There There(58)

But each and every bottle you bought was a medicine or a poison depending on whether you managed to keep them full enough. The method was unstable. Unsustainable. To drink enough but not too much for a drunk was like asking the evangelical not to say the name Jesus. And so playing drums and singing in those classes had given you something else. A way to get there without having to drink and wait and see if the next day the State might emerge from the ashes.

The State was based on something you read about James Hampton years after your trip to D.C. James had given himself a title: Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity. James was a Christian. You are not. But he was just crazy enough to make sense to you. This is what made sense: He spent fourteen years building a massive piece of artwork out of junk he collected in and around the garage he rented, which was about a mile from the White House. The piece was called The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. James made the throne for Jesus’s second coming. What you get about James Hampton is his almost desperate devotion to God. To the waiting for his God to come. He made a golden throne from junk. The throne you were building was made of moments, made of experiences in the State after excess drinking, made of leftover, unused drunkenness, kept overnight, dreamed, moon-soaked fumes you breathed into throne form, into a place you could sit. In the State you were just unhinged enough to not get in the way. The problem came from having to drink at all.

    The night before you got fired, drum class had been canceled. It was the end of December. The approach of the new year. This kind of drinking was not about reaching the State. This kind of drinking was careless, pointless—one of the risks, the consequences of being the kind of drunk you are. That you’ll always be, no matter how well you learn to manage it. By night’s end, you’d finished a fifth of Jim Beam. A fifth is a lot if you don’t work your way up to it. It can take years to drink this way, alone, on random Tuesday nights. It takes a lot from you. Drinking this way. Your liver. The one doing the most living for you, detoxifying all the shit you put into your body.

When you got to work the next day you were fine. A little dizzy, still drunk, but the day felt normal enough. You went into the conference room. The powwow committee meeting was happening. You ate what they were calling breakfast enchiladas when they offered them. You met a new member of the committee. Then your supervisor, Jim, called you into his office, called on the two-way you kept on your belt.

When you got to his office he was on the phone. He covered it with one hand.

“There’s a bat,” he said, and pointed out to the hallway. “Get it out. We can’t have bats. This is a medical facility.” He said it like you’d brought the bat in yourself.

    Out in the hallway, you looked up and around you. You saw the thing on the ceiling in the corner near the conference room at the end of the hall. You went and got a plastic bag and a broom. You approached the bat carefully, slowly, but when you got close it flew into the conference room. Everyone, the whole powwow committee, their heads spinning, watched as you went in there and chased it out.

When you were back out in the hallway, the bat circled around you. It was behind you, and then it was on the back of your neck. It had its teeth or claws dug in. You freaked out and reached back and got the bat by a wing and instead of doing what you should have done—put it in the trash bag you’d been carrying with you—you brought your hands together and with all your strength, everything you had in you, you squeezed. You crushed the bat in your hands. Blood and thin bones and teeth in a pile in your hands. You threw it down. You would mop it up quick. Wipe clean the whole day. Start over again. But no. The whole powwow committee was there. They’d come out to watch you catch the bat after you’d chased the thing into their meeting. Every one of them looked at you with disgust. You felt it too. It was on your hands. On the floor. That creature.



* * *



—

Back in your supervisor’s office after you’d cleaned up the mess, Jim gestured for you to sit down.

“I don’t know what that was,” Jim said. Both hands were on top of his head. “But it’s not something we can tolerate in a medical facility.”

    “The thing fucking…Sorry, but the thing fucking bit me. I was reacting—”

“And that would have been okay, Thomas. Only co-workers saw. But you smell like alcohol. And coming to work drunk, I’m sorry, but that’s a fireable offense. You know we have a zero-tolerance policy here.” He didn’t look mad anymore. He looked disappointed. You almost told him that it was just from the night before, but that maybe wouldn’t have made a difference, because you could have still blown an over-the-limit blood alcohol level. The alcohol was still in you, in your blood.

“I did not drink this morning,” you said. You almost crossed your heart. You’d never even done that when you were a kid. It was something about Jim. He was like a big kid. He didn’t want to have to punish you. Crossing your heart seemed like a reasonable way to convince Jim you were telling the truth.

“I’m sorry,” Jim said.

“So that’s it? I’m being fired?”

“There’s nothing I can do for you,” Jim said. He stood up and walked out of his own office. “Go home, Thomas,” he said.