Or, The Ferret Connection, Part 2
Smith, help me prop him against the wall here, the still well-built older man says, and they lift Jack Step under the arms and drag him from the foot of his desk across the art-deco-tiled floor and try to sit him up. But Step’s unconscious body keels over sideways; without his arms to break the fall, his left brow ridge slams hard into the floor.
He’ll wear that badge on his head for a while, the older man says. How did he get himself into this one?
The older man kicks the empty three-quarter liter bottle of Johnnie Walker Red by Step’s desk across the floor.
Damn it to hell!
How do you know he’s not dead, Smith asks, bending over to feel Step’s neck with a pair of fingers for a pulse.
I know, Smith. A corpse don’t flop and slump like that. Also, the smell. It’s the difference between a body metabolizing a vat of booze and the stench of death. Why don’t you go open some windows, Smith, and the door, air this place out. Thanks.
But doesn’t death start to stink after a couple of hours. For all we know, we might have found him just a few minutes after –
Believe me, Smith. I’ve got a good nose. It comes with the territory. Step’s not dead, although that doesn’t mean he might not die from all that hooch. Damn it to hell!
The older man bangs a huge fist down on Step’s desk – so hard, the computer monitor jumps. After that, he seems sorry he did it. Rubbing his fist, he appears to come back to his senses.
Maybe we should call an ambulance.
Way ahead of you, kid. I took care of it. We’ve got our own medical unit in the corps. Someone will be up here in a minute.
But he might die!
Smith – if he dies, he dies. We all get to say goodbye to this big, wonderful world some time.
They both look down to where the older man has kicked the bottle.
Why would he drink that much? I mean, no offense, but I’ve heard Step likes taking a dip once in a while, to take the edge off, maybe more than most of us, but –
No, no, Smith, this goes beyond that. There’s something wrong here, and I can’t figure out what. Step’s a reformed alcoholic, which for Step has basically meant reforming his alcoholism. He’s a stubborn, tough, hard-willed character – not afraid of anything – nothing! The only thing that makes Dickerson his equal is that that one’s a damned maniac. Except Step just likes to have his drink. Once in a while. Maybe a little more than most of us, but nothing inordinately out of control. Not like before. Because before, it was all the time, and he was almost out of here, lights out, a slow suicide. Nothing anyone could do to stop him. If he’s here now, we only have him to thank for it. I’ve never known anyone who could pull himself back from the edge so much and then control his drink the way he’s done, for years, without ever letting it get out of hand again.
Why didn’t he just quit altogether.
Ha, ha, ha!!! Smith, I don’t know what to tell you. Easier said than done, I suppose. I asked him the exact same thing, years ago, when he made the change. I could only imagine how much willpower he had to call up and keep in front of him at all times to continue drinking without drowning. He just looked at me with that hard, stubborn I’m-doing-it-my-way face of his and said, ‘I like it too much. It’s too near and dear to me. I might quit most of it, but I’ll never quit all of it. And that’s just fine with me.’
And it was fine with me, too, Smith. Fine with all of us. He did it that way for years – for years, and that’s why something here just don’t fit. Yeah, everyone knew he kept a bottle in that bottom drawer; take it out once in a while, give himself a few slugs, to put the ease on, whenever he felt things getting a bit rough, or just for the hell of it – because it was ‘too near and dear to him.’
The older man laughs to himself, being fond of this phrase of Step’s.
And then he’d be okay, the older man continues. Ever since he brought himself from the edge, he never let himself get close to it again.
The older man looks hard at the desk.
Smith, he says, check those drawers. The bottom right one first.
Smith does this; pulls out a bottle of whisky – Johnnie Walker Red. Smith says:
From the looks of it, he’d only had a couple of drinks.
Let me see that, the older man says.
Smith brings him the bottle. The older man looks at it.
Smith, the older man says. I’d come here and mark these bottles – see those two small notches on the cap? They’re weeks apart. And then the two small nicks going down the label?
Yeah…
Step wouldn’t know it. He’s not so vain to notice things like that, so he never knew his drinking was being controlled – just in case. The point is, Smith, this particular bottle is weeks old – he’d hardly touched it at all; that is, if we use the past Step as the average measurement over time.
So, Smith says, the question becomes, why would Step drink a whole bottle of Johnnie when he had this one, mostly untouched, according to the old Step standard, still in the drawer?
That’s exactly right, Smith. Even in his worst days, Step would never drink that much. He sometimes felt like having a drink, or two, or three, sometimes he felt he needed them, but he’d never do that to himself. Never. Something happened here, Smith. Even in his worst days, Step knew when to stop. Smith, I think someone forced that bottle down Step’s throat.
Continued in Part 2
Filed by Jack Step, June 8, 2013