t about to go back there, ever again. As he walked in the door, he noticed that it was a small bookshop and library, and he recognized some of the people. Frankie felt good about that. He sat down in the dusty old, dimly lit storeroom and waited. The woman who ran the meeting that afternoon was tall and thin. After the standard introductions, she got up to speak.
She read a poem from a man who had been sober twenty-two years and then relapsed. He had completely fallen apart. The poem she read was one of the last things he wrote, before his fall:
Twenty-two years since my last drink, last handful of pills
Twenty-two years since the night I first saw that red-eyed, red-faced, puking demon.
I raise my head from the toilet and look into the mirror
I start to scream and cry and punch things.
Two weeks in oblivion: no food, no memory, just aimless walking.
Confused, scared, alone, hopeless.
Still sick, not vomiting, not bleeding, not drugged,
Gray skies.
AA/NA: broken people trying to help each other heal.
Introductions: I’m a drunk, I’m a drug addict, I’m sick, I’m insane.
I don’t want to live like this. I don’t know how to live any other way.
I don’t know how to live. I don’t live, I feed my demon.
Twelve steps, personal inventories
The battle over the third step, a battle that will last the rest of my life.
Understanding, making peace, getting better, feeling good, not drugged, not drunk.
Healing.
Temptation, fear, setbacks, refusal.
Dig deep, hang on.
God grant me the serenity. Say it. Say it again. Say it again. Say it again.
A victory, a small but significant victory.
Recovery: a process, it does not end.
Recovery, gratitude. Peace. Confidence. Recovery.
Life, living it, mistakes, forgiveness.
Anger, pride, the real drug. My drug.
Rage, violence, Say it again. Say it again. Say it again. Peace.
A life, always aware, demons, always there, always
close.
Work to ignore him. Work to deny him. Work to accept him. Pray for peace.
A child, my baby girl. An addict. Rage, the rage
again
Breaking things, breaking hands, out of my mind, not drunk, drugged on my rage.
Want to kill. Want to hurt. Her face.
Tears.
AA/NA again
The process never ends. We start again, together. The rage subsides.
I find love, I find peace. My baby girl is free and sane.
Gratitude
Confident, happy, at peace
A hospital, a simple test
A drug in my vein: desire, craving, planning, want insanity.
The demon: unchanged, smiling, waiting
Always, always, always waiting.
Say it again. Say it again. Say it again.
A victory, a shock, a move forward, confident and aware
Never arrogant, always aware.
He sits there in the corner: waiting, always waiting.
He will wait forever to kill me.
Say it again, say it again and say it again.
‘Not today, you won’t win today.’
The tall, thin woman said, “The author wrote that two weeks ago and he gave it to me. He’s dead now. Just dead. Fucking dead. I can’t put into words how sad all this makes me. I guess the lesson is to never become too confident, too self-assured. We all have that demon waiting to own us, to rape us, to kill us.”
This was the first time that Frankie completely understood this battle.
These words were not new to Frankie, but for the first time they left an impact. As Payton and Frankie walked back to the brothel, Payton said, �
��There’s another aspect of recovery you need to become aware of. It goes along with gratitude and fellowship, the desire and need to help our fellow addicts. I think you are at that point, Frankie. It’s a tough lesson, but a necessary and valuable lesson. It can be a thankless lesson. One that can break you, but I think, I know, it’s one you need to take. You never know, maybe you’ll find your understanding of God in this girl. Today has been a long and tiring and confusing day. Tomorrow we can talk about this girl that I want you to meet.”
Zara and Payton wanted to go out to dinner, while Frankie just wanted to sit alone and think. He poured himself a tall glass of sweet tea, laughing to himself. This was his drink now. It was good and funny, but mostly good. He sat down on the wicker chairs on the small patio of Zara’s third-floor apartment. It was the first time he had a chance to be alone and to ponder and question the events of the recent days and the past weeks, the past month. He was convinced at this point that he was never going to come to terms with or have any understanding of this God-entity. He really wasn’t even sure where God fit into his sobriety. He fully understood his powerlessness over drugs. But that was where it ended.
He thought back to Alexandrine and her happiness in poverty. She would complain often and loudly, to Frankie and anyone else who’d listen about her struggle and how hard her life was. Her poverty and her life were hard, a struggle; yet she was always thankful and somehow joyful. This gratitude and her thankfulness was something he could never fully comprehend. Frankie had so many more things—material things and comforts—but he was always angry and unsatisfied. Somewhere in this confusing mix, this caldron of confounding and conflicting emotions, was a tie, a hint, a pathway to this higher power he could not comprehend.
Tonight, however, all he wanted to do and needed to do, was to sit on this fine porch and sip his cold, sweet tea and watch the sun set over his new home, his home in the Deep South. He thought back to the bar and Lynard Skynard and his notorious dislike for the South and he smiled, watching all that was New Orleans open before him like a constantly changing and moving painting. He liked not being insane. It was good to be at rest and feel a little less broken, to not feel the need for constant forward motion. He contemplated the possibility that he might actually find peace someday.