The Boys

I have moved in with a beautiful group of men. Like so: I am on the Bioremediation team. We plant sunflowers and practice some science in an effort to develop better ways to enable people to detoxify the soil in their yards. We are, in a word, hippies. With a purpose. And we work - lest we should be mistaken for a particular image of hippiness - men and women alike, weilding picks, shovels, rakes, and we sweat and we love our sweat.

But these guys are another picture of the movement, every moment of the waking day either working or drinking beer, whose mouths utter curses as though somewhere out of sight each carried a rosary with beads for each word, and each one makes thirty to one hundred rosaries in the hour, spitting out insults at tools, trucks, time, the hot sun, FEMA, and empty beer bottles or cigarette boxes.

Alaskan in descent, Henry came to New Orleans with the same thing in mind that all the rest of us carry with us, the wish to stop talking about it and do something constructive. A danger to every automobile that he can put his hands on, a sharpshooter with a can of raid sitting on the front porch in the afternoon heat, Eric shoots a quick remark at Henry's own wit, which might not be sharper than the boots that he wears, but like the boots his mind still provides a vessel for his heart, by which, if we must measure, makes him taller than many despite anything he lacks in stature.
Today he picked up the empty pretzel bag, which nearly yells "Rold Gold" on its label, and quipped, "Must have been a bag of corn chips." I made a joke about his mistake and he got up and walked away, and I wondered why I would ever make fun of anyone about anything - it never ends up in a good place. Lord, take from my lips the words that do not speak of beauty, possibility, growth, peace, love, understanding! If I lack meaning with my lips, let them please remain at rest, may my heart and mind so abide as well.

Mike came back from the hospital early this morning. He was a little drunk last night and put his arm through the window in the door. Now he's out for ten days, and I hope he doesn't drink too hard during that time. This world already has liver problems, without it drinks so hard. But I had my fill so I won't begrudge him his. But I say this: an addiction problem doesn't make a person bad or worthless! Maybe worthless to swing a hammer or else loosing blood like FEMA's losing money, but we are all eventually Death's customer and what penny's worth of peace is scrimped by a moment's drunkenness so that we might carry ourselves one step closer to our eventual enlightenment, lest we might in our poverty lash out at some other unknowing character, that I know not to begrudge a person.
Not by booze nor by other bedevilments, for we all have ours! If yours be a craving for some other silencer of the voices in your head, let it be so, but please when your crutch gives out please raise your hand and ask for help, so as not to pull another one down a road they need not walk, and I will promise to do the same. We must all walk on coals some day.

To be continued.