Grayson's Knife

by Russell H Aborn

  Grayson is on the way to the bathroom when he hears Ron Kerr rustling around in his room. It’d be better to get this over with now.

  He taps on Kerr’s door.

  “Hey, Curly? Are you in there, Curl? You got a sec?”

  Kerr opens the door and stands there in a full set of black silk pajamas and a red smoking jacket with shiny black lapels. His hair is combed and still wet from the shower. He holds a lit pipe in his teeth and a can of Pepsi in his hand. He withdraws the pipe.

  “What can I do for you?” Curly says, still a bit frosty.

  “I’m sorry, bud, for getting shitty with you and everything, threatening your Celtic stuff.”

  Kerr relaxes, but not much. “Yeah, that wasn’t cool, at all.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s my pride and---”

  “Yeah, I know, Ron. I apologized, man. You want me to grovel, or what?”

  Kerr sees he’d pushed as far as he is going to get without resuming the hostilities.

  “Okay, Grayson. I appreciate it.”

  “I’m going up the Downs a little later. You need anything?”

  “Like what?” Kerr asks.

  “I don’t know, man. That’s why I asked you.”

  “No, I think I’m all set.”

  He walks from the apartment up to Norfolk Downs to his bank, hands the teller his passbook and asks for a cashier’s check.

  Back at the apartment, he sits at the kitchen table holding a pen and looking at a piece of clean lined paper he’d just ripped off the pad. He taps the top of the pen on the table for a minute, shrugs and puts pen to paper. Nothing. He lays his forearms on the table and his forehead on his forearms and wonders what he wants to say. Some time passes and he lifts his head and puts pen to paper. A few lines in, he writes:

  I keep thinking about when we took the train to NYC the June we graduated. We went into that weird little restaurant and I ordered clam chowder and the strange looking waiter brought me soup with celery and tomatoes in it. I said I ordered chowder not vegetable soup and the waiter said I had to be from Boston and then he said, “Man, you are a stranger in a strange land. Maybe that’s not what you wanted, but you got what you asked for. And I’m sorry but that is your problem if those are two different things.”

  He pauses to figure out what else he wants to say, then he bent over the paper and writes some more. He plans to drop it off, but if she sees an envelope from him, she might rip it up without opening it. If it came in the mail it would be more formal. When he finishes, he pulls an envelope from the kitchen drawer and addresses it. He looks for a stamp but can’t find one. He knocks again on Kerr’s bedroom door, and calls out.

  “Hey, Ron. Do you have any postage stamps?”

  Kerr opens the door, smiling.

  “That’s funny,” he says. He holds up a Playboy magazine, showing Grayson the cover, where a blonde held a mocked-up postage stamp with the Playboy logo on it.

  “Wow,” Grayson says. “Wild.”

  “Tennessee Williams is the interview,” Kerr says.

  “That the guy who sings ‘Sixteen Tons?’” Grayson thought that Curly would laugh.

  Curly shrugs, “Maybe. I haven’t got that far yet.”

  “So, no stamps?”

  “No, but I’m going to the post office to get stamps for work. How many do you need?” Kerr asks.

  “Just one.”

  “Leave the envelope on the table and I’ll get a stamp and mail it right at the post office, too. They’re eight cents each.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Grayson says. “I’ll put a dime on the envelope.”

  “I’ll leave you the change,” Ron Kerr says. He closes the door.

  He calls Charlie’s place: No answer. He tries several more times with the same result.

  Thinking sleep may help him put off a drink, he goes into his room and stretches out on his bed. He is tired, beyond tired but he can’t fall asleep. His mind bounces from one thing to another, but slowly, as if he has a hangover. He feels sick, sickened by despair. But he doesn’t really know what despair is. Was he being dramatic? Part of the problem is he lacks the discernment to distinguish one emotional state from another, except for a very basic few. Whenever he’d hear people talk about emotions, not that it happened much, but when it did, he tried to change the subject. He was very sad about his mother getting cancer, sadder when she had the stroke, saddest when it became clear she wasn’t going to get better. When he saw one of his sisters or their kids, he was glad. He was as sad as sad could be, it was as if he been crushed, when Paul had been reported MIA, because he knew instantly that his brother was dead. So, the news that Paul was really dead was not news at all, but it still hurt something awful, way worse than he expected. Grayson also knew when he was mad. But, with any emotion that could not be found in the pages of a Dick and Jane book, he is like a goldfish looking out from his glass bowl at a blueprint for a nuclear plant.

  On New Year’s Day, he’d woken up knowing Catherine was through with him, but he’d hoped it would blow over. When she was waiting for him at the apartment, which was the day his mother opened the door to the Marines and her world began ending, he thought Catherine had taken him back, but no. He waited. When she said she was pregnant he thought, at first, she’d agree to marry him if he was contrite, but somehow, he’d really let her down. Maybe he was supposed to grab her and drag her to the priest. Me Tarzan, you Jane. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows? Who knows! If there are answers they are out of his reach.

  At some point, he hears Ronald Kerr lurching around the apartment like a team of Clydesdales. How could a skinny guy make so much noise? He hears the door close as Kerr goes out.

  He closes his eyes and falls asleep.

  When he wakes up, it is late afternoon. Each minute that the cops didn’t kick down his door and shoot him dead is gravy. He has to get out of the apartment. He asks himself why he needs that old bastard John Minihan just to go to a frigging AA meeting? Is there some secret password that he needs to know to get in, or what? Why doesn’t he get up off his ass and go to a meeting himself? He’s a big boy. He could see for himself, now, without someone yapping in his ear. Get it over with, go and tell them that the whole AA thing is a crock of shit, and it won’t work for him.

  “Get going, doofus,” Grayson says.

  He gets off the bed, looks around for his sneakers, because if this plays out like he expects, it won’t take long to confirm the AA experience is for lames and he can make a quick, silent exit from the meeting, leaving the dead to talk to the dead.

  The phone rings in the kitchen and he ignores it while he laces his sneakers. Would the cops call before they came over to arrest him? Not likely; they much prefer surprise.

  Grayson groans, jumps to his feet and throws a flurry of punches at his invisible adversary, which, now, has the face of Hugh as it floats in front of him, but out of reach. He’s lightheaded, so he stops punching and goes to the kitchen.

  He fills a glass with tap water, goes back into his bedroom and opens his sock drawer, pulls out a sandwich bag half full of amphetamine capsules, the ‘greenies.’ Grayson doesn’t like to take pills recreationally, only for practical reasons, because taking a pill to get high was too…bald. You can claim to be a social drinker; you might have to admit you really stunk at it, but still, you can claim that that is your intent. He’s never heard anyone ever claim to be a social pill taker. But, boy, did he need something to lift him out of this funk.

  He takes two with water, and wraps a third in a piece of torn off page from Time magazine, then because the two didn’t seem like they’d be enough, he unwraps the third, downs it with water, then wraps two others in the paper and puts it in his pocket.

  Anyone, who spends any time in the seedier bars, has heard the horror stories about AA. These tales are told in the same way that a gathering of ancient mariners spoke of monster sea serpents and rogue waves, and like those terrible yarns, often end with the words,
“and was never seen again.” So, Grayson knows there is a number in the phone book, and overpowering the instinct for self-preservation, he looks it up.

  He walks carefully out the door, down the stairs, imagining a camera crew recording a documentary entitled The Last of Grayson. He gets in his car, zips down to the Merit Station and the bank of phone booths there. He gets in the booth, and closes the door, even though there is no around, then drops a dime and rats himself out.

  “Can you tell me where there’s a meeting tonight in South Boston?” he says. He wants to avoid Quincy meetings for fear someone will see him.

  “Sure thing,” says some chipper bastard. “There’s one at the L St. Bath House at 7:30 in the rec room. That work?”

  “Well, I’m a wreck so I guess it does,” Grayson says.

  The cheerful SOB began cooing some words that Grayson didn’t have time to identify because he hung up so fast. He half expects to disappear down a hole in the floor of the booth, like Max in the opening credits of Get Smart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Grayson racks the GTO on the residential side of the treed median, across from the L St. Bathhouse, which is more of a community center. The L St. Brownies is a club of mostly old men who were locally famous for taking a bollicky swim in Dorchester Bay, behind the building, every New Year’s Day, regardless of weather.

  He rolls the window down, smokes a cigarette and watches the foot traffic enter the building; all these noisy, rollicking, giddy geeks, greeting each other with hugs and handshakes. Inside, the joint is probably teeming with people who think they’re happy. He’d like to give each drunk a kick in the nuts for running a scam. He doesn’t belong there, and he can’t fake it.

  “Fuck that,” he says. He slips the stick into first gear, and takes off like he knows where he’s going.

  He has no idea where to go or what to do, but moving offers comfort. His only lasting desire is to go, just go, go, no matter where he was. This is the one imperative: Go. Keep moving. Being somewhere else is like the future; you can head there, but you can never get there.

  He pulls into the Stop & Shop lot at Neponset Circle and parks down the end, in front of the liquor store. He knew it was inevitable that he’d end up here. It is impossible to last all the way through life without drinking? No. Why pretend? Why postpone it? Give in, get it over with, everything’s screwed anyway. He gets out, pulls the folded money from his pocket to see how much he has on him and the card John M. gave him falls to the ground. He looks down at the card lying there, and thinks about it. He leaves the card where it fell and the wind picks it up and it tumbles away. At the front door of the package store, he came to a quick halt on the rubber mat when the automatic door he’d expected to swing open at his footfall failed to do so. He pushes on the door, but it seems to be locked. He looks in the store and sees smiling customers and genial clerks busy with various stages of purchase. He looks at the hours of operation on the door and the store is supposed to be open until 11 PM. He knocks on the window, but nobody seems to hear him. Spooked, he wonders if he’s a ghost? The thought scares him. He turns to go back to his car. On the way by the phone booth, he sees John M.’s card, lying there at the door of the booth. The wind has blown it his way. He hurries back to the Goat, disoriented and in fear. Have the greenies made him paranoid?

  He fishes his pocket for the keys, and pulling them out, the key ring gets caught on a thread and the keys fall to the ground, like John M.’s card had fallen to the ground. He feels a strong wind blowing from behind him, pushing him toward the phone booth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  John Minihan says the meeting is close enough to walk. So, they set off down Beale St., and cross Arlington where Grayson has parked the GTO at the hilltop beside the firehouse.

  “Will my car be all right there?” Grayson says, mostly just to say something.

  John M. looks. “Yeah, if you have the emergency brake on.”

  Down the hill they go, toward Beach St.

  “I’m glad you changed your mind,” John M. says. “You will be, too, although that might be hard to believe right now.”

  Grayson nods.

  “I know how you feel. I’m sure there were guys who went to the electric chair more cheerfully than I went to my first AA meeting,” John M. says. “I didn’t really want to quit drinking. So, I know. I get it. But you have to trust me a little bit. I’ve been where you are. You’ve never been where I am. You’ll be okay, if you let it work.”

  As they talk back and forth, Grayson notices John M. is verbose on the down side of the hills, and more economical word-wise on the flat stretches. Grayson’s best chance to really plead his case was on the inclines where John is busy wheezing. The old guy is cagey, though, and slows noticeably and sometimes stops when he wants to make a point.

  “I don’t see how quitting helps anything,” Grayson says. “I feel like if I don’t drink, I’ll crack up. I don’t want to end up in Mattapan, sitting around in pajamas, making stuff out of gimp.”

  “Did your father crack up?”

  “No. But he’s no prize. He can still be an asshole.”

  John stops. “A son who thinks his father is an asshole is very common, and both parties can live with that. But when a father thinks his son is an asshole, both are grief stricken. I’m not saying that’s what he thinks now, but you keep it up, and he will eventually.”

  It’s never occurred to Grayson that his father might think of him in this way.

  John may have seen he had dented Grayson’s armor, because he changes topics.

  “This is how I get my highs today,” John M. says.

  Grayson surfaces out of his gloom. “Walking?”

  “Getting light headed, and not just from walking. A coughing fit, standing up quick, bending down to tie my shoes. Whoo!”

  They go by Mass Fields grammar school, bearing down on some kind of Protestant church.

  They descend a steep flight of stone stairs, go through a double set of swinging doors and onto a cement floor in a wide-open basement which is abuzz with the happy babble of people at a party. Or maybe this hall has been invaded and occupied by a second squad from the same army of smiling, cult-eyed Moonies that he’d earlier seen infiltrating the L St. Bathhouse.

  John M. says he wants to introduce the skittish Grayson to this other young guy named Bob. They wait until Bob, whose back is to them, finishes drawing a cup of coffee from a big metal urn that sits on a shaky card table. Bob pulls a plastic spoon from a cup full of them and digs it into a bowl of sugar and shovels sugar into his coffee cup, and keeps doing it until, perhaps, the cup is too heavy. Then he stirs it, as he gazes about with a dreamy look on his face. The guy looks familiar, like the kid brother of someone Grayson knew in school.

  “Bob,” John M. says. “Let me introduce you to a friend.”

  “Hey, Grayson! Good to see you,” Bob says.

  He shakes Grayson’s hand so vigorously that Bob slops his coffee over the top of the cup onto his other hand.

  “I wondered if you fellas might know each other,” John M. says.

  “Igor?” Grayson says.

  He barely recognizes him; Igor looks like Bob Hayes from sixth grade again, at ease, clean and tidy, as if his mother had gotten him ready for school.

  “Yeah!” Bob says. “Boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve been called Igor. Cripes, am I glad you made it. I’m really happy to see you.”

  “Yeah? Well, misery loves company,” Grayson says.

  Bob and John M. laugh heartily, like Ed McMahon laughs at Johnny.

  “You’re in the right place,” Bob says. “This is a great meeting.”

  Bob turns away, picks up a pamphlet out of a wire rack on the table and hands it to Grayson.

  “Here,” he says. “Stick that in your pocket. It’s a schedule of area meetings, where, what night they meet, and so on.”

  Grayson puts it in his back pocket, already wondering where he can throw it away. What if he gets k
illed in a car accident and someone finds that on him? Talk about embarrassing.

  The low-ceilinged room is fluorescently lit and crowded with a hundred or so metal folding chairs which look like they’ve been lined up in rows by a team of German engineers. There are indeed Boy Scout banners with cryptic sayings hanging from wall nails, just like The Old Man said. Expect a Miracle, But For The Grace of God, and We Can Do What I Couldn’t. Grayson again asks himself, what the hell am I doing here?

  He is being herded along the wall, to the left of the chairs, toward the far end of the long room, which is much like the basement room in the grammar school where he and Bob had played Bombardment in an after-school recreation program. Bob could whip that rubber ball, man; that red ball burned like fire when you caught it against your belly, like it might blow a hole right through you.

  But right now, Grayson is deeply concerned about the present; were they marching him toward that microphone up at the front? Is he supposed to weep and wail about bad luck, like on Queen For A Day?

  “Why are we going up to the front?” Grayson asks.

  “I can hear better,” John M. says, “when I sit up front.”

  Bob nods at this wisdom, as if he admires it and is very impressed with John’s sagacity.

  The walls are smooth, painted cinder block, about six feet high. At the top of the wall, set in sideways, are casement windows that open inward. The windows are not the kind Grayson can crash through and make his way to freedom. They are too small. Maybe he could jump up, wriggle through and then claw his way to ground level, but by the time he got halfway out, even someone as old as John M. would have time to jump up, point and shout, ‘Seize him!’

  Soon he finds himself sitting on a metal folding chair in the third row, packaged between Bob on the aisle, and John M. on the other side. Underneath, the ceiling’s a thick blanket of cigarette smoke.

  “Wow,” Grayson says. “These people like to smoke.”

  More Ed-style chortling.

  Bob says, “There’s a beginner’s meeting here, before the regular meeting starts. You get thirty or so wired up beginners here, they can burn through a carton of smokes in sixty minutes, no sweat.”