Apparently, Sue Was Already Taken

Gene Gilchrist

Louisville, Kentucky

James Robert Clark was awake. The hallway light peaked through the loose edges of the ill-fitting door to his room.  His inner hallway room, nine feet by eight feet, was tightly packed with a single bed, a mismatched night table and a lamp, and was dimly lit no matter the time of day or night.

Bob/Roberta/whatever, was trolling the hallway as he/she/whatever, did almost every night. Jim felt a mix of empathy and concern and annoyance for Bob/Roberta/whatever.  Live and Let Live was an AA saying and that worked for this situation; barely.  There was plenty in his life to worry about and manage without distracting himself over other people’s issues and concerns.  The empathetic side of Jim wanted to express concern and some level of kinship, but it was all too foreign for Jim to get involved in any helpful way.  Plus, this nightly din was, frankly, a nuisance.

He stepped into the hallway and made eye contact.  The message in Jim’s eyes did not need saying – it had been said over and over and over and …..  “Good morning Jim Bob”, Bob/Roberta /whatever greeted.  “Love those boxers you have there”. “Insolent b….”, Jim thought to himself.  Live and Let Live.

Jim Bob, JimBo.  His folks probably thought that was a perfectly good, near southern name for a Scotch-Irish American from the Kentucky country.  In Atlanta, Charleston, Norfolk, Cincinnati and now Louisville it made him out to be the hick from the holler.  Bob/Roberta/whatever knew full well it would irk him.  Live and Let Live.

He went back in his room but knew that sleep would not come.  He turned on his table lamp and reached for the “Big Book”.  Pages 83-84, The Promises, “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace.”   Jim read this section almost daily perhaps the way a Catholic priest reads “The Divine Office”.  It served as a promise for him and a reminder that those before him showed the way. They did not regret the past. 

It was a few days short of two years since his last drink.  It still seemed fresh even though it was an eternity for the average alcoholic.  “Less than 6% ever make a year,” he said aloud to no one.  How long before these memories passed, before it was his new life? “Any time now would be fine,” he thought.

The past haunted and seemingly all the time.  He remembered his foster parents from his earliest days.  They were a good, if poor, rural family.  Sissie was two years older, and they were placed in foster care from their alcoholic, single mothers at about the same time.  Sissie remembered the orphanage, or so she said, but Jim just recalled his mother and then hazily. 

In rural Kentucky, the rural poor didn’t know they were poor.  They led a simple life with the modern conveniences one required – shelter, plumbing, heat, electricity, food, and one car.  They didn’t miss what they didn’t know.

The public schools were fine if underfunded and the Three Rs were taught well.  Education pointed toward a manual labor job in the city, farming, homemaker, or raising children.  Jim’s adopted father was a mechanic repairing farm equipment.  Everyone was God fearing and that slipped into the schools with daily prayer.  The urban folk fought the Church and State battle but that seemed far away to Jim’s family.

The Church was a small, white, wooden building and the center of rural life.  Jesus of Nazareth was lord and savior to all, and the sincere, unquestioned belief was built upon an assurance passed on from generation to generation.  There was no doubt for faith to overcome, it just was, always had been, always will be faith.  Jim and Sissie were regular attendees at children’s bible study Sunday morning and Wednesday evening.  The message of salvation comforted them and was the center of their life view.  Jim never knew if Sissie shared his experience and shame for things that happened in that church basement.  It was too shameful to share, too painful to remember, too much trouble would come of telling anyone.

After graduation from high school Jim worked with his father in the shop for a while but it wasn’t his knack.  Despite his shameful childhood events he was drawn to ministry.  He apprenticed with a minister in the next town over, walking five miles each way when he couldn’t get a ride from Dad or a neighbor going that way.  His duties were the simple ones – set up for morning prayers, clean up after the service, listen to the daily readings from the minister.  After lunch he read from the New Testament and church literature that helped him understand the given word. 

Training for Christian ministry in rural Kentucky was at best informal. A nearby church needed a minister and  word of mouth led Jim to a church half way to Louisville.  His apprenticeship prepared him for the basic needs of his congregation.  He could manage a good service, a good homily as long as he stuck to a bible reading.  He was there for the sick and infirmed, the women who suffered abuse that was all too common.  He schooled the children in the faith of Jesus.  Some folks needed just the word of God to bless their union but for others he could arrange a marriage license.  He was comfortable, the congregates were grateful to have him.

On a drive back from dinner at Sissie’s one night he decided that he would try a drink.  Dad had shared “shine” with him once as a rite of passage but otherwise he had not imbibed.  He did not know his father to be much of a drinker.   Jim always wondered what went on in the bar and it seemed that he should know what the bar was like.  Scanning inside the bar he was certain that no one knew him.  He ordered a tap beer and sipped it cautiously.  After a second beer he thought to get moving to keep his secret.  The patrons seemed in dire need of the word, frankly, but he tried to reserve judgment.

That bar got to be an occasional, then regular stop.  He was cautious about his identity, never got involved, never stopped for more than two.  Later he took a six pack with him and snuck them into his house, snuck the empties out the next time.  Liquor stores were easy to find out of town.  Slowly, but certainly his drinking became more frequent and then daily.  Delivering sermons he could anticipate the drink back at his house.  Over time things progressed for the worse.  He missed dinners at Sissie’s house because he “didn’t feel well”.  Church activities were sometimes canceled because he couldn’t be seen at church in his condition.  Jim made every attempt to hide what he knew was a growing drinking problem.

Discovery was inevitable.  One night returning from his bar he was stopped by a patrol car.  He was too drunk to stand steadily, and the officer had no choice but to put him in a cell overnight.  Jim knew that there was no hiding this.  Back at his apartment he wondered what to do and knew he needed to decide quickly.  Escape seemed the only way and so he took the first of many “geographic cures”.  First stop, Roanoke. Someplace he could use his ID but not be known.

He arrived with five hundred dollars, all he had, and a few sets of clothes.  He found a small apartment, took a job guarding the local school at midnight.  It seemed he could control his drinking, maybe sneaking a couple at work to steady his hand.  His life quickly became sleeping, drinking, working, repeat.  He often had pangs about his church, his sister, her family, but it just seemed too hard to go back and make it right.

Eventually, inevitably, his drinking impinged on work.  He missed too many shifts while passed out in his apartment.  He was drunk on the job too often.  Now without a job he would quickly run out of the small stash he had squirreled away.  Next to Charlotte.  The pattern repeated as he progressed to Charleston, Tallahassee, Hattiesburg.  Denial allowed him to believe that he would eventually get a handle on all this.  He had heard the proselytizers’ harangue on the “second step”.  “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”.  Dissociative disorder was the clinical term he believed.  Not him of course.

When he arrived in Atlanta he had $50 and a few clothes, toiletries.  Jim had rubbed shoulders with many homeless people and had a general sense of what to do but when he was dropped off near Buckhead he quickly saw that he had little knowledge of the survival skills required.  He asked other homeless people about shelters and walked to the nearest, church run shelter. He was too late for a bed, but dinner was being served.  He ate quickly, made no eye contact, followed people leaving the food line to see where they were headed.  They walked to an open parking lot where he found an old, dirty blanket and tried to settle down near what looked like the safest group.  He had a fitful sleep but managed the night without incident.

After breakfast at the same shelter another white man near his age approached Jim.  Cautious as he was, Jim still hoped for some tips about how to make all this work.  “New here?”, the man opened.  “New to the street?”, he continued.  “Yeah”, Jim replied.  “Got any advice?”  “Look”, the guy continued, “we all need people around us.  Alone on the street is a way to have bad things happen.  I have a crew, if you want you can follow me.”  Jim was leery but what the guy said about being alone on the street made sense.  “I’m Jim”.  “Good to meet you, I’m Edward.”

Jim followed Edward to another open space under a bypass.  He kept his distance, being sure not to enter any place he could not escape.  Jim was a big man, 6’,4” 240 lbs., but he couldn’t fight off numbers.  Things seemed safe though and he really didn’t have any other options at the moment.  Edward gave Jim a big piece of cardboard and a blanket and they settled into a few months’ pattern.  They would sleep as dark settled in, awake with the shuffling that occurred at dawn.  Drugs were around of course, and Jim tried weed and meth.  The craving in his body always brought him back to booze.

After a few years on the street the incidents became too many to ignore.  The shouting match that turned into a fist fight was all too frequent and even at his size he didn’t “win” them all.  He was robbed leaving the truck warehouse where he got paid at the end of the day.  Once his tent caught on fire from the nearby fire someone lit for warmth.  Jim decided to make a concerted effort to get a bed.  There were limits on how long one could stay in this or that shelter but Jim soon learned to time his place in line after dinner to get a bed.  After two months, three months depending on the shelter he moved on to the next that he had already scouted out during the day.  He saw Edward here and there and they managed to get together over a bottle on occasion.

Inside the shelters there was structure and a modicum of discipline.  There was a time to get out of bed, a time for breakfast, a time to vacate for cleaning, a time for dinner, a time for curfew.  There were rules against drinking and drugs that were regularly violated.  Jim made every effort to get back for curfew before getting too drunk but he was, effectively, drunk all the time and he got used to that equilibrium. 

Inside the shelters the cost of providing a bed, the meals, the security, and the staffing overwhelmed the available resources.  The management and staff could see the underlying issues – poverty, products of abuse, substance use, mental illness – but their capacity to address those issues was a constant, lingering afterthought.  The best that could be done seemed to be the occasional relief from full time on the street.

Jim endured “the classes” as they were known.  In a Christian based shelter there were services to attend, testimony from someone saved.  Occasionally someone “in recovery” would talk about AA or NA.  If a social worker was on staff, there were lectures about getting necessary documents or Medicaid.  These classes were something to do, occasionally served coffee or cookies that were a treat, were sometimes entertaining.  Of course, the Christian services were  a dual edged sword for Jim both comforting and reminding.  Sitting in these services in particular Jim’s thoughts wandered back to Sissie.

Every once in awhile Jim passed out drunk before he made it back to his bed.  Sometimes he could get back in the next day and sometimes he was kicked out.  He was usually able to call on his street skills to get back into a pattern with another shelter.  One day though he woke up in the middle of the night not knowing where he was or how he got there.  Everything he had was gone.  He could feel the bruises.  For the first time in a long time he was afraid.  It occurred to him that he could be beaten to death, that he could stumble into traffic, that he could be placed in a mental ward and from there involuntarily committed.  This fear built on itself.  This was a place he could not go.  He reached back out to the God of his youth.  It was more than a year later that he realized it was at this moment that the peace of having the desire to drink was lifted.

Jim thought that walking to the Christian shelter and waiting there was the safer course.  He walked using the main, best lit streets and hunkered down by the gate where the staff entered to park.  Jim had a relationship with Pastor Ken there or at least they had often discussed their shared faith in Christ.  Perhaps Pastor Ken would have sympathy and help him out with special treatment.

After parking the car Ken heard his name and walked toward the fence in the direction the voice came in the early morning dark.  “Jim, you look a little rough there.  What happened?”  A tear came to Jim as Pastor Ken’s voice suggested the sympathy Jim had hoped to find.  “Ken, I really don’t know.  I woke up like this with nothing left.  I’m scared, Ken”.  Pastor Ken let Jim in the side gate, took him to his office meeting room and let him sleep there a few minutes.  “I’ll wake you when breakfast is served, Jim.”

Ken ate breakfast with Jim then took him back to his pastoral office.  Jim was not surprised to see the Director and the social worker. “Jim, can you tell us what happened?”, Ken started.  Jim tried to start, tried to hold back the tears but it all came rushing from him uncontrollably.  The three staff sat and let it all come out.  The Director waited a few minutes before setting the condition.  “Jim, you’re a good man, a God fearing man, a strong man.  “But,” he continued, ”right now none of that will matter if you don’t have a commitment to do something about your drinking.  We can’t just make new rules every time someone shows up hung over and beat up at our door. But Pastor Ken has pleaded your case.  Here’s what we are willing to do.” 

The next moment seemed like an eternity to Jim.  It seemed that his very existence would hinge on the next sentence. “We will assign you a bed for the next thirty days.  You will liaise with the AA guy today, you will work with Wanda our case worker on finding a counselor.  You will take on tasks for the shelter like cleaning and moving furniture.  You will not contact people outside the shelter.  You will not leave the shelter except for medical appointments. You will shower and shave every day.  You will participate in counseling with Pastor Ken. Thirty days from now we will meet again and if you are on a good path we will talk about another thirty days.  However, if you violate any of these conditions, once, you will leave and be banned from here for at least six months.”

Jim was a smart man, a drunk for sure, but a smart man.  He knew that these people were extending themselves just for him.  He knew that Pastor Ken had made the case.  He knew that this was far more support than he had earned.  “I am grateful to all three of you”, Jim finally said.  “I know that my track record will not make my commitment to justify this extraordinary support believable, but you have my word that I will prove that your taking a chance on me was well founded.”  And with that, James Robert Clark started his road to recovery.

The next six months went by quickly.  Lamont, the AA rep who ran meetings in the shelter became his sponsor.  Jim attended an AA meeting every day, practiced the steps, read the Big Book religiously.  He was glad to clean the showers and toilets as disgusting as they occasionally were.  At least he had tasks to occupy his days and felt productive.  The case worker enrolled him in Georgia Medicaid and after a few weeks he started to see doctors, nurses, dentists.  A few monthly reviews went by, and he was grateful and satisfied that his privileges were not rescinded more than was eager for more freedoms.  Every month his responsibilities were upgraded in recognition of his progress.  He went from cleaning toilets to staffing the 4:00 – 12:00 entrance.

As much as he liked the addictions counselor, the work on the hard issues came with Pastor Ken.  Maybe it was his familiarity from being on Ken’s side of the table.  Maybe it was just starting and ending with prayer. Regardless, the hard issues were discussed here.

Avoiding the drink was not hard. There was plenty of alcohol inside the shelter but the fear from that morning in the parking lot remained fresh.  His first task with Pastor Ken was shame.  How could a God fearing man, from a good family, fall to demon rum?  How could a man of the cloth so easily fall to the devil?  Jim felt that everyone saw him as a fallen man.  Every glance, every remark could be interpreted.  He was ashamed.  No amount of comfort from Lamont about the “disease concept” could relieve Jim from the burden of that shame.

Jim’s fourth step inventory with Lamont cleared away some of the wreckage.  He tended not so much to linger about the many specific actions and transgressions, but to think about the patterns.  He was critical of others, even despised many people.  He harbored anger at seeming slights.  In the midst of his cravings he stole,  had had harmed people physically, he had taken advantage of women who were in no condition to give their consent.  Above all, he had abandoned his home, his hearth, his family, Sissie.  All of this seemed so much to overcome. 

As the first year came to a close much had evolved for Jim.  As he prepared to speak at his anniversary AA meeting, he was proud to take stock.  He had become the overnight security staff for the shelter supervising four employees.  He had graduated to an apartment within the shelter with a door that locked, his own bathroom and internet and TV. The aches and pains marked on him from the street eased, his doctor visits provided pharmaceuticals that helped with his sugar, constipation and drops for his eye pressure.  He started to have his dental health worked on too.  He felt that his relationship with God was returning if slowly.  The shame was still there but as people new to attempting recovery arrived, they looked to Jim for his experience, strength and hope.  Perhaps “The Promises” in the Big Book were coming true as predicted.  Yet, the call of home was always there.  Each time he thought about it his stomach tightened.  He knew, though, that it must be done.

The day before his move to Louisville Jim asked to meet with Lamont and Pastor Ken together.  Jim told them both that he wanted to connect his faith tradition and discussion with his AA discussion and hadn’t felt fully connected.  It was much to his surprise that it was Lamont who connected the dots.  “Jim,”, Lamont started, “do you think that you have had a spiritual awakening as a result of the steps as step twelve suggests?”  Of course he did, Jim thought.  It was easier for him having never lost his Christian faith. “I do, of course”, Jim replied.  “As I listed my transgressions, I did so in the definition of sin to start, but over time I came to a different awareness of the role that booze played.  Putting the drink behind me I could work not only on amending the past but improving who I was in the future.  Eventually, that spiritual awakening happened alongside rediscovery of my religion through Ken.”

“I think that’s right”, Lamont continued.  “But, I have often wondered about what happened that early morning in the parking lot.  You woke up, beat up, tore up from the floor up to be shore up as they say.  And you prayed.  But in that moment before you got on your feet …..”.

Jim did not quite hear the end of the sentence.  At that moment the light in the room seemed to change, time seemed to slow.  He was aware that Ken and Lamont were with him. He knew that for them nothing had changed.  A calm came over Jim first physically, then metaphysically, spiritually. He heard a voice; he had a knowing from somewhere he could  not quite understand.  “Oh my, I was touched by the hand of God.  For the first time, I was touched by the hand of God”, Jim voiced to no one and to everyone. 

Pastor Ken was suddenly in awe.  He had always thought about these AA people as giving lip service to “God as we understand God”.  In that moment Ken realized just how spiritual Lamont was, perhaps as spiritual as any member of Ken’s church. He wondered if all of the AA members knew what Lamont knew.  Could they all know just when to deliver this message to the newcomer?

“That’s right, Jim”, Lamont responded.  “The God of your youth never left you. You left him. That night you did not have a spiritual awakening but a spiritual experience.  Many of us have been at that moment.  I just saw it happen again in you. That is the reason that not drinking hasn’t been so hard.  In that moment, a year ago, in the dark early morning, in an Atlanta parking lot, God touched one of his children in pain.  He lifted the desire to drink.  That is the connection, Jim.  Now it is your turn to take my place wherever it is that you may be.”

Jim had saved enough money to open a checking account and had made arrangements to transfer that to Republic Bank in Louisville. He had a credit card to pay for the cab from the airport for him and his luggage to the shelter downtown.  He arrived on a warm day in May and felt this mission would do fine for now.  He had already made arrangements to meet someone at the AA meeting in the shelter that night.

As he approached the front desk, he was greeted by someone staffing the desk who was obviously a resident working there.  As they exchanged pleasantries someone who was quite obviously male approached wearing a brightly colored sari, a bronze tiara and sandals.  The person interrupted what anyone else would have considered a private conversation.  “Oh, are you new here?”, the person said in a rather purposefully affected, feminine tone.  The woman at the desk introduced them. “Jim this is Bob”, she said.  “Roberta” the person said holding out her hand.  “And you are…?”, asked Bob/Roberta/whatever. “My name is James Robert Clark”, Jim replied.  “Oh no, Jim Bob?”, Bob/Roberta/whatever said rather too loudly. “Yes, Jim Bob. Apparently, Sue was already taken”.

February 2025