The Higher Power of Lucky

Lucky had had the day off on Saturday because there was no twelve-step meeting that day. So on Sunday afternoon, she picked up cigarette butts and other trash left over from Friday’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She collected plenty of butts, because the ex-drinkers stood around talking and smoking before their meeting. The ashtrays were big coffee cans and flowerpots filled with sand—and they were always loaded with butts that the ex-smokers didn’t want to see or smell before their meeting.

Lucky went around back to the Dumpster and stored her broom and rake against it. She heard someone moving chairs inside the museum, so she eased herself quietly into her lawn chair to listen.

The best part of the meetings came after they were done reading from a book called Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Even though that part was a little bit boring, Lucky listened carefully for information about how to find your Higher Power. Then came the part where people told their most interesting and horrifying stories of how they hit rock bottom.

First it was the Captain’s turn. Before he got the part-time mail-sorting job at the post office, he was an airline pilot who had the calm, in-charge voice of a TV airline pilot, so Lucky recognized it easily. He said how he was addicted so bad to cigarettes that he even smoked in the shower. He smoked from the first moment he opened his eyes in the morning until he fell asleep at night. He smoked while he ate. He even burned a big hole in his bride’s wedding dress the day they got married.

The story was excellent so far. Then the Captain told about how his wife gave him a choice: quit smoking or she would divorce him.

“I told her, how about I switch to low tar, filtered,” said the Captain. “I thought it was a pretty big sacrifice for a Camel smoker. She didn’t agree and she walked out. That was almost rock bottom. I remember thinking, ‘My wife just left me! I can’t quit smoking now!’”

People laughed and clapped.

The Captain went on. “But then I came to a meeting and started working the twelve steps. I found my Higher Power. And here I am.”

Lucky’s enzymes started churning. She leaned forward to listen carefully. Maybe the Captain would explain exactly how he found his Higher Power and also where, which would be extremely helpful. So far, Lucky hadn’t found a trace of her Higher Power, though she tried hard to be alert for the slightest hint of it.

Having a Higher Power could help a person know what to do about the problem of a Guardian who, every time it got too hot, or there was French music or a snake in the dryer, seemed like she might quit and go back home to France.

Someone cleared her throat and shouted, “I’m Mildred. I choose not to smoke.”

Lucky almost tipped over in her chair. It was Mrs. Prender, Miles’s grandma. Lucky had never heard her talk at any of the meetings.

Mrs. Prender went on, “I was in the hospital with quadruple pneumonia. After the doc told me I’d die if I didn’t quit smoking, I snuck out the back and lit a cigarette. I coughed so hard I broke a rib, so I had to quit for a while until they let me go home. Next day I dropped a cigarette on the couch and set it on fire, and then I set my hair on fire. I called the fire department and went outside to wait. Well, it was raining, so I stood there in the road bawling and trying to smoke a sopping-wet cigarette. But that wasn’t rock bottom.”

Mrs. Prender’s story, Lucky decided, was even better than the Captain’s.

“It was my grown daughter. I knew she’d been sneaking cigarettes since she was a girl, but I never done nothing about it. Figured, what could I say, a smoker myself. Couple years ago I get a call from the police in L.A., can I come pick up her little boy. She’s been arrested for selling dope.”

Lucky frowned. The little boy had to be Miles. But Miles’s mother was supposed to be in Florida, nursing her sick friend.

Mrs. Prender went on. “I go on down to L.A. for my grandson. My daughter gets a long jail sentence. So I figure—this is it. I’m not bringing up another kid with myself setting a bad example.” Mrs. Prender blew her nose loudly. “Once I decided to quit, it was like turning off a light switch. I just did it. That was almost two years ago.”

Lucky had the same jolting feeling as when you’re in a big hurry to pee and you pull down your pants fast and back up to the toilet without looking—but some man or boy before you has forgotten to put the seat down. So your bottom, which is expecting the usual nicely shaped plastic toilet seat, instead lands shocked on the thin rim of the toilet bowl, which is quite a lot colder and lower. Your bottom gets a panic of bad surprise. That was the same thump-on-the-heart shock Lucky got finding out that Miles’s mother was in jail.

12. Parsley