Start It Up
My small contribution to humanity, my very small contribution, is that I carry jumper cables in the trunk of my car and I am sometimes able to use them to start the dead batteries of other cars. As engines rumble back into life, there are looks of joy, or at least relief, on the faces of the previously stranded motorists. For a moment, I am their hero.
I am particularly grateful when the one I am helping knows how to use the cables I provide. I know the basics, positive to positive, negative to negative, but I’m still nervous that the battery is going to blow up in my face or that I am going to ignite both cars on fire. We’d stand back in horror, back away from the burning wreckage. So much for heroes.
In the early days of my sobriety, I was filled with the spirit. I felt my Higher Power everywhere. There was a young man in our group who was always morose. We would chat sometimes, take a walk together. But as I said, he was morose. He saw no meaning in life. He wasn’t getting this whole Higher Power thing.
One day he mentioned he was looking for a sponsor, and I thought, I’m your man. I had plenty of Higher Power, enough left over to charge him up. As we walked, I hinted at the idea of my being his sponsor. He tilted his shoulders away, leaned toward the curb. I came right out with it, almost demanded it: I will be your sponsor! He swayed back from the curb, looked at me out the corner of his eye. Fuck no, he said, you’re more fucked up than I am.
Well, what an asshole, I thought, if you don’t want me as your sponsor.
For a couple of years, I kept looking around for someone who might want me as their sponsor. Finally, the one guy who asked me only did so because he wanted to borrow some money.
By then I was married, I miraculously had a steady job. One day I was walking to a meeting. It was a warm summer morning. Light shone off the windows of buildings. I smelled something sweet in the air. My legs felt good, loose and light, and my head rose a little closer to the sky. I’m okay, I thought, I’m almost a regular sort of guy. I turned around and I never went to another meeting.
The years roll by. Maybe I was wrong to stop going, I don’t know. I don’t drink, but I don’t feel that Higher Power so much, and there’s a sadness in that. Maybe just a touch of it comes back when I start up the cars. The cables come off. I didn’t blow us up! Smiles, handshakes. Sometimes we even hug, strangers hugging, cars chugging away.
Author: Robert Garner McBrearty has published five books of fiction, with a new collection of stories forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press. His stories have appeared widely including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, New England Review, Narrative Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
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