The Drinking Hand
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
By the fall of 2005, he was living in Tampa, having transferred to a branch office of the same brokerage firm, in the midst of a real estate market even more frenzied than the one in northern Virginia. His timing, as it turned out, was excellent, which didn’t make him feel any better. He was deeply hurt by Jan’s desertion and, realizing his vulnerability, alone and friendless in a new city, he soon found the nearest chapter of A.A. and attended meetings as often as he could.
Then, on an appallingly hot day in July 2006, he received a package in the mail. The return address was a name he didn’t recognize and a post office box address in Wilmington, Delaware. It was the bottle of bourbon, still in its ornate box, the cork still sealed with wax. There was a sealed envelope pasted to the box. It was a letter, and his heart was beating so hard as he read it that the paper in his hand trembled in time with his pulse.
“Iraq?” it began. “Never been there. Never been in the Army, either. Don’t know why I ever said I was. Maybe I wanted you and the others at the meeting to think I had an excuse for being a drunk. The name on the address is my real name, but nothing else about me is, except the boozing. Been doing that since I was fourteen. Sometimes I get sober, meet a guy at A.A. and play house for a while, until I can’t stand it anymore and the old itch has to be scratched. But I need you to believe this, Dan: leaving you was the hardest thing I ever did. When the landlord recognized me, I got scared. Why? Because I knew you’d eventually find out that I was with you the night you lost your hand, that it was all my fault.
“That night I was half in the bag, as usual, on my way to buy more bourbon, and almost ran over you in the parking lot, en route to doing the same thing. Pickled minds think alike. You were on a suicide mission: too trashed to walk, much less drive. But even in the state you were in, I could tell you were a decent guy, and talked you into letting me drive you to the liquor store. At the store you stayed in the car and I went in and bought a quart of Jim Beam and some ginger ale. Didn’t even bother buying your gin, knowing you were on the verge of passing out anyway.
“On the way out I ran into a couple guys I’d partied with before, and they told me about a big bash out in the country near Poolesville on some rich guy’s estate, with a live band and free beer. They were heading out there, and invited me to follow them. It was a bad idea, and I wouldn’t have done it if I’d been sober, and certainly wouldn’t have dragged you along. But I’m like you that way, Dan: the more I drink, the more I want. The difference is, it lights me up, makes me crazy. Later, I hate myself. You don’t remember any of this, I know, but when I told you about the party, you opened your eyes and said, ‘Sure, let’s go.’ So we went.
“The place was way out in darkest farm country, a two hundred-acre property bordering the Potomac River. There was a big bonfire going in the middle of a fallow field. At the bonfire, a couple hundred people were milling around or dancing to a lousy rock band. Everybody was wasted, drinking, smoking and snorting multiple substances, and you and I joined right in. Except for the two guys who led us out there, I didn’t know a soul. I didn’t know you, either, Dan, the guy I’d come with, and didn’t care. When I’m drunk, it’s all about me: have bottle, will travel, full of Irish courage and stupid enough for anything.
“It wasn’t the first time I’d barged into a crowd of drunken strangers, but loaded as I was, I couldn’t fail to notice that these people were a little harder core than I was used to dealing with. I never did find out whose farm it was. The host seemed to have deserted his own party. There wasn’t any supervision, no food and six kegs of beer, and the crowd was already getting wild when we showed up.
“At some point I lost you. You’d been silent pretty much the whole time since we’d left the liquor store, but had stuck close to me, sometimes holding on to my arm to keep from falling down. Some guy asked me to dance, and right off he started groping me, so I pushed him away and went back to where you’d been standing. You weren’t there, and somebody said you’d gone to take a leak, so I went over to the kegs and got myself some beer, already forgetting to worry about you. I mean, I intended to find you eventually and get us back home in one piece, but I wasn’t really thinking much about you, and you know why? Because I had the car keys, and I wanted to party.
“Anyway, shit happened then, that I wish I could forget, but I can’t seem to black out like you do, and in the morning it’s all there, every gruesome detail, staring back at me in the mirror. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I already have, Dan. Let’s just say I met somebody, or more accurately, some body, name unknown, who had a whole pharmacy in his backpack that he was eager to share with me in hopes of getting a return on his investment.
“My god, that party, those people. It was like the last night of the world, like nobody wanted the sun to come up again. Listen to me, talking like I’m better than they are. Truth is, I fell right in with the mood. It was like I had a death wish that night. I was bottoming out, Dan. I just didn’t know it yet.
“Then somebody started firing a pistol into the air, which seemed to signal a deeper craziness. The band had quit playing and probably fled the premises. Some whacked-out jackass wandering around in the dark found a tractor with the key in it and a disk harrow hooked up to it, started it up and began joyriding it in big wobbly circles around the field, steering it closer and closer to the fire. People thought it was funny at first, then started getting nervous.
“The guy on top of me went into a cocaine panic and left the scene, pulling his pants on as he stumbled off. I was on my back in the dirt, a half-naked wreck, when I heard the tractor stop. And then somebody was screaming. Most people scattered, but a few, I could see, were standing around something in the field. I was too far gone to move. That’s the truth, Dan. I lay out there in the dark, too trashed even to crawl.
“I guess I passed out, because it was near dawn when I came to, cold, sick, covered with mosquito bites. I heaved for a while, then limped across that big, empty field to where my car was, the only car left in the lot.
“I didn’t know what to do. I looked around for you, then walked over to where the tractor was parked. I hadn’t reached it yet when I saw the blood, a long trail of it, leading back to the harrow. One of the steel blades was stained red and had pieces of what looked like skin and bone stuck to it. Really scared now as well as sick, I hurried back to my car and got the hell out of there.
“I drove back to Woodbridge. Our acquaintance hadn’t progressed far enough for me to know your apartment number, or even if you lived in the complex, so I had no way of knowing whether you were home in bed or elsewhere. I told myself that you’d caught a ride back with someone and were probably sleeping it off right now. I went into my apartment, locked the door, took a shower, and went to bed. I stayed in bed a long time. I wanted to stay there forever.
“A little over a week later I happened to run into — guess where — one of the guys who’d led us to the party. He was still freaked out about it, and apologized for ‘that shit storm in Poolesville.’ I asked what he meant, and he looked at me strangely, like he thought I was playing dumb. That’s when he told me about you.
“When you wandered out into the field to take a leak, you must have passed out cold on the ground. Nobody realized it, though he implied that I should have done a better job of looking after my ‘date.’ When the asshole on the tractor started tearing around the field, neither he nor anyone else knew you were out there in the dark, dead to the world. You must have had your left arm flung out from your body when the harrow went over your wrist. He told me that some slightly less wasted individual tore up his shirt and made a crude tourniquet. I think it saved your life.
“Somebody had a pick-up truck, and several shit-faced idiots loaded you in the back, along with the hand, and then took off for the hospital. My acquaintance wasn’t sure what happened after that. Either you fell off the truck without their realizing it, or they got scared and decided to dump you. He’d heard different versions. I wouldn’t have put it past that bunch to leave you for dead, throw the hand out in the bushes, and head for the hills. Thank God you were found and treated in time.
“I was holding a bag full of liquor and mixers when my friend told me that. I don’t expect you to believe this, Dan, but something happened to me then, and I just lost it. Handed the bag to the guy without a word and drove home. I started attending meetings the next day, and I haven’t missed one since.
“When you came to the meeting that first time, I got up very carefully and went to the bathroom, my heart going so fast I couldn’t breathe. When I came back I was ready for you to recognize me, to denounce me in front of everyone, like I deserved. But I caught a break: you didn’t remember. I almost envied you your blackouts, then, and how pathetic is that?
“You probably thought I was flirting, because I couldn’t keep my eyes off you, thinking, any second he’ll recognize me. When you didn’t, and we started talking afterward, and I began to realize how much I liked you, it started to feel like a gift, my second chance to make things right. But I lived in fear, all the time we were together. The more I cared about you, the more scared I was. I should have told you that first day. I think you might have forgiven me, then. But I blew it, like I blow everything good that happens to me.
“I don’t know why I took the whisky when I ran. Probably intended to hole up somewhere and drink it. But I didn’t. I haven’t had a drink, Dan, not a drop, honest to God, since a week or so after the party. In case you’re wondering how I got your Tampa address, I told your old boss at Liberty Mortgage that I’d lost it and needed to send you something important. I didn’t tell him it was the box of whisky.
“I hope you’re doing all right down there in Florida. I’m doing okay here. I thought staying sober would be harder than it is. It’s staying drunk that’s hard. And not being with you. Take care of yourself. Write me back, if you feel like it. I’ll understand if you don’t.”
Jan
It took him a while to work up to it, but eventually he responded. He thanked her for telling him, knowing how much it had cost her to write that letter, and asked her not to blame herself for what was as much his fault as anyone’s. If he’d stopped drinking after that bottle of gin, none of this would have happened. But then he never would have met her, nor, probably, would he have taken the cure.
He, too, had remained sober, he told her. He had only one regret: he was sorry that she hadn’t trusted him enough to be honest from the beginning. She was right: he would have forgiven her. But it was too late now. She’d hurt him too much, and he’d moved on. However, if she felt like writing again sometime, he’d like to hear from her. He mailed the letter along with the box of whisky.
When the Tampa mortgage firm collapsed along with the rest of the housing market in 2008, Dan had long since resigned. He was seeing a woman he’d met at his new job in software sales, but was still living alone. He and Jan Whitcomb — he couldn’t think of her as anyone else — hadn’t written to each other again, but that box of bourbon had become a kind of Flying Dutchman of the U.S. Mail. It was sent back and forth between Tampa and Wilmington every six months, the now rather heavily-laden symbol of their shared and ever-precarious sobriety. They could only hope that the bottle would never be lost or broken in transit, but remain intact and unopened for as long as it was needed.
Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey Greene
