“It started off as fun. Especially when I got good at the guitar and started hanging at the juke joints. I was only fifteen when I played my first show, down in Richmond. Have you ever been?” Joe asked but didn’t wait for a response.
“Man, I was more scared than a whore going to church on Easter Sunday.” Joe clapped his hands. “But then one of the fellows slipped me a glass of bourbon, and I downed it. My nerves were gone, and I got up on the stage and played like somebody possessed. Got a reputation as the little fella who could hold his liquor and play like Bo Diddley. So I had to live up to it.”
Ozzie’s skin itched. As Joe went on to describe nights when he’d wake up and not be able to remember how he got home and who the woman next to him was, Ozzie realized that he could relate. Days and nights were missing from his memory as well. Though lucky for him, he had awakened only next to Rita, except on the nights she had banished him to the basement, which in the past few months had been more often than not.
“I woke up with the shakes and went to bed with the runs. It all became too much, and a deep sadness had strangled me till I didn’t want to live no more. Ten years went by without me drawing a clean breath. I lost my home, my woman, and only worked enough odd jobs to keep my mouth from getting dry. Alcohol had become my master; it was the only thing that mattered.”
Joe spoke with an honesty that resonated intimately, gnawing at a truth buried deep within Ozzie. A lump formed in his throat as a wave of emotions rose to the surface.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” Ozzie choked out. “We finally got an appointment for a mortgage after trying for two years, but I messed it up. Drinking on the job. By the time I arrived, the bank had closed, and my wife’s been distant ever since.”
“Trust me, I’ve done worse.”
Ozzie looked at Joe. “So how’d you control your thirst? ’Cause it’s ruining my life.”
“A friend invited me to attend a meeting with him. I went and met men who had struggled with drinking just like me. I did what they told me to do. That was eight years ago, and I’ve been living a sober life ever since.”
“You mean to tell me that you haven’t had a drink in eight years? Don’t bullshit me.”
“Not a single drop. Best part is that I don’t even think about it anymore. It has lost its power over me.”
Ozzie didn’t know if he believed him. Then Joe reached over and covered Ozzie’s jittery hand with his.
“This isn’t who you are, brother. Let me help you the way my friend helped me.”
Those words opened something inside Ozzie, but he had trouble identifying the feeling. Was it hope?
“Mr. Philips?” called a thin nurse, dressed in white from head to toe, clutching a clipboard in the doorway.
“That’s me.”
“Your wife and baby are ready for you.” Her smile was reassuring.
Ozzie stood. “It was nice meeting you.”
Joe put out his hand and pulled Ozzie into a one-armed hug and whispered in his ear, “First order of business is to start with twenty-four hours. No matter what happens, don’t pick up that first drink.” Then he slipped Ozzie a business card with his telephone number on it.
The hospital room had two beds, and Rita’s was on the left, closest to the window. Beside her bed was a woven bassinet. On a slip of cardboard scrolled in cursive were the words “It’s a boy.” Ozzie held his hat in his hands, in awe of this tiny miracle. He had a son.
“Hey.” Rita’s voice was hoarse, and her hair had been brushed away from her face and swept into bobby pins.
“You did good, baby.” Ozzie touched her foot. “And you look beautiful,” he said, even though he could see in her eyes that she was beat.
“You see our boy?”
Ozzie stood over the bassinet. As he watched the child’s belly rise and fall, he couldn’t help comparing this moment to the first time he had laid eyes on Katja. She’d been smaller and had twice as much hair, and her skin was so pale he remembered checking her features to make sure she belonged to him. Throughout Rita’s pregnancy, Ozzie had wondered if it would be possible to love another child. But when he lifted his son and cradled him against his chest, his heart burst open with more love than he knew was possible.
“I want to name him Maceo, after my uncle Maceo,” Rita said proudly. “If it wasn’t for him losing his life voting in Georgia, I wouldn’t have moved to Philly and met you.”
There was a loving tenderness in her eyes that had been absent for months, and it further unraveled Ozzie. Joy, sorrow, and regret clipped his words so that they came out staccato.
“Thank you. For giving me a son. I know. I have disappointed you. The drinking. Late rent and missed appointment at the bank. But…” He looked down at Maceo, and it was once again like looking God in the face. His eyes crowned with tears. Joe’s words had been a revelation. He owed it to his family and to himself to be better.
Rita beckoned him to sit on the side of her bed, then took her fingertips and caressed his tears. “I don’t want to raise Maceo withoutyou, but don’t make me choose,” she whispered, her face wet. “I need you to come back to me, Oz. Be the man I fell in love with, booze-free.”
A surge of love, shame, and pain welled up inside Ozzie as he cradled the baby with one arm and Rita with the other. He didn’t know why he was being granted this second chance, but he knew that meeting Joe had set something in motion, and he couldn’t let it slip away.
CHAPTER 54Prince Frederick, MD, April 1966
