“And ain’t this one hell of a way to spend it. Tell you what, if they don’t murder me with their knives and forks tomorrow morning, I guess I’m going to owe you my life. I don’t know how you knew, but if there’s anything I can ever do for you—I mean anything at all—you just have to ask.”
Dan thought of how he’d descended the steps of an interstate bus ten years ago, stepping into a snow flurry as fine as wedding lace. He thought of his delight when he had spotted the bright red locomotive that pulled The Helen Rivington. Also of how this man had asked him if he liked the little train instead of telling him to get the f**k away from what he had no business touching. Just a small kindness, but it had opened the door to all he had now.
“Billy-boy, I’m the one who owes you, and more than I could ever repay.”
11
He had noticed an odd fact during his years of sobriety. When things in his life weren’t going so well—the morning in 2008 when he had discovered someone had smashed in the rear window of his car with a rock came to mind—he rarely thought of a drink. When they were going well, however, the old dry thirst had a way of coming back on him. That night after saying goodbye to Billy, on the way home from Lewiston with everything okey-doke, he spied a roadhouse bar called the Cowboy Boot and felt a nearly insurmountable urge to go in. To buy a pitcher of beer and get enough quarters to fill the jukebox for at least an hour. To sit there listening to Jennings and Jackson and Haggard, not talking to anyone, not causing any trouble, just getting high. Feeling the weight of sobriety—sometimes it was like wearing lead shoes—fall away. When he got down to his last five quarters, he’d play “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” six times straight.
He passed the roadhouse, turned in at the gigantic Walmart parking lot just beyond, and opened his phone. He let his finger hover over Casey’s number, then remembered their difficult conversation in the café. Casey might want to revisit that discussion, especially the subject of whatever Dan might be holding back. That was a nonstarter.
Feeling like a man having an out-of-body experience, he returned to the roadhouse and parked in the back of the dirt lot. He felt good about this. He also felt like a man who has just picked up a loaded gun and put it to his temple. His window was open and he could hear a live band playing an old Derailers tune: “Lover’s Lie.” They didn’t sound too bad, and with a few drinks in him, they would sound great. There would be ladies in there who would want to dance. Ladies with curls, ladies with pearls, ladies in skirts, ladies in cowboy shirts. There always were. He wondered what kind of whiskey they had in the well, and God, God, great God, he was so thirsty. He opened the car door, put one foot out on the ground, then sat there with his head lowered.
Ten years. Ten good years, and he could toss them away in the next ten minutes. It would be easy enough to do. Like honey to the bee.
We all have a bottom. Someday you’re going to have to tell somebody about yours. If you don’t, somewhere down the line, you’re going to find yourself in a bar with a drink in your hand.
And I can blame you, Casey, he thought coldly. I can say you put the idea in my head while we were having coffee in the Sunspot.
There was a flashing red arrow over the door, and a sign reading PITCHERS $2 UNTIL 9 PM MILLER LITE COME ON IN.
Dan closed the car door, opened his phone again, and called John Dalton.
“Is your buddy okay?” John asked.
“Tucked up and ready to go tomorrow morning at seven a.m. John, I feel like drinking.”
“Oh, nooo!” John cried in a trembling falsetto. “Not booooze!”
And just like that the urge was gone. Dan laughed. “Okay, I needed that. But if you ever do the Michael Jackson voice again, I will drink.”
“You should hear me on ‘Billie Jean.’ I’m a karaoke monster. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Through the windshield, Dan could see the Cowboy Boot patrons come and go, probably not talking of Michelangelo.
“Whatever you’ve got, did drinking . . . I don’t know . . . shut it up?”
“Muffled it. Put a pillow over its face and made it struggle for air.”
“And now?”
“Like Superman, I use my powers to promote truth, justice, and the American Way.”
“Meaning you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No,” Dan said. “I don’t. But it’s better now. Better than I ever thought it could be. When I was a teenager . . .” He trailed off. When he’d been a teenager, every day had been a struggle for sanity. The voices in his head were bad; the pictures were frequently worse. He had promised both his mother and himself that he would never drink like his father, but when he finally began, as a freshman in high school, it had been such a huge relief that he had—at first—only wished he’d started sooner. Morning hangovers were a thousand times better than nightmares all night long. All of which sort of led to a question: How much of his father’s son was he? In how many ways?
“When you were a teenager, what?” John asked.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Listen, I better get moving. I’m sitting in a bar parking lot.”