Halfway

by Tom Macher

  I wrapped my sheet tighter. I knew what he’d say. Don’t say it, bra, I told him. You don’t have to say it.

  Seriously, he said. You think it’s the meat, but it’s not. It never is. It’s the protein, bra. How much longer you think you can go on like this?

  You think you have to say something, I told him, but you don’t.

  The difference between you and me right now, he said, is—

  I left. Took a train from New Orleans to Beaumont, where there were problems. We got delayed. In San Antonio, we encountered more problems. In El Paso, the tracks doglegged into Juárez, where people lived in cardboard boxes in cardboard towns. I came back to Sally to screw. Afterward, I sat on the bed and stared silently until she looked away. We didn’t talk about the money I’d taken. She had class or rehearsal or someone else. When she left, I stole more money from her and hit the road.

  I was drinking again, but it wasn’t the same. Didn’t matter how fucked up I got, nothing changed. I couldn’t stop thinking. No matter what. The hole remained. Alcohol didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t get past the shame of what had come before, not the stealing of Sally’s money, not the knowledge that I couldn’t hack it at the House, not the understanding of my own futility. Ultimately, the only lesson that had stuck from these places was “That old dumb motherfucker was right.” And that is a painful lesson to learn.

  I stayed on people’s couches or floors, in their beds or basements, in youth hostels, and beneath steps in an alley when it didn’t rain. I slept in a car on the mountain or by the water and in eucalyptus groves. I walked around my mom’s town, never going to her door unless I knew she was out; I’d stop under eaves and at all-night convenience stores, where I’d smoke and drink hot coffee and watch for cruisers and try to stay out of the rain, always feeling that homeless cold, which is wet and windblown and never—no matter how much coffee you drink—ever going away. I was twenty, maybe. I kept running. Every night was the last, and every morning I said not today.

  I’d like to say I thought of other people in all this, but that’s not how it works. I’d become a feral thing, pushing against someone else only for warmth. Shit was much, much worse. I called the House, but they didn’t have any beds.

  Call us in a week, they said.

  Instead, I got on another Greyhound bus and headed for Colorado, where, if things didn’t improve, I planned to rent a cheap motel room and kill myself.

  * * *

  ELKO HAD WINDOWLESS cinder-block buildings with single neon signs saying “Casino.” I spun penny slots one bet after another, didn’t care what hit, smoking until my jaw locked and my lungs ached. In the morning, beneath a neon sign, I drank watered-down coffee. Pickups sputtered fumes under a bleak Nevada sky.

  At the bus station in Denver, we slept in rotation a few guys at a time while one guy watched for security. We slept on our rucks on the floor or on benches. After a day or so, the guard stopped patrolling and hovered over us, baton snaking from his fist, whacking it against a trash barrel. Now no one slept, and when guys smoked, dude locked them out. It was snowing or about to, cold, and otherwise the same as everywhere else I’d been. I hated myself.

  I went to Boulder. It seemed like a good place. I got a cheap motel room. I ate noodles, watched a lot of ESPN, beat off as much as my dick could handle. I was lonely but more so alone. What did it matter what happened to me now? I was anonymous.

  Late one afternoon, I stood by a window, watching snow come down and smoking one cigarette after another. After a while, I heard singing. A funeral procession came marching down the street. They chanted, ambling slowly over the dusty white road. Jugglers and fire-breathers, drummers and banjo players. There were firemen and police officers, young girls and old people, lovers and yuppies, the homeless—all with arms linked, their song joyous yet sorrowful. The last of the mourners was a small child. He was not marching at all but instead whirling, arms outstretched, head tilted up, mouth open to the falling snow. With each whirl, he fell another pace behind the rest of the group until he was alone on the empty road, just turning and turning now, not moving, his face sheened over with wet.

  Here’s what I thought, watching this: Had I done all that had been suggested? Had I fully worked the steps? Had I turned myself over and let go? Was I really going to kill myself without knowing what life was like sober? I still had some money in my pocket. I could give myself another ninety days. I could always kill myself.

  Fuck it.

  Miss A and the Silver Fox

  VIC picked me up at the bus station. Vic. What did I tell you? he said. Baseball players . . . .

  They don’t smoke, Vic, I said.

  They don’t, he said.

  It had the same cracked pavement in its driveway, the same weedy gully in front of it, the same Coke machine, same busted basketball hoop. Different brothers, of course, but the same stories, same stupid shit.

  And Program had left. He was gone.

  A woman ran it now. Miss A. She liked to talk about dick. It was always dick with her. Dick-dick-dick-dick-dick-dick. And then more dick. I’ll say it again, she’d tell us. And then: Don’t make me say it again. It didn’t matter if we were in group or a one-on-one, in the parking lot, or on the back slab smoking cigarettes.

  She described plenty of positions we knew already and many we didn’t, such as the butter churner, the thigh master, the triple-reverse-upside-down wheelbarrow, and the snow angel.

  If you weren’t my client, she’d start off, and I weren’t your counselor.

  This was bug-eyed shit.

  I don’t care, she’d say, about your herpes and syphilis, your gonorrhea. HPV don’t faze me.

  Or she’d get historical about the fucking she used to do behind lonely bars on Airline Highway and in weedy lots next to service stations and cheap motels.

  God don’t put it where you can reach it, she’d say, if He don’t want you playing with it.

  Guys thought she was coming on, and when she’d start up with her shit, they’d look the other way, or start finding things to fuck with, like a spot on their shoe or the skin of their palms.

  Y’all don’t even know, she’d say, what I’m talking about. You haven’t even tapped a basic understanding of your own crazy.

  The Silver Fox showed up. This was his second time as a social worker here at the House. He was seventy years old, wore a salt-and-pepper perm, a silver handlebar stash, elephant boots, half-buttoned western-styled shirts. Gold chains glittered in his silvery chest hair. He had thirty-two years sober; first third he’d done in Chino. Manslaughter.

  He and Miss A hated each other. Openly. Hm, she’d offer, the Silver Fox, you say?

  And he’d just roll his eyes. That woman.

  They both refused to call us clients or brothers. Instead we were motherfuckers, junkies, a bunch of roaches, really. But, they could agree, so were they.

  He told a story in group once, a straightforward story: For five or six days, he did nothing but slam dope and soil his pants. Same pair of pants. Day after day. This was 1964, maybe ’65. San Francisco. Before the hippies came. He drove a drop-top T-Bird, beautiful ride. He could have gone on forever like this, he explained, except he ran out of dope and was idling in an alley when he saw these two cops, these dirty pigs, emerge from a building. They had some bags in their hands. And they began furtively tossing these bags in the dumpster.

  He didn’t even think about it, he said. Just stepped on the gas, ran those fucks over.

  It was a true thing he’d done many years in the Big House, just as it was a true thing Miss A was no virgin. And yet there were inconsistencies: could you really get off a double murder that easy?

  There were many conversations, much pooling of our opinions by the basketball hoop.

  I didn’t care. That’s how I knew I’d changed. A difference had come to exist for me in the way I viewed this whole thing: what happened wasn’t as important as the truth of a thing.

  So what. It didn’t matter, this non
sense of Miss A’s, and didn’t matter if the Silver Fox had imagined his whole creation story while serving a white-collar sentence for hanging bad paper.

  It could have happened. It could.

  Testimony of Father, Son, and the First of Many

  ME and Bob Dirty stopped by the Pizza Buffet to see about this waitress we’d heard many good stories about. There was no way she could disappoint. It was late June and I was still in the House, had about eighty days clean and didn’t feel much different about things. Just shitty. Same old, same old, really.

  I’ll take the lead here, I told Bob Dirty; then you come in with that kielbasa and finish her off.

  Oh, and she was pretty, more so than I’d imagined: all curves and gaiety, a real happy-go-lucky type. I worked up a sweat just hearing her polyesters swish between her thighs.

  Listen here, I explained, why don’t you give me your number before I go and say something to fuck this up.

  That’s funny, she said. Now, you aren’t one of these House boys, are you?

  Yup. Both of us.

  Nice, she said. Well. Here it is. She scrawled some digits in a curly, looping script. What did you have in mind?

  Hand, mouth, or pussy, I said. But anal is fine, too. Honestly, I’d settle for anything.

  Don’t get me wrong, she said. I would and all. But I don’t know you’re my thing.

  What is your thing? Bob Dirty asked. He was Texas Panhandle all the way, twenty-seven, a con and speedball junkie looking at real time if he didn’t finish.

  I like boys who go both ways, she said.

  Bob Dirty didn’t miss a beat, just tossed an arm around my shoulder and pulled me tight, all lispy, limp-wristed, and the like.

  Bob’s a well-known sausage handler, I told the girl, but she frowned.

  We’re gay on each other, he informed her. Not that it’s anyone’s business.

  I’ll think about it, she told me. But just you, ’kay? I don’t trust this other one a bit.

  * * *

  I HAD SOMEWHERE between two and six months left in the House, a long indefinite time, the exactness of it dependent on my behavior, though I didn’t think I’d last—ninety days was approaching, and if I wasn’t better by then, I promised myself, I’d get a room at the White Rose Motel, drink until I ran out of money, and then hang myself. Bob Dirty, on the other hand, had a few short weeks: his graduation date had been set. While the rest of us played hoops or fuckaround-fuckaround, he’d squat on a parking bump, eyes downcast, interested only in his cigarettes and Zippo. He didn’t want to leave. Wasn’t anything out there, his eyes would say. Nothing new, anyway, nothing he didn’t know.

  Maybe the pressure got to him. He began fucking up.

  I, too, started prepping for the end. And Jesus, my mom. Who knows what goes on in that woman’s mind? She began calling the House, asking for me. I didn’t want to take her calls. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I cut off all contact with my family, cut out anyone who’d been in my life to this point. This just made my mom call more. I’d hear the phone ring and start walking. Out to the back slab behind the group room, or into the woods. Brothers tricked me. They’d act like it was their own mom on the phone and then hand the receiver to me.

  Sweetie? she’d say.

  I didn’t know what to tell her now. I mean, what do you tell your mom when you’re planning on dying?

  Sweetie? Are you there?

  I’m sorry, I finally told her. I can’t talk to you anymore. Not while I’m here. I’ll call you when I get out. Maybe.

  * * *

  I DIDN’T PLAY GAMES, didn’t lie or deceive, just signed off the Property to Lutcher, where the Pizza Buffet girl lived, but outside her trailer, sitting on her car’s hood, nerves took over and I began speaking of the sky, how queerly green it was above the river and plants, how chemical and lime. She seemed quite bored and then angry and then bored again, and we drove to Pontchartrain, walked its muddy shore where the lake bubbled and frothed and lapped among the reeds. This here, I knew—even before she began popping the various pills she needed to ready herself for what was fixing to happen—was alligator and cottonmouth country, each of these predators silent and creeping and violent and aggressive. Are you ready? I asked, but her shoulders slumped, her chin dropped, and she began crying.

  * * *

  GUYS FOUND IT FUNNY. They stroked me in Sunday Care and Concern. Bob Dirty and T-Mac, both of them. Going to any lengths. Acting gay for pussy. They had jokes. This guy could not get laid in a . . . Etc. Got a lot of laughs. Miss A listened with a whimsical look, waiting for a point of entry. That’s too funny, she said. A real knee-slapper. Little floozy roofies herself and you still couldn’t get her done. Shame on you, Tommy. You’re pathetic. Tell you what. Fuck up with bitches again—that means anything: talk to them, hang out with them, look at them, anything—you’ll be ass out on the road.

  This was called No Female Contact and a lot of guys were on it.

  What do y’all think? she asked the group. Should we make a pool? I don’t give him the end of the month.

  It was the twenty-fifth.

  Of course, Miss A had a way of making a joke go on forever and, later that week, made me Rec BBG. This afforded me more freedom, an extra hour of curfew, a little more time to myself that I didn’t have to explain. Here’s some rope, motherfucker. She laughed. Maybe that extra hour will do you in. My fingers are crossed, she said. I got five bucks riding on this.

  Guys uttered condolences. Geez. See you at the White Rose, I guess. It’s been okay, they admitted. Not great but decent. Others got more up-front, calling me a fink-fuck, a slick bastard, Mr. Pretend, and so on. I wasn’t working a program.

  * * *

  THERE ARE ALWAYS decisions we make: Bob Dirty got in a truck and drove to New Orleans, circled back past G-town, and headed west to Lafayette, where he walked the downtown promenade, presumably talking at women. Lafayette is a college town with breweries, dive bars, hip sexy restaurants, boutiques, and yet on its fringes are shanties, cum-dumpster motels, road after road like West with its stores of rock, crystal, Special K, Dilaudid.

  I remember when he finally came back, sitting with him on the parking bump and someone asking where he’d gone and what happened, but all he could talk about was crossing the endless Atchafalaya Basin Bridge at sundown, twilight over Whiskey Bay, a stillness in the Spanish moss and on the smooth red water.

  There wasn’t anything to do now but clear out of his way and hope whoever he dragged down with him wasn’t someone you’d miss.

  Where were you? Miss A asked in group, but Bob Dirty wouldn’t say. Where were you? she asked again, but he sat there, arms crossed, a look of surprise on his face, as if he didn’t know where he’d been, not exactly. If you can’t say, she said.

  I can’t.

  Tell her about the bridge, someone said. Tell her about the water and the sunlight.

  Bob Dirty smiled. He stood up, exited the group room, got in his truck, and left. Not two days later, he found himself in some law scrapes compounding his priors and went to county. The hard time he faced had doubled, but he made bail. There was nothing for him to do now but keep going. He carried out strong-arm jobs in most of the smaller towns on the west side of the parish and then one day tried to strong-arm a man who wasn’t playing and that man shot Bob Dirty in the face and Bob died.

  I don’t know that I can explain it if you’re normal. It’s just no, no, no, right until that bottle hits your lips.

  * * *

  I HAD A FEW DOLLARS IN THE BANK, enough for a month or two of heavy use, and I wanted a reward. Rec BBG gave me certain latitudes, and Tyson was fighting Holyfield that weekend. I used Confo money on a pay-per-view box, ordered pizza and wings, bought chips, dip, vanilla and lemon creams, cold drinks. Next I called the Lebanesian, who’d just been released to live down the road in the three-quarter house, which meant he had not graduated yet but was not subject to curfew, Stricts, or Checks. Most important: he had a car.

&
nbsp; Pick my ass up, I told him. We’re going to Baton Rouge.

  Seventeen and severely bipolar, the Lebanesian, when he was still at the House, spent many days catatonic on the couch or floor. Prone, eyes dead, he’d finger the shag fibers as if they were new and strange. I wanted to be there for him and would tell him I loved him and offer to listen if he wanted to share, but he’d just keep up with those dead eyes, touching the polyester. Do you want to be alone? I’d ask, and if he didn’t answer, I’d turn to go, but he’d grab at my ankle and pull it to his cheek, all curled and fetal and quivering. Or he’d lie between my bed and Captain Ron’s, the Captain snoring, talking me to sleep. I’d wake hours later and he’d still be prattling on, never about anything. Then he’d go way up, gorge himself on all-you-can-eat buffets, hot white buns, Doritos. His weight fluctuated between fat and extremely obese. Once I saw him run up the hood and over the roof and trunk of a car. Whose car is that? I asked, thinking it was a joke. Don’t know, he said. Who cares? He’d hop on a table and gyrate like Elvis during Dinner Group. He was unstoppable, a true sick fuck, criminally intelligent, probably best served somewhere else—what do Stricts matter when you can’t get it together?

  I was standing outside a meeting with Roger M., who sponsored a lot of brothers, and Nob, when the Lebanesian pulled into the parking lot doing about five miles an hour. Roger M., who was certifiable, told us, Watch this, and walked into the driveway and stood in front of the car. He was being funny, I think. He held his hand up as if he were a traffic cop. Annoyance flashed in the Lebanesian’s eyes. Anyone could’ve read his lips: What the fuck are you doing? Get out of the way, dude. Move!

  But Roger M. didn’t move and the Lebanesian plowed him over, crumpling the old man at his fender and discarding him on the pavement.

  It should’ve signaled a shift to the surreal; my testimony would change; the night would grow dreamlike, full of possibility and dead ends. I asked Nob if that really happened and he said yes and indeed Roger M. was on the pavement collecting his Big Book and glasses. But here’s the thing about the surreal: I simply stepped over Roger M. and got in the car, slathered my neck and package with some of the Lebanesian’s cologne, and we reversed out of the parking lot, business as usual.