Out of the Drink

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

He talked to his family members intermittently on the telephone and privately grieved at how their circumstances never seemed to live up to their ambitions. He genuinely wished things would go better for them, and when they didn't, he still held out hope. But he wasn't willing to let his family get him down with their compounded troubles. Ray managed carefully the once-a-year encounters, renting rooms at a hotel so he wouldn't have to bear up under more direct circumstances.

When Ray was writing, calm was as necessary as oxygen to him. (Recall the title of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?) Ray's nerves seemed exposed without alcohol to deaden them. He sent me out once to shut up all the dogs in the neighborhood, for he was especially sensitive to persistent loud noises. Ray was a great avoider, and that was his characteristic mode when he was in turmoil. He'd get himself away from the trouble, and he was always looking ahead to see what might be coming. I think he developed a kind of talent for sidestepping difficulty because his life depended on it. He didn't consider running away to be cowardly under such circumstances. He knew what triggered his 'jitters,' his 'God-help-me's,' his cave-ins of the spirit. Climbing the mountain next to him, I came to know these hazards too. I tightened the rope between us. I sunk my piton into the ice. I let him know I was right there.

Companionship is probably a necessity for anyone coming out of alcoholism: to have those who give us strength close at hand. He called me 'the rock,' and I know I tried to be. Ray's poems and stories were admissions of that 'other' life, the 'bad Raymond' who'd lived at the mercy of alcohol. They paint a dire portrait of times he didn't want to relive.

Limits

All that day we banged at geese
from a blind at the top
of the bluff. Busted one flock
after the other, until our gun barrels
grew hot to the touch. Geese
filled the cold, grey air. But we still
didn't kill our limits.
The wind driving our shot
every whichway. Late afternoon,
and we had four. Two shy
of our limits. Thirst drove us
off the bluff and down a dirt road
alongside the river.

To an evil-looking farm
surrounded by dead fields of
barley. Where, almost evening,
a man with patches of skin
gone from his hands let us dip water
from a bucket on his porch.
Then asked if we wanted to see
something-a Canada goose he kept
alive in a barrel beside
the barn. The barrel covered over
with screen wire, rigged inside
like a little cell. He'd broken
the bird's wing with a long shot,
he said, then chased it down
and stuffed it in the barrel.
He'd had a brainstorm!
He'd use that goose as a live decoy.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print