The Drunk Logs (3 page)

Although apprehensive, I casually entered and sat in a wooden chair next to a small shelf attached to the wall, where a digital camera lay.

Molly smiled, picked up the camera, and took a quick picture. “That was for our files. So if something happens, we at least know what you look like.”

She reached behind her to a shelf and pulled my file. “Here are two wristbands that you must wear at all times. The red one is to indicate that you are in detox and will come off when you’re in the detox clear. The other one is an identification band which you must keep on the entire stay here.”

She reached forward and grabbed my left hand, lifted it up, and attached the two bands.

She walked back to the multi-drawer plastic cabinet, and grabbed a cup with my name printed on the plastic platform beneath it. “Okay, so now that’s done, this is a cup with the medication the doctor deems you need at this time. The blue pill is a Valium to help you detox from the alcohol. Hold your arms out straight for me.”

I raised my arms, but my hands shook uncontrollably.

“Yep,” Molly said. “Do you want me to feed you these pills?”

“I probably could use some help,” I said, ashamed.

Molly gave a sympathetic smile, closed the door, and continued to help me as she held the cup of pills to my lips. I opened my mouth as she tilted the cup forward, surprised by the amount I started to cough.

“Hold on. You need to drink this water too,” she said softly as she held another cup to my lips.

“Thank you, Molly,” I said, and wiped off the water from my chin.

She grinned, patted me on the head, and put the cup on the shelf next to me. She opened the door and told me I could go back to my room. Before I left, she stated that a nurse would check on me throughout the night. So, with another pat on my head from her, I headed back into the hallway, which was less congested with nurses and patients. The path back to my room seemed a little more familiar. Tightly woven carpet was still green and the walls were still vanilla.

I was just a few feet away from my room when Carl exited it; he smiled as he passed and walked toward the nurses’ station. As I looked, I realized that I had left all of my belongings on the bed, and rushed into the room, hitting the partially opened door with my shoulder. I ran to my bed and started to sift through my belongings to make sure that everything was accounted for. Underwear, jeans, shorts, shirts, bathing supplies, cigarettes…good.
Everything seems to be here
, I thought.

Putting the carton of cigarettes on the nightstand, I found the yellow folder I’d been given and pulled out the key from the inner pocket. I walked to the cabinet closet on the right side of my bed and unlocked the door; inside there were a few shelves, a few plastic hangers, and a full length mirror on the inside of the door.
Not bad
, I thought,
this should definitely hold all of my belongings
. I reached into the closet and grabbed one of the plastic hangers, and turned for one of my collared shirts. Grabbing my brown-striped polo shirt, I had just inserted the hanger when I heard the toilet flush, but no one exited the bathroom.
It must have been someone from the other room
, I thought. I turned and proceeded to hang the shirt on the steel rod when the bathroom door opened and an old, gray haired, unshaven man limped out into the room, wearing a worn, short sleeve, gray-striped shirt, faded blue jeans, and a walking cast on his right foot. Oblivious to his surroundings, he limped over to the bed closest to the door, lay down on the comforter, and put his right arm over his forehead.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Oh, I didden’ know that there was someone else here,” the old man mumbled in a low gravelly voice as he threw his foot off the bed.

He proceeded to push himself off the edge of the bed, while his thin, shaking arms made a go of pushing his heavy mass. He stood quickly, stumbled a few steps, and eventually got his bearings as he limped over and held the chair by the desk for support as he passed.

“Name’s Barry Eugene, and that’s what they call me,” he said as he extended his hand. I just stood there and said nothing for a moment.

“Oh, my name is Matt, pleasure to meet you,” I finally said and shook his hand.

“So did they capture and trap you inside here, too?” he asked, as he turned and limped back toward his bed.

Speechless, I stared at a long dark stain from his back pockets to his boot cast on the back of his pants.
He just shit his pants
, I thought as he sat back down on his bed.

“N-n-no,” I said, stuttering my words, “I, uh, I, uh, drove here myself.”

“Well, not me,” he grumbled. “They captured me like a prisoner, they did.” He took a long breath as he prepared to tell his story. “Yeah, I was sitting in my recliner drinking my Budweiser when my wife says we need to go to the store to get me more beer, which didn’t make sense because I knew I couldn’t of drank the case that fast. Well anyhow, we got into the car and headed to the store, but she told me she was going to take a different way this time,” he said as he rubbed his cheeks. “Anyhow, I didn’t know where she was driving, and she pulled into the parking lot outside this place. I asked her if this was a new convenience store, and she said no, it was a treatment center, and I needed to get help for my drinking. Well, I gave her one of my angry looks and told her, who does she think she is, thinking I have a drinking problem? Hell, I’ve been married to the woman for 30 years. Well, I wouldn’t budge and she wouldn’t leave the parking lot, so we just sat there for a while. So, I thought that if I’m just gonna sit there I might as well have a beer doing so, and told her I’ll drive to the store. Well, she agreed and we both got out of the car, but as soon as I was by the front, she hopped back into the car and started to drive. Since I didn’t know where I was, I hopped on the hood, because she wasn’t going to be leaving me there, ya know. Well, the damn woman pulled out, and we headed down the road, but I wasn’t gonna let go, ya know. Finally we hit this intersection and she slammed on the brakes, where I slid off the front of the car, and she turned around and headed in the other direction, leaving me in the middle of nowhere. So I headed back here to use the phone and that’s when they told me my wife admitted me. Just wait ’til I get out of here, I’ll show her who has the problem.” He lay back down on his bed and covered his forehead with his arm.

I started to shake my head and laugh with disgust as I methodically put away all of my belongings: collared shirts, jackets, and pants on hangers; shirts, shorts, underwear, socks, and toiletries on the shelves; cigarettes hidden between the shirts and the shoes, and suitcases on the bottom.

I looked at the inside of the closet and smiled at my perfection of order.
A job well done
, I thought, when I caught my reflection in the mirror on the inside door. My smile quickly vanished as I closed the door and turned the key.

As I patted my shirt pocket to make sure I had my cigarettes and lighter, I decided to ask where I could go to smoke, but first I needed to go to the bathroom; I hadn’t done so since I arrived. I walked over to the bathroom door, grabbed the handle, and noticed Barry Eugene snoring on the bed. I proceeded to open the door inward and stepped in, slid on something wet, and held onto the doorknob for dear life. Shocked, I stood in an entire bathroom covered in shit.

Gagging, I slid back into the room and wiped my shoes on the green carpet, turning it black.

“Great, Barry Eugene. Just great,” I raged.

Leaving behind long, black streak marks, I shuffled my feet all the way to the door, entered the hallway, and looked for someone to help.

“Carl! Carl!” I screamed down the hall, toward the place where I had made my entrance into this circus. “Could you please come here?”

Hearing the commotion, Carl sashayed down the hall.

“How can I help you, Matt?”

“Well first, where can I smoke in this place?”

“Remember coming in, you passed the workout gym and turned right?”

“Yes.”

“Well right by it, those glass doors that lead to the outside, there’s a pavilion.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.”

“What’s your other question?”

I looked at Carl with a half smile. “Well, you know the guy that just came into my room…well, he’s lying in his bed with his pants full of shit, and the bathroom is covered in it, too.”

“Oh, no,” he said, disgusted.

“Someone better take care of that, because I’m not.”

“I know, I know, I’ll get someone to clean it up. Thanks for letting me know,” he said and grudgingly walked into the room. I snickered as I walked down the hall and looked for the doors that led to the outside.

I found the glass and steel doors and pushed them open into another set of doors that released me to the outside. I felt clean as the air washed over me. I took a few deep breaths, opened my eyes, and absorbed my new surroundings.
There is much to take in, but all I have is time
, I thought.

In front of me was a long pathway, with the building extending along the right of it that housed the detox patients on the first floor and the clean patients on the second. More colorful wildflowers kissed the building’s concrete base and provided beauty for anyone who wished to accept it. At the corner end of the building was a bay window, with a 180-degree view of the grounds. I found out later, it was specifically placed there to warn the patients that they were always being watched.

To the left of the pathway was another parking lot that hugged the Nautilus gym, where all the employees parked. There were no assigned spaces, much to the chagrin of all the employees; perhaps this was deemed beneficial, because it forced them to come in to work early.

The tennis court, which had not had many visitors, was to the right; the weeds in the concrete cracks seemed to be the only players, but yellow and red tulips that rounded the steel fence still gave the impression that it was new.

Tiny neon orange cornhole platforms raised their hands to be noticed between the pavilion and the pond, with corn bags strewn on the platforms and in the plush grass. They competed with two fountains on either side of the bridge and the walkway that surrounded them, flowing in and out of the thick woods behind them.

There was a typical, old, gray continental farmhouse with a screen door, large oak trees all around giving shade, and a tractor on the side with tall grass eating halfway into the wheels. The dirt road that led up to the house was splintered off by a white office trailer with wheelchair ramps that headed to the two doors with the word “office” written on the front. The entire place was serene, as the hidden birds sang their songs in the trees, accompanied by the splashes of water from the fountains, that rose up to the blue sky, which blanketed the forest around them.

I gradually made my way up to the pavilion, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it before I entered. Once inside, I looked for a place to sit, away from the people I didn’t know. I found an empty spot at a picnic table in the corner of the pavilion and sat down, hearing a familiar voice in the crowd. I looked around, but didn’t remember any one of the many faces that stared back at me, so I took another drag from my cigarette and blew the smoke down onto the table.

“Are you here to get your asshole checked?” a voice whispered in my ear.

I turned around, and noticed Jack Jack smiling like a cat that just caught a mouse, sucking his cigarette down to the filter.

“You son of a bitch!” I exclaimed.

“Calm down, dude, I was just having a little fun at your expense.”

“You know, you got a lot of nerve trying to pull that shit. I’m in here trying to get help, and you’re fuckin’ around,” I said angrily and threw my lit cigarette into the grass.

I pulled one leg out over the bench and readied to stand.

“Dude, sit down. I was just trying to see what kind of person you were. We get a lot of messed up people in here, and it’s not because of the drugs,” Jack Jack said as he tapped the side of his head with his finger.

I threw my leg back over the bench and sat back down. Jack Jack sat down next to me, put his elbows on the table, pulled out his cigarettes, and offered one up. I hesitantly took one, lit it, and blew the smoke away from him.

“I mean, look, I just wanted to know what type of clique you’re going to fit into. I mean, we have jocks and pricks, who are one in the same, bitches, sluts, cool girls, ditz, wannabe blacks, hicks, ‘in generals,’ and others,” he said as he counted each one off on his fingers. “The ‘others’ are the ones in this pavilion,” he whispered. “Just people who don’t fit in—quiet, and always keeping to themselves.”

“So what category do I fit?”

“You’re one of the ‘in generals,’ because it looks like you don’t give a crap about cliques or supposed status; you just roll with whatever is in front of you.” He said it proudly. I got the impression I had just been accepted.

“And what category are you in?”

“Me? I’m a freewheeler. There can’t be a clique for me, because I’m the only one.”

I shook my head, puckered my lips, and thought,
what a smug bastard
.

Jack Jack stood and put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, if you’re up to it tomorrow, I’ll see you at breakfast and introduce you to the rest of the guys if they’re there.” I agreed. He walked out of the pavilion and whistled down the path to the glass and steel doors.

As angry as I felt toward Jack Jack, there was something about him that I liked. Was it his devil-may-care attitude toward life or the sense I got that he might be the first person who genuinely didn’t need something from me?
Only time would tell, and I would keep my guard up for now
, I thought.

I stared into the distance until the burnt tobacco from my last cigarette crunched under the sole of my tennis shoe, and then I headed down the path. I dreaded going into the building, let alone what might await me in my room. I walked down the hall and shook my head, still upset at Barry Eugene for defecating all over the bathroom. No matter how well they cleaned it, the mere thought of how it looked and smelled could not escape my memory.