…by the gate of Bathrabbim.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

All of us drink more than we should, but Uri, Jap’s friend, has a real problem, the way we define “problem” by the standards that each of us uses to justify his level of hedonism. Jap is a great admirer of Dr. Phield, and he thought that maybe Phield could talk to Uri to some effect, so he brought Uri to one of Fred’s gatherings about a year ago.

Phield told Jap, “I’m not a practicing therapist, Jap. Nor qualified to give anybody advice on something as deep-seated as alcoholism.”

Jap said, “Uri is in dark need of an alternator.”

In the kitchen with Fred and a couple of the other guys, including Jap, Phield said, “Over time, most alcoholics forget what it is that drove them to drink in the first place: the desired effect, as it were. But of little edification to somebody who has managed to stoke his common human weaknesses into an inextinguishable bag of self-loathing that he can only tolerate with more drink: a chicken or the egg kind of thing. The capacity to engage in riskier emotions is replaced by a a bottomless reservoir for self-indulgence.”

Jap said, “You can’t harpoon sympático for a fellow humanist, Dr. Phield?”

“Uri’s desire to quit is certainly a step in the right direction, Jap. But I’m not the right person to guide him any further.”

“A pinhead of elucidation can light a man’s way down the last mile.”

Phield was running a small insurance company now. It gave him plenty of time to think on the things that Phield liked to think about. He was putting together a techno-thriller for publication. But he made an appointment for Uri to come talk to him. He liked Jap, too.

Now Uri Phillips made his way here—and ultimately to Phield’s office—throught the twists and turns of labrynthine fate:

One night, Adele Kinderman, a junior at the university, attended a party across state lines in the Kentucky hills thrown by one of the fraternities already in Dutch with the dean for their wildness. She never totally passed out through the night, but she was only conscious enough to count to five when at least that many of the frats raped her. When she felt fully capable of driving, she got into her car, and maybe a mile later, or fifty, she couldn’t remember, she drove the car off a cliff.

Luther Phillips, seventy years old already, found her in a gulley the next morning while he was out hunting. He pulled her out of the car and took her to his house. He lived alone, separated by at least five miles from his closest neighbor. His first wife, who had wanted children, came home pregnant one day after eight barren years, and told him, “It hain’t y’orn,” and left him. His second one left after three; the child in her belly “tweren’t his’n neither”. A band of children, some of them his except for errant biology, would bedevil him every time he went to town, hollering things like, “Reptile dysfunction! Reptile dysfunction!”

Adele woke up after four days while he was sitting by her bed reading the bible, and she said, “How many times did you fuck me?” and he said, “I wouldn’ a dun that lessen ‘twere what it tooken ta save ya.”

She didn’t leave until two years later to go back to New York fo finish a teaching degree, and reconcile with her mom and dad. Luther and Uri (now Uri Phillips) attended her graduation with her immigrant parents, whose idea it had been to send her out to the heartland to find her American self. Adele went back to the little town in the hills to teach not only the children but some of the now awestruck women of the town whom she taught how to “han’write proper.”

When Uri was twelve, Luther had a stroke out in the woods and fell on top of Uri, dying and breaking Uri’s arm at the same time. It was at this time that Uri began to drink maybe not seriously, but occasionally heavier, already familiar in small increments with Luther’s famous squeezings. Adele decided right after his graduation from high school to relate to Uri the true circumstances of his birth. Thie wisdom of this decision is yet to be configured.

When Uri went to college, he met Tammy, who could drink as long and hard as he could, and they showed up married one spring break at Adele’s, who assumed a “qué será, será” pholosophy about it and took Tammy into the bigger city to get her into some kind of salon shape—and some moron ran them off the road at about the same place Adele had tried to commit suicide twenty years before. This time she didn’t make it. Neither did Tammy.

Two years later, Uri woke up at a motel in town with no memory of how he had gotten here, and the deed to a ranchhouse in one of the townships. Jap says Uri won it in a card game from a real estate agent. Uri certainly didn’t need any more capital. He was comfortably wrapped in a million or two of insurance money from Luther, Adele, and from Tammy, who Adele took to an insurance company just after the perm and manicure. Uri liked it here, and he found a great friend in Jap, so he stayed. That was six years ago:

Phield said, “Well Uri, I have to say that if anybody ever got driven to drink, it was you. In this instance, my question would be, ‘What will drive you to sobriety?’ Is there anything you have ever wanted to do that you have to be sober for?”

Uri said, “I used to want to play the banjo.”

Phield says, “Did you ever do it?

“No.”

“How long did you ever stay completely sober?”

“I get sober once in a while just long enough for my mind to feel the shame and the sickness, the remorse, and the guilt of breaking my promises to quit. I debate suicide. And then I start drinking again. But I stayed sober for two years once.”

“Well, goodness! Tell me about that time!”

This girl, Tammy (coincidentally), showed up at Uri’s front door one day with a kitten in her arms, asking if he might have some milk or something for it. It would have been difficult to decide which one of them was in worse shape: the kitten had a broken leg; Tammy had at least one social disease; Lily had feline leukemia—and neither one had a home. Uri took both of them to doctors. Tammy stayed a year. And bloomed. And left. Lily stayed with him and lived for two years.

Phield said, “How long after Tammy left did you start drinking again.”

Uri said, “Two years.”

“Wait a minute! When did you stop?”

“When she left.”

Phield told Jap on the phone, “Some men go through life looking for an answer to which there is no question. They’re driven to nihilism, even to fatality by an inability to accept that living isn’t all that complicated. The heart won’t stop beating just because you tell it to. The world would be a lonely place if that were so.”

About a week later, Phield showed up at Uri’s door with a kitten in his hands. Phield said, “She came to my back door looking like she needed help. I thought about how good you are at this sort of thing. Can you do something for her?”

A month later, Jap called Phield and asked him if they could have lunch. Uri came along. They all had the tilapia special. Jap had a glass of beer. Phield had a glass of white wine. And Uri drank ice tea. Phield asked Uri if he still had the cat, and Uri said, “Sharon’s doing fine. She’s going to live for a long time.” He himself was shuffling papers to try to get into veterinary school.

Waiting without speaking by the car while Uri took care of the bill that he insisted on paying, Jap looked at Phield almost lovingly for a moment, and said quietly, “Bravo, Maestro. Bravo.”

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

Noe.