Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [117]
“To this day, when I’m in a mess or don’t know what to do, I always think, What would Red do? And it’s always the same thing. Pray. Write some kind of inventory. Talk to another alcoholic. Pause, give yourself a little room to think.”
Gabriel, who spoke next, had known Red in his drinking days. “If you think he was generous sober, you should’ve seen him drunk. He’d buy drinks for fifty people all night long. I waited five years after Red to get sober myself. He was my scout. He looked good to me, happy, and that’s what gave me courage. I’d say to myself, Look at Red Ray. He loved his drink, but now he loves his life.
“I came to Round Rock just when Red started the Sunday softball games, and I never figured out where he learned to pitch like that. He’d send you these way-out, swoopy thunkers you couldn’t hit off. The more sober you got, the more those pitches confounded….”
Gabriel stepped down and Doc Perrin, weeping openly, came to the podium.
“I remember the day fourteen, fifteen years ago when this rank damn crippled newcomer says he wants to turn his estate into a drunk farm. A crazy fucking deal. Thing was, we needed a house. There wasn’t any kind of halfway facility anywhere around here, unless you count the Good Brothers Home, where they fed you oatmeal and Jesus at every meal. We’d send people out to Camarillo and Acton back then. They’d bounce back to us in a few months, worse than ever, livers shot, yellow as baby damn ducks.
“I said, ‘Red, you get a board of directors and a good lawyer and let’s go to work.’ Like Luke said, Red got sober with this farm. He grew up here. And everyone on the farm grew up with him. He took whoever was here through all the phases of his own sobriety. Around two and a half years sober, he went spiritual on us. Hired a farm chaplain, mostly so he could have long, theological discussions with him. Is George here?”
A man waved from the center of the crowd.
“Well, you’ll remember,” Perrin said. “For months, maybe years, it was Meister Eckhart all the time. ‘God is neither this nor that’ … ‘God is the foundation without foundation.’ Remember how he was always quoting? ‘Flee and hide yourself before the storm of inner thoughts, for they create a lack of peace.’ Remember?
“Then he hooked up with this Jungian therapist, and all he wanted to talk about were dreams. He had these wild theories. He’d tell you his dreams and analyze yours. He was good at it, too. I used to call him up with dreams all the time and he’d say to me, ‘Is it right, Doc? ’Cause a dream isn’t interpreted until the dreamer says it is.’
“Next it was transcendental meditation. He’d pay out of his own pocket if anyone wanted to learn to do it. He put out hundreds of dollars getting people to meditate. He even got me to, only he made me pay my own way. He was generous, but he wasn’t a fool.
“Greatest thing that ever happened to me was Red asking me to be his sponsor. He’s kept me sober all these years—you know, the drunk’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility. If I slip, I thought, who’ll keep an eye on that crazy SOB and all you sorry drunks at the house?
“I’m gonna tell all of you hardheaded bastards something. You think you kick alcohol, you’re in the clear. But the other stuff is just sitting there, waiting to jump you. This disease moves sideways, right into cigarettes, coffee, sugar, food, gambling, women, adrenaline, you name it. So if you guys want to do something in memory to Red, throw away those damn cigarettes. Start drinking water.”
Before closing the meeting, Julie took a straw poll. “Just out of curiosity,” she said, “let’s see the hands of the people Red sponsored in this room.” About forty people, including Lewis, raised their hands, and then everybody else’s hands went up, too.
BARBARA AND LEWIS drove to the hospital early, before he had to start lunch. They’d picked a large bouquet of roses, which Barbara took up to Libby’s room. Lewis went to see Red’s body, but an orderly at the