Jimmy

Jimmy was going to get his ankle fixed,

messed it up bad jumping off a garage

roof. Not sure why he was up there in

the first place. Could have been high or

down, some kind of pain killers he was

on even before his injury. Damn fool jum-

ped instead of using a ladder. Jimmy was

out of money, was scheduled to get sur-

gery at the VA for free, needed a place to

stay for a couple of weeks. I offered him

to hang out with me after we finished our

treatment for substance abuse, a 27-day

inpatient program at the VA. I was clean,

but Jimmy needed meds for his pain, and

took more than prescribed which was not

good for me. Unless you clean up your act,

I warned him, you will have to leave. I can’t

risk falling back into that addiction trap. So,

while cooking dinner one night, Jimmy pas-

sed out and nearly caught my place on fire.

That was it, and I evicted Jimmy right there

and then. He had another friend he could

stay with, and I sent him packing. Not two

weeks later Jimmy’s other friend called to

tell me that Jimmy had died, O. D. ed on ille-

gal drugs he had bought on the street with a

$4000 inheritance he had recently received

from a deceased aunt. Goddamn it, Jimmy, I

thought to myself, a lot of good any of that

does you now. And I thanked God I was sober

and still alive. More than I could say for poor

Jimmy, 52-years old and sent to an untimely

grave. Money in his pocket pissed away,
a dead man just the same, messed up till
the end, ankle and all.

                          -30-

Chris Hanch 2-24-2020