I Was There the Night He Died by Ray Robertson Read Free Book Online Page B

engine. “Anyway, good to see you again, Sam. And call me if you’re interested.”
    A horn beeps behind her, and Rachel waves goodbye. I fold her phone number into my wallet and head inside No Frills. I have no idea how many boxes I’m going to need. I guess I’ll just start with a few and see what happens from there.
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    If the weather is pleasant, if your health is perfect, if you happen to discover a ten dollar bill you didn’t know you had in the back pocket of a pair of jeans you rarely wear, it’s possible to pretend that drugs, alcohol, and loud, loud music aren’t the only things capable of making a person happy. Just one humidity-soiled, freshly-donned clean shirt, though; just one slightly achy arthritic knuckle or even a more-irritating-than-actually-painful midwinter sore throat, however, and a nose gets white-dust itchy and lips get hoochy dry. Ditto when you’ve spent nearly three hours going though your parents’ closets and drawers and a single metal filing cabinet and can’t come up with anything more memento memorable than four years’ worth of elementary-school report cards (mine), a still-polished pair of first baby shoes (also mine), the crappy Christmas gifts we’d annually mangle out of pipe cleaners and white glue and construction paper in grade school that I’d give to my mother and that she actually kept, and the single letter I sent home during first-year university telling them how much I loved both it and Toronto and how much I appreciated their helping me get there, Talk to you soon, Sam.
    Wait: one more thing: a driftwood-encased dual clock and thermometer set that my dad received from Siemens on the day he retired. At first it had sat on one of my mother’s doily-topped side tables in the living room, but the clock always ran a couple of minutes slow, so Dad eventually banished it to the top shelf of their bedroom closet. All together, I’ve filled less than half of one small cardboard box. It’s a good thing I don’t know any drug dealers in Chatham. I get a beer from the fridge and a joint from my stash and exchange the heating blanket for my coat. It’s just after midnight—maybe I’ll get lucky and be accosted by a roving gang of crack dealers.
    Carefully recalling what I’d been taught, I manage to light up on the first try. I toke and sip and lean back on the bench and wait for the smoke and the suds to tag team my brain. In the time it takes a jigsaw-piece cloud to make the frozen moon disappear, I’m high, or, at any rate, as high as marijuana can get you. They should call smoking pot getting low . But at least I’m not normal, at least I’m below see-yourself level.
    Besides, apparently that’s the source of my entire substance abuse problem. When I’m up—whether because writing-well exhilarated or plain old chemically enhanced overstimulated (or a bit of both because the one doesn’t usually wander too far from home without the other)—I want to stay up. And when staying up inevitably leads to not just good work done or giddy times had, but involuntarily clenched molars and pin-wheeling pupils and the inability to sleep, eat, or sit still for longer than a single accelerated heart beat, maybe it’s time to consider professional help. People who quit using drugs seldom talk about the real reason they became addicts. It wasn’t your troubled childhood or the pressures of modern society or the depraved, enabling company you kept—it’s because being high finally feels like being alive. Unfortunately, being alive too much or for too long will kill you. Or make you wish that you were dead.
    Thankfully, when I finally decided I needed help, I got the help I needed. Like anything you really require, though, it wasn’t a matter of simply asking for it. You never get what you ask for—you always have to force someone to give it to