Rachel had now been in Quinn for six days, and she finally felt strong enough to venture out, lapped the town again and again, driving in circles, safe in the night. Nobody knew who the town of Quinn had been named after, although rumor had it that the original Quinn had been a railroad hobo, who in 1910 jumped a train, fell out drunkenly, and then decided to remain in the thick woods and found the town that would become his namesake. Wildfires completely decimated Quinn in 1939, and then again in 1946, just after people had finally rebuilt. As a result, the town was sloppily organized, streets named arbitrarily, or not at all, businesses only formed out of absolute necessity, no street signs or sidewalks or traffic lights. The whole town seemed to be waiting for the flames to return.
At night, the town was dark and still, no headlights from cars. The bars shut down at two o’clock, and the Sinclair had long since closed. She was thankful for the darkness when she pulled into her driveway. In the daylight, the sight of the trailer house filled her with dread.
She stepped through the gate, carefully navigating the narrow path, unlit and uneven, stepping-stones made of giant pieces of shale that were sunk at dangerous and unpredictable depths. What remained of the porch light was a jagged black hole, rimmed with papery gray clumps of hornets’ nests. Rachel hadn’t bothered to lock the door. Frank had left behind nothing worth stealing, and the trailer house already looked like it had been vandalized and squatted in. She turned on the living room light, and it glared off the plastic sheeting that covered the entire east corner, where the chimney had collapsed into the fireplace. The carpet was filthy, so Rachel sat on a cardboard box of unpacked clothes and reached for the cordless phone. She had been amazed to find that her father still had phone service, despite his dying. Maybe he had known she would return like a boomerang, and had paid in advance.
Seeing all those people at the Fireman’s Ball had reignited her shame. She had felt the fire in her cheeks as she leaned against the firehouse wall. She always thought that the people had been frozen in time when she left, but fatter and older versions carried on like they always had, only stopping to glare. Rachel thought she had moved past her shame, after it manifested itself in her first month of sobriety as spectacular crying jags and handwritten lists of the terrible things she had done, the things she could remember. Doing this inventory with her sponsor took two solid weeks, every evening spent unveiling yet another thing she thought unforgivable, while her sponsor made endless cups of tea. The sponsor massaged Rachel’s shaking hands and assured her that other drunks had done much worse things.
Rachel’s sponsor was called Athena. This was not her real name. Athena had ditched the name Louise after attending a sweat lodge where she received a vision in the teepee and decided that she was a warrior woman and not a tax accountant. Sobriety did strange things to people. Athena was hugely obese, a true warrior only when they went out to eat at restaurants that served food buffet-style.
“I feel shame again,” reported Rachel, when the phone was answered on the first ring.
“We got rid of that.” Athena sighed. “Come back to Missoula. I warned you this would happen. Don’t fuck it up. You’ve only got a year.”
“I have three hundred and eighty-four days,” responded Rachel. “That’s more than a year.”
She could hear Athena sigh again, and then the catch, the scratch of a lighter.
“Rachel . . .”
“What? I’ve done everything you have ever told me to do. You said no big changes during the first year. I didn’t even get a fucking haircut.”
“Did you go to that hootenanny?”
“It was a fund-raiser,” said Rachel. “For the fire department. I just wanted to make sure they know I support them. Trailers burn up quick around here.”
“Did you feel the urge to drink?”
Rachel thought about this question and realized that she had not. She had been too preoccupied with her mission, distracted by the sloppy citizens of her hometown, all of those faces that were vaguely familiar. She wished they had been wearing name tags.
“No,” said Rachel. “I felt the urge to spray everybody with disinfectant.”
“Have you found a meeting yet?”
“Yes.” Rachel had found the only meeting in Quinn, but she was too frightened to go, was too afraid of who she would run into. Although it was an anonymous program, the gossip might be worth too much. There was certainly a value for the delicious secrets of a famous, thieving, murderous harlot.
“We’ve been through all of the steps,” asserted Athena. “I don’t understand why you keep coming back to steps eight and nine.” Rachel made a list of all persons she had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. She made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Rachel no longer feared injuring herself, figured that she had it coming.
“I’m stuck,” said Rachel. “I’ve been able to forgive myself for everything else. I have to make things right.”
“That’s not how it works,” said Athena. “You know that. All you have to do is be willing, and if they can’t accept your amends, then forget every white-trash piece of shit in that town. Stop beating yourself up.”
“Okay,” said Rachel.
“I don’t think you need to atone for the rest of your life. Two weeks is plenty. Paint some benches, pick up some trash, buy some Girl Scout cookies, and get the fuck out of there. Go to meetings.”