Catch and Release

Clay raps on the front door with the small peeping window across the top. His eyes are level with it, so he can see when the stained-glass-distorted version of the homeowner comes closer to the door. The man at the door is exactly who Clay hoped it would be.

“Can I help you?” The man is hesitant. Rightfully so. Clay knows what he looks like in this showerless state, his facial hair growing so rampantly that it could have its own zip code.

Clay clears his throat, willing the whole thing to click with his best friend from years past before he must truly explain himself. “Hi, I d-don’t know–”

His friend’s gasp of, “Clay?”, cuts through his attempt. Clay nods. “Oh my gosh, man, how are you?” His eyes scan Clay up and down, almost subconsciously, but his face shows no sign of how he feels about what he’s seeing. “What’s up, what can I do for you?”

Clay was never good at asking for what he needed. From the simple things like asking his parents to show up to a baseball game, to the harder task of asking his parents to show up emotionally. It was always a meeting or a trip or not wanting to be in the same vicinity as their ex-spouse. It was never him. But luckily for Clay, it seemed that lots of parents were like his, including those of Ledger Cauley.

Ledger’s eyes remain on Clay as he waits for an explanation as to why he’s not only on his doorstep but seemingly cosplaying as a lumberjack, with his burly beard and full backpack. Clay clears his throat for a second time, hoping to keep his nervous stammer at bay. It rears its ugly head in the face of nerves, in the face of Clay trying to stand up for himself. It began in college when he was first prescribed his pills. When he took half a pill too much and was sluggish during practice, it was a genuine accident. His coach asked if he should be worried about Clay abusing his medicine, he stuttered his way through his honest explanation, and he could tell his coach didn’t believe him. Clay accidentally proved him right later in the year when he truly got hooked on the pills.

Clay forces himself to the present and tears the words from his tongue. “I know this is sudden and random and…I don’t know if…” The right words were hard to find, even if they weren’t chopped up by his insecurity. How do you invite yourself to live with someone, Clay pondered. The one thing Clay could always count on with Ledger was their ability to be honest with one another, if with no one else. “I’m not doing so good. But I’m trying to. I just need s-some…” Clay could not force the little four-letter word to leave his prideful mouth: help. His pride should be long gone by now---living on the streets doesn’t really equate to dignity. In fact, the diminishing of his ego began when he and Ledger moved off to college and Clay found he was no longer the big fish. His small town had been a lake, this town was an ocean, and he realized he was much better suited for freshwater.

Ledger had always known him very well, and Clay knew when he opened the door wider and said, “Come in,” that his heart still did. Maybe he was hesitant to let him in, maybe he would kick him out, but he let him in nonetheless.

Clay Lambrecht and Ledger Cauley were two names you didn’t often see separated. They co-captained the baseball team, were both on Homecoming Court, and went to the same university on the same baseball scholarship. Their small town treated them like royalty. Only the two of them knew how the other struggled. The town saw a shutout game from their star pitcher; Ledger saw Clay holding back tears as he realized his parents didn’t show. The town saw that Cauley boy throwing pasture parties while his parents were away on business; Clay saw Ledger drink until he passed out somewhere in the woods on the many acres of land.

However, it was to the shock of everyone when Clay dropped out of college and, essentially, off the face of the Earth. It was only when his first arrest record surfaced that anyone from small town Texas figured out what had happened. Clay’s first arrest was for public intoxication. He got off easy on account of the pills being prescribed. When his fifteen days of jail time were up, his roommates---of the apartment he had somehow weaseled his way into after getting kicked from the dorms---had already changed the locks on him. His second arrest, only technically detainment, occurred when he was yelled at by an officer about his lying on a bench. Apparently, it was a “homeless-free zone”. When Clay got in his face and told him it seemed like the whole city was a homeless-free zone, the officer didn’t take too kindly to it.

Entering Ledger’s childhood home, Clay is hit with a rush of nostalgic familiarity. Clay couldn’t believe his luck when he managed to find Ledger’s social media on one of the library computers and discovered he had taken over his parents’ house. Clay had avoided the small town for years—being homeless in the city was more under the radar than being homeless in the town you were the star athlete of. Yet, he ended up back here anyway. He sits down with Ledger at a new, modern dining table, nothing like the one from his teenage years. Ledger is cautious. He speaks carefully, he listens carefully, and when all is said and done, he only has a few rules for Clay.

Rule #1: Try to find a job. He offers the help of his little sister, Winslet, at her animal shelter—or sanctuary, as he calls it—a town over. Rule #2: Any drug use and he’s gone. Clay’s fine with this. After the two-week withdrawal in a dirty alley where he thought it might—and maybe hoped it might—be the end for him, never taking a pill again would be too soon. But addiction is a tricky thing, and it doesn’t always listen to what you want—it tells you what you need. He pushes the fearful, taunting voices to the back of his mind.

When Clay takes a shower, it’s the first hot one he’s had in months. Ledger lends him a shaver, and Clay watches with relief as the unruly, matted hair falls into the sink from his face. Clay is unpacking his minimal belongings when Ledger comes in to suggest pizza for dinner. Much like his shower, this meal is his first hot one in a while. The two eat their dinner, a TV show serving as background noise. Clay can’t help but notice how much younger Ledger looks than him. As he watches the thirty-year-old man dig into a slice of pizza, he still sees his teenage friend, someone he recognizes. When Clay looks at himself in the mirror, he can’t say the same.

The first few days pass with ease. Ledger goes to work, and Clay does his best not to be a burden. Ledger holds back tears at the thought of what the world did to his best friend. And, even more, what the world didn’t do to him.

Truthfully, Ledger is weighed down with guilt. He was meant to be there for Clay in college. He should have noticed when he started to take more than the recommended dosage of the pain pills for his near-career-ending wrist injury. He should have noticed when Clay began to sleep through lectures. He should have noticed when his best friend showed up to a championship game high as a kite. But the truth was that he did notice. He just ignored it. He was just a dumb kid who thought these problems would solve themselves. He was scared to face what it could actually be. When Ledger moved back home after college and the small-town rumor-mill spun tales of the fall of Clay Lambrecht, he still did his best to ignore it. And for that he would always carry shame. Clay showing up at his door wasn’t only a welcome reunion, it was Ledger’s chance at retribution. His chance to be a good friend.

A little less than a week in, Clay decides it’s time to start pulling his weight. Ledger talks to his sister, and she reluctantly agrees to take Clay on at her shelter. Her only requirement is drug testing. Clay tries to pull his ear away from the door where he’s listening to the conversation. But he can’t make himself move. It’s quiet for a moment, then he hears Winslet sigh. “Does he seem all there?”

“Yeah,” Ledger insists. “He seems quieter…timid.” Then, the silence persists again. “He’s still the same Clay, I’m sure of it.” When Ledger says these words, Clay almost feels like they could be true.

The next day Clay takes a drug test and nearly falls to his knees when Winslet confirms that he passed it. His days consist of helping her wrangle the bigger dogs and giving much needed love to unwilling cats. Clay feels no better than the abandoned animals when he catches the way Winslet looks at him. He knows that in high school—much like many other girls, guys, and even parents—she looked at him like a savior. Now, she looks at him like the Patron Saint of the Lost Causes. She says things to him like, “You can take a break if you need,” after he lifts a particularly heavy dog, and Clay feels like he should cower in the corner of his own cage. She would never have thought of ‘Clay Lambrecht, Small Town Superstar’ as someone who needed to take breaks.

But the work gives Clay purpose. It gives him routine. He showers twice a day just because he can. He makes dinner for him, Ledger, and sometimes Winslet. He slips envelopes of cash onto the desk in Ledger’s home office, though they always seem to find their way back to Clay. Even though he isn’t what the ideal vision of success might look like, he can see a future forming before him. He can feel the ache of his past fading—he can no longer smell the trash from the dumpster or the smell of his own urine caked on him, can no longer feel the sticky ground beneath his cheek as he tries for just a moment of sleep. Clay feels for the first time in years like he might deserve these nice things he has.

And then he’s hit with an aftershock, as if his addiction knows how well everything is going and couldn’t wait to wreck it. He wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He shakes for hours before giving in and sitting fully clothed under the steaming shower. This is how Ledger finds him in the morning, grappling with a bottle of Ibuprofen just for the feel of a few pills going down his throat. For the rest of the morning, Ledger walks on eggshells around him, before leaving for work.

When Ledger returns home from work, Winlset in tow, Clay all but gets on his knees and begs. “I haven’t used, I promise,” is what he tries to say. “I h-h-haven’t—” is what comes out instead. He feels suddenly like a fifteen-year-old Clay, pleading with his feuding parents to put it all aside and come watch him do what he loves, what he’s good at. His wrist aches at the memory. Ledger stops him with a nod. The three sit silently until Winslet urges Ledger on. He swallows the knot in his throat and asks, “Would it be okay if we check your room and bathroom? Just in case?” Clay knows he should take it well—the Cauley siblings care enough about him to make sure he hasn’t relapsed. But even though he knows they won’t find anything—that there’s nothing to find—a small part of him dies at the distrust. He feels like he’s been caught for a crime he didn’t commit. Clay always longed for involved parents. Now at thirty, he feels like he has some, and he thinks all the wishing might have been misplaced. Winslet asks him to test again, and when the results come back, even though Clay passes, he feels like a failure.

When it’s confirmed once again that Clay is in the clear, business continues as usual, and he has a renewed vigor—a need to continue to prove himself. And when he recognizes some of the townspeople who come into the animal sanctuary, he ignores their looks of pity and confusion. The ones he has a harder time pretending about are the looks of disgust. When his old high school baseball coach comes in with his grandkids, he feels all too much like the stereotype of athlete-turned-addict. His wrist begins to ache again, and for the first time in months, he actually longs for a pain pill—a longing he pushes deep into his gut. His only sliver of optimism comes from the thought that at least people are no longer looking at him in disgust from his odor or appearance as they did on the streets. He watches the fish swim around the tank at the shelter and feels that maybe he can be at peace with his life here.

On a Friday, Winslet gives Clay his paycheck. As she finishes closing up, Clay takes a walk just to feel the incoming autumn air—a rarity to actually notice in Texas. He sees a homeless man, age undeterminable, with a plastic cup on a dirty blanket. Clay walks straight past him to the nearest bank. He cashes his check, comes back, and gives the entirety of his week’s pay to the man, who begins to cry. Clay doesn’t wonder what he’ll do with the money or if he’ll “spend it right.” He knows better. Clay makes it back to the shelter just as Winslet locks the doors. She notes his glossy eyes and asks if he’s okay. When Clay breaks down, Winslet gathers him into her arms like she does to some of the particularly needy shelter animals. It hits Clay with a startling clarity that he actually misses his deceased mother, or at least the hope of the mother she could have been to him but never was.

Clay would be lying if he said he didn’t still get those bone-deep aches for a high every now and again as the year passes. But he slowly but surely finds ways to ease the yearning. He starts going to the gym with Ledger and sees his frail, starved body turn back into a beautiful vessel, a machine to carry him forward. When he looks at himself in the mirror he seldom thinks of his dad telling him to man up nor mothers on the street tucking their kids safely away from him. For the first time, past is past. And when Ledger and Winslet’s eyes land on him as he blows out a number one candle on a cake, he recognizes that it isn’t the look of pity aimed toward a wounded animal but a look of love aimed toward family.

-- This is a short story I wrote for a fiction writing class that I hope to develop into a full length novel someday. So, I would love your thoughts and critiques on the characters and general story line. Thank you.