Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards Page A

men often have, who believe that if they are stubborn they are right – refused to speak or to defend himself. He then got fed up with the navy and came home. He married Rita, while all of those that knew her wondered why she would bother with him. They had two children.
    It was in his nature to drink, and he had to drink – he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t. To be what he was – what image he had of himself – it was only natural and authentic that he do so.
    He crossed the line after he was thirty, that is, he fell under a tractor while fighting a fire. He was laid up for almost a year – periodically. And finally lost his job, and got drunk every day. Every time he drank, Joe would resolve toquit. Sitting about the tavern, or down at the wharf, or working outside around the house, or hobbling once again to the liquor store through a variety of streets, as if he was making for himself some obstacle course and really wasn’t thinking of the wine he was about to buy, he would resolve to quit.
    He would take his bottles down to the bank and throw them over – only to climb down after them in the middle of the night. The bank was about sixty yards from their back door, which faced the river. There were small spaces of grass and alders where men and women hid away in the afternoons to drink – old veterans and girls who had grown up to go nowhere, and ended up at fifty somehow still in print dresses, their hair clasped by some silver broach. Joe often hopped down there to drink with them, and they would sing some songs together. And sometimes one of his friends, a salesman from the Gaspé, who always had a bottle in the trunk of his car, would come along. Joe would bring him into the house, and the man would try to get Adele to call him Uncle Pete. Then in the morning Joe wouldn’t be able to stare himself or anyone else in the face. He would sit out in the porch, with his chair turned about facing the wall, while Rita and Adele walked out the door to church.
    Once in January in his bare feet, he walked down over the bank and stepped on a broken wine bottle, cutting through to a tendon. After this his left foot bothered him also, and he found that he could no longer get a job full time – but only part-time doing odd jobs. For a while he took a job with a local finance company repossessing furniture. He would go into houses and while children cried in bewilderment and men swore at him and threatened him, and women both yelled and pleaded, outside the days were bright, and the heat played down like a vapour on thesteps, and dandelion heads lay tousled in the fresh-mown grass. He would take away chairs and couches – and feel sick of himself and the world. After a while he gave almost everything up, except drink.
    Because of his difficulty, Rita had to start fending for herself at a time when it wasn’t as accepted or as natural for women to go out to work. At this time, for a woman to work meant the family had somehow fallen. That is, the very women who today were saying that a woman’s career was indispensable were quite prepared to stay home then, because staying home was as much commonplace as working now is. But Rita, and a thousand Rita’s like her, worked every day.
    Joe remained in this phase of his drinking for seven years. Pledges from the priest didn’t solve matters, even when Father Dolan walked in telling Joe he would go to hell – if hell was not where he already was – while Rita sat in the corner, her breasts heavy, and Joe, who towered over the priest, nodded like a child.
    Joe managed to stay away from the hospitals and clinics, and managed to stay clear of anyone who suggested they might have a solution for his drinking. In those days he hated the AA and the detox with a passion, and cursed every time they were mentioned. He also looked at Rita at this time as if he was blaming her for something that no one else understood.
    Some nights they would find him alongside the ditch, as far away