by Tom Macher
Get some more wood on this fire, the guide said.
Guys rushed to the river and pulled him from the water, his long arms flailing. He was a big boy—our biggest in the home, maybe three hundred pounds—and drying that much body would take hours.
I turned on the social worker. Better hustle your ass today.
Excuse me?
You know what I’m talking about.
I don’t care for your tone. Can you be direct?
Don’t be fucking with your straps. Don’t fuck with your pack. Don’t stop, don’t rest, don’t do it.
Worry about your own side of the street, she said.
Good Jeff’s eyes darkened. What is it with you, he said. Are you mental? Can you not see and hear what’s around you? Are you deaf and blind or just stupid?
I am still your social worker, she informed him.
No, he said, you’re not. We’re through.
Hey, Tommy, Donald said. Guess what day it is! Tomorrow, motherfucker!
Maybe she really did have the soul of a poet and could see into our hearts and knew exactly where we all stood. Maybe she understood my wince at Donald’s words or sensed in me that calmness I feel when shit goes down. Maybe she thought my calm signaled something good.
I can’t drag the sled, she told me, if I’m going to keep up. I can’t carry my pack. I can’t carry both. I’ve tried. I’ve tried and tried.
Trying’s dying, I told her.
Damn it, she said, listen!
What is it you like to say? I asked. Accounta-what-blah-blah-macho-bullshit?
I know all about accountability, she said, but her tone shifted, and something in this shift allowed me to see her fully as I hadn’t seen her this whole time—she’d begun Trip plump, soft, out of shape, but her skin hung loose below her eyes and around her jowls, and her face sagged—she’d lost a lot of weight. I can’t do it anymore, she said. I’m tired.
Well, there you go.
Leave her, someone said. Give her a tent and sleeping bag, her skis and whatnot, but let’s not be foolish here.
And who was it, I wonder now, who suggested this? Which of our wallflowers had chosen this time to speak up? I don’t know. It could very well have been anyone, even the wilderness guide. By now he’d returned from the river and, after slowly untying his boots and setting them by the fire to dry, sat narrow-mouthed, unreadable.
The social worker shook her head. Make you a deal, she said, removing her pack and digging about inside. She pulled her lunch stuff out and laid it by my skis. It’s yours, she said, if you take my pack and sled.
I picked up her lunch bag. She had a lot of food in that bag. As if she’d been dieting. But I didn’t think of this then. I thought of the obvious—my hunger and hers for the next week or two.
You won’t eat lunch again, I said.
I know.
Donald nodded. The nod said, This here is sufficient; it will do. Take it, man, he said. Fuck her.
Sometimes I wish I had more of a spine and were a hero and didn’t think like a criminal—if it isn’t me, it’ll be someone else; if not this, it’ll be much worse. I wish I weren’t cold sometimes but kind always and stood up for the meek. In short, I wish I were different, that things were different.
The other boys hungrily eyed the food. Even the guide’s stomach rumbled. Meanwhile the woman stared at me, her eyes as wide and vulnerable and unknowing as those of a baby whose face you’re about to smother with a goose down pillow.
Mexico
THEY had a way of shifting a suggestion so you believed it was your idea, and a good one at that. From this came a deal—if I agreed to go to Louisiana, I could go to school, play baseball, and get to see my dad one last time. I didn’t want to go to Louisiana—no one did—but I needed these other things, same as I needed the illusion of it being voluntary. So I flew down to see him. He was living in an in-law below a friend’s house in a small mountain town east of Hemet, California. The town was one of these quirky old hippie places with log cabins and evergreens, friendly diners, four-wheel-drive vehicles. A place where people used chain saws. Signs advertised wood sculptures and ice carving. Life-size replicas of grizzlies and Sasquatch cut from redwood ushered travelers into lodges and the VFW hall. It was February. Snow piled on the side of the road. His car took a while to warm up. He masked the degeneration of his last few years with thick scarves, wool sweaters, an oversize burglar’s hat. He did not think it would be long now, a few months is all. This was it. Goodbye.
Catching sight of the two of us in a mirror or storefront window, there was no mistaking our relationship. We are eerily similar. Pictures of us as late teens freak me out. It’s not just our eyes and brow, nose and cheeks, the build of our bodies, our long feet and fingers, but the way we hold ourselves, the tilt of our crown, sloped shoulders, slightly stooped, hands in our pockets; how we lean back or forward to talk. And we both have this thing—it’s clear—where we will look out at the world and doubt. A haziness obscures our relations. We find ourselves always skirting that rootless cipher of anonymity, known but unknown, in but not of, or of but not in.
We drove through the Coachella Valley and past the Salton Sea, a crystalline body of water in the middle of an arid sink. In the fifties, developers bet on it becoming a famous resort and sold it as the French Riviera for Hollywood—Sinatra played here, Nixon did, too. Retirees came, brought their life savings. But this was a desert, and the Salton Sea had formed by accident, the result of shoddy engineering on a Colorado River dam—there was no way to replenish its freshwater source. It had been stocked with corbina and bass, but the lack of renewable water led to a lack of oxygen which led to the growth of algae which lead to fish breeding which led to more fish which led to less oxygen which led to more death, and so on. Its shores were stacked six feet high with the carcasses of dead fish. Millions more died each day. Former resorts dotting its shores were close to death as well. Towns once zoned for fifty and sixty thousand offered empty gridded reminders of old dreams. Lot after lot sat undeveloped. There were no grocery stores, no restaurants. Abandoned cottages stood on cracked asphalt just past heaps of dead fish. The air thick with stink and death, all that remained were a few people stuck in their investments, lounging in rusted lawn chairs outside faded trailers, waiting for the end.
In Mexico, we got out of the car and walked through a large courtyard beside a cathedral. But his energy had gone. His steps got slower and slower. The wind, he said. It’s gotten in my lungs. It’s these holes, he told me, in my cheeks. I’ll have to sit down.
I helped him to a bench, where he settled his long limbs and closed his eyes.
Would this be it? Was he going to die right here?
Dad? I said.
A slight smile spread across his lips. I’m going to be okay, he said. I’m just—Son? I’m thinking about my mother.
We were in a kind of town square not unlike that place you might imagine in the Johnny Cash song. It was a Sunday morning. Pigeons squawked. Wayward mariachis snoozed on benches.
She was pretty, he said. But not beautiful. She was intelligent, witty, charming, and batshit crazy. She used to get mad at the TV, at things an actor said, and would get up and start kicking the screen or pull it off the wall. She’d get a hammer and break things. She was paranoid, delusional, convinced everyone had it in for her. For most of her adult life, she was institutionalized. Whole decades passed when he didn’t hear from her, didn’t know where she lived. At some point, he tracked her down via the White Pages, found her in Oxnard, paid her a visit. She’d aged well, he said, was fresh and young-looking. Heavily medicated. He stayed a few nights, and then, just before he left, she laid some truth on him: If you ever visit me again, she told him, you will die.
Or some-such. It’s what she meant, anyway, he said. What she implied. You know the thing is, he said, whatever crazy she had, I’ve got, too. I guess maybe you probably might have some of it as well.
His mouth remained open, his eyes still close
d. Was there more? Had he fallen asleep?
Nope. Just caught up in a memory.
Son, he said. Here is the thing—I never knew her. He looked at me. She was always a mystery to me.
I understood him then like I never had before and rarely would again. We were the same. I wanted to hug him. I took his ear in my hand and pulled his head close to my own and held him.
That’s nice, he said. It’s very nice. Then he tapped my chest. Now let me go, he said. Son. I want to tell you a story, and maybe you’ve heard this already, I don’t know. No one likes to hear the same story twice. Anyway. There’re these two bulls up on a hill, looking down on a field of cows. One of the bulls is very young, and the other quite old. The young bull says to the old bull . . . Hold on, son. I have to think. I want to remember how this goes. He closed his eyes and smiled. Yes, he said. The young bull says, Let’s run down this hill and fuck one of these cows, but the old bull, he stops him, says, No, why don’t we walk down this hill and fuck every last one of them. Again, he tapped my chest. Give me a damn cigarette, he said.
Should you be smoking? I asked.
Are you fucking kidding? Son, I’m dying.
The House
THE House was on West Road, which was the kind of street in a part of a town you’ll almost never go. Locals called it Crack Row, and they had reason. Now, of course, our country’s drug of choice has changed, as has the neighborhood where it’s bought and sold, but back then rock was everywhere, and on West Road you could hear the dopeman, Tree, and his bass long before his lowrider made our block.
Homes here were small, old, manufactured, half-dropped on cinder blocks or bricks; they had unfinished stoops, tinfoil-blocked windows, and plywood exteriors, were missing shingles and doors and doorknobs—I never could tell which were inhabited and which merely used. West Road had so many crack houses that when police came and shut one place down, the next day everyone went next door. Baseheads littered the area. We’d see them pedal their bicycles past the Property, return a few hours later on foot. Like the ranch, it was the middle of nowhere—halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in a truck-stop town of swamp and cypress—and maybe, if you drove past the outlet mall and chemical plants to the levee or into the Maurepas boondocks and Amite, you’d find the beautiful and exquisite—a painted owl, egret, or alligator—yet the House was close in, and all we saw were the broke down, desperate, and washed out. They’d drift by, each day getting skinnier and skinnier until they were only a pile of loose clothes jerking up the road, eyes sunk in their skulls, knuckles, knees, and elbows pushing up through their scabbed skin.
* * *
I GOT THERE on a Tuesday during group. Group, they said, is three times a week, mandatory. It’s the only thing, Vic said, you got to do, other than not drink.
This was the kind of shit they said.
He snapped a Polaroid, did not search my stuff. Why aren’t you searching my stuff? I asked.
Vic, he said, which I’d come to learn he called everyone, and so he, too, was called Vic. Why would we search your stuff? Is there something you shouldn’t have? Vic. He shook his head. Either you are or aren’t. Either you will or won’t.
He was a broad-shouldered hulk with Coke-bottle glasses, wearing polyester athletic shorts and a polyester button-down, short-sleeve shirt. He pointed me to the group room.
I was expecting something like the Rockies, except no mountains, snow, or barns—a continuation, maybe, an extension between the two places—but it was completely different. In the boys’ home, group offered soft lighting, a warm glow, couches, Kleenex. They encouraged sharing; our feelings were the most important thing. In here, it ran twenty deep. Dudes sat in plastic chairs in a circle, feet tapping. They chewed their nails or the skin on their palms, fidgeted with their hair, mouthed unlit cigarettes. Some of them were old as fuck, like sixty or seventy, and missing fingers or hands, their livers bulging; they had glass eyes, cheap dentures, scars wrapping their heads and faces as if they’d been put together like a puzzle. They wore gym shorts and plastic flip-flops or ill-fitting suits and out-of-fashion ties, all of them with serpentine grins: here is a fresh mouse!
A big biker stalked about, pausing every so often to scribble on a dry-erase board. He had inked-up forearms, black eyes, and was huge, like five-ten, maybe three or four hundred pounds. This was Program. I’d heard about him. Everyone had. He took a look at me. New brother, he said, grimacing. What is that shit on your face?
It’s a beard, I informed him.
Looks like a pussy to me, he said. Shave it.
Dallas John began rattling his jaw. Something about anxiety or childhood, but it didn’t matter. Program cut him off. What the fuck, he asked, are you saying?
I was saying, Dallas John said.
Naw, naw, Program said. I didn’t ask so you’d tell me. You need to, he said. If you don’t. You’re going. Then there’s. You’ll be strapped. Then. When these mother. And you. You’re. Your mom’s there, crying. Your dad, well. But your mom.
I couldn’t keep up, wasn’t sure I wanted to. No matter. There was no slowing down, no welcome packet, no here’s what’s what. They assigned me a Big Brother, but it was Ray, a psychopath. He brayed in my face, punctuated his noise with catcalls and laughter, then walked away. This was SOP, I’d learn, Standard Operating Procedure: shit always seemed practically on the verge of maybe reaching a point where violence approached. Motherfuckers were loud. They said the word “motherfucker” a lot. Everyone here was either a motherfucker, it was known, or a bitch. They said, again and again, All you motherfuckers will die. This was their language, how they conveyed the reality of our disease. Everything nonnegotiable, no one unique. They were rah, rah, confront, confront, confront: get sober or die, will the real Tom M. please stand up, we’ve given you the rope, now hang yourself, bitch.
Program just cut on a dime. Hey, he said, before I forget. Play any fuckaround-fuckaround, kill even a rabbit here, you’re going to jail. Play bloody knuckles, jail. Smoke dope, jail. Conspire to rape, jail. This ain’t no boys’ place, little brother. Playtime is over.
This guy, Dallas John, I guess, was still having some feelings. He leaned forward in his chair, holding his belly. How do you think that makes me feel? he asked.
I don’t give a fuck how you feel, Program said.
* * *
THEY WARNED ABOUT JUSTIFICATION. What was done was done. Rationalization was the same absurdity. No one cares why. Why is just something to tell people, and what we tell people don’t matter. We were all, anyway, just a bunch of liars. Even when we want to tell the truth, we can’t, don’t know. There seemed no point in questioning this. I mean, who was dumb enough to stand up and say what he really wanted, which 95 percent of the time was to build a bankroll, get up and go, score dope, a girl, a motel room? No one was going to say, Yeah, you know what, I want a razor, a belt, a shoestring, a .38, shotgun, hand grenade, or land mine, a high roof or bridge, a hundred benzos and a glass of water, a shut garage and running car, rope and a rafter, a penknife, whatever. Instead, it’s like this: I want sugar. I feel uncomfortable. I miss my mom. All of it smoke and coded. Everything meant something else. Act as if, they told us, or else. And so we did. We said, I want to be here, I want to be sober, I want to live. We knew the people we lied to knew we were lying. That’s fine, they said, lie, keep lying, play the rehab game, keep coming back.
In private, we longed for our take on things, that same old why. It was never, in private, what happened. What happened lacks setup, context. You can’t con in a vacuum, can’t pass the hat without context, there’s no Feel sorry for me, no Give me your motherfucking money.
Out in the world, we were men, sons, husbands, and such, but not here. In here, we were drunks, junkies, fuckups, and—bottom line—drunks, junkies, and fuckups will do what they always do, which is stay fucked up and die young. It made no difference, alcohol or drug, pill or marijuana. Same is the same, all of it off-limits now. Sudafed, caffeine pills, NyQuil.
If it keeps you awake or puts you to sleep. All of it gone.
They made no distinction between relapse and death. Either case, they said, either way. It’s all the same. There’s no such thing, they said, as half-pregnant, motherfucker. You can’t damn near quit, can you? It’s either do or don’t.
They preached the disease concept, the notion of craving, how once you scratch an itch, the itch grows paramount, our twenty/twenty tunnel vision, and spoke of its ends in loosely concrete ways: at the edge of town was the White Rose Motel, and brothers who left were said to have gone there, as if this motel were a junkie heaven or hell. Our minds are dangerous, lonely places, and instinctively, same as a kitten paws litter or a baby grasps tit, we want out, to leave, never mind consequence, never mind wisdom, never mind, never mind. Alone, lacking outside counsel, we drown, our best right thinking just a delusion, a kicking and clawing to surface, prolonging the inevitable. We all promised ourselves things, cut deals: at the end of ninety days, if nothing is better, I’ll tie the noose myself, and yet within these promises we sought wiggle room, variance—now, what about a girl, some sweet girl—and in these fantasies lost track once more of what’s known: binge followed by regret followed by shame followed by another binge to mask that shame.
Our families were part and parcel of this, and we got warned off them same as they warned of old using buddies, or walking certain roads alone late at night, how we find ourselves cruising hard-liquor aisles again and again, or paying more attention to a beer commercial, or eating too much sugar, the high of not sleeping, how you hallucinate when you don’t sleep, or feel jittery on your first cigarette, the adrenaline of bungee jumping—triggers, all. Our illness is unified, the junkie just the beginning. Call it herpes, you are the dick sore; in plain-speak: a symptom. Your families don’t know better, they said, but they are just as sick as you. You must warn them!