Prologue
Dixon
“D,why don’t you start us off today?”Mo said.
It looked like he’d showered and combed his hair, brushed his teeth, but he was probably three cups of coffee deep this morning, so there was a discolored tinge to them.Drugs and drinking hadn’t left them pearly white anyway.His button down was rumpled, as usual, and his khakis weren’t the wrinkle-free kind by any stretch of the imagination.
I asked, “We’re tellin’ memories?Good or bad?”
“What comes to mind?”
But Mo was a good guy.Maybe the nicest person I’d met since I got sober.He always had a kind word, even if his day had gone to shit.He had real, true belief in his fellow man, and if you needed it, he’d give you the shirt off his back even though he didn’t have a pot to piss in.
A memory?I had to think about it.I had lots of those.The therapist told me to let the bad ones come, that I couldn’t avoid them forever if I wanted to stay clean, but today had been a good one up till now, as far as memories went, and I didn’t want the bad ones to sour my stomach quite yet.I’d just eaten shitty diner bacon and eggs, and if I let the bad memories flow, I’d chuck.
If I thought about Candy and my brother’s baby, what I’d done to them, what I didn’t do…
No, today, I wanted to think about something good.Something sweet.
Memories of my brothers and sister from when we were kids hit me like a bullet train.My oldest brother, Bax, was off limits, though, because he was attached to the memories of Candy and their baby.He wasn’t safe.My other brother, Brand, was a good man.Maybe a little self-centered, but I loved him.I always had.And I wouldn’t be clean if he hadn’t flown down from Wyoming to California and paid up front for rehab.
I loved all my siblings, and maybe Brand had his own demons to wrangle and that was why he’d always been a little standoffish and stiff.
My sister, the youngest in our family, Abey… What a beautiful soul.
I ached for her.She’d gotten the worst of our dad.He’d made her feel like she didn’t even deserve to live?—
No.My brothers and sister were out of bounds this morning if I wanted to keep my day on track, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to give myself permission to remember Kel, the dead mother of my kid.
Stay positive.
“There was a girl.”
The tired, beat-down group of men around me mumbled their agreement.Didn’t it always start with a girl?
“Yeah,” I said, “but this girl was a kid.I was a kid.She didn’t have anything to do with why things got dark for me.She was a light.Her grandparents lived near our family farm, and she used to stay out at their place during the summers.
“Her hair was the color of cornsilk.The sun made it that way.And she had this tinkling laugh.Her name was… I don’t remember.It won’t come to me.There’s too much bad and hurt between now and then.”The hurt made the good memories blurry and out of reach.“But I remember that laugh.
“She loved flowers, was always picking the wild ones, even picked ’em from her grandma’s prized garden, and she’d make these bouquets for the squirrels and birds, deer and elk.Now, I knew they didn’t give a shit about flowers, but she insisted on leavin’ ’em for the animals.She made beds of flowers and strung the stems together to make strands we’d hang from tree limbs.She said when the wind blew through the trees, she thought her flowers made the animals happy.”
Next to me, Nesty chuckled.He thought shortening his real name, Ernesto, to Nesty sounded like Posty.He was always doing that, comparing himself to celebrities, even though he was the scrawniest, least-famous dude I’d ever met.He was strong though; he punched me once when we were high after I called him Ernie.Most guys didn’t, but I hoped if he stayed clean this time, he’d rethink the nickname.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that,” he said.
I elbowed him.“Shut up.Mo said good or bad memories.This is my good one.
“Anyway, I think about that girl when I can’t sleep.I always told her she should take over her grandma’s flower shop.I wonder if she did.I wonder if she’s happy.If she still laughs like that, like a wind chime.”
Or was she like me, broken and sorry and scarred?
I prayed like crazy I’d stay clean, like it wasn’t up to me.
But it was.And this time, I had the best reason to beat my demon into submission.
A son.
A beautiful, soft, perfect baby boy.
