Drunken Angel (9781936740062) (26 page)

He looked at me to see how I was taking all this.

“Go on,” I said, knowing that the story wasn't done, couldn't be. “There were others, right?”

He nodded. “I knew you'd see. In fact, there was one more. I won't say where. All I know is, he was armed and I was armed, but when the guns came out, he lost his nerve.”

He hung his face, voice barely audible. “I had a choice.” “What choice?”

“I didn't have to. He just stood there. Couldn't follow through. I always said: you pull a gun, you use it. He couldn't. But I would not hesitate. Wasn't even angry. Just a matter of my code. You draw your gun, you fire. So, I dropped him. Almost like it was a lesson for him to learn. But that was the end of his education. It puzzled even me. You know what I'm saying?”

“Actually, I do.”

“I thought you would.”

We just sat there, heads leaned close.

“I never told anyone. It was all years ago. But that last time I knew was wrong. I couldn't get him out of my mind, his eyes. It hurt to think about. It isn't about the law. I don't give a crap for the law. The law don't know what happened to me in the Nam, shit-all! The law says over here you gotta act like a hairdresser but over there, in the jungle, you get to go Rambo. Double-standard shit is what it is. Schizo. Hell, in the Nam I was cutting off VC ears to prove my head count. I even scalped one or two, dried them in the sun, cured them, wore 'em around my neck. I left my uniform
shoulder patches stuffed in the mouths of my dead enemy, like a calling card. I had no soul. Went there with one, returned without. The guy who killed those men was soulless, dead, in my way.”

“So, how did you stop, if you couldn't before?”

I'd rather not talk about that either. Let's just say, I changed my life and I'm truly sorry about those men. They drew on me, pulled knives, came at me. I never once aggressed. I coulda been the dead man on every one of those occasions. I lived because I killed better than they did, but they were killers too.”

“Except for that last one.”

The pained look in his eyes showed to what degree he knew that, and suffered for it every waking moment of his life.

He swallowed hard and after a long reflective pause, said: “My parents are Christian folk. They believe in confession. But I can't go to no priest. Not in Des Moines. Not anywhere. I can't tell who might up and go to the authorities. I can put more trust in a stranger, like you. Be my priest, stranger. This was my confession.”

“Done,” I said. “I can't absolve you. No man can. Only God can do that, if there is one. Go to Him now. And be at peace. Good luck with your folks.”

We shook hands. “I knew you'd be a good one,” he said. “I know a soldier.”

“I soldiered once,” I said. “I'm just a bad drunk now but I'm trying to get better, man. I really am.”

“You make it,” he said. “You make it all the way.” And Corey returned to his seat.

When the bus pulled into Des Moines, there were his parents, waiting. One on a walker, the other on a cane. They clasped Corey hard and close in their arms and his mother wept. His father swept away a tear.

I watched all this through the window.

IN IOWA I NAPPED. WHEN I AWOKE, AN ATTRACTIVE but bedraggled woman with a blackened eye, clutching a child in her lap and two other kids seated nearby, settled beside me.

“Hello,” I said.

She scanned my face but didn't respond, her right eye ferociously bruised. I noticed scratches, abrasions, all fresh. The kids sat sucking thumbs and warily looking around, as children do in perilous times.

“How far you headed?” I asked.

She decided I was harmless. “Just to Reno,” she said.

“Going to play the slots?”

“Oh, no. I've got a sister there.”

“It must be a major production just to visit a sister out of state when you've got three young ones in tow.”

Her face grew fierce, the wet shine preceding tears coating her eyes. “We're not visiting. We're moving.”

“Oh, I see. To be close to Sis?”

“To get away from Des Moines.”

“Oh.”

After an uncomfortable pause, she added: “As far away as possible.”

Couldn't think of what more to say or ask, and collapsed myself against the window, hugging the bus wall to give her more room, self-conscious, sensing her raw-nerved, painful state. After a time I said: “I guess I'll do a little reading,” and took out a book about the 12 steps, covering the first chapter, about what powerlessness over alcohol is—an allergy of the body coupled to an obsession of the mind—and about the curious mental blank spot the alcoholic has, an inability to sufficiently recall the ravages of the previous night's horrors, a kind of lethal amnesia, as if nothing had occurred, and so the drunk goes at it all over again.

At some point I felt her eyes sneak-peek over my shoulder and pretended not to notice even as I eased a little closer, to help her read the page. The mental blank spot, said the book, always precedes the first drink. One feels a flush of unreal optimism about one's ability to process alcohol. Months, years, even decades of suffering and ruin are eclipsed once the alcoholic mind fixates on drink. One, taken just to wet the old whistle, becomes two, triggering the addiction that results in an unstoppable binge that can last anywhere from a day to twenty years.

“Do you have a drinking problem?” she asked softly.

Inwardly delighted, I looked up.

“I don't mean to pry,” she whispered. “I just saw the book's title and couldn't help but sneak a look at what you're reading.”

I smiled the nicest, most courtly smile that I could summon. “I don't mind your asking. I certainly do have a problem with drink, yes.”

Her face grew somber. “I'm sorry to hear that. My brother has
that problem too, I think. My uncle, Rickie, yes, him too, most likely. Well, what made you realize…you know…that you have the problem?”

“When I drink I break out in handcuffs, hospitals, shrinks, public parks, disappointed employers, angry wives, streets, Dumpsters. I keep waking up in gutters, rummaging in garbage cans for breakfast.” I chuckled. “I got good at knowing which garbage cans had the best meals. Was a real connoisseur of trash food.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I've never had anything like that.”

“Thank God for you.”

“Yes, Thank God.”

We enjoyed a comfortable pause.

Then: “I was a cocktail waitress.”

“Oh.” I smiled. “Well, I guess you've seen your share of drinkers like me.”

“I certainly have. In fact, I got so that if a man drank I didn't want to date him.”

“Do you drink?”

“Yes. But I can control it. I don't have the problem you seem to, I guess, where you can't stop?”

I nodded. “That's my problem in a nutshell. Once I start, I can't stop.”

“Say,” she said. “You couldn't spare a cigarette by any chance, could you?”

Gave her one, lit her up. She inhaled, and a sigh of sweet relief spread over her face, relaxing the lines into a smooth mask of narcotized bliss.

“Thank you.”

“Are you just an occasional smoker?”

“I'm trying to quit. I never seem able to, though.” She held up the cigarette, regarded it with wonder. “Actually, this is the reason
I gotta leave Des Moines.”

“Oh?”

She told me that in the cocktail lounge one night she had met a man, a Peruvian rug salesman. Didn't drink or do drugs. In fact, had no bad habits. A religious thing. Polite, clean, well mannered, respectful, and very prosperous. Left her big tips and was always pleasant. He was very handsome and he loved America. “ ‘Oh, God bless America,' he used to say, and we'd both laugh. One night, he asked me in the sweetest, most chivalrous way if I would allow him to take me to a movie.”

She inhaled and exhaled a plume of smoke. “
Allowed.
I liked that. I mean, American men never think, like, about
allowed
. They just grab and take, and what's a girl to do? If you say no they spread word around that you're a drag. And I thought that an evening out with a gent who asks permission would be good for me, like a visit to a foreign land or something—you know? I've never been out of Iowa except to visit the sister. My parents are dead. ‘Sure,' I said. ‘Pick me up at eight p.m. on my night off.'

“Come the night, I arranged for a babysitter, and was it ever worth it! We had the nicest date! After the movie we went someplace for ice cream sodas. I kept looking at his beautiful teeth. Perfect, white. And he smelled so good. He was something!”

“Sounds great,” I said.

Her face darkened. “It was nice. It really was.”

He took her out again. For three months they dated. He met the children, bought them toys. Paid for the babysitter when they went out. Said that he loved her, wanted them to marry. And one night, proposed that they live together, he'd pay for everything. She could quit her job as a cocktail waitress and just be a wife, mother, and good daughter-in-law. His old mother lived with him too. “I didn't like the bitch. But she was so old, I figured
that she wouldn't be around forever.”

She inhaled again, exhaled. “Well, I agreed. And it's funny. At home, with all that free time on my hands, I drank a little more than typical. But it was just for the readjustment. He was never home. Worked all the time. So I was there with his mom all day. And she began to go on about my smoking. Wanted me to stop.”

She had finished her cigarette and asked if she could have another.

“Help yourself,” I said; left out the pack to share.

“I love to smoke,” she said, lighting up.

What happened was that she grew bored, restless, and began to think his nice big house was in fact a jail. Went out nights on her own nickel to the cocktail lounge, as a customer now. Missed the place. The action was fun. People she had once served now became friends. She went to other places, some of them rough trade but they were fun too. Put on little outfits that her boyfriend forbade her to wear when out with him or in the company of his mother. He wanted her to affect modesty. “Modesty!” she sneered. “Do I strike you as the modest type?”

I smiled. “You strike me as the nice person type.”

She looked at me. “You're sweet.”

Then he tried to put his foot down. Said no more going out. When she told him where to get off, he struck her, hard, across the face, while his mother stood by watching with approval. Outraged, she threatened to leave, but where could she take herself and three kids? All she knew were drunks. She had no choice but to stay put, for the kids' sake.

She determined to reform herself, meet the conditions of the situation. If enduring bouts of boredom would assure the children's welfare, then she would stop going out. They must come before herself.

But for the mother-in-law, it was not enough. She must stop smoking too. It was, she complained, not only a filthy habit but unseemly for a woman. Smoking was a vice of men. Only fallen women smoked, whores. She must quit smoking or leave.

She held up the cigarette for me to see, contemplated it. “This was my last refuge and friend. The last pleasure left to me. Take it away and what did I have?”

She looked blankly at me. I nodded that I understood.

She tried everything. Patches. Nicotine. Gum. Plastic cigarettes. This hypnotism tape. Nothing worked. And the old woman, that witch, was everywhere spying and reporting back to her son. And it's so hard to hide the smell. Lord knows, she tried perfumes and kept changing her deodorants—and the mouthwash, the strongest that money could buy. And in the belief that drinking the mouthwash would burn the smell right out of her system, she got drunk, and still it didn't hide the smell, but now she began to drink the mouthwash anyway, and then switched to harder stuff, bottles she smuggled into the house. At first, he was amused, then outraged. Told her that his mother had angina, couldn't be around smoke. That seeing her violate his mother's values was sending his own blood pressure through the roof. The former cocktail waitress was literally killing his mother.

She pleaded, tried to reason. This is America. Everyone drinks and smokes! But he flew into a fury, night after night, anger mounting into rages, and one night punched her so hard he knocked her wind right out, sent her flying across the room.

She lay there on the marble floor of his beautiful house with the old woman near, looking down on her in disgust, and the Peruvian with fists clenched shouting for her to get up and apologize to his dear wonderful mother, who was a woman of the old country and the old ways, such a woman as he should have, not some whore like you, and her children at the top of the stairs, watching, shocked, too
afraid even to cry. And she came to her feet, made it to the front door, ran out, jumped into his SUV, drove like a bat out of hell to a local biker bar, told the bikers what her boyfriend had done. They swore up and down they'd crucify him. But what's the big hurry? Stay and have a drink. Here, have a cigarette. He gave you quite a shiner. Here, drink this. Big tattooed hand clasping her neck, tilting back her head as other bikers laughed, pouring in the drink, which ran down the sides of her mouth, and poured another in, and another, though she didn't need much help.

She left the bar with three of them, drunk out of her mind, riding on back, holding tight, shouting and laughing as they roared into the night, the Peruvian's SUV left behind with tires slashed and a pound of sugar funneled into the gas tank, to teach the sucker a lesson. And the next morning, awoke in a ditch with her skirt hiked over her head, panties stuffed into her mouth, face pounded and scratched, and made it to the highway, where a passerby drove her to the house. The Peruvian was gone, the old woman home with the children, screeching. She packed quick bags—the bags I saw; there wasn't much—threw together food and formula, got the kids into clothes, called a cab, and went to the Greyhound bus station. All this happened in the last twenty-four hours. Her sister had told her simply: “Come.”