The little hand tugged hard to be free of his, and he let it go, even though it seemed that a little piece of him slipped away with her. There had been a time when he feared that he would never hold Lizzie’s tiny hand again, and that fear still persisted, like now when she gave her full attention to reaching into the bag for a handful of feed, oblivious to his caring and doting, unable to wait another second to share the food with the quacking, splashing throng in the water, and it gripped him harder, especially in the middle of the night when he lay awake, his demons dancing in his head, the ”what if” committee standing firmly on his chest, hashing and rehashing his guilt. It was then that his past played in agonizing torment, like the phonograph needle hitting the scratched spot in the record, bouncing back over and over again to repeat his pain. It was a fear that would probably never leave, gone, perhaps, for brief respites, but never forgotten.

“They’re so hungry, Grampa!” she exclaimed.

“Feed them what you have, babe, and we’ll get some more.”

Elizabeth seemed like such a proper name for the tiny, dark-haired, brown-eyed angel that she was, so he called her Lizzie. It seemed more fitting, even though her mother hated nicknames. He rationalized by saying that it wasn’t a real nickname, just a shorter version of her given name. He would have given her anything he had, and he often did, even if it meant getting chastised for spoiling her. She squatted by the bank, tossing bits of food to the ducks, laughing and smiling when their bills got too close to her fingers. He stayed within arms reach and watched intently in case she might slip toward the water.

“See the white one, Grampa? He’s my favorite. I’m trying to throw him some food, but the others keep gobbling it all up before he gets there.”

“I think he got the last one. I saw him duck his head in the water for it.”

She tossed the last of the pellets and turned to him, her face beaming.

“Can we get some more?”

“Of course we can. As much as you want.”

She took his hand as they moved away from the water’s edge and walked toward the feed dispenser.

“I want to give all I can to the little white one!” she cried.

He nodded, eager to prolong their fun.

It was late afternoon. The people walking in the park, and the trees and bushes cast long shadows across the grass that reminded him of another afternoon, in many ways not too different from this one, miles and perhaps lifetimes away, yet closer than he cared to admit. Funny how the mind can skip from one experience to another, triggered by the simplest things, and transport you to another time and place in the blink of an eye. In fact, the memory was always on the edge of his consciousness, and he was there as vividly and clearly as the day it happened, not really wanting to, but unable to stop.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

It was true that the shadows lengthened in that other afternoon, the same as this one, and it too was a warm one in late spring, but that was where the similarities ended. It was not a happy one like this one with Lizzie. That afternoon, he was riding a steel Hound as it rolled across the plains. The flat landscape streamed by outside the bus windows, mile after mile looking much the same as the one before. He remembered very plainly the angry voices in his head during the ride on that afternoon, and he could still hear them, the ones he had heard for years leading up to that point, the ones that had gotten angrier as he persisted on digging the hole that was his life deeper and deeper into oblivion.

“This is it, Dad! I can’t take anymore! You’re driving me away just like you did Mom!”

It was Lisa, his daughter.

“You’re screwing up my life and Elizabeth’s, and God knows your own! You’re killing yourself! You need help.”

He could see her pushing her hand up her forehead and back through her hair, the way she did when she was very upset.

“I can’t depend on you anymore, can’t trust you. All you had to do was pick her up from school! That’s all I asked! They called me at work, wanting to know if anyone was coming for her. She cried all the way home, Dad, and you know it breaks my heart to see her like that. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t need this crap! And I don’t either!”

“And where were you? I don’t even have to ask! I know! You were getting drunk somewhere, sitting on a barstool, probably, until you fell off, talking to your new best friend next to you, or behind the bar, or wherever! Well what about me, Dad? I’m your best friend, too, aren’t I? I’m about the only one you have left, and you’re trying your damnedest to drive me away!”

The words couldn’t have hit him harder than if she used her fists.

“Can’t you even talk to me? Oh! Excuse me! I know why you don’t talk to me! It’s because I won’t drink with you! I won’t sit there while you drink yourself to death!”

“Good old Norman, always ready to buy the next round, always ready to give away his last dime, even though he has mouths to feed at home.”

She leaned her elbow against the wall, put her face in her hand, and sobbed, but only for a moment. She was tough, like her old man in that way, at least when he was sober. She sniffled, but stood up straight and ran her hand through her hair again.

“Well, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. I won’t allow you to drag me and your granddaughter down with you.”

He dreaded the next words, dreaded them more than death, more than anything.

“I can’t let you see Elizabeth anymore, Dad. I don’t want you around her. It’s tearing her apart. She won’t understand, but I can’t let it go on. Letting you tear me apart is one thing, Dad, but her…. She’s too tiny, too fragile, too defenseless. Until you can quit drinking and get your life back together again, if that ever happens, I have to walk away.”

And that was exactly what she did. It was another way that she was like her old man, at least when he was sober. She made up her mind, and that was that.

Across the aisle of the bus, a man’s voice rose and fell, getting louder and more animated as he jawed at the person next to him. He was an old guy, and Norman had been watching him from the corner of his eye. Norman didn’t know him from Adam, but he knew what he was doing. Norman had been there too many times. He knew what was in the sack that the old guy raised to his lips between speeches. It didn’t matter who was next to him. It could have been anyone. He just needed someone to listen. The guy would probably be sitting by himself before long.

Norman’s own voices weren’t done with him, though.

“Christ, Norm, don’t you ever learn?”

It was his sergeant at the Precinct, looking tired and gray across the desk.

“How many times do you think I can cover for your sorry ass, anyway? I’ve done it time and time again, and you know it. It’s not like this is the first time, or even the tenth time! I quit counting. Hell, I’m the stupid one for letting it go on this long!”

Norm knew it was bad. His sergeant wouldn’t even look at him.

“Come on Sarge. Give me a chance. I’ll make it right. It isn’t that bad. I’ve done worse.”

“It IS that bad! And if you’ve done worse, it’s nothing to brag about!”

The sergeant clicked the button on the end of the ballpoint pen so much that it stuck, and he tossed it aside, only to pick up another and start fidgeting with it.

“The crazy part is that I’ve become a player in this thing, too. Yeh, I’ve written you up and put you on probation more than once, but then I’ve turned my head and looked the other way, I’ve joined the cast. There’s a name for that. What do they call it, an enabler? I’ve become a goddamn enabler, just like the shrinks talk about all the time! I’m not doing you any favors, or me either. I’ve got a family of my own, and a retirement to think about.”

“We’ve known each other too many years for this not to be hard, Norm, but I’m going to have to ask you to turn in your badge.”

All those years on the force, and it had come to that. All those years of being a good cop, of protecting the law-abiding public, of watching out for everyone but himself, and it had come down to losing everything he had worked for.

But he wasn’t done, yet. He still managed to get security jobs, making enough money to feed his habit. And he never ran out of someone to blame, as long as it wasn’t himself. He blamed anyone that he could for a long time. Bitter and angry, he drank even more, and dug his hole so deep that he couldn’t see the top anymore.

Norman always figured it was his old sergeant who sent a friend to save him. The friend’s name was Henry, and he literally saved Norman’s life. He drug Norman out of a rat trap hotel, took him home and kept him there until he got him dried out. It wasn’t pretty, and Norman didn’t help things at first, but he had sense enough to hang on to the hand that reached for his. Henry got him into a support group.

The meetings helped, just like Henry said they would. Things had gotten so bad for Norman that they couldn’t get much worse, and, for the first time in his life, he actually started listening, listening to the other drunks talk about their problems. At first, he didn’t want to believe that he was like them, but deep inside, he knew it. He began to hear their stories, and along with the listening to story after story, mistake after mistake, excuse after excuse, as difficult as it was for him, he began to accept the fact that he was the same. At least he had that much sense left in his thick skull. Henry had said as much.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t waste my time on your sorry ass if I didn’t think you was worth it!”

And it was in the accepting and admitting that Norman turned on to the long road back. He quit drinking ten times, or however many, before he actually did, but he got there. Henry told him he would. It didn’t take days, or months, but years, close to five of them, before he could function again like a normal human being.

Henry died not long after that. They said it was a massive heart attack. At least, it took him quickly. Norman always knew that Henry was an angel sent by a compassionate universe.

But the guy across the aisle on the Hound definitely wasn’t functioning like a normal human being. Again he brought Norman from his reverie. By then, the man had gone through three people in the seat next to him. Each time the bus stopped, someone new took the seat, and each time, the partnership was short lived. The old guy got louder and sloppier each time he raised the paper bag to his mouth. Norman could hear his slurred words clearly from where he sat, which was a third of the way further back in the coach. From the frustrated comments that Norman heard from those around him, he could tell that many of the passengers were fed up with the man by the time the Hound slowed for another stop. This time, it was a major rest stop at a place with a diner.

Norman got off for a bathroom break. Then, he went in to the restaurant to get a burger and fries. It was probably half an hour or forty-five minutes before he reboarded the bus, and another fifteen minutes before the driver got back in his seat.

“We’ll be driving for quite a ways, folks, so sit back and relax,” he said over the speaker. “Is everybody back? We’ll be leaving in a couple of minutes.”

“Everybody but that drunken bastard!” came a voice somewhere over Norm’s left shoulder. “Let’s get rolling before he wakes up!”

The comment brought a few laughs. Others voiced their approval.

Norman might have been the only one with any sympathy for the old timer. He walked to the front of the coach and spoke to the driver.

“Do you know where he was going?” Norman asked.

“His ticket was for a few stops down the road,” the driver answered. “If you help him back on, you’ll have to take him under your wing and keep him quiet. Otherwise, I’m leaving him. He’s causing too much trouble. You never know what someone like him might do, and I’ve got a bus load of passengers to keep safe. I don’t want to chance it.”

“I understand,” said Norman.

There was no good reason for doing the old geezer a favor, except that Norman had a soft spot in his heart for a drunk, and it took one to know one. So, he searched first in the bathroom, and then in the restaurant. He found him slumped forward on the table of the rear booth, his unshaven chin nestled on his folded arms, snoring softly. Norm roused him from his slumber.

“Now, what the sam hell?” he began with a start.

His speech was slurred, and his eyes were glazed, but he was docile enough. Norman hoisted the man’s arm over his shoulders, and half carried, half dragged him. The old man weighed practically nothing, so it wasn’t difficult to maneuver him through the restaurant, out the door, and up the steps of the coach. The door hissed shut behind them, and voices grumbled as the two jostled down the aisle to a rear seat. Norman pushed the man in ahead of him to the seat by the window, and sat on the aisle to pen him in. The coach shuddered to a start as the driver ground through the low gears, steered out of the parking lot and rolled back onto the highway. The glow from what few streetlights there were in the burg shone through the windows before the night engulfed the riders, save for a few overhead reading lights. Those too were soon extinguished as most tried to sleep, and the Hound was silent and dark as it sped into the night.