My Brother's Keeper

He looked at me with perfect puppy-dog eyes, just the right amount of worry and pleading. "I'm turning forty in a few months and I have nothing. Nothing at all. I've wasted my life."

Some of my brothers and sisters with me.
 

It had been a bit over a week since I'd sent him the $500 he'd said would get him and his girlfriend into an apartment. Two days since he'd called from the side of the road in the middle of the night after a judge decreed he could not be where he was. Salem, Virginia in January. Minus ten degrees farenheit. A light snow falling.

He'd spent that night at a friend's house and came to my place the next day. That first night he vomited several times in the middle of the night. I figured he might have picked up the flu.

Now, as I looked at his eyes--that perfect look of helplessness--it felt like I was being played. It was too perfect. But if I were wrong... the stakes were too high. I couldn't take the chance that this time, finally, he was really wanting to work on the things that kept causing problems in his life. Namely: alcohol addiction. I couldn't take the chance. I had to help. If he wanted to straighten his life up, I had no choice.

Dream Job

And that's what he said that night. He was swearing off his drinking. He was really going to quit. He wanted his old job back. He wanted to get his driver's license back. He wanted to get a place of his own where his children would feel good about visiting him. He wanted those kids to respect him. He was ready. He just knew if he could get his old job back everything would fall into place.

He called that his 'dream job'. And it was, for him and at the time. He'd worked there in the past for two years as a cook and when he left, he'd worked a month notice and trained his replacement. Their only objection to hiring him again was his alcohol problems. He'd never drink in the mornings before work, but he would show up to work some days smelling of the night before, which always left them wondering.

We talked every day about it. He found some work helping an old friend doing landscape work for a week or so. The folks who owned the restaurant where he wanted to work didn't want to hire him back. I know these folks really well--I have a contract to provide IT support with them. I talked to the owners and managers several times, finally convincing them to give him a chance.

I knew he was still drinking. He's the kind of guy who is a great conversationalist when he is sober, but turns into a blithering idiot within minutes of drinking any amount of alcohol. But he doesn't notice. He still thinks he makes sense. But he hadn't been falling-down drunk. He'd kept it as mild as I'd ever seen him keep it.

A damned big carrot. Fuck the stick, said I.

He seemed sincere, seemed to be trying. I decided I wanted to help him realize his dream in a way he never imagined. I decided to buy a house that a great friend of mine just wanted to get rid of. It had been empty for the past ten years and he'd offered to sell it to me for the tax lein and $5000. Another $8000 would repair the minor problems in the house and return it to liveability. So for about fifteen grand, a home could be made.

Reasonably cheap rent around these parts is in the $400-$450 range. He'd be paying that much regardless. Which meant that at $400/month he could pay off this house in three years. Two bedrooms, one bath, eat-in kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room, front southern-style porch and deck off the kitchen in the rear, with a stick-built building in the back yard and a partial finished basement on a quarter-acre.

He couldn't believe it, but he saw it happening. We checked out the house, talked to Brad the owner. He dropped the price to just five large to help my brother out. (I know some wonderful people.) I sat down and worked up the scope of the job. Brad and I sat down and did the take-off for materials. Using his crew we'd come out at about what we thought, just over eight thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, my brother was busting his butt. His old/new bosses at the restaurant were on board with the house-buying idea and were throwing hours for him onto the schedule like he was some kind of superman. Usually folks are lucky to get 32 hours a week, but right off they were hitting him with 40 plus each week. He could see this happening.

And he was loving it. He gave me most of his money to put in our lock-box, to hold for the future when he'd need deposits and new things for the house. Life was working out in his favor. In our talks I tried to talk about momentum and balance in life. I tried to make him aware of how fragile each second is, how a single thought could disrupt any of us.

Momentum and Balance

He broke off his relationship with his girlfriend from Salem. She convinced him that she needed to see him. Knowing I didn't want her anywhere near me, he told her to come. (He'd told me emphatically that this girl has an opioid addiction and refuses to talk about it. Remember the vomiting he did his first day here?)

She showed up on Sunday. They spent the day in my office, a four-hundred square foot building behind my house, where he'd been sleeping for the past three weeks. About an hour before dark we noticed her car was gone, so I assumed she'd gone home. Several hours later Trish noticed her car was parked out back again. It stayed there until just before daybreak.

I'd been up all night working on a job for the owner of the restaurant, so Trish drove him to work. He told her that his girlfriend had gotten too tired to drive home and he wouldn't let her leave. He stayed away from me that entire day.

The next morning I took him to work. He said, and I quote here for clarity, "You know what the easiest thing about having a job is? Showing up."

The next morning he called in sick, saying he was three days into trying to stop drinking and he was too sick with withdrawals to come to work. They fired him immediately.

He spent that day trying to think of a way to not make me upset. I am certain of that. When he finally walked into my office up here in the house he had a new strategy: Doubling Down. With those perfect puppy-dog eyes he told me he was going to voluntarily go into a rehab program.

The next four days were a slow-motion trainwreck.

At first he wanted us to take the money he'd put in our safe as payment in part for the money we'd given him already, but we said we'd keep it for when he finished rehab. Then he wanted a few dollars for cigarettes, then half of it and finally all of it, so he could buy diapers for his little girl. (Said he was going to buy $200 worth of diapers and wipes.) By Saturday, when he finally left for the hospital, all of the money was gone and he was asking for cigarette money again.

Each day he'd say goodbye. And each day he'd tell us a new reason why he couldn't leave yet. And he'd always be sure to drive home his decision to get his life cleaned up. He'd say everything he was supposed to say. And we saw through it all in real-time.

It was painful watching him lie to us. At one point I became totally disgusted and called him out. Trish had to intervene, fearing I would have another heart attack. I'd had my earlier one during a similar argument with this same brother, over these same things. It was probably good that she stopped it.

He left the next day. I have to give him credit--he had a bona fide nurse who was a friend of his pick him up. She promised to take him to the hospital. As they drove away, Trish and I thought there might be a chance he was actually going to check himself into rehab.

He spent the next several days checking into facebook instead. He's staying in the apartment that the judge made him vacate. With the people who took out the complaint which led to that order. My fear is that he will get drunk and make an ass of himself, giving a reason to call the police. Who may be told that he is dangerous.

And with him being drunk, I'm worried some idiot cop will suddenly fear for his own life.