Home to Harmony by Philip Gulley Read Free Book Online Page B

everyone in town we thought was a drunk. He started making a list with Uly’s name at the top.
    Miriam said, “Put that list away. You can’t do it that way. We’ll contact the AA people and they’ll help us get it going.”
    Which we did. We looked them up in the city phone book, and they sent a man to talk with us about starting a Harmony chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. We would need a leader. But the leader had to be an alcoholic, and no one in Harmony would admit to meeting that criterion, so we had to import an alcoholic from the city.
    Â 
    H is name was Gary. That was the first thing he told us when he came to the following month’s elders’ meeting.
    â€œMy name is Gary, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said. Then he told us his story. Dale sat listening, enthralled,as Gary recalled his years of hard living and how he’d found a new life in a church basement in Ohio.
    When Gary finished speaking, Dale leaned back in his chair and marveled, “Well, imagine that; and it was free!”
    Gary said he’d need an assistant, someone to work alongside him, someone who could take over after he was gone. I told him about Uly. Gary said, “Let’s go see him right now.”
    Gary was not your typical AA member. He wasn’t the type to sit around in a church basement waiting for drunks to come to him. He was a Green Beret type of AA member who believed in active intervention.
    We walked over to Uly’s house. Uly was in his basement, just getting started. Gary reached out with one hand and lifted Uly to his feet, and with the other hand took that bottle and poured it down the utility sink next to the washing machine.
    He stared at Uly. He said, “You are pathetic. Sitting down here in your basement drinking your life away in front of your boys. What kind of man are you?”
    Uly hung his head.
    Gary growled, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
    Uly raised up.
    Gary said, “I’m going to help you, then you’re going to help me help others. You’re going to be my assistant. Have I made myself clear? As of this moment, you will no longer drink. I want you to say that, Uly. I want you to say, ‘I am Ulysses S. Grant the Fifth, and I no longer drink.’ Say it.”
    Uly whimpered, “I am Ulysses S. Grant the Fifth, and I no longer drink.”
    Gary said, “I can’t hear you.”
    Uly said it even louder. “I am Ulysses S. Grant the Fifth, and I no longer drink.”
    Â 
    I ’m not certain what it was. I think it was heritage rising up. Whatever it was, something was born in Uly that evening; something old and deep within him rose up and took hold of him and made him new.
    He rose to his feet and moved forward to Appomattox, to victory. He marched up the basement stairs, up from that dungeon of death, and didn’t look back.
    The alcoholics met every Wednesday evening at seven in the church basement. Dale Hinshaw would arrive at six-thirty and set out the cookies, then leave before anyone got there.
    Gary and Uly would arrive at a quarter till and go over their battle plans.
    â€œThis is war,” Gary would remind him. “We’re fighting for people’s lives. Don’t you ever forget that.”
    Uly started coming to church. Every Sunday. Brought his wife and his boys and sat in the sixth row, in Fern Hampton’s pew. For sixty-five years, that pew had not been sat in by anyone outside the Hampton family. As her mother lay dying, Fern pledged she would guard that pew with her life. But on that day, Fern looked up at Uly and his family and smiled and slid right over. There are those who claim that was a bigger miracle than Uly Grant’s sobriety.
    Dale Hinshaw was beside himself. He stood during the silence and said, “One saved soul, and all it cost was cookies. What a bargain!”
    After church, Uly proceeded directly to the Emporium, took down the Miss Hardware