A Plague Year

“Well, I drank at bars,” he explained. “I’d only drink at home on weekends—out back, usually, where you and Lilly couldn’t see me. I got pretty good at it. I’d finish off my two six-packs a night sure as the sun would set.”

“You didn’t work on weekends?”

“No. Not back then. I was like Reg Malloy. I unloaded all the trucks, and they came Monday to Friday.”

Dad looked down for a moment; then he went on quietly. “The beer was always enough for me, but not for Robby. He started taking Quaaludes. Did you ever hear of them?”

“No.”

“That was the big drug back then, like crack was later, like meth is now. People called them ‘ludes.’ They were strong sedatives, like sleeping pills. Robby would wash them down with beer. They were a powerful combination, all right. A deadly combination.”

I asked cautiously, “So, did he… OD?”

Dad nodded his head yes. “Robby left the bar a little early that night, twelve years, two months, and seventeen days ago—the last night of his life. It was raining, and he crashed into a telephone pole. I’m the one who found him, dead, with a broken neck.”

Dad stopped talking for about thirty seconds, reliving the moment. He continued in a haunted voice: “All I could think of as I stared at Robby was the word worthless. A dead human being is worthless, no matter who you were just half an hour before. You can’t ever do anything for anybody, ever again.

“I stood there in the rain and stared at him for so long that somebody else stopped, some other guy. He’s the one who got the police.

“I was still standing there when they arrived. When they pried Robby out of the car, his eyes were wide open, like he was staring back, saying, Do you want to end up like me?

“The cops were going to take me away, too, for being drunk, but I made a deal with them: If they would drive me home, I would report to my first AA meeting the next night. Lucky for me, they gave me that chance.

“The next night, I was sitting at a folding table at a church in Minersville, listening to six guys and two women tell their stories about being drunks and fools and criminals. Then I stood up, and I told them my story.”

Dad looked at me and smiled. “I guess you know how many years and months and days ago that was.”

“Yeah.” I asked, “And you never drank again?”

“I never drank again. But it’s been hard. It has been, literally, one day at a time.”

Dad clapped me on my shoulder and then went into the office. I stayed in the beer aisle, looking at all the colored bottles, trying to imagine my dad as being young and stupid.

It wasn’t easy. And I knew it wasn’t easy for him to talk to me about this. It was more than he had ever said to me about anything.

And I appreciated it.

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

I appreciated it. I really did. But not enough to stop my plan.

Today, I was going to betray Dad. And Mom. I was going to do the worst thing I have ever done, and nothing would stop me.

I got up before dawn, as focused (and as frightened) as I had been for the honor-vengeance trip up to Blackwater U.

I unzipped my backpack. I dumped out the contents and replaced them with underwear, socks, T-shirts, and a backup pair of pants. I zipped the bag up until it was nearly closed. Then I slipped down the hall to the bathroom. I wrapped my toothbrush in a tissue and stuck it through the hole at the top of the backpack. I did the same for my stick of Right Guard deodorant.

Then, just to be safe, I rooted under the sink, found a tube of Crest, and added it to my supplies. I couldn’t trust Jimmy, Warren, or Arthur to have toothpaste. Beer, maybe, but not toothpaste.

I zipped the backpack completely closed, slid it over my shoulder, and walked down the stairs like it was a normal school day.

The plan was for Dad and me to arrive at the Food Giant at 6:00 a.m. to help Mitchell defrost and display fifty turkeys in his glass case. I told my parents that Arthur had to drive me to school because we were doing a project for Mr. Proctor’s class. We had to act out a scene from A Journal of the Plague Year, but we hadn’t rehearsed it. So Arthur was going to pick me up, and we were going to do that on the way.

I told them that big fat lie, and they believed me.

It was shocking for me, as someone who did not lie, to see how easy it was to get away with one. I must admit I was a little disappointed in them. I thought, I could be lying to you all the time, and you would never know it.

When we pulled into the Food Giant lot, two cars were already parked in the outer spaces—John’s old Impala and Mitchell’s Saturn SL. John and Mitchell were standing by the ATM, stamping their feet in the cold and waiting for us.

Dad and I walked briskly to the entrance, nodding hello to them. Dad unlocked the door and held it for us all to step inside.

That was when we got a nasty surprise.

There was a big mess over by the bakery aisle. Someone had been in here overnight and had tried to break down the office door. The doorjamb, the hinges, and the door itself all showed signs of violence.

While Dad dealt with that situation, the rest of us spread out and looked around. I’m the one who discovered how the thief had gotten in. He had sawed right through the storeroom’s ceiling and climbed down the shelves. The Food Giant now had a gaping hole in its roof.

Dad called the police while John, Mitchell, and I cleaned up the office area and the storeroom.

By 7:00 a.m., things were almost back to normal. The police had come and gone, and the store-opening crew was hard at work. (I was hard at work alongside them, but I was not getting paid for it.)

Because of the break-in, and the mess, I felt even guiltier about my escape plan, but not guilty enough to change my mind. At 7:30, I was standing out front with my backpack. Only Bobby was out there with me, and he was preoccupied with the padlock on the propane cage.

Arthur pulled up right on schedule. I hopped in on the passenger side, the Geo Metro peeled out, and I never looked back.

I confirmed with Arthur, “Everybody at your house knows that I’m coming, right?”

“Right.”

“And they’re okay with it?”

“Yeah. I talked to Mom and Jimmy Giles this morning.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much. I reminded Jimmy about you, and the three hundred bucks, and he said cool.”

Now came the hard part.

I asked Arthur to pull over at Sheetz gas. I got out, put a quarter in a pay phone, and dialed the store number. Dad answered on one ring. “Good morning, Food Giant.”

“Dad? It’s Tom.”

“Tom? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, sir. I just wanted to tell you that I’m on my way to Florida with Arthur, Jimmy, and Warren. I’m going to help them sell their Christmas trees.”

After a long pause, Dad replied, “Tom? What are you talking about? Aren’t you at school?”

“No, sir. It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Nothing really happens at school.” I restated, “I’m on the road, heading south to Florida. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“Sunday! You can’t do that. This is the busiest weekend of the year.”