The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

THE THIRTEENTH STEP

The leader cut short the last chuckles of laughter by measuredly spanking the rostrum with the flat of his hand. He grinned broadly at the forty-or-so people occupying, along with their ashtrays and coffee cups, the half dozen rows of folding chairs facing him.

He said, “If anyone came here tonight thinking that the life story of an alcoholic couldn't be hilariously funny as well as heart-breakingly tragic, I imagine he changed his mind after the pitch we just heard. Any way you slice it, it's a Happy Program—sometimes even slaphappy."

His face grew serious. He said, “Our last speaker is a gal. She's surprisingly young, just out of her teens. Some of the old timers used to think you couldn't make the Program until you'd drunk your way through a dozen jobs and four or five wives and light housekeepers—or husbands!—but they've had to change their minds in recent years. This gal's only been on the Program a short time—two months—but I heard her make a great pitch at the open meetings last week. She'd so new she still gets a little emotionally disturbed from time to time—” (He paused for a brief warning frown, his eyes roving) “but I asked her about it and she told me that as long as she knows we're all pulling for her everything'll be all right. So without more ado—"

A pucker-mouthed woman with hennaed hair in the second row whispered loudly to her neighbor, “If she's that disturbed, she ought to be in a mental hospital, not an A.A. meeting."

Faces turned. The room grew very still. The leader glared steadily at the woman with the hennaed hair. She tilted her chin at him and said loudly, “I was speaking of someone else.” He frowned at her skeptically, nodded once more, then put on the big grin and said, “So without more ado I'll turn the meeting over to Sue! I'm sure she's got a great message for us. Let's give her a big hand."

Forty-or-so people pounded their palms together—some enthusiastically, some dutifully, but only the woman with hennaed hair abstaining completely—as a thin ash-blonde in a dark green dress rose from the last row and made her way to the rostrum with the abstracted deliberateness of a sleepwalker. As the leader stepped back and aside for her, he simultaneously smiled warmly, sketched a bow and gave her elbow a reassuring squeeze. She nodded her thanks without looking at him. He seated himself in an empty chair at the end of the front row, switching around enough so that he had the hennaed woman within view.

Looking straight in front of her, just over the heads of her audience, the ash-blonde said in a low but somewhat harsh voice, “My name is Sue and I'm an alcoholic."

“Hi, Sue,” a score-or-so voices responded, some brightly, some dully.

Sue did not immediately start her pitch. Instead she slowly swung her face from side to side, her gaze still just brushing the tops of her audience's heads with the suggestion of a heavy machine gun ranging over an enemy crouched in foxholes. Never smiling, she looked back and forth—from the inappropriate “Come Dressed as Beatniks” party poster of some other organization on the right hand wall across the leader's and the other assorted heads to the left hand wall where a row of open doors let in the balmy night and the occasional low growl of a passing car beyond the wide lawn and shrubbery. Then just as the pause was becoming unbearable—

“I accepted you people and your Twelve Steps only because I was frightened to death,” Sue said with measured, almost mannered intensity. “Every day I dwelt with fear. Every hour I knew terror. Every night I slept—blacked out, that is—with horror! Believe me I know what it means to drink with desperation because the Fifth Horseman is waiting outside for me in the big black car with the two faceless drivers."

“Oh, one of those,” the hennaed woman could be heard to say. She tossed her head as the leader scowled at her sharply from his seat by the inner wall.

Sue did not react except that the knuckles of her hands grasping the side of the rostrum grew white. She continued, “I had my first snort of hard liquor at the age of seven—brandy for a toothache. I liked it. I liked what it did for me. From that day on I snitched liquor whenever and wherever I could get it. The way was made easy for me because both of my parents were practicing alcoholics. By the age of thirteen I had passed over the invisible line and I was a confirmed alcoholic myself, shakes, morning drink, blackouts, hidden bottles, sleeping pills and all."

A gaunt-faced man in the third row folded his arms across his chest, creaked his metal chair and snorted skeptically. The hennaed woman quickly looked back to him with an emphatic triple nod, then smiled triumphantly at the anxious-eyed leader as she faced front again.

Sue did not take direct note of either of her hecklers, but she sent her next remarks skimming just above the silvery thatch of the gaunt-faced man.

“Why is it that even you people find difficulty in accepting the child alcoholic?” she said. “Children can do everything bad that adults can do. Children can formulate dark evil plots. Children can suffer obsessions and compulsions. Children can go insane. Children can commit suicide. Children can torture. Children can commit ... yes! my dear friends ... murder!"

“—self-dramatizing little ... herself."

Ignoring the mostly indistinct whisper, Sue took a slow deep breath and continued, “I emphasize murder because soon after my thirteenth year I was to be subjected, again and again, to that hideous temptation. You see, by the time I was fifteen the big black car had begun to draw up and park in front of my home every afternoon at four thirty—or so soon as I had managed to snitch my first four or five drinks of the day." “—just can't stand the scare-you-to-death school!” The last part of the hennaed woman's whisper to her neighbor came across very clearly. The neighbor, a white-haired woman with rimless glasses, went so far as to nod briefly and cover the other's hand reassuringly yet warningly.

The knuckles of Sue's hands grasping the sides of the rostrum grew white again. She went on, “I knew who was waiting in that car, invisible between the two faceless drivers. You people often speak of the Four Horsemen of Fear, Frustration, Disillusionment, and Despair. You seldom mention the Fifth Horseman, but you know that he's always there."

“—can't stand the let's-share-my-aberration school either!"

“And I knew whom he was waiting for! I knew that some afternoon, or some evening, or very late some night—for the big black car stayed there at the curb until the first gray ray of morning—I knew that I would have to walk out to it and get inside and drive away with him to his dark land. But I also knew that it would not be that easy for me, not nearly that easy."

For the first time Sue smiled at her audience—a lingering half-tranced smile. “You see, my dear friends,

I knew that if I ever went out to the car, before we could drive away I would first have to bringhim and the two faceless drivers back into the house and take away with us my mother, my father, my brothers, my sister and whomever else happened to be inside on however innocent a pretext."

“Look, I came here to an A. A. meeting, not to listen to ghost stories.” All of the hennaed woman's whisper was quite audible this time. There was a general disapproving murmur, possibly shot here and there with approval.

Sue seemed to have difficulty going on. She took three deep, heaving breaths, not quite looking at the hennaed woman. The leader started to get up, but just then —

“Thatis why I had to drink,” Sue resumed strongly. “That is why I had to keep my brain numbed with alcohol, day after day, month after month. Yet that is also why I feared to drink, for if I blacked out at the wrong time I might walk out to the car unknowing. That is why I drank, fearing to!

“Let me tell you, my friends, that big black car became the realest thing in my life. Hour after hour I'd sit at the window, watching it, getting up only to sneak a drink. Sometimes it would change into a big black tiger with glossy fur lying by the curb with his jaw on his folded paws, occupying all the space a parked car would and a little more, looking almost like a black Continental except that every hour or so he'd swing his great green eyes up toward me. At those times the two faceless drivers would turn black as ebony, with silver turbans and silver loin-cloths—"

“Purple, if you ask me!"

“But whether I saw it as a black tiger or a black car, it regularly drew up at my curb every evening or

night. It got so that by the time I was seventeen, it came even on the rare days when I couldn't get a drink or hold one down."

Just at that moment a passing car, growling more softly than others, became silent, as if its motor had been switched off, followed by the faintest dying whisper of rubber on asphalt, as if it had parked just outside, beyond the dark lawn and shrubs.

“She's got confederates!” the hennaed woman whispered with a flash of sour humor. Two or three people giggled nervously.

At last Sue looked straight into her adversary's eyes. “I prayed to a god I didn't believe in that I wouldn't become a confederate!—that he wouldn't trick me into leading him and the two faceless drivers inside.” Her gaze left the hennaed woman and ranged just over their heads again. “The Fifth Horseman is tricky, you know, he's endlessly subtle. I talked with him in my mind for hours at a time as I sat at the window watching him invisible in the car. When I first learned to tell time and found there was twelve hours, he told me he was the thirteenth. Later, when I learned that some people count twenty-four hours, he told me he was the twenty-fifth. When they instructed me at church that there were three persons in the godhead, he told me he was the fourth—”

“I don't think I can stand much more of this. And flouting religion—” The hennaed woman half rose from her chair, her neighbor clinging to her arm, trying to draw her down again.

Three more heaving breaths and Sue continued, though seeming to speak with the greatest difficulty, “The Fifth Horsemans” talks to me. You know our Twelve Steps, from the First where we admit we are powerless over alcohol, to the Twelfth, where we try to carry the Message to others. We sometimes joke about a Thirteenth Step—where we carry the Message to someone because we've got a crush on them, or for some other illegitimate reason—but he tells me that he is the Thirteenth Step, which I will someday be forced to take no matter how earnestly I try to avoid it!"

“No, I cannot stand any more of this! I refuse to!” The hennaed woman spoke out loud at last, shaking off her neighbor's hand and standing up straight. She made no move to leave, just faced the rostrum.

The leader stood up too, angry-browed, and started toward her, but just then—

“I'm sorry,” Sue said quickly, looking at them all, “I really am,” and she walked rapidly to the door opposite the rostrum and into the night.

For three or four seconds nobody did a thing. Then the leader started after her past the rostrum, taking long strides, but when he got a few feet short of the open doors, he suddenly checked and turned around.

“Where's her sponsor?” he called toward the back of the room. “She said her sponsor was bringing her to the meeting. It would be a lot better if her sponsor went out and talked to her now, rather than me."

No one stepped forward. The hennaed woman chuckled knowingly, “/wouldn't admit to being her sponsor after that performance. If you ask me, it'll be a lot better if she just keeps on walking until the police pick her up and throw her in the psycho ward!"

“Nobody's asking you!” the leader rasped. “Look, everybody, I suppose the next best thing would be if a couple of you ladies would go out after her and quietly talk to her..."

The half dozen or so other women in the room looked around at each other, but none of them moved.

“If you're ... well ... nervous,” the leader said, “I suppose a couple of the guys could go out with you..."

The thirty-odd men in the room looked at each other. None of them moved either.

“Oh my God,” the leader said disgustedly and himself started to turn, though somewhat slowly, toward the huge rectangle of darkness just behind him.

“You'll just be making a big fool of yourself, Charlie Pierce,” the hennaed woman said stingingly.

“Look here,” he retorted angrily, whirling back toward her a bit eagerly, “you're the one who's been making fools and worse of us all and of the Program. You're—"

He got no further. The hennaed woman, staring mad-eyed and mouth a-grimace over his shoulder, had started to scream. The others in the room, following her gaze, took it up.

The leader looked around.

Then he screamed too.