Now, Grayson sits in a wheel chair in the Boston City Hospital emergency room waiting area. He imagines he is permanently confined to the chair, as his mother is; certainly, it would diminish his ability to fuck up his life. Some mornings on his way to work, he’d stop in an East Milton coffee shop to get a cup to go. Perched at the counter would be a line of lively, bantering, old men, up before the sun, out of the house, in the pink and as happy as five-year-old kids. He envied them; they were closing in on the finish line, and still able to smile. They had navigated the mine field that was life, and clearly had not screwed it up too bad, or they would not be there smiling.
In the ER waiting room he didn’t want to look around and see what real threats to mortality his fellow humans are dealing with as the new day approaches. Instead he smokes cigarettes and stares at his feet, which are flat, still and lifeless on the wheelchair footrests.
The glass entry doors slide open and Donny appears in the breach. He scans the room from just inside the doors, sees Grayson, jerks his head, ‘come on,’ turns and goes back out.
Grayson stays in the wheel chair and rolls himself out to Albany St.
Out at the car, he sees Hugh in the front seat of Donny’s station wagon so he gets in the back. Donny gets in, looks back at him and drops the transmission into drive and rolls away from the ER.
“Why are you here?” Grayson says. “I called Donny.”
Hugh says, “What happened?”
“I’m not in the mood,” Grayson says. He closes his eyes and leans his head back on the top of the seat. He hears a whisper of cloth, as something slams into his throat. His eyes snap open to see his brother’s snarling face inches away from his own, as Hugh’s forearm presses harder against Grayson’s neck.
“Hey,” Donny yells.
The car skids to a stop and Hugh coils back to his seat with the motion, as quickly as he’d attacked. He sits facing the windshield as if nothing had happened.
Grayson slams the heel of his foot into the back of his brother’s seat.
“Hey, quit it,” Donny says.
“Everything that’s going on, and you get picked up?” Hugh says.
“I have to get my car,” Grayson says.
“Where is it?” Donny says.
“Just drop me here,” Grayson says.
Hugh says, “He doesn’t know where it is.”
Grayson lights a cigarette, and blows the smoke at the back of his brother’s head.
“What’s wrong with you?” Hugh says.
“What’s wrong? We shot a cop in the commission of felony armed robbery, that’s what’s wrong with me. And then I killed a guy,” Grayson says.
“Don’t be dramatic,” Hugh says. “What’s really wrong is you’re a drunk.”
“You brought in a guy who shot a cop.”
“So, you shoved him out the window,” Hugh says. “That solves the problem?”
“What do we do now?” Donny says. “Fight ourselves? Or stick together and work on the problem?”
“He’s right. I’m sure if we work on it together, we can find a way to fuck it up way worse,” Grayson says.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Minihan Auto is a six-bay repair shop in a defunct gas station on the upper end of Beale Street, just past where it crosses Newport Ave.
Grayson parks the GTO off to the side in the small, crowded lot and goes over to the office. The hours are shown on the glass door, and he sees they won’t open until 7:30, about forty minutes. He thinks about leaving and coming back but if he does leave he won’t come back.
He sits on the front bumper of a junked 1964 Chrysler Barracuda. He has his head down and his elbows on his knees and is tracking the progress of a solitary ant that is either hurrying away from someplace or hurrying toward someplace else. Grayson drops a glob of spit in front of the ant to see what the ant would make of it. The ant adjusts his momentum, bounces around the perimeter of the mound of spit and regains his speed. Grayson spits again, but his aim is off and the spit entombs the ant, but the little bastard is a gamer and he fought through and got back underway. The thing stops for a moment and is doing something with his antennae or arms, whatever they were. It looks like he is shaking his fists at the sky. Maybe the ant can’t see him because his eyes are too small to see something so big. Then, perhaps motivated by a mental picture of a picnic still to come, the ant zips off.
“Enjoy the rest of your day, Mister Ant.”
A wiry guy on the other side of sixty, wearing gray work pants and a black tee shirt and a canvas jacket had walked in from the street, and stopped a few feet shy of Grayson. The old guy has white hair shaved down to a fuzzy flat top at the very peak of a pear-shaped head. He has a shiny, flat face that curves away to the side and leads to scrunched up, pinned back ears. He balances the entire assembly at an angle that requires you to suppose he has a stiff neck. He looks like a lonely big toe poking out of a torn sock. He pulls a pair of wire rimmed glasses from his tee shirt and hooks the arms over his ears.
“Do you identify with the ant?” the man says. His breathing is labored.
“What?”
“Or the spitter? Me? In my time, I was both at once.”
“That’s way too deep for me.”
The old guy pulls his keys out and jerks his head toward the door, inviting Grayson inside.
“Is John Minihan around?” Grayson asks.
“Right in front of you,” he says. He sticks out his hand. “You are?”
“Dan Grayson’s son.”
“Michael. Nice to meet you.”
Grayson smiles unhappily. “How do you know I’m not Hugh?”
“I deduced it.”
Grayson bristles, and reaches in his pocket to grab his keys.
“Your father told me Hugh drives a company car.” John M. smiles. “People don’t come here to get company cars fixed.”
Grayson looks at John M. and pegs him as another old drunk who thinks he’s smart.
“That isn’t a company issued 1967 GTO parked over there. It is the pride of Dee-troit that year. That Tempest body on the 67’ was perfect. All in all, you got the best GTO made.”
“Good to know,” Grayson says.
“What can I do for you?”
John M. turns around, opens the door into the shop. He walks a couple of feet, pulls the string on a hanging troffer of fluorescent tubes that stutter and blink before filling one section of the room with a small but unforgiving hum that sounds like a bad guy bug getting the electric chair. The noise brought up an ugly light to go with the harsh hum. John M. then went to a door on the back wall, opens it and went inside. Grayson follows as John goes directly to a five-gallon coffee urn sitting on a counter and flips the switch.
Around the room he goes, pulling the string on more grim lights, revealing metal folding chairs set up in three rows of four beside a picnic table that is draped with an old flowery oilcloth covering that looked as if every smoker since Sir Walter Raleigh had a go at scorching it. Scattered about are red and yellow metal ashtrays, clearly subjected to hard but careless use, empty now except for crusts of ash that paint the air with stink.
Grayson says, “I promised I’d meet you. After that, I don’t know.”
“People come here to get their wagons repaired, usually, but sometimes someone will show up because he wants help to get off the booze.”
“What’s with all the chairs?”
“Some of the boys come in around noon and we have a meeting. Breaks up the work day,” John says.
“You stand at the front and give a sermon?”
“No, we rotate, whoever chairs the meeting sits at the desk and speaks for five minutes or so, then whoever wants to talk, does. You want to come back for it?”
“No.”
“You worried about one of your friends seeing you? Would anyone be shocked to learn that you drink too much?” John says.
“I’m worried they find out I’m not man enough to do anything about it myself.”
“What happens if this doesn’t work for me? What then?” Grayson says.
John nods. “Don’t worry about that. You do this thing like it’s laid out and it will work. I’ve never seen it fail, when pursued with heart.”
John M. sits at the picnic table, and pulls over a tin ashtray crusted black and positioned it in front of himself.
“The smell from these things helps me remember why I want to quit.”
Grayson leans against the wall and folds his arms.
“Isn’t there some part confessing all the stuff I’ve done wrong? And facing the music?”
“Only when and if you are ready. For most, that’s way down the line, too far off to worry about. Not yet. A day at a time. But, if you’re doing something that’s bothering you, you should stop.”
“Because if you’re talking about sin, I don’t believe in God.”
“That may be just wishful thinking on your part,” John says.
“I guess if I go to meetings, my fun is done,” Grayson says.
“Good-bye Rolling Stones, and hello Lawrence Welk,” John says.
“That nails it,” Grayson says.
“A great friend of mine says that Lawrence Welk bit, when he speaks at a meeting. It’s how most of us felt coming in. But the evidence showed most of us weren’t having much fun anymore.”
“A lot of times, I was,” Grayson says.
“I know I was all funned out. Or else, I wouldn’t have been even talking about AA. If I was having fun, why would I need AA?”
“Because other people think I should quit.”
“People who hate fun, right? Those fun hating bastards. But you can’t do it for other people. You have to do it for you. Which is why I want a Camel so bad I’d fight you for it if you had one. My youngest daughter wants me to quit, my oldest wants me to die. Lung cancer killed their mother.”
Grayson sighs. “Sorry to hear it.”
“She was my-ex. Bounced me when I wouldn’t quit drinking. I gave up her and my girls for booze. The only woman I ever loved. I love her still. I’m just grateful she would see me before she died. The day before she passed, she told me I broke her heart. I told her I was sorry, and I still loved her. She said, ‘Better luck next time.’”
“When did you quit?”
“February 25th, 1958.”
“You missed all of the sixties,” Grayson says.
“Not yet, I haven’t. They’re not over yet. Decades start late. The 60’s didn’t start until the Cuban Missile thing, and they won’t be over until Nixon is gone.”
“1976?” Grayson asks.
“I guess you don’t watch the news,” John says.
“If I was tough,” Grayson says, “I could do it. But I’m not. I’m not strong enough, or tough. Whatever I need, I don’t have it.”
“There are different kinds of tough, different kinds of strength that apply here.” He paused. “Listen, when you come to the Sagamore Bridge there, down the Cape, you see a Samaritan sign says, “Depressed? Lonely? Call The Samaritans.” But if you drive down by the shipyard, to the Fore River Bridge, the sign there, in big, black letters, shouts, “No Jumping!” John M. laughed. “Maybe we should be glad it doesn’t say, ‘Hey Stupid! No Jumping!’ AA is like that. Different strokes for different people, or whatever the song says. Some need kindness, some need simple straight forward directions. Like, ‘No Jumping!’”
Grayson is not amused.
John M. looks out to the lot and says, “Okay, look, let me know when, or if, you want to go to a meeting.”
He walks toward the door that led to the shop bays.
“All right, but,” Grayson says. “Do I need to go with you? Can’t I go by myself?”
John M. turns. “Sure, you can, but don’t push your luck. The temptation is always to go out one last time. But a lot of men died because they took their time asking for a ride out to Dropkick Murphy’s farm to dry out. But, listen, you do what you please.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay if I don’t hold my breath while I wait?” John says.
“I said I will, so I will,” Grayson snaps. “I probably need to stop for a while. Until I can get my shit together. But I can’t see myself panicking and deciding to quit forever, not at my age.”
“See,” John says. “If you do stop, your ability to gather your shit into a pile will definitely improve, if that’s what you want. Your shit wrangling skills, so to speak, will get better. But, there is always way more shit to gather in a drunk’s life. Your best bet is to reduce the amount of shit you have to deal with.”
“So, I stop, and everything gets perfect?”
“No, not for me, it didn’t. For you? I don’t know. All I know is that when I was drunk I wanted to be sober, and when I was sober, I wanted to be drunk. An MDC cop found me passed out in the back seat of my car over at the Castle Island parking lot, Mike MacGillivray was his name. He said if I went to meetings and listened to the people talk, I wouldn’t have to drink anymore. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have to. I was flabbergasted by the idea. What if it were true? So, I went and found out I have a disease.”
“Okay, I’ll be honest,” Grayson says. “That’s where the whole AA thing really gets irritating. That’s a fucking cop out. A way to run away from your responsibility for all the shit you pulled.”
“Did he run away from it?” John M. asks.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Grayson shrugs and shakes his head. “All I know is I don’t have a disease.”
“I do,” John M. says. “It’s the only disease that tells you that you don’t have it.”
Grayson rolls his eyes.
“There was an old time French writer, see,” John M. says. “I don’t know his name. He had a story about the devil, about the devil’s best trick? You know it?”
Grayson shakes his head. “Oh, God. The devil?”
“The devil’s best trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist. The disease’s best trick is convincing you that you don’t have it. It insists that you don’t have a disease. That’s why they say it’s cunning, baffling and powerful.”
“So,” Grayson says, “If you think you have this disease, you should sign up for AA. If you think you don’t have it, then sign up faster. That’s a surefire formula for growth.”
“Look, I’d love to stand here and verbally joust with you all day, but duty calls. So, you’re not an alky but you don’t want to drink. Then just quit. People do it every day.”
“I think I’ll try that. I don’t want to go to meetings. I’m pretty busy.”
“I bet. Gathering one’s shit can keep a fella occupied.”
Grayson says, “Plus, no offense, but some of the stuff The Old Man says, it sounds goofy.”
“You go to AA meetings and you will hear plenty of goofy stuff said about almost everything, definitely. But, you gotta pay attention because the goofy stuff is often followed by real wisdom.” He shrugs. “Then more goofy stuff.”
“I don’t want wisdom. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I could go for a little peace.”
“That’s good. You can have either peace or wisdom, but not both. Listen, AA is not for everybody. It’s for people who want it.”
“I could always try it later, if I want,” Grayson says.
“Sure, you can. We’ll save you a seat. Just don’t die in the meantime,” John M. says.
Grayson twitches.
John M. puts his hand. “Listen, I’m sorry I said that. I’ve got a problem with snappishness.”
“You guys all sound like you’re narrating your own life,” Grayson says.
John M. pulls a card from the pocket of his tee shirt. “If you change your mind, give me a call.”
Grayson looks at the plain white card.
John M.
Granite 2-7275
“You still use the old-fashioned exchange, huh?” Grayson says.
“I’m an old fashion guy. Call anytime, if you want to go to a meeting.” He swept an arm back toward the garage. “Or, when you break down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Grayson sticks an oversized, soft sponge in a bucket of hot, soapy water, and without wringing it out, slops it across the hood of the GTO.
Ron Kerr leans on the third-floor porch rail and yells down at him.
“Telephone.”
Grayson climbs the three flights and opens the door to see Curly down at the end of the hall, holding the phone out to him.
“You are a real popular guy,” Curly snarls. “Why don’t you get a secretary?”
Grayson is still smarting from the note Curly left him, as well as the segmented refrigerator.
Grayson takes the phone from Curley, and says, “Why don’t you get your label maker out and punch in “asshole” and stick it to your forehead.”
“Wow,” Curly says, now with a deep sadness. He shakes his head, disappointed by the level of hostility directed toward his personage. He inhales then expels a jet of air from his nose. “Bummer.”
He stands there, way longer than appropriate, and keeps on with the gloomy puss, to manifest beyond a shadow of a doubt, his disappointment at Grayson’s rudeness. Curley then walks away. He goes in his bedroom and closes the door, gently, to demonstrate his unflappable maturity.
“Yeah?” Grayson says into the phone.
“You giving Kerr crap?” Donny says. “Didn’t you just tell me he was strong as a monkey?”
“That’s right,” Grayson says. “Meaning he could kick your ass, which doesn’t mean he could kick mine.”
Donny snorts. “Listen, I’ll give it to you straight. I don’t think Charley will hold up under pressure from the cops, or the bikers. He says he wants to get out of town. Right now, let’s make that happen so he doesn’t screw us up.”
“I’ll call him.”
He does and there is no answer. He kills time, smoking on the front porch of the third-floor apartment. He can see pretty far from up here, but he didn’t see anything.
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