Some people drink because they have had a tragedy in their lives. Some people have tragic lives because they drink. There are worse things than drinking and some reformed drinkers merely replace their drinking with other addictions. As long as dopamine crosses the neuron gaps, life goes on. There are further levels, both above and below the immediate first aid of pain avoidance. In those places, one either addresses the cause of their imbalance or surrenders to it.
Drinkers can be guilty of ruining and endangering the lives of others but that is only if others allow it, with the noted exception of children. I once had a step-father, my first of two, who drank like a Baron. He had been at it for quite some time when he came into my life. He was in the sunset of his thirties when I met him and one drunken night, after we had polished off all the available ale, wine and Aquavit, we were musing on life. I was about eighteen years old.
He pulled an old card-board box out of his closet and rummaged inside underneath a bashed up trumpet. He extracted a yellowed newspaper clipping with an Oregon masthead. There was a photo of a young man in a hospital bed. It was my step-father and he was in traction, wrapped in layer upon layer of bandages and anyone could see that he was lucky to be alive. There was a small inset photo of another young man with an accompanying obituary.
The story told of two young Danes who had come to Canada to receive jet pilot training from the Royal Canadian Air Force. The boys were also accomplished tennis players and my step-father was an amateur jazz pianist. The Scandinavian pair were authorized to represent their base in those two capacities and thus they travelled around to various competitions by plane and by automobile.
During those excursions, there was much prodigious drinking engaged in by these two. My step-father had been doing a shift at the wheel on the highway that runs through The Dalles, while his pal slept off a drunk. He was just as drunk as the sleeper and lost control of the vehicle. His best friend was killed in the resulting crash and he was severely crushed, particularly his two lower legs.
He had just awoken from surgery when the picture in the paper had been snapped. He was smiling in the picture and hadn't yet been told the news about his mate. When he arose from that hospital bed, he began to punish himself with alcohol and continued until his own death. I believe that I was the only person to ever receive his story since the tragedy had happened. He never spoke of it again.
After my mother divorced him, I only saw him once more. He was living alone in a funky, dilapidated North Vancouver house. Raccoons and squirrels ran across the dingy keys of a broken piano, which a friend had gifted him, as he slept off each day's ethanol in a urine soaked chair.
Another Dane, who was a friend of his, was a car mechanic. That man had a brother who was a dishevelled, barely functioning drunk and a son my age, whom I befriended. The mechanic was a prodigious drinker of beer but a great father, husband and family man. His successful business kept him in a nice house with a good wife.
One day, as I was at the Dane’s auto shop having some work done on my old car, I saw a fantastic secret. Another customer had brought in a big luxury car with an unknown problem. The Dane brought his indigent brother out from a chair in the back and gave him some liquor. Then they got into the car and went for a short drive. They were back in ten minutes.
While they had been gone, the car’s owner, also a Dane, intimated to me that the alcoholic brother had an incredible talent, which the other brother was able to make use of. The delirious one could diagnose with 100% accuracy any problem with any car using his incredible sense of hearing and deep knowledge of mechanical things.
When my ex-step-father passed away, I was invited to his wake at the Army and Navy Club in North Vancouver. I imagined that it would be a proper Viking binge and I declined to attend for two reasons. One was the fact that my step-father had made my mother and younger sister miserable for many years. The other reason was that I had spent the years between eighteen and twenty drinking daily and after coming close to death, I had managed to sober up. Even three decades later, I did not feet comfortable in such settings.
On the night of the wake, I went out onto my front porch for a smoke. I was instantly and completely enveloped in a choking cloud of alcohol fumes. There was no visible source but I knew within a minute what was up.
“Lasse, I know you have come to say goodbye. I bear you no ill-will and I know you’ll understand why I didn't come tonight, when you sober up. You have to go on your way, you are dead now. I thank you for your story and wish you well.”
I went out into the yard and cut a cedar branch and lit it up. I wafted the smoke around the yard, the porch, the doorway and also the interior of my apartment. To put it simply, this act gets the attention of those beings stuck in-between realities and it signals to them that they may continue saying goodbye to others in this world. The person doing the smudge has acknowledged their presence and has waved farewell. The alcohol smell disappeared as rapidly as it had come.
Several years into my second marriage, I took on a mortgage. I had paid ten thousand dollars down after saving the proceeds of daily overtime worked at the Post Office. I built missing closets, stripped six layers of wallpaper, painted, gardened and repaired. I had my first-born son, Daniel strapped onto my chest in a baby harness as I did all those repairs.
The boy was in his first year and loved the close contact. He soon grew used to the noise and sawdust. I had him with me unless I was sleeping or at work. When I got to the point in my endeavours where some carpet laying was to be done, I phoned a tradesman. It was a task I had never done on my own and I lacked the little tricks of that trade as well as the special tools.
A man came over to estimate the job and I chose the colour, a deep royal blue. The next day a carpet layer pulled into the driveway and we had a brief meeting while I showed him the rooms to be carpeted. I was busy installing dry-wall, changing diapers, fixing bottles and baby meals. The carpet installer, who looked to be about my age, shook my hand and patted my boy on his head.
For the balance of that day, we two worked at our various tasks and passed each other in the house and in the yard. I had to rebuild some stairs in the bedroom, so he could finish laying the underlay. We parted ways that afternoon in my driveway and he said he would likely finish by the next day. I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing the end of a long, hard year spent renovating, avoiding my deeply depressed wife and caring for our little son.
I had a week off from my job at the Post Office and was already up with my son strapped on my chest when the carpet man pulled up in his van with the royal blue carpet I had chosen. We had coffee and talked about my son and then we both got to our work. About noon, the fellow came to tell me that he was missing some items which he needed in order to complete his job. He said he would just run back to his warehouse and pick them up.
He never returned that day. The next morning, he showed up at eight AM and told me a complicated tale of a day gone horribly wrong. We had coffee again and talked about sons. Then we got to work. Again at about noon, the carpet man showed me where he had done half of my hallway and had run out of staples and other such supplies. He said he would drive back to the warehouse and grab some.
He never returned that day, nor did he on the next day. I phoned his number and left multiple massages, which went unanswered. My wife grew furious and called me eighteen kinds of a fool. The hallway was half bare and another room was clad in underlay only.
After a two days absence, I saw the carpet van pull up bright and early and park. The carpet guy jumped out whistling. His plaid shirt was clean and he had shaved. He beckoned me over to his van and lit a cigarette. I waddled over with my ubiquitous baby chest-pack. Strapped safely inside, Daniel was happily chewing on an animal biscuit.
“Mike, lookit, I'm sorry for the delay. To make it up to you, I fixed the paperwork, so you get the underlay for free. You're just gonna pay for the carpet and half of my time.”
“Wow! OK, but you don't have to do that. I know it’s hard sometimes to keep several jobs on the go at the same time. Happened to me when I was retro-fitting oil-burners into natural gas furnaces during the government rebate program.”
He looked at me hard in my eyes, His expression tightened up as if he was wincing in pain and then it softened like when a man is holding a baby in his arms.
“Fuck, I gotta tell you the truth. What it was, was this. I got married a few years ago and we had a little boy. He's got to be just about the same age as your Dan, there. My wife took off with him and got full custody. They left town and I ain't seen him since that day. When I saw you with your boy, I couldn't bear it. My trips to the warehouse, were really trips to the bar. I'll finish up the job right now and I'd appreciate it if you'd just work outside until I'm done.”
He did an extra special job and the carpet was laid with care and perfection. Daniel and I wished him well as we watched him back out of our long driveway. I continued fixing the house, as my marriage deteriorated into a state I could ignore no longer. Realizing that I was unequipped to help my wife or to cope with her behaviour, I reluctantly and painfully sought divorce and petitioned for custody of our child. During the divorce proceedings, our house was listed for sale, as neither of us could bear to live in it, nor could we cooperate to rent it out.
I kept a remnant of the royal blue carpet when I moved out. It was meant to cover the front steps and it was the last chore I had planned in my renovations. I decided to drive over and install it on the front steps for the future new owners. On arrival, I found myself standing slack-jawed on the sidewalk in front of the address, looking at a huge, nasty, hole in the ground where heavy equipment had wrecked our house.
I saw a scrap of blue carpet poking out of the mud and debris and I thought of my son, whom the Court had rightly ordered into the custody of his mother. I missed my boy with a pain like having a root canal of the soul without anaesthesia. I remembered the carpet man and the truth that even on the most cactus-strewn roads, no one walks alone.
fin