Read Online The Falling Away by Hines - Free Book Online Page B

he’d worked his way through all the pharmacies in the area—easily a couple dozen—he could move back to the top of the list without attracting any attention.
    But the wheels had fallen off that particular plan when the scrip pad went missing. Maybe he’d dropped it on the way to the post office. Maybe he’d accidentally mixed it in with one of the trash piles. Maybe he, ironically enough, had cribbed it away in the middle of a Percocet-fueled stupor. It was harder than ever to get to that stage now, the stage that made everything unimportant, but he could still hit it now and then.
    Whatever the cause, the scrip pad was gone. And shortly after that, so was his stash of painkillers. No matter, he told himself. Hadn’t Scott, that eminent sage appointed to his case by the VA, told him a couple months ago that his doctor wanted to wean him off the painkillers? This was a good excuse to do that. He could do this without the Perks or the Vikes or the Oxies.
    Such had been the lies he’d told himself three short days ago. He’d been fine the first twenty-four hours, something south of fine the second twenty-four, and now, sweaty and shaky. Cold. Sick. On top of it all, fuzzy and itchy.
    In the midst of it, even though he didn’t really care for alcohol, it became the panacea that filled his mind. Okay, so he was addicted to the painkillers, but he knew a few shots could kill the pain. Hadn’t he watched more than a few folks on the rez kill their pain with liquor and beer?
    He’d staggered to The Rainbow and tried to drink away the pain with middling success.
    â€œYou look like I feel,” a voice said to him.
    Dylan looked up, saw a guy with a full beard who looked like a lumberjack sliding onto the stool next to him. Dylan hadn’t even known it was unoccupied; last time he’d looked, some drunk woman had been sitting there, working on whiskey sours. She’d held her liquor pretty well, but she kept lighting and then putting out the same cigarette as she tried to focus on her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. After the third or fourth time she’d stamped out the cigarette, it had bent and had begun to lose the tobacco inside; at roughly the same time, Dylan had lost any limited interest in continuing to watch her.
    But now, lumberjack Joe was sitting next to him, waiting for some snappy comeback to his You look like I feel line. Fine. He could play that game.
    â€œSo how do you feel?” he asked.
    The lumberjack smiled. “Like I just been run over.”
    Dylan returned the smile. “Then I look like I feel too.”
    Lumberjack Joe held out a hand. “Name’s Webb.”
    Dylan took his hand and shook it, wishing he hadn’t engaged in this conversation in the first place.
    Yeah, starting a conversation was your first mistake , Joni said. Getting hooked on painkillers, then going off them cold turkey, then trying to drown the withdrawals with liquor were all great moves .
    Shut up, Joni. I’ll send you to the kill box .
    Shutting up .
    â€œI’m Dylan.”
    â€œDylan? As in—”
    â€œYeah. As in Bob Dylan. My parents were big into sixties folk rock. Had a sister named Joni, named after Joni Mitchell.”
    Webb nodded, ordered a tap beer from the bartender.
    Dylan smiled. He’d left a door wide open for this guy, that whole line about had a sister, and he hadn’t walked through it. The natural follow-up to that statement would be to ask what had happened to the sister. But if you were the kind of person who knew it was best to keep old skeletons in the closet, you didn’t peek inside other people’s closets. Even when they opened them a crack for you.
    â€œI’ll buy your beer,” Dylan said, pushing a fiver toward the bartender when he came back with a tall glass.
    â€œYou, sir, are a scholar and a gentlemen,” Webb said, tilting his glass in Dylan’s direction.
    â€œWhich is