by Mark Dawson
“You… you…”
“Easy.”
“You hit me!”
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
“What you do, hit me with a fucking hammer?”
He had a point. A large, vivid, purple bruise was forming on his jaw where Milton had struck him.
“Listen carefully. You’re staying here tonight. We both are. You’re going to lie down and sleep off whatever it is that you’ve been smoking.”
He screwed his eyes shut and then opened them again. “Where are we?”
“In a motel.”
“I ain’t staying here,” he said, stumbling to his feet.
Milton got up and blocked the way to the door. Alexander staggered over to him, as unsteady as a drunken sailor on a rolling ship, and, when Milton didn’t step clear, he awkwardly tried to jostle him back to the door. Sighing with impatience, Milton held his right hand vertically and struck him with the heel, right on his clavicle, pushing all the way through his body as if the target was five inches behind him. It was a sudden blow, and Alexander—already dazed and unbalanced—lost his feet and landed on his rear end, his shoulders bouncing off the edge of the bed.
“You are going to get some sleep, Alexander. There are two ways that can happen. First, you lie down on the bed, close your eyes, and if you ask me nicely, I’ll sing you a nice lullaby. The second way, I’ll put your lights out for you again. One is a lot more pleasant than the other. You choose.”
“You’re fucking crazy, man!”
“You’re probably right. But you’re staying here tonight.”
#
ALEXANDER HAD dropped off quickly once Milton had persuaded him that he had no choice but to stay in the motel room with him. Milton had pulled the armchair across to block the door and, once he had satisfied himself that there was no other way out nor any weapons that Alexander could lay his hands upon, he had slept in the chair with his legs on the bed. If Alexander tried to get out, he would wake him up.
He didn’t try.
Milton awoke first the next morning. He checked his watch, saw that it was five, and moved quietly across the room so as not to disturb Alexander. He rinsed his face in cold water, used the toilet, and then went back to the bed. He was still asleep.
He opened the door and stepped onto the veranda. It was still dark. He patted down his pockets for his cigarettes, put one to his lips, flicked his Zippo, and smoked it. He sat quietly for an hour and watched the sun rise. He smoked another. He watched the steady increase in the morning’s traffic on US-90.
He heard the sound of stirring in the room and, grinding his cigarette under his boot, he went back inside and switched on the coffee maker.
#
“WHERE AM I?”
“A motel, just outside New Orleans.”
He looked at him, his befuddlement replaced by anger as he remembered what had happened. “You kidnapped me!”
“Semantics,” Milton said with a shrug. “I wanted to talk to you; you didn’t want to talk to me. This seemed like the most efficient way to arrange it.”
“You knocked me out.”
“You tried to pull a gun on me. That wasn’t clever, Alexander.”
“You…” He rubbed his chin, a bruise there from where Milton had hit him. “You knocked out Bernard, too, right? You know he’s connected?”
“To what?”
“You heard of the Ride or Die?”
“No. But it sounds colourful.”
The bafflement returned. “Colourful? This ain’t a joke. They’re serious players.”
“Do I look as if I care about them, Alexander? Your friend pulled a gun on me, too. He doesn’t have the credit in the bank that you do. He’s lucky he’s still breathing.”
He looked at him, confused. “The credit?”
“From Katrina. Remember?”
He shook his head, as if trying to clear sawdust from between his ears. “What you doing, man?”
“A couple of things. First thing. You stole something from me.”
“I didn’t!”
Milton pointed at his wallet. He had found it in Alexander’s pocket when he had drifted off to sleep, taken it out and left it on the bedside table. All the money had been taken out.
“I don’t take particularly well to people who steal from me. That wasn’t clever, either. That credit I told you about? It’s just about all used up now.”
Alexander sat up and rubbed his bruised chin. Milton could see, immediately, that he was very different when he was sober than when he was high. The brashness and the attitude were gone.
“We need to talk about the second thing,” Milton said. “You’ve got a problem, and I think I can help.”
“I ain’t got no problem,” he said, although doubt had flooded into his voice.
“You do. You know you do.” Milton found two styrofoam cups and poured out the coffee. “I’m going to tell you a story, and I want you to listen and tell me whether you hear any similarities between my experience and yours.” He gave Alexander the first cup. “If you listen, and you still don’t think we have anything in common, I’ll stand up out of your way and let you leave. You can go back to Raceland if you want, get high, kill yourself, I don’t really care. But you’re going to listen to me first. Does that sound reasonable to you, Alexander?”
“Sounds like you’re crazy,” he replied, but he made no attempt to leave.
Milton took his cup to the chair, sat down, and, between sips, he told Alexander his story. It was the edited version. There were some things, some reasons that explained the way that he felt the way that he did, that he couldn’t have imparted. He had told Alexander that he had been in New Orleans for business when he met him in the storm. He had told him that he was in IT. That was a lie, and he wasn’t able to describe what that business had really entailed. He could not have told him about the roster of dead that he was responsible for, including the two Irishmen he had executed in the French Quarter bar that night. Reasons and motivations had to be left opaque, as was the case every time he shared in a meeting.
Instead, he told him how he used drink to make him forget. He described his feelings in broad strokes. He described the shame and regret he would feel when he awoke the day after a heavy session, the blackouts that meant that he couldn’t remember what he had said, the panic and fear that he must have done something that he shouldn’t. He described how the obsession for alcohol became so powerful that it was all he could think about. He described how he could only focus on the next drink. He spoke about morning drinking, hiding bottles around the houses of the women he was seeing, of stealing money, getting into fights, drinking to oblivion. Anger. How self-neglect became self-harm and how he had entertained thoughts of putting an end to his misery. He told him about the promises that he made to himself and others that he would try to control his drinking and how every single attempt had failed. He told him that he was constitutionally unable to be honest when it came to drink. How he could not accept his problem. He explained how he had learned that his alcoholism was a disease, a progressive disease that would get worse the longer it was left unacknowledged and untreated. He explained how it would always get worse, never better.
As Milton told the story, he watched Alexander carefully. He had expected hostility or ridicule or the inevitable denial that he had a problem, but there was none of it.
Instead, Milton watched as he fell apart.
“You gotta help me, man. I know I got a problem, I tried to stop, but I can’t do it on my own. I tried, man. I tried, but I can’t.”
Milton told him that he could help him. He knew NA and AA were based on the same twelve steps. The old tropes spilled out. He explained how, if he took his recovery seriously, then, one day at a time, he could put his addiction behind him. There would be no judgment, no recriminations. He could have peace. The same peace that Milton had, mostly, found.
Alexander’s chin started to quiver and then, pathetic and forlorn, he started to sob
.
#
MILTON CHECKED out, relieved to see that Alexander was still in the car when he returned to it. He took his cellphone from his pocket. He found Isadora’s business card and dialled the number.
“Hello?”
“It’s John.”
“Where are you?”
He frowned. “What?”
“One day too much for you?”
He understood. “I’ve been busy. I’m with your brother.”
“You’re what?”
“He’s in my car right now.”
“How…? What…?”
“I’ll explain when I see you, but I want to get moving in case he changes his mind.”
“Changes his mind from what?”
“You said that your father had paid for him to have a place in rehab?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“He’s going?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Hold on. It’s on my phone.” There was a pause, so Milton turned to the car and held up two fingers to Alexander to indicate that he would be with him soon. “I found it,” Isadora said. “I sent you the contact details.”
Milton’s phone pinged. Bridge House, 4150 Earhart Blvd., New Orleans, LA 70125.
“Got it,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll take him and check him in.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Chapter Twenty
JACKSON DUBOIS opened the door to the bar and went back to the usual booth. Melvin Fryatt and Chad Crossland were waiting there, half-empty bottles of beer on the table before them. He looked at them, dirty clothes, scum caught beneath their nails, full of the twitches and tics of long-term addicts. He ignored the usual feeling of distaste at having to deal with the two of them and sat down opposite them.
“What happened?”
“We delivered the message like you wanted us to.”
“And?”
Fryatt snickered. “And we delivered it, you know what I’m saying? Old man came to the door, started giving us lip, giving us attitude, so Chad put a lick on him.”
Dubois turned to the white guy. “You hit him?”
“Sure, Mr. Dubois. That alright?”
Neither he nor Babineaux had any qualms with violence. If they had, he wouldn’t have hired men with a propensity towards it. “What did they say?”
“After? Didn’t get no time to say anything. This big brother came out of the house next door and, seeing as we’d already told them what you wanted us to tell them, we didn’t think you’d want no escalation, least not last night.”
“And when you go back again tonight?”
“You want us to go back?”
“Of course, I do.”
“I thought you was bluffing.”
“Do I look like the bluffing type?”
“I don’t—”
“I don’t bluff, Melvin. When I say something, I do it.”
“No, I—”
“You go back and you tell them they need to decide now. Right now.”
“That’s no problem, Mr. Dubois.”
“And when you go back, what you going to do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“You’ll ‘escalate’, will you?”
Melvin bristled. “Sure.”
“How will you do that, Melvin?”
“You want, we’ll put a nine right in the old man’s head.”
Chapter Twenty-One
ISADORA HAD a shorter journey than Milton and Alexander, and she was already waiting in the parking lot as Milton pulled off the road. She got out of her car and leaned against it, waiting as Milton swung into the lot.
Alexander stiffened in the passenger seat. “What’s she doing here?”
“She wants to help.”
Alexander scowled.
“Is that all right?”
“If she’s all pious and shit, I’m just gonna jet.”
“No, you’re not.”
“So you say.”
“Shut up, Alexander.”
He parked next to Isadora’s beaten-up Ford Taurus.
“I’m serious.”
“She won’t be pious. She’s worried about you. And you’re not going anywhere.”
“No?”
“No. Because if you run, I’ll just come and get you again. You know what that will be like, right?”
He stared at him. “You said all I had to do was listen.”
Milton looked at him. He had a slight smile on his lips, but there was steel in his eyes that would be impossible to misinterpret. “That was back then. You asked me to help you. That means that the rules have changed. You’re going to be helped, whether you like it or not.”
He cut the engine and stepped outside. Isadora pushed away from her Taurus and walked across to the Buick. She glanced at Milton, swept by him, and went around to the other side. Milton walked a few paces away from the car, turning just once to see that everything was all right, saw that brother and sister were embracing, and turned away from them so that they could have a moment of privacy.
#
MILTON AND ISADORA accompanied Alexander into the facility. Bridge House was a long-term residential recovery centre. It was a wide, modern, four-storey building that had, judging from a plaque in the lobby, been constructed thanks to the generosity of a benefactor and a city grant. There were a series of bedrooms and, on the ground floor, meeting spaces where the patients could have their group therapy sessions.
Isadora led the way to the front desk. Alexander followed and Milton brought up the rear, close enough to him that he would know there would be little chance of getting far if he chose to bolt. A large crucifix had been hung on the wall behind the desk. Next to that was framed scripture, “Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up.” It was from the Book of James, and Milton remembered it from his own study of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous when he had started his own recovery.
Isadora spoke to the receptionist, explaining that there was a room ready for Alexander Bartholomew and that he was here and ready to check in. The woman took down his details and, with a gentle smile, invited them to sit in the waiting area.
“I ain’t religious,” Alexander protested, loud enough for a patient who was loitering near the desk to overhear. “You see the things I seen, you wouldn’t believe in nothing like a merciful God, either.”
“Shut up, Alex,” Isadora said.
“It’s all fairy tales, meant to keep us down. It’s—”
“I’m not religious, either,” Milton interrupted. “It’s not about religion.”
Alexander jerked his head in the direction of the desk. “What about that shit up there, the scripture, the cross?”
“AA, NA—all the recovery programmes that work say you need a Higher Power.”
“There, you see! You lying to me, man! It’s all about God.”
“A Higher Power. I didn’t say what that meant. Some people use God. Others say G-O-D means Group Of Drunks. It means you get your strength from somewhere outside of yourself. It means you can’t do it by yourself.” Milton frowned a little as he said it, knowing that he had failed to listen to his own advice for much too long. He felt the sting of his own hypocrisy.
“Say what you want,” Alexander said. “I can smell the Bible in here.” His surliness was returning, and Milton knew that if they didn’t admit him quickly, the chances were good that he would lose his nerve and make a run for it. And, despite what he had said, Milton didn’t much feel like chasing him down.
A doctor dressed in a white coat stepped through a pair of double doors. He looked down at a clipboard. “Mr. Bartholomew?”
“Come on,” Izzy said.
Alexander stood. He turned to his sister, an uncertain expression on his face. Then he took a step in the wrong direction, to the door. But Milton was in the way. He put out his hand and rested it gently on Alexander’s elbow. His instinct was to p
lace his thumb and forefinger over the pressure points and squeeze, to impel Alexander around and across to the doctor, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he gave a short shallow nod, never taking his eyes from Alexander’s.
He looked back at him, then looked down, turned, and walked to the doctor. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s me.”
They waited until the doctor had spoken to Alexander, and then watched as he turned to the doors. The doctor held them open and indicated that he should go inside. He did. The doctor gave them a nod and followed Alexander out of sight.
Izzy turned for the exit, her eyes wet.
Milton followed her. There was a stand of flyers on the desk. Milton recognised the blue AA symbol on the leaflet and withdrew one from the stand, folding it neatly and putting it in his pocket. That’s right, hypocrisy. He had been white knuckling his recovery, ignoring others, trying to do it on his own. That was stupid, and it would only end up in one place. He would start to put that right.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IZZY SAID that she wanted to buy him breakfast as a way of saying thanks. Milton was hungry and, since the prospect of an hour alone with her was not unpleasant, he didn’t demur. She led the way to Panola Street and Riccobono’s, a café that Milton would never have found on his own. She parked, leaving enough space for Milton to slot the Buick in behind her.
They went inside, took a booth and ordered. Izzy said the place was known for its egg breakfasts. She ordered huevos rancheros, and Milton took the One, Two, Three Plate: one egg, two strips of applewood-smoked bacon, and three silver-dollar pancakes.
Once the waitress had departed, Izzy reached across the table and placed her hand atop Milton’s.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I told you, I’m happy to help.”
“Where did you find him?”
“Raceland, the place you said.”
“And, what? He just came with you?”
Milton shrugged. “Not exactly.”
“How did you get him to come, then?”
