***
The dad and little boy were climbing over a railing and down onto a concrete piling. The little boy was gripping the cold metal and looking down to watch the dad finish, looking out for the arm to reach up for the stuff they had brought: A tackle box, fishing poles, two buckets. No food or water.
It felt like the wind was going to blow the boy into the river. He looked down to see the water rushing from under the bridge, south and away to someplace the boy had no idea where.
The arm rose up, and the boy fed his dad the poles. It rose up again, and he handed him the tackle box, lying on his chest and stretching his tiny arm as far down as he could. The boy did the same with the empty bucket. Then came the other bucket, heavy because of the big, weighted cast net inside. The boy lifted it and knelt, then started to lie down on his chest when he lost his balance.
The bucket went down first, hitting the concrete below and then rolling into the water, gone. The boy came down after, upside down with his stomach in his mouth from gravity and shock, but the dad caught him.
The dad yelled at the boy but didn’t hit him, and then they were fishing.
For a while they cast out into the river, reeling in every few minutes. The boy’s bait would always be missing.
Then it was just the dad casting and reeling. The boy ran around the piling, kneeling down to dip his hand in the water, imagining impossible creatures swimming down there, in the ten-foot depths.
The boy got hungry after a few hours and, of course, started whining. The dad wanted to keep fishing, so the boy went back to occupying himself. He thought about his mother. She probably hated fishing. He tried to think about what his mother probably liked but couldn’t imagine anything.
Now the sun was coming down, and the boy was thirsty as well as hungry. He wanted to go. The dad said okay.
They climbed up and made the long walk back to the truck, broken glass crunching under their shoes.
When they got home, the dad went in and turned on the lights. The boy took the things from the truck and brought them around back. He rinsed the poles off with the hose, put them away, then went inside.
The dad came out of the kitchen and called the boy over. They sat at the table together and ate quietly.
Later, when the boy was lying on his bed in the dark, he started feeling like everything was far away again. He felt that, instead of being in his relatively small ten-by-thirteen-foot room, he was in an infinitely vast, empty space.
The little boy got out of bed slowly. He placed a towel over the crack between the ground and the door, then turned on the light. He was not in a vast, empty space, but his bookshelf and closet did look much too far away, his ceiling much too high.
He paced around as silently as possible until the distances seemed normal again. When they finally did, he turned the light off, got back into bed, and went to sleep.
***
Again.
A black noon sky threatens heavy rain as I head over the causeway to the barrier island, wind buffeting the side of my car. Below, the brackish river is streaked with white from the chop and foam.
Storms have always excited me. As a kid, I’d hear the rain and run outside, find a stick to start swinging around like a sword. It was like something was about to happen—the beginning of some adventure.
The sweat between my palms and the steering wheel reminds me why I’m returning beachside, to my home. If a friendship isn’t to be, I’ll understand. I can even accept that. But then what? My plans for the future will be put back somewhat.
As I turn right onto the familiar street, there’s no sign of Jason’s brother’s truck, and that’s good.
I stop before the driveway and get out. Tiny droplets of rain hit my face and arms, accelerated by the rising wind to feel like grains of sand. Feeling as though any hesitation will do me harm, I stride purposefully to the front door, but the way I knock seems to scream my anxiety.
Lightning strikes what sounds like ten feet away, making me jump just as Jason opens the door.
I say, “Hey . . .”
I see him shift his weight. Even though I kind of want to give him a free shot, I instinctively move—on the slick, wet concrete.
Whiff, goes his punch, but only because I fall on my ass.
I scramble back toward the grass and manage to get halfway up before he tackles me. Then we’re rolling on the front lawn. He’s got me in sheer size and strength, and I’m only trying not to end up pinned. He still winds up on top, but with my body diagonal to his, my legs still free. His fist goes up and I’m struggling but can’t avoid it in time. The thudding impact of the blow is accompanied by a sharp pain in my mouth. I get a foot under his chest and kick him away, making him fall backward.
“Hey! What’s going on?!”
I turn toward the street. It’s some neighborhood dad, yelling from the open window of his truck.
“None of your business!” I tell him.
“I’m a police officer, buddy, and I’m making it my business.”
I turn to Jason, but he’s just looking angrily into space, holding a spot on his side.
“You guys roommates, friends, or what?”
Jason says nothing.
“We’re not roommates.”
“Well, I recognize him,” the supposed-cop says, pointing to Jason, “but I don’t recognize you, so you guys either shake hands right now, or you get lost.”
Jason turns to go inside.
“Wait! Come on, man. Hear me out for a minute. I have something for you. I’ll leave after that if you want.”
“Whatever.”
I start to follow him, turning back to the cop to make sure he understands. He just stares.
Jason doesn’t hold the door open for me, but he doesn’t slam it on me, either. He heads out to the patio and drops into a chair, lighting up a cigarette. I close the door and take the chair across from him.
Sitting in silence, I realize I taste blood. It’s dripping down my chin. My lip’s been split open, but I’m hoping not too badly.
Jason pulls up his shirt, and I see he’s bleeding from a cut on his abdomen. “Fucking rolled into a sprinkler head.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know how many times you might want to hit me in the face.”
He reaches for the ashtray and looks at me, checking out my lip. Whether it’s to gloat, or because of his empathetic instincts as an ex-combat medic, I can’t tell. He says, “What do you want?”
I place the three hundred-dollar bills I have for him on the table. I’m not sure words are going to do me much good. Not yet anyway.
A few moments of silence pass, and then I grab his bong from under the table and pack a bowl with the weed I brought, holding it out to him after I’m done.
Money and weed aren’t just my way of making peace; they’re a sort of message that only he’d get, because Jason and I have known each other since childhood, have been friends all through my years as an addict. Until recently.
He takes the bong and sets it on the ground next to him. “How long you been clean?”
“About a month.”
“Tch. No subs?”
“Nothing. Not even kratom.”
Wind is beginning to fling a serious rain through the screen wall, forming a puddle on the table. Without speaking, we get up and pull the table and everything back, out of the wet.
“Kind of reminds me of the last time we tripped,” I say.
Jason takes a quick couple of final drags on his cigarette and then mushes the cherry into the ashtray. “Kinda.”
We listen to the storm blowing through the palm trees for a minute or two. Then Jason picks up the bong, and I feel encouraged.
“I swear I’d never have sold anything of yours in my right mind. No excuse, I know, but . . . It’s . . . I chose to quit on my own this time. I don’t even really know why.”
He clears the bong and blows a huge cloud before succumbing to a coughing fit, with thunder joining to accompany him.
I can’t help but smile—partly because that’s what every dumb stoner does when someone gets a good cough going, and partly because, I guess, vulnerability can be its own ice breaker.
“Goddamn, bro,” Jason says without thinking. He grabs a small trashcan from behind his chair and spits in it. His lungs stop burning, and the idea of us still being bros is again suspended in air. “I thought you’d pay me back. Eventually.”
A long pause. “But?”
“You selling shit I let you borrowwasn’t what pissed me off most.”
“Then . . .?”
“Fucking . . . Shannon was a good person, and a good friend. With how you were acting, I honestly wanted to take her side. I only didn’t because you were my friend from way back. I lied for you and then got blamed the same as you. Which, you know, whatever . . . You were my buddy, and it was my decision. But then you fucked me over, so I lost two close friends. Fuck you for all that.”
“. . .”
Jason looks away, to his backyard. “Fuck, it’s raining hard.”
Spiderweb cracks of lightning momentarily shatter the sky. The reporting thunder shakes the sliding-glass door and scares a neighbor into cursing.
“I’m sorry, man. I was a fucking asshole. I apologized to her, too. Twice, actually. I told her not to blame you, that you had no idea.”
Jason lights up another cigarette. “Whatever, dude. Enough high-school bullshit. You ever sell anything of mine or fuck me over again, and I’ll beat your ass. Then that’ll be the end of our friendship. For good. Alright?”
“Fair enough, man.”
“More than fair, I’d say.”
Jason’s brother Nate opens the sliding-glass door.
Nate’s a rough-edged construction contractor who’s always getting angry for different reasons. And he’s not fond of junkies. He never knew about my issues before, but the sudden vibe says that’s all changed.
Nate looks at us—at me, in particular, and my bleeding lip. “You guys settled some stuff, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jason says. “He came over and paid me back, but I punched him in the face before that.”
“Good. You still on that shit?”
“No,” I say. “Been off for a month.”
“Want a rip?” Jason asks him.
“Maybe later. I’m stoned as fuck. Took some bong rips before going to tow my buddy out the mud. Then he wanted to do some dabs. I was like, ‘fuck . . . oookay.’ Fucking ripped, bro. I need some food.”
He starts to go and then turns back. “Hey, Alex, don’t be fucking over my brother. You guys have been friends for too long.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The door closes again. “I never should have told him, but I was pissed,” Jason says.
“It’s all good, man. He reacted better to seeing me than I imagined he would.”
“Yeah. He’s chilled out a lot, actually.” Jason brings his cigarette toward his mouth and then stops halfway. “I’m fucking stoned, too.”
“I haven’t even smoked any of this yet. Picked it up right before I came over.”
“Do it up.”
I start packing a bowl in my slow, typical way. Jason picks through the music on his phone.
After we get good and baked and the storm’s all but gone, I bribe Jason to accompany me to the post office with the promise of a pack of smokes.
When we get there, I open my P.O. box to find a small package envelope.
“What’s that?” Jason asks.
I look the package over and squeeze it a little, trying to think. The return address is not familiar at all.
Then it hits me.
“I have to open this at your house.”
“Why? What is it?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
We get to his house and I open the package, dump out the contents. After I remove some bubble wrap, I’m left with a vacuum-sealed bag of powder.
Not heroin. Ibogaine powder.
A few months back, when I thought I really wanted to quit and was desperate for a get-out-of-jail-free card, Jason told me in passing about how his friend out west helped addicts quit using ibogaine.
I did a little research, and it sounded like some kind of miracle cure for addiction. People on forums spoke of how it supposedly re-altered your brain chemistry, restoring you back to factory settings. Back to the state you were in before you turned your brain into a chemical motherboard seeking greater and constant input—the empty slots to fill multiplying after every come up, each one itching for ever more after every comedown.
It wasn’t long before I ended up on the dark web, way out of my depth and ordering ibogaine powder with cryptocurrency. It was a pain in the ass and expensive. And when I still hadn’t gotten anything in the mail after two weeks, I cursed myself for ever trying.
Now I think I was lucky for the delay. Ibogaine is a powerful hallucinogen. I already knew that, but I hadn’t known that it’s also scary. Unlike LSD or mushrooms, the trip is supposedly very intense, with an unpleasant body load. Scattered rumors and differing conclusions on its efficacy and safety abound on the internet.
Which doesn’t matter at all if you’re desperate enough. An addict’s give-a-fuck can drop drastically with circumstance.
“Damn, I didn’t think you’d actually find some of that shit. You ordered that online?”
“Yeah. Months ago. I thought I got screwed.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
“Well, there’s no point in me doing it now.”
“You could try and sell it.”
“How? There’s not really a huge demand for this stuff. And I’m not selling it online.”
“So . . .?”
“I guess I’ll hold onto it for now. Maybe keep it here?”
“Yeah, sure.”
***
ns 15.158.61.23da2
