That was no cavalry, he thinks as he lies on the floor, his face swelling up again, meet the new face, same as the old face. That was Voice Number One and Voice Number Two. Only that isn’t right, either. That was two
men, middle-aged at the least, probably getting a little on the old side. That was Mr. Ex Libris and Mr. Gai Cock-nifEn Yom, whatever that means. Both of them scared to death. And right to be scared. The Hitler Brothers might not have done a thousand as Lennie had boasted, but they had done plenty and killed some of them, they were a couple of human copperheads, and yes, Mr. Ex Libris and Mr. Gai Cocknif were absolutely right to be scared. It had turned out all right for them, but it might not have done. And if George and Lennie had turned the tables, what then? Why, instead of finding one dead man in the Turtle Bay Washateria, whoever happened in there first would have found three. That would have made the frontpage of the Post for sure! So those guys had risked their lives, and here was what they’d risked it for, six or eight months on down the line: a dirty emaciated busted up asshole drunk, his underwear drenched with piss on one side and full of shit on the other. A daily drinker and a nightly drunk.
And that is when it happens. Down the hall, the steady slow-chanting voice has reached Sprang, Steward, and Sudby; in this cell up the hall, a man lying on a dirty floor in the long light of dawn finally reaches his bottom, which is, by definition, that point from which you can descend no lower unless you find a shovel and actually start to dig.
Lying as he is, staring directly along the floor, the dust-bunnies look like ghostly groves of trees and the lumps of dirt look like the hills in some sterile mining country. He thinks: What is it, February? February of 1982? Something like that. Well, I tell you what. I’ll give myself one year to try and clean up my act. One year to do something—anything—to justify the risk those two guys took. If I can do something, I’ll go on.
But if I’m still drinking in February of 1983, I’ll kill myself.
Down the corridor, the chanting voice has finally reached Targenfield.
THIRTEEN
Callahan was silent for a moment. He sipped at his coffee, grimaced, and poured himself a knock of sweet cider, instead.
“I knew how the climb back starts,” he said. “I’d taken enough low-bottom drunks to enough AA meetings on the East Side, God knows. So when they let me out, I found AA in Topeka and started going every day. I never looked ahead, never looked behind. ‘The past is history, the future’s a mystery,’ they say. Only this time, instead of sitting in the back of the room and saying nothing, I forced myself to go right down front, and during the introductions I’d say, ‘I’m Don C. and I don’t want to drink anymore.’ I did want to, every day I wanted to, but in AA they have sayings for everything, and one of them is ‘Fake it till you make it.’ And little by little, I did make it. I woke up one day in the fall of 1982 and realized I really didn’t want to drink anymore. The compulsion, as they say, had been lifted.
“I moved on. You’re not supposed to make any big changes in the first year of sobriety, but one day when I was in Gage Park—the Reinisch Rose Garden, actually…” He trailed off, looking at them. “What? Do you know it? Don’t tell me you know the Reinisch!”
“We’ve been there,” Susannah said quietly. “Seen the toy train.”
“That,” Callahan said, “is amazing.”
“It’s nineteen o’clock and all the birds are singing,” Eddie said. He wasn’t smiling.
“Anyway, the Rose Garden was where I spotted the first poster. HAVE YOU SEEN CALLAHAN, OUR
IRISH SETTER. SCAR ON PAW, SCAR ON FOREHEAD. GENEROUS REWARD. Et cetera, et cetera.
They’d finally gotten the name right. I decided it was time to move on while I still could. So I went to Detroit, and there I found a place called The Lighthouse Shelter. It was a wet shelter. It was, in fact, Home without Rowan Magruder. They were doing good work there, but they were barely staggering along. I signed on. And that’s where I was in December of 1983, when it happened.”
“When what happened?” Susannah asked.
It was Jake Chambers who answered. He knew, was perhaps the only one of them who could know. It had happened to him, too, after all.
“That was when you died,” Jake said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Callahan said. He showed no surprise at all. They might have been discussing rice, or the possibility that Andy ran on ant-nomics. “That’s when I died. Roland, I wonder if you’d roll me a cigarette? I seem to need something a little stronger than apple cider.”
FOURTEEN
There’s an old tradition at Lighthouse, one that goes back… jeez, must be all of four years (The Lighthouse Shelter has only been in existence for five). It’s Thanksgiving in the gym of Holy Name High School on West Congress Street. A bunch of the drunks decorate the place with orange and brown crepe paper, cardboard turkeys, plastic fruit and vegetables. American reap-charms, in other words. You had to have at least two weeks’ continuous sobriety to get on this detail. Also— this is something Ward Huckman, Al McCowan, and Don Callahan have agreed to among themselves— no wet brains are allowed on Decoration Detail, no matter how long they’ve been sober.
On Turkey Day, nearly a hundred of Detroit’s finest alkies, hypes, and half-crazed homeless gather at Holy Name for a wonderful dinner of turkey, taters, and all the trimmings. They are seated at a dozen long tables in the center of the basketball court (the legs of the tables are protected by swags of felt, and the diners eat in their stocking feet). Before they dig in— this is part of the custom— they go swiftly around the tables (“Take more than ten seconds, boys, and I’m cutting you off, ” Al has warned) and everyone says one thing they’re grateful for. Because it’s Thanksgiving, yes, but also because one of the principal tenets of the AA program is that a grateful alcoholic doesn’t get drunk and a grateful addict doesn’t get stoned.
It goes fast, and because Callahan is just sitting there, not thinking of anything in particular, when it’s his turn he almost blurts out something that could have caused him trouble. At the very least, he would have been tabbed as a guy with a bizarre sense of humor.
” I’m grateful I haven’t…” he begins, then realizes what he’s about to say, and bites it back. They’re looking at him expectantly, stubble-faced men and pale, doughy women with limp hair, all carrying about them the dirty-breeze subway station aroma that’s the smell of the streets. Some already call him Faddah, and how do they know ? How could they know ? And how would they feel if they knew what a chill it gives him to hear that? How it makes him remember the Hitler Brothers and the sweet, childish smell of fabric softener? But they’re looking at him. “The clients. ” Ward and Al are looking at him, too.
” I’m grateful I haven’t had a drink or a drug today,” he says, falling back on the old faithful, there’s always
that to be grateful for. They murmur their approval, the man next to Callahan says he’s grateful his sister’s going to let him come for Christmas, and no one knows how close Callahan has come to saying “I’m grateful I haven’t seen any Type Three vampires or lost-pet posters lately.”
He thinks it’s because God has taken him back, at least on a trial basis, and the power of Barlow’s bite has finally been cancelled. He thinks he’s lost the cursed gift of seeing, in other words. He doesn’t test this by trying to go into a church, however— the gym of Holy Name High is close enough for him, thanks. It never occurs to him— at least in his conscious mind— that they want to make sure the net’s all the way around him this time. They may be slow learners, Callahan will eventually come to realize, but they’re not no learners.
Then, in early December, Ward Huckman receives a dream letter. “Christmas done come early, Don! Wait’ll you see this, Al!” Waving the letter triumphantly. “Play our cards right, and boys, our worries about next year are over!”
Al McCowan takes the letter, and as he reads it his expression of conscious, careful reserve begins to melt.
By the time he hands the letter to Don, he’s grinning from ear to ear.