by Mark Dunn
Twelve Steps to Sobriety
A draft
by Harlan Davison
1. We admit that we are presently powerless. We embrace the fact that our lives are controlled by the demon liquid spirits.
2. The existence of God still open to question, we look for a power greater than ourselves with a more temporal address. A respected uncle, an admired high school football coach, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Clark Gable are all good choices. A good choice for women would be the ever-popular Dolores Del Rio.
3. We make a decision to turn our lives over to that power greater than ourselves, unless in the case of Clark Gable, he does not answer our correspondence with anything but an autographed picture of himself as Fletcher Christian.
4. We take a good, long look at our lives, where we have been, and where we have gone wrong. We do not take this inventory in a saloon because it may prove counterproductive.
5. We are specific about what we have done for which we should be ashamed. We make a detailed list. If necessary, we purchase additional Big Chief notebooks.
6. We make the decision to remedy defects in our character that have diminished the lives of others. This step does not necessarily involve the removal of unsightly facial moles.
7. We drink strong black coffee whenever possible, many cups of it. Our teeth become stained but we bear the stains as proud emblems of our sobriety, for lips that taste coffee do not taste liquor, Irish coffee excluded.
8. We make a list of all the people we have hurt. We prepare to make things right with them all, excepting those who have passed away, and in such cases we then prepare to make things right with their children, and if they died childless, we prepare to make things right with a close neighbor or perhaps the family butcher.
9. We make our amends to all those we have harmed in order of the grievousness of the offense. Maiming others with our automobiles would be highest on the list. At the bottom, perhaps, would be making a sarcastic comment to a newspaper vendor when he greeted us innocently and cheerily, only to have our sour mood darken for a moment his beautiful sun-kissed morning.
10. We look deep within ourselves and find those things requiring change, and we change them for the better and when we are wrong we admit it promptly, even if this admission involves chasing after the wronged party and wedging him between furniture to get our point across.
11. We drink more coffee. If necessary, we chew and swallow the grounds. We reek of the stench of coffee, but we rejoice in it, for it represents the essence and incense of our rejuvenation.
12. We share these steps with other alcoholics in need. We come together in groups and say our name and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and eat lard-shortened doughnuts and sugar fry cakes and acknowledge that we are men and women on the road to sobriety and health through fellowship and mutual support. We celebrate our rebirth as alcohol-freed Americans, ready now to make sober contribution to the life of this great nation, and so we go clear-headed with raised chin and elevated spirits, and with renewed determination to get ourselves off the breadlines and into a job. And Clark Gable willing, we shall succeed.
32. It was all over but the shouting. Even on the best of days Dandy-D’s vice president for international marketing William B. Worthington would shout his opinions and instructions in a voice so deafening that Jonathan was forced to put an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist on staff to administer to the injured. Eventually Worthington left to go to work for a turbine manufacturer. In a raised voice, the departing company man confessed that he could not help himself; he came from a long line of shouters, mostly ministers. There is a rich history of bellowing from the pulpit, the phenomenon, curiously, the subject of perhaps the longest book title in American publishing history: Shouting: Genuine and Spurious in All Ages of the Church, from the Birth of Creation, When the Sons of God Shouted for Joy, until the Shout of the Archangel: with Numerous Extracts from the Old and New Testament, and from the Works of Wesley, Evans, Edwards, Abbott, Cartwright, and Finley, Giving a History of the Outward Demonstrations of the Spirit, Such as Laughing, Screaming, Shouting, Leaping, Jerking, and Falling under the Power &C., by G. W. Henry (Oneida, New York, 1859).
33. Clara could bear no more children. As disappointed as Jonathan must have been to learn that the surgery would prevent Clara from giving him the biological child he had always wanted, his feelings go unregistered both in his diary and in correspondence from this period. Furman wonders if this might not have been a silent acknowledgement of the fact that the odds were already working against him; even without the fibroid tumors, Clara might still have had difficulty conceiving, given that Jonathan was in possession of an undescended testicle—a condition that generally reduces sperm count and the odds of “hitting the target.” Or as Odger delicately put it, “See, ol’ Jonny was born with three legs but only one ball. Ol’ Tweedledee was tucked away up in his stomach somewheres. Back in those days, why, the doctors they didn’t generally go about the business of dropping those suckers into the oat bag. And even if this had been standard procedure, they’d probably have been too distracted by that extra danged leg to notice that the boy was one nut short of a Mars bar.”
34. “Clara and I have decided to adopt.” Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 28 March1935. AnB.
35. “Clara says he’s the most beautiful baby she’s ever seen. Even famed engineer and bridge designer Bascom Caruthers left his blueprints to come down from the attic to give him a look.” Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 17 May1935, AnB.
36. “We are going to call him Addicus Andrew, after my father and a very dear friend.” Ibid. Bloor’s response, coming only a few days after his retirement from Oberlin College, was touching. The complete letter follows. JBP.
May 21, 1935
My dear Jonathan,
You have moved me to tears. I am watermarking my stationery with this shameful welling of my lachrymal glands! I was never blessed with a marital union and so I have never known the joy of fatherhood. You are finally, in your forty-eighth year, partaking of that experience and I wish you all possible happiness.
I have just remarked that I have never known the joy of fatherhood. That is not entirely true. For I have come to think of you as my own son. You have opened your life to me as has no one else and I feel each day the ligature of that special bond we have forged. Yes, like that of father and son. I hope that your birth father will forgive me for trespassing here, but it is true.
I wish all good things for you and Clara, and for little Addicus Andrew Blashette.
Next month I will be moving to Omaha to take up residence with my sister Evetta and her husband Sven. I will not know what to do with myself. Teaching was my life. I will wear the mantle of “emeritus” proudly, but will so miss the classroom and all my students.
Evetta is a blessed soul. Her husband Sven, however, often tries my patience to the extreme. On my last visit, he brought his catch of the day boastingly into my bedroom and dripped fish water upon my bed. He is illiterate and frequently requests that I read product labels to him. These readings seem to entertain him in a way that I cannot comprehend and I am often required to recite a particular label more than once and employ different voices, especially highly pitched ones that remind him of women from the Orient. I refuse to do this in the presence of my sister. It is an act of humiliation I reserve for Sven alone. Yet sometimes when the recitations are over, I feel strangely invigorated and eager for our next session. I do not understand the reason for this.
Congratulations again on the adoption. I look forward to seeing the child on my next visit to “Chez Blashette.”
Give him a little hug for me.
Your friend always,
Andrew Bloor
37. “Adopted Son of Deodorant Executive Kidnapped. Family had the child for only six days.” New York Dispatch, 23 May1935.
38. “God, oh God, what did I do to deserve this?” Jonathan’s “Letter to God,” JBP.
12
&n
bsp; THE SHIFTING SPOTLIGHT
1. “I just heard the news.” Nydia Blashette to Jonathan Blashette, 24 May1935, JBP. Jonathan’s Aunt Nydia, sensitive to the emotional toll the kidnapping was taking on Jonathan and Clara, continued to write to the couple, often including verses of inspirational poetry she had penned during stolen moments from her job as hash-slinger at the Fort Ituska Logging Camp Mess Hall. Far from being the balm to Jonathan and Clara that Nydia hoped they would be, the verses served only to sharpen the pain of loss that the couple felt. It is not difficult to see why Jonathan and his wife found the poetry so objectionable, as illustrated by the following excerpt.
You cry for the child at night.
I know.
I hear the whimpers like the warbly whimpers of the whimperwill.
Like the moping murmur of the moany bird.
Custodian of the empty nest—
A nest robbed of chirpy chick
By the clawed swipe of the thievy rascally rat.
A silent nest where no young one sings—
Where stillness settles heavy dulled and dampened by
the leaden ache of a mother’s loss.
A pining and keening among the oaken branches of a family tree
Unnecessarily
Pruned.
A pining keening, wail-warble
For the happy child who once dwelled within this
Nest of love and twining tangly tendertwig.
Where, oh where is that child-chick so fair,
So young, so soft
So loved.
You cry for the child at night.
Tears that do not dry with the break of day.
In company with the flitter-flutter of the
Mourning Dove,
Newly arrived upon your sill.
Coo.
Coo.
Addy Andy, where are you?
2. “Did Hauptmann have a brother?” Nydia Blashette to Jonathan Blashette, JBP. The letter, which I include in its entirety below, prompted Jonathan to direct his local postmaster to return all correspondence from Nydia “to sender,” and to temporarily sever ties with a woman who obviously meant well but had a strange way of showing it. Addicus had been estranged from his younger sister for years, and had counseled Jonathan to avoid her as well. It seems that Jonathan finally took his father’s advice.
June 18, 1935
My favorite nephew Jonathan,
Nearly a month has passed and I know that the FBI has given you very little hope of ever seeing your little Addy Andy again. I keep thinking of that Mr. Hauptmann who killed the little Lindbergh baby and I have to wonder, did Hauptmann have a brother? Though the handwriting in the two ransom notes is very different, it is my hope that it is the brother who took your child and I will tell you why. Because I believe that unlike the first Mr. Hauptmann, this Mr. Hauptmann could be a different sort of man entirely—one who will hold little Addy Andy somewhere safe and warm. Perhaps he conveys his baby captives to some secret nursery where they are suckled and dandled and cared for with a gentle Germanic hand. That would be a wonderful thing to learn, would it not? I believe that if one brother is bad, it does not have to follow that the other will also be bad. I would think that there are many brothers who would want to make up for the bad in the evil, murderous sibling. I know, for example, that after John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, his brother Edgar who was also an actor, often played the clown at children’s birthday parties and sometimes pretended to be Rip Van Winkle and would sleep until time for cake when he would rise up like a big ol’ gobble bear, much to the delight of all the little ones. His name could have been Edmund. Or Eduardo.
I have spoken little of myself during these past few weeks. I will say that I am well and except for the mosquitoes here as large as humming birds, the harsh, damp winters, the uncouth behavior of these Paul Bunyan-pretenders (little boys at heart playing at being big burly men) I am happy to be here. Alaska is the last frontier and your aunt is ever the trailblazer.
Perhaps some day I will be able to see you again. It has been many years since we have been together—many years since I was sent away to deliver in anonymity and without scandal that bastard child that grew arrogantly within me.
Your loving aunt,
Nydia
3. “Cannot thank you enough for helping to bring the child home” Jonathan Blashette to Special Agent Vaughn Dobbs, June 30, 1935, Correspondence Files, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It took three days to find someone able to decipher the letter that was safety-pinned to Addicus Andrew’s little sailor suit, and then three days more to find someone who could translate it successfully. The language, an obscure Mediterranean dialect spoken by only a handful of natives of the Isle of Fish off the coast of Portugal, posed such linguistic difficulty for Cape May University Mediterranean language scholar Gaffer Hurd that his early attempt at translation into English was roundly dismissed, and the search was renewed to enlist someone more versed in “Piscianeté.” Fortunately, this early effort wasn’t permanently discarded; I found it nestled safely in Blashette’s papers. (Box 71, folder 18), and offer it below in its entirety as curious sidebar:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Blashette,
Jackle Weebe, my husband (or brother or male cousin or village prelate disguised to look like a beggar-man) got the boy (or baby boy or baby crib mobile or overstuffed box lunch or bucket of mashed fish meal), wrote give-give letter (or ransom note or telegram or thank-you card sent upon receipt of an invitation to an oyster-shucking party) for to give-give us money. I hold the boy (or baby boy, etc.) but Jackle go (or left, or will leave, or is leaving, or will have left—tense unclear here) and me alone with boy (or baby crib mobile, etc.) I wait and wait (or squat and squat, or pace back and forth on one leg like an impatient heron) but take good care of infant (miniature adult, brave little man, wax figurine resembling a weeping Saint Francis of Assisi) and wait so long, I say enough of this! and bring back Avicus Andoo to you with money. I think (I am cognizant, I make a cerebral stab, I choke on the enormity of life’s huge portions) that Jackle got eye-big (scared, frightened?) and left me holding the bag. (Or left the cake to be eaten alone. Or left the umbrella open in the sunshine. Or left the clock without a horological function.) So here the little one is. I bought him the sailor suit (or seaman’s lucky biscuits, or pipe fitter’s line-axe or sequined codpiece). It isn’t necessary to reimburse me. (Or don’t pay me twice for a deed done once. Or dance, little monkey, dance and I will pay you only with monkey kibble and kindness.)
Best wishes (or sincere regrets, or remembering you always as if the years were pebbles on a vast beach, each stone smooth and distinct and beautiful, yet constituents of the myriad wondrous whole, dear friend)
Rondonia Filette
4. The kidnapper’s name was Jack McKevitt Weebe. One theory as to why Weebe escaped suspicion for so long is entirely plausible; with his fingerprints having been abraded from years of working in pumice mines, little Addicus Andrew’s kidnapper left FBI agents only a tracing of sock lint and a single curl of unassigned body hair by which to track him down. The case wasn’t cracked until a bright young investigator not even assigned to the case, Hermes Gasparian, hypothesized that the reason no fingerprints were left at the scene of the crime was not because the culprit had taken special care to wear gloves but because he did not, in fact, possess fingerprints. Weebe was subsequently brought in for questioning along with an old friend of Blashette’s from his circus days, Torso Timmy, (a.k.a. Timmy Briggs), the latter quickly released with apologies.
5. Winny would always remain Jonathan’s favorite artist. Winny’s powerful aesthetic influence on Jonathan lived on long after her death. Because of this now deeply ingrained love of art, Blashette cultivated friendships with artists whenever he could and served as chief patron of the droll and mischievous Fiona Fareed who began her career as a muralist with a penchant for nautical scenes, especially those in which sea vessels take on human characteristics, venture
on land, and dance together to happy porcine jug bands. Fareed spent her last years scandalizing the art world by putting flesh and sinew on Georgia Okeeffe’s skeletal bovines and deliberately misspelling Okeeffe’s name in her weakly written, meandering apologies.
6. “Clara has asked for a divorce.” Jonathan’s Diary, 15 January1936. The rest of the entry says, simply, “She doesn’t love me anymore.” One suspects, though, that there was much more to it than that. The kidnapping had obviously left Clara wrung out, nerve-jangled, and no longer comfortable with the clutter of her life, a domestic chaos that included a high-profile business executive husband whose colorful coterie of friends and associates had become a daily vexation. (It was also an open secret that Clara detested the profusion of partially completed jigsaw puzzles scattered on surfaces throughout the house.)
The trauma of the kidnapping had apparently transformed Jonathan’s wife from brassy, gregarious, full-bosomed earth mother to a far more subdued and less spirited brand of hausfrau. I wonder, as well, if the presence of so many paintings of Jonathan’s dear departed Winny hanging about the house (not to mention the painting-in-progress of Winny herself staring appraisingly down at Clara on each of her not infrequent visits to the Greenwich Village brownstone) was a factor in the unraveling of her ties of devotion to her husband. It could also be that Clara had come to realize that, for all his professions of affection, Jonathan had never truly loved her with anything even approaching the intensity with which he worshipped Winny (or even Great Jane or Lucile for that matter). Whereas Jonathan and Clara might have been marginally content to recline among the plush cushions of an easy and respectable domestic union, Clara quickly came to embrace a different scenario, one in which she had the bed all to herself, with all the oddball associates who used to enliven her days and nights, now kept at safe distance.