Pete and Repeat (In progress)

So Pete and me are hanging out at the new Alpha Group, not to be confused with the old Alpha Group, which actually lived on Alpha Road. The new Alpha Group is on Webb Chapel, down by the Love Field. It's a good place to hang out during the day, being so near everything important—lots of good restaurants—lots of good dumpsters.

We stay at Alpha some nights. Most of the old coots who lock up and open the place don’t care if we flop there, but a few are self-righteous somebitches who feel the need to 12-Step us. Tonight, Bob R is closing. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't kick us out, either. We are grateful.

I wish we could stay here every night. Dumpsters are fine—usually pretty comfortable and relatively warm in the winter. The odor’s not as bad as you’d think, either, once you get used to it. But the smell ain’t pleasant for people around you, and I like to stay under the radar. Besides, dumpsters can be dangerous, when you’re too drunk to pay attention to pick up times.

Pete enters with both hands full of half-smoked butts. He holds his cupped hands out to me reverently; it puts me in mind of communion. I grab a handful and toss all but one in my jacket pocket, then sit down and set about uncrumpling the remaining one. It's a beaut, hardly smoked at all, though it's menthol, which I don't much care for on account of the fact that I'd got sick on Kools once. Now, the menthol smell kinda makes my stomach flip. But you take what you can get. 

We're in the hanging out room (the one with all the couches, where discussion meetings happen). After we finish smoking, Pete grabs two paper plates from the kitchen and tosses them on the coffee table. He pulls out a squashy brown paper bag full of food that he got from his favorite dumpster, the one behind the Dixie House nearby. He hit the jackpot—almost a full meatloaf. He divides everything equally between the plates. He pauses at a sole corn on the cob and looks at me. I nod for him to take it. He grins and takes it, transferring a bit more meatloaf to my plate. I can afford to be generous; this is a feast!

After eating, we light another set of butts. Our couches are perpendicular to one another, and I stretch out on my couch, feet toward Pete. Pete reclines back, and lifts his feet onto the coffee table, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. We light up several, smoking in silence. We would normally conserve, but there's so many ashtrays full of butts, we know can replenish any time.

"He never hit me, you know." Pete says. I nod. "He didn't have to," he adds, bitterly. "He messed with my mind. All the time, tinkering around in there." Pete made a motion with his hands, illustrating the point. "Like a shrink."

"Well, that's what he is," I say.

Pete shrugs. After a while he adds, "I think I'd've been all right if he'd just stayed outta my head."

"I'm sure you're right," I answer. It's a conversation we've had repeatedly.

Pete lies down and we fall silent. I'm thinking of my own father, a hard drinker, and hard-fisted man, who died when I was nine, killing almost a whole family and himself for good measure in a car accident he caused while driving drunk. I feel mostly shame when I think of him. So mostly I don't, if I can help it. One thing I've never done, not even once, is drive drunk. I suppose I owe that one good thing to the old man.

I turn my thoughts to Pete, now sleeping on the other couch. The light from the kitchen lights up his face. He looks looked angelic. At twenty, he looks about fifteen, handsome, with blue eyes, tanned skin and curly, sandy hair. A few freckles sprinkle across his nose.

I feel contented, lying there on a comfortable couch, drowsy, with a full belly, looking at this beautiful kid. Pride surges through me, as though he were my own son. I close my eyes and fall asleep.

---

“So Pete and me, we’re headin’ over to give some blood. Anyone wanna go?”

I'm hoping for a ride. Everyone shakes their heads. You can’t blame a guy for trying.

This morning, there are about a half dozen others with us at the Alpha Group, smoking and drinking coffee in the hanging out room. We're all the kind of people who can hang out on a weekday morning—retired or unemployed. Christie is a high school student on summer break who doesn’t have much else to do during the day. Debbie is unemployed. I'm sweet on her, but she’s only been sober eight months, and, though I've been coming here for almost five years, I haven’t been able to string together more than three months at a time. I think she looks a little kindly on me, though. Steve is unemployed as well; about three months sober this time around. He's noodling on the piano, singing "Bad Company" in a soft voice.

A woman enters and sits down.

“How you doin’, Susan?” Christie asks.

“High,” she says, kinda dreamily.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Debbie cries. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It just sort of happened. Out of nowhere. I came here to be somewhere safe.”

She doesn’t seem inclined to talk more, and nobody here is the kind who feels the need to preach at everybody. We’ve all been there. We just let her zone a bit while we continue talking. It seems to comfort her. Then she catches sight of Christie’s feet.

“Oh!” she startles.

We all look at her.

“You have very small feet,” she says. Her eyes move slowly from Christie’s feet to her face. “Don’t you?”

Christie smiles. “Yes, I do.”

She closes her eyes in relief. “Good.” We all laugh. She smiles, too.

Charlie enters the hanging-out room and shouts, “Hey! Pete and Repeat, you bastards! How the hell are you?” . He slaps me on the back and ruffles Pete's curly head.

Pete giggles and grabs his arms. The two wrestle a bit, laughing. I smile, again feeling that strange sense of pride in my young companion. When they stop wrestling, Charlie sits next to Christie, kisses her, and takes her hand. He turns his gaze on us.

“Either of you two useless excuses for human beings finally got a job?”

“We were working at Pizza Hut,” Pete says. “Free food—that was the only good thing. ’Course, I can get that from the dumpster any time, but this was hot.” He looks a bit wistful.

“Why didn’t you hang in there, man?” Carl asks.

“It’s Society, man,” Pete says fiercely. “It’s always Society. It’s The Man keepin' you down. They want you to bow to their ways. They don’t care if makes sense.”

“What, they want you show up on time or something?”

“I don’t mind that. They just want you to be their slave, do whatever they say. It wasn’t just one thing.” Pete is an amazingly cheerful kid, for someone who lives skint. I think that's why I hang with him, even though I'm close to double his age.

“How about you?” Charlie looks at me.

I shrug and point my thumb at Pete, sitting next to me. “He left. I left.”

“Living up to your name, ay?” Charlie grins.

I shrug again. Charlie's the one who started the trend of calling me, “Repeat.”

Pete stands. “Well, let’s roll then.”

I put out my cigarette, drain my cup, and stand.

“Need I say more?” Charlie asks.

I shrug a third time and follow Pete out the door.

---

The blood bank is a no-go; we’ve given blood too recently. It will soon be that time of day when we'll  have to get some alcohol in us. Pete starts heading east along Northwest Highway.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Not sure,” he says. “I’m thinking.”

So I follow along. I can walk a pretty long ways, so I don’t mind just following. I was in construction for many years, before I became unhirable, and I'm still in pretty good shape. We walk south on Lemmon, almost all the way around Love Field, then we head east on Mockingbird. My comfort level is dropping with each passing block.

Pete's taking us to Highland Park. There is no way, no how, that anyone there wants us anywhere near. I feel certain that a cop'll jump us any minute. But we make our way unmolested, and Pete stops near a house. A very big house. I’d call it a mansion. I can see which one he's eying, but he can’t seem to make up his mind to approach the door. I hope he isn’t thinking about breaking in; if so, he's going about it all wrong.

“What’s up, Pete?” I ask, kind of timidly.

“Don’t say anything, Mike,” he answers. “Let me think.”

Well, whatever else are my flaws, I can be patient, even in the midst of a paranoiac episode. And whatever else are Pete's flaws, he can definitely think. So I stand stock still, hoping like Hell that nobody will notice me.

Sudden-like, he speeds toward the door. I have to trot to follow along. He knocks, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman answers.

“Mister Pete!” she cries. She stands dumb-founded for a moment, then her face takes on a determined look; she opens the door wider and ushers the two of us in. “You come in, Mister Pete. You come right on in here.”

We wait in a marble vestibule. I believe I can say that this is the first vestibule I’ve ever been in, and it is so big and clean and richly furnished that I feel small and dirty, like I have no right to be here. I kinda shrink into a corner.

The woman returns with a distinguished-looking, gray-haired man who seems reluctant to come. She's practically pulling him along and talking quickly and quietly into his ear. I can’t hear what she's saying.

Finally he shakes her off, straightens his sweater and his spine, and enters the vestibule. He stands stiffly, just inside the room.

“Peter,” he says.

“Hello, Father,” Pete replies.

“Out with it. You only come here when you need something.”

Pete drops his head and breathes out a long sigh. Then he raises his head and lifts his arms, as though to welcome his father, “My dear son. Here’s your ring. Here’s your cloak. We’re preparing the fatted calf.”

A laugh escapes me. Pete’s father turns cold eyes on me, and the mirth evaporates from my whole body.

“And who is your friend?”

“This is Mike. He’s my best friend.” Pete smiles encouragement at me. I stand a little straighter, extend my hand, like to shake his, and say, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr.—”. Damn, I don’t even know Pete’s last name.

“Dr. Hamilton.” Emphasis on the “doc.” He stares at me a moment, but makes no move to take my hand. I drop my hand. He turns his gaze back towards his son.

“You’ve worn out your welcome, Peter,” he says grimly. “Don’t you dare blame me for that!”

“Okay, so I just need a little money.”

Silence. Pete’s father glares at his son.

“Look, man, I really am getting back on my feet. I got a job. I stayed almost three weeks!”

“Pride overwhelms me. Where did you work?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pete mutters.

“Where did you work?”

“Pizza Hut! Okay? You happy?”

“Delirious.”

More silence.

Pete starts, then says, “You’re not giving me any money.”

“Oh, I’ll give you money, you little shit,” he injected incredible venom into that final word. “But that doesn’t mean I have to make it easy for you.”

After a moment, he sighs. “How much do you want?”

“Five hundred?”

Pete’s father looks at him sharply.

“Three hundred?”

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars and not a cent more. Can you find a way to cash a check, or do you need cash.”

“Cash?”

“Wait.”

Pete and I stand awkwardly in the vestibule for a while. Dr. Hamilton returns and mashes the cash into Pete’s hand, grabbing Pete’s hand and the money between his two hands, hard, crumpling the money.

“I don’t want to see you again until you are completely clean. At that time you will treat me with respect, and you will NOT ask for money. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

"And you can leave your... friend at home! That is, if he has a home." He looked at me as though I were a disease. Any worth still clinging to my soul evacuates the premises.

“I mean it, Peter.” He yells as we scram out of there. “Leave us alone!”

---

Pete is shaking when we finally slow down on our return to the Alpha Group. “Fuck him,” he says, so quietly I have to lean in to hear him. A tear squeezes out of his eye. “Fuck him!” he screams. He throws the crumpled money to the ground. I drop to my knees to rescue it, quick-like.

“He’s always messing with my mind.” He bends over as though in pain. “You know that, right? He’s just messing with me. It’s all a game for him.” Tears roll down his face. “When I was kid, right, I wanted to please him. More than anything! But I never could. I never could. And you know why? He didn’t WANT to be pleased!”

I put my arms around him and let him cry it out, kind of patting his head, like he's a little boy. In a way he is, but he's a smart boy. In another life he would have been a leader. I have never regretted following him.

---

That night, as we're settling down on the couches at Alpha Group, I hear him mutter, “Fuck him.” 

Later, as I'm starting to drowse, he says, “Hey, Mike, we don’t need Society, right?

“You got it, buddy.”

“You know, it’s like quantum particles, how they talk to each other over long distances. They’re never really separated. We’re like that, you know? We’re like quarks. The strong nuclear force. It’ll always be you and me.”

"You and me, little buddy," I say, soothing-like.

 

---

Now I’ve been sober three years, and have held down a construction job for almost that long. I’m going to school to become a computer technician. I married Debbie two years ago. Charlie and Christie and lots of other Alpha people were there. Even Susan, with a shiny new six-month chip on her keychain. Pete was my best man, though I rarely see him these days. He thinks I’ve sold out—given in to Society.

Tonight, I'm at the Alpha club, stamping off snow and hanging up my coat. Then I enter the meeting room, blowing on my hands, and rubbing them. Charlie shakes my hand and then hugs me.

“Mike, how are you?” he asks quietly.

“Pretty good,” I answer. “You?”

Charlie looks at me a long time, looking tired and sad. He hands me a newspaper, pointing at an article: “Homeless man dies in dumpster mishap.” My heart skips a beat, and I read:

Peter Alexander Hamilton, 24, was found dead when a waste collection vehicle deposited his body into a local landfill. The coroner's office released a statement saying that the multiple injuries on his body were consistent with those caused by the machinery that compacts garbage after it is collected from a dumpster.

Hamilton graduated from Highland Park High School and attended one year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he had received a full scholarship to study theoretical physics. After returning to spend the summer with his parents, he disappeared. His parents have seen him only occasionally over the past few years.

He is survived by his father, Alexander, a prominent Dallas psychiatrist, and his mother, Marsha, who serves on the board of several local charities.

The family has officially released no comment, but a family friend, asked how such a promising young man ended up dying in a dumpster, answered, “Dr. Hamilton says that they’ve given up trying to understand.”

The Dallas Police Department is investigating, but a spokesman says that no foul play is currently suspected.

I grab my coat and head back out into the cold. I barely feel it.

I walk, not noticing where I'm going, until I arrive at the Dixie House on the corner. I head around  back to the dumpster. Tears stream down my face. I try to wipe them off, but eventually give it up and just stand there, leaning against the frigid metal of the dumpster, sobbing.

“Oh, little buddy! What have they done to you?” I cry.  "What have we done to you?"

Dr. Hamilton’s face rises in my memory. How does it look today? Is he crying, too? Is he relieved? Is Pete’s mom crying for him? I don't have a picture of her face to conjure up in my memory, so I think of my mom, tears streaming down her face. I hope she's crying. I can't imagine Pete’s father crying, and a fresh wave of sorrow washes over me.

“Fuck them, buddy," I say out loud. "Fuck them!” I shout. The falling snow muffles the sound.