James Burke - Light of the World

“There’s one other thing. You can’t tell your father or Clete about this.”

“That doesn’t sound too good.”

“Are you in or out?” Gretchen said.

On north Higgins, next to a saloon that had not closed its doors since 1891, was a newsstand and tobacco store that carried pulps and tabloids and magazines of every stripe. A man wearing two-tone shoes and a rain hat and aviator glasses and a loose-fitting tan suit and an open-collar blue shirt with white stripes came through the front door and began looking at the magazines on the rack, flipping through a few pages and replacing the magazine sloppily on the rack when he found nothing of interest in it. Or he simply let it fall to the floor, the pages splaying by his foot, while he reached for another magazine.

Two teenage girls with blond hair that was almost gold had gotten out of his SUV to watch a street guitarist playing on the corner. Then they window-shopped and walked out of the clerk’s line of sight, but the man in the tan suit seemed to pay little attention to them. He had the air of a beachcomber or a quasi-dissolute figure prowling the backstreet dens of an Oriental city in a 1940s film noir. He picked up a copy of Hustler, occasionally wetting a finger as he turned the pages, tilting the magazine sideways to get a better view of the artwork inside.

The clerk was a zit-faced kid whose skinny arms were tattooed from wrist to armpit with images of snakes and skeletal heads and bloody knives. He was sitting on a stool behind the counter, eyeballing the customer in the tan suit, a matchstick flipping up and down between his teeth. “I just started this job. I’d like to keep it,” he said.

“Yeah?” the customer said.

“How about not wrecking the magazine rack?”

“Why do you carry this trash?”

“Because horny old geeks come in here and buy it?”

“I like that new way of talking you kids have. You end every sentence like it’s a question.”

“I don’t think you get it. I’m not the issue.”

The customer went on reading, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“How about picking up the magazines off the floor, man?” the clerk said.

“You shouldn’t sell this junk.”

“Then why are you looking at it?”

The customer kept reading, never raising his eyes. “What’s your name?”

The clerk hesitated before he spoke. “Seymour Little.”

“That’s perfect.”

The clerk made a snuffing sound down in his nose. “You step in dog shit or something?”

The customer lifted his eyes from the magazine. “Repeat that?”

“There’s a funny smell in the air.”

“You’re saying the funny smell is me?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

“But you were wondering if it was me that smelled like dog shit?”

“No, I lost my job at the motel. I’m just trying to get a fresh start.”

“Yeah, you worked at a fleabag on West Broadway, didn’t you? You got fired because you dragged somebody’s Harley down the street.”

“How’d you know that?”

“You made some ink. You’re a celebrity.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I say you did. But you should take your mind off world events, Seymour. You think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

The customer took a hundred-dollar bill and a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and placed them on the counter. “I want you to walk down to the pharmacy and pick up a prescription for me. There’re several other items you’ll have to get off the shelf.”

“I can’t leave here.”

“I’ll fill in for you.”

“What the fuck is with you, man?”

“I say and you do. That’s not hard to understand, is it? You shouldn’t wise off to the wrong people, Seymour.”

The clerk unfolded the piece of paper and read it. “You want me to shop for tampons?”

“You need to be back here in thirteen minutes. Don’t make me come after you.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Run along now.”

“Thirteen minutes? Not twelve or fourteen?”

“Look into my face. Tell me what you see there. Don’t look away. Look straight into my eyes. Do you have any doubt what might happen to you if you don’t do what I say?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want trouble. Hey, man, I was just doing my job. What the fuck?”

There was a long pause. “I was having a little fun with you. I saw you drag that motorcycle down the street.”

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“With that smile on your face.”

“Your tats. You want people to think you’ve been inside. But you haven’t. You couldn’t cut it inside, Seymour. First night in the shower, the wolves would make lamb chops out of you. They would have you sizzling in the pan like a lump of butter.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’m helping you so you won’t shoot off your mouth to the wrong man again. You’ll always remember this moment. No matter how long you live, you’ll remember me. When you think you’ve changed, that you’re strong and all this is behind you, you’ll have a dream about me and realize I’ll always be inside your head. Run along now. Everything will be shipshape when you get back. Do you mind if I get myself a soda?”

The clerk went to the pharmacy and returned in under thirteen minutes, his face chastened, his skin as dry and bloodless as paper. He looked as though half of what he used to be had been left outside the store. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Go ahead,” the customer replied.

“The girls in your SUV, are those your daughters?”

“I’m their godfather. Why do you ask?”

“Why do you need all that OxyContin?”

“I’m pimping them out.” The man waited, then his face split into a grin. “You never know when a guy is ribbing you, do you? Enjoy the rest of your day, Seymour. Take consolation in the fact that you’re a part of history. You just don’t know it yet.”

As the customer drove away with the two teenage girls, the clerk memorized the tag number and wrote it in pencil on the counter. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed 911. As soon as he had completed the third digit, he hung up and rubbed the tag number out of the wood with the heel of his hand, a lump as big as a walnut protruding from his throat.

Why do people in A.A. claim they pay the biggest membership dues in the world? That’s easy. Early in life, you set out to deconstruct everything good you thought you’d turn out to be. When you’re finished doing that, you foul your blood, piss your brains into the street, trade off your tomorrows, destroy your family, betray your friends, court suicide on a daily basis, and become an object of ridicule and contempt in the eyes of your fellow man. That’s for openers. The rest of the dance card involves detox, jail, padded cells, and finally, the cemetery. If you want your soul shot out of a cannon, or you want to enter a period of agitated depression and psychoneurotic anxiety known as a Gethsemane Experience, untreated alcoholism is a surefire way to get there.

The big surprise at your first A.A. meeting is the apparent normalcy of the people in the room. They come from every socioeconomic background imaginable. The only thing most of them have in common is the neurosis that has governed their lives. The meeting I attended on Monday night was held on the second floor of a Methodist church, across from a high school in a maple-lined neighborhood reminiscent of an earlier time. The woman seated next to me was a Lutheran minister. The woman on the other side of me was a former middle-school teacher who had been molested as a child and had seduced two of her male students. The man leading the meeting was a housepainter who had been a door gunner in Vietnam and had killed innocent people in a free-fire zone (in his words, “just to watch them die”). The kid who came in late during the recitation of the Serenity Prayer and plunked down next to me in a whoosh of nicotine was the first to speak when the moderator opened up the meeting.