One Thing Leads to Another (pt 7).

They call it getting clean, but you never are. You try to fix things; you call up everybody and apologize for everything under the sun, you make donations to churches and you carry change to give to homeless people. Mostly you feel like there’s a timer on the back of your head saying you better hurry up. The reason I didn’t come for True was because I didn’t want him. I was great at my job and I was clean and I was saving up money, and I was going to bring a junkie home? He never had to do anything, all he had to do was sit there and be True and everybody jumped around on one leg trying to make him happy. I didn’t want to find him, I thought he’d be dead by now. I hoped.

Wolf is gasping these words out, limping on a knee that feels like grinding gears down the dark alley-side of the old hotel. He feels poured out; he is going to find True and take him away, and if the big one tries to stop him he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He finds a broken door and ducks in, listening. There are bodies in blankets and sleeping bags in the icy corridor, some of them moaning; he steps over them, sniffing, something unfolding its wings and roaring to life in him, the NEED, the NEED, it’s punching its way out of him, grabbing him and hauling him after a smell in the air, matches and burning copper, and he opens the door and falls in, dropping to his knees. True is on his back. The girl is next to him, legs folded beneath her like a swan. Between them are candles, cotton, and tar.

Wolf sinks down. True’s eyes are half open; they look like they’re full of water. I missed you, he says. Do you remember when the flood lifted the trailer up in the middle of the night, and mom woke us up and got us on the roof, and all you could hear was the river and the rain. How long did we float for?

A long ways, Wolf says. Miles, I think.

The girl is pulling the belt around his bicep. This isn’t happening, he says to her.

Of course not, she says; they watch as the vein swells ripe and hard. It can’t be.

True is still talking about the flood, though Wolf can’t hear him anymore because the needle is in him, fucking him, dumping its load in him. The girl’s face is morphing into an elephant. You’re still going to take him with you, she says, her trunk flailing. You have to, it’s the right thing to do.

Leave him alone, True says; he’s a ghost hovering over them both. He’s just a tourist.

This isn’t happening, Wolf says. He’s outside, trying to walk, falling more than standing, landing hard on his knee in front of the State and shrieking, and then laughing because it doesn’t hurt, nothing hurts, everything’s warm and shiny and his coat flaps around him like sails in the wind. He has his keys in his hand and he is going get in his car and to drive north somewhere and go to sleep.

The beast is standing in front of him. He hits Wolf in the nose; it bleeds on his shirt. His brother appears and he chases the monster away; he loops Wolf’s arm around his neck and pulls him into the wind, walking him around the corner and then around another one all the way to his car. He puts Wolf inside and starts it for him.

Come with me, Wolf tries to say, but True just laughs at him. He draws invisible pistols from invisible holsters and shoots; Wolf tries to shoot back but the car is moving too fast, blurring everything as he slides out of town. He wakes up three hours later on the side of the road, the car covered in frost and blood dried to his mouth. His knee is swollen and when he tries to move it he shouts.

The car starts after several tries; when he gets to a gas station he goes to the pay phone and starts calling the people he is supposed to when he is in trouble, and when he can’t take it anymore he slams the phone down as hard as he can and it breaks, the mouthpiece hanging like something with its jaw torn out. It felt so good, so good. Wolf crosses his arms, hugging himself like a child, and he wails for his mother.

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