Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [77]
“When you take off like that,” Red said evenly, “you leave everyone in the lurch. It’s one thing that there was no coffee at the union hall meeting Friday night. But then, people wanted to know: Where’s Lewis? Is he okay? Is he coming back? We were pretty damn worried about you.”
“Why do you think I came back? I felt like shit, too. I’ll make amends to the meeting and everybody. What more do you want?”
When Red frowned, Lewis prepared for the worst: would Red tell him to move back to the Blue House, start all over again as a lowly resident?
“I want you to take things in order, Lewis,” Red said finally. “Amends are made after an inventory.”
“Yeah?”
“I want you to write your inventory, the way I assigned it to you. I’ll give you one month.” He walked behind the desk to lift a page of the master calendar. “If you don’t have it done by Tuesday, October twelfth, I’ll have to let you go.”
Lewis gave a short cough of laughter, and didn’t point out that this was actually five weeks. “I can’t believe you’re still hounding me about that dumb inventory. You want it that bad, Redsy? You got it.”
THE OLD BASTARDS CLUB, a local group of alcoholism and recovery professionals, was formed four years earlier in response to a crisis at Round Rock Farm. Doc Perrin had called the meeting to rally support for Red Ray. Staff members from Social Model Detox, the Alcohol Hot Line, and the AA Central Office gathered at the union hall in Buchanan.
Red had spoken first that night. He was exhausted, he said. The last suicide at the farm had taken the starch out of his sails. This was a great guy, well liked, who’d borrowed Red’s shotgun to shoot a rattlesnake in the vegetable garden and then blew his brains out in the groves. Red was fed up and furious. And he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d told anybody what was really bothering him; at the Blue House meetings, he shared only strength and hope with the newcomers. He’d been ignoring his own recovery, kept mum about his own problems, and now everything had reached such a pitch.
His outburst broke the ice, and for the rest of the night, all the sober-forever do-gooders talked about their troubles: wanting to drink, hating God, their difficulties with forming strong human attachments. Such mutual discovery made everyone unreasonably happy. The meeting didn’t break up until after midnight, and only then after everyone had agreed to meet again. They’d done so ever since, as the Old Bastards Club, on the first Monday of every month.
Tonight, Julie Swaggart led the meeting. Her new recovery house was doing well; she’d instituted yoga classes, group meditation, bake sales.
Red braced his forehead against his hand, averting his eyes. He was glad Julie was thriving, and he should ask her about the yoga. But he couldn’t stop worrying—about Libby and Lewis, and mostly about his own inappropriate behavior.
When he’d told her Lewis was back, Libby couldn’t speak, her face so wan that it frightened him.
“Give me your hand,” she’d said. “Say I don’t have to give you up.”
“You don’t have to give me up. Unless you want to.”
She held his hand to her face. “Did you tell him about us?”
“The opportunity didn’t come up. And even if it had, I wanted to talk to you first. I don’t think we’re sure what’s happening here.”
“We don’t owe him any explanations.”
“We should say something eventually,” Red said. “I’m not going to force anything, though. It’s too fresh.”
Now, in the Old Bastards meeting, he faced one irrefutable fact: when you sponsor a man, you don’t move in on his girlfriend.
Red’s angst did not pass unnoticed. At the break, Doc Perrin seized his arm—“Okay, lover boy. Outside”—and escorted him to the front steps. The fog was thick, the street lamps haloed in purple. “Spill your beans,” Perrin said.
“The boyfriend’s home.”
“And the girlfriend scampered back?”
“No, no, not yet.”
“Smart gal. So what’s the problem?”
“I’m his sponsor, for God’s sake,” Red finally got to say it, and to someone who understood that bond.