Page 16 of Steadfast
Mrs. Shipley, Griffin, Audrey and May brought the rest of the food out of the kitchen and set in on the table. While they took their seats, I bowed my head for what I knew came next.
“Dear Lord,” Mrs. Shipley began, “thank you for these gifts we are about to receive. Thank you for bringing friends to our table…”
The prayer went on, and my eyes made a covert trip across the candlelit faces around the table. I’d pointed my car in this direction for a reason, even if I hadn’t realized it in my freaked-out haze.
Well done, subconscious.
The months I’d spent on this farm were pretty much the most perilous ones that an addict can have. You’re out on your own again, and you need to rebuild all your habits from scratch, since the old ones practically killed you already.
This farm had functioned like an accidental halfway-house for me. There weren’t any locks on the doors like they had at rehab. But the farm was in the middle of nowhere, and I’d had no car. So there had been no way for me to get drugs without really working for it. I would have had to borrow a vehicle and wander around Orange County asking questions.
But I hadn’t done that. I’d stayed clean.
And the Shipleys were just so fucking nice to me, even though I was that loser who’d just come from jail and then rehab. I have no idea why they’d hired me, except that farm labor was really pretty tight in the summertime, and my parole officer was a friend of theirs.
From July through October, I’d slept in their bunkhouse out back. There had been four of us in there, including Griffin. At first I’d assumed that he slept in the bunkhouse to keep an eye on the help. But that wasn’t the reason at all. He’d given his bedroom to his aging grandfather, and the farmhouse was crowded. Last month he’d moved in with Audrey a half mile down the road.
This family had been nothing but good to me. I’d done hard labor all day long and fell into bed at night. And when I’d inevitably woke (because recovering addicts sleep like shit), I would just lie in my bunk and listen to the others breathe. They’d sounded calm, and it had made me feel calmer, too. Eventually, my tired body would drift to sleep again until it was time to get up at dawn and work my ass off.
I would have stayed forever.
“Amen,” Mrs. Shipley finally said. There was a smattering of “Amens” to follow hers, and then busy hands began lifting and passing plates around the table.
“No muffler yet?” Zachariah asked, passing me a platter of ham after hefting two fat slices onto his own plate.
“I ordered it. Should come in on Monday.”
He nodded. Zach had driven me to look at the car in Montpelier when I was trying to find something cheap. He didn’t have a car, either. But Griffin had let us use his truck to go check out the vehicle.
I’d wanted company, too. Because if Zachariah was beside me, I knew I wouldn’t even be tempted to look around the back streets of Montpelier for a dealer.
That had been three weeks ago, but it felt longer. At that point, I’d suspected that moving back to Colebury would be hard.
But I’d had no idea that I was about to be sucker-punched by the knowledge that Sophie was still in town. And getting harrassed by some asshole in a turtleneck. Sitting there in the comfort of the Shipleys’ dining room, I fought off a shudder.
Zachariah passed me the roasted potatoes. I found myself taking less food for myself than I did when I was a rightful employee of this place and not just a hanger-on like I was tonight. But Zach filled his plate with the righteous determination of a man who knows he’ll be shoveling cow shit before six AM. Life had knocked Zach around twice as hard as it ever had me. His people had taped his hands behind his back and rolled him off a flatbed truck when he wouldn’t fall in line with their bullshit. Yet the guy sitting beside me had never touched a drug in his life. (Or a woman. But that’s a whole different story.)
It was hard not to compare my shitty solutions with all the ways he’d managed to cope. Treatment meetings had taught me that addiction was a disease, one that I had and Zachariah didn’t. According to them, I wasn’t supposed to compare myself to Zachariah, because he didn’t walk around all day with a body that craved smack.
It sounded nice on paper. The problem was that I remembered the exact moment my friends offered me a line of painkillers to snort. I’d said yes instead of no, even though I’d known it was a dumbass thing to do. The rest is (ugly) history.
My name is Jude Nickel, and I am an addict. Also, I’m a big fucking idiot.
* * *
After dinnerI helped clear the table. And while May did the dishes, I dried.
“What’s it like being back at home?” May asked me, handing over a dripping-wet mixing bowl.
“It’s… awful,” I answered.
May laughed. “That is uncharacteristically candid of you.”
“Isn’t it?” We worked in silence for a couple of minutes. “The problem is that it’s hard to behave differently in the same old environment. Every time I step inside my old room, Ifeellike the junkie I used to be. Like the air in there is fucking toxic.”
She gave me a quick glance that was brimming with empathy. “Isn’t there somewhere else you can be?”
“I do the math, like, hourly. But I can’t get a decent job until I’ve been clean and out of prison for a while. And without a real job, I can’t move away. Besides, even if I had some kind of roommate situation for cheap, there’s no telling what the roommates might be into.”
