Sober three days, ever since his wife told him his son was dead.
He'd quit before, it was a cycle with him since his early teens. DT's, bugs crawling out of the walls, all over him. On his skin, into his skin.
Once that goes away he's left with the dark craving, a need for a drink that seems to cut through everything, thought, logic, flesh, cells, bone. It goes down to some marrow and there is no escape. And he knows he'll go back to it, evil mistress he can not escape.
But not this time. As sobriety creeps over him, leaves him feeling sucked dry, he can see clearly for the first time since he was 15. Maybe for the first time ever.
He sees that he is a piece of shit. He sees that he had lost control, has no control even now. He can't control his anger, he can't control the need for a drink. He can't control desire transforming itself into need. He can't control the helplessness and grief that may never go away.
His wife is like their son was in many ways. She is small. She is quiet. She has black hair and those haunted black eyes. How responsible is he for those haunted looks?
His wife told him Johnny was dead and it was strange. The world began to split into layers, into then and now, into culpability and glistening sadness, hopelessness, despair.
And it didn't make sense. How could he be dead? That boy who had just been here in his jean jacket, greasing his long hair like a hood, smoking despite the fact that he'd get beat for it, probably drinking, too. That this child, his child, was dead, it couldn't make sense.
Because he himself had lived a long time, 36 years, and had lived hard. Drank hard, fucked hard, fought hard. Johnny had not even lived half that time and now he was just gone.
John Cade. His son named for his father but they'd always called him Johnny. And he could see, with terrible consequences, he could see he'd been hard on Johnny. He'd been a bastard, as much as his own father was. Mean old man who had gotten leaner and eviler over the years.
And images of his son's black eyes and split lips and broken bones and bruises, all his fault, these images assaulted him, and he saw with the clarity of the newly sober, that he had hurt his son more than he had helped him. That he'd in fact hurt everyone around him, that he'd been his wife's and son's cross to bear.
The funeral loomed ahead. Unnatural event. It should be Johnny burying him, it should be that way. He didn't see Johnny's birth, he didn't see his son into this world, but he'd see him out of it.
He licked his lips. His tongue was dry. He had the beginnings of a screaming migraine.
His wife told him Johnny had killed a boy. With a knife. A switchblade. He himself had never committed such a heinous crime. His wife told him Johnny had been hurt in a fire, because he had run into the fire to save children trapped there. He did not think himself capable of such selflessness. His son had extremes he couldn't touch, would never reach.
He was not perfect. He had been an evil man. But there was someone else beneath the alcohol and the violence. He owed it to Johnny to find that person. He owed it to Johnny to become someone he would have been proud of.
It wasn't over. He was 36. He could get up every day, drink coffee, go to work. Rediscover the girl he loved as a teenager, stop fighting with the woman she had become. They could have another child, one with black hair and big black eyes and he wouldn't hit this child, beat this child. He wouldn't make this one sleep out on the streets because home was worse. He would give this child the love and care he should have given to Johnny, that he owed Johnny.
Because he was a man who paid his debts. And because he had loved his son.
