Free Exile on Kalamazoo Street by Michael Loyd Gray

the crow—high up in the tree nearest the deck, looking down toward me. But with crows, who knows what they truly are looking at, and what they are really aware of, what they care about? I felt like throwing up for a moment, then that passed, and soon the feeling returned and I did finally throw up, mostly saliva. As I wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand, the crow lifted off slowly from the branch, as if in slow-motion—although maybe it only seemed like slow motion to me, and for the crow it was normal flight and speed—and flew lazily in a circle above the backyard before darting over the trees toward the lake.
    I managed to grab a pillow from the sofa behind me and slip it under my head. I sagged heavily against the pillow, which sagged against the side of the sofa, and Black Kitty sagged against me, his tail again flicking at my face like a furry and cool flame that teased and tickled and comforted instead of burned. I lay there a long time, rubbing Black Kitty behind the ears, hearing Black Kitty purr, and soon I really felt as though the last vile dregs of the Whiskey River were emptying out of me and cascading off me and splashing across the floor to the deck door, pooling briefly before finding an exit, and then seeping under the door and onto the deck, flowing off and freezing and turning the backyard into a skating rink.

Chapter 6: Beyond the Whiskey River
    F rom the very start of exile, my ability to think had been almost exclusively restricted to the present, not much beyond the hour, certainly not beyond the day, and with the frigid burial of Whiskey River, the past opened up to me again. A vivid kaleidoscope, at first. Even a tad overwhelming and too bright and rapid and kinetic for me to maintain focus and make sense of any one thing. It all sped by in a blur: faces and events coming into focus momentarily before disappearing back into the swirl of images and colors and sounds, and even smells, that formed a river of history. I worried, at first, about the prospect of another river running through me, but then time slowed down, and I began to truly see things for the first time in a long while.
    Soon I was able to follow random images and isolate them, zoom in, fix them for inspection, analyze them. I recalled a night before exile began, a night of drinking for no more reason than a bottle and a glass existed, and my ability to pour the glass full many times was unimpeded, and my ability to raise my arm and glass to my mouth worked perfectly and naturally. Alcohol was the wondrous giant killer I accepted and relied on—the Whiskey River—and I welcomed the disease, opened my house to it, opened my mouth to it, left a light on for it, longed and pined for it like a neglected lover, though I did not then know it was a disease, and instead looked upon it as a friend, my good and dear friend.
    As with all good friends, it was natural to want to have fun with it, to do things together, to see things together, to go places together—to share and enhance the love and intensify the love with shared experiences—and so I introduced Whiskey River to Exile on Main Street , the great Stones album. Much later I would understand that Whiskey River knew Exile on Main Street , knew all the great albums, and all the great songs, because they were among the countless artifacts, the infinite multitudes of artifacts and devices that a Whiskey River absorbed on its course through the human vessel.
    But it was Exile on Main Street that I was recalling so well, and as Whiskey River jumped its banks that night and filled me up and swept me away—swept me off my feet—I floated and drifted and felt no pain and could recall no morality, had no regrets. I marveled at the songs—“All Down the Line,” “Happy,” “Tumbling Dice,” and “Sweet Virginia,” but the next morning, when I could barely function before coffee and food, and not much better