the Lord looking down in pity

At the end of the road, 

At bottom of the the bottle,

There begins belief.

At the end of lonely road, at an abandoned, hunting camp, a young man meets his future in a broken-down old drunk. The seemingly simple decision to stay—the whim of a moment—costs the old man dearly, but gives the young man the greatest gift one can receive.

… It was a simple, watershed-crossing of a moment—the crest of a gentle hill overtopped without even realizing it or the turning of a tide on a broad, shallow beach. It was not a well-considered, conscious decision. Not a decision that’s obviously going to change one’s life, like going to this college or that, or asking for a woman’s hand in marriage, or having a child, or taking a job in California or New York or some Godforsaken South Dakota city. No, this was so subtle that I didn’t even feel it, then one day I remembered and reflected and understood that it was this exercise of free will—this decision barely felt—which would come to define what I was, and what I would be, and, most importantly, what I am now.

… Static on this page, words bear slight resemblance to the man who lay on the sand next to the dying fire. Words can tell you that he was a hopeless drunk. A rummy of the first degree. Drinker of spirits. Crusher of souls. Souse. Sot. Stumblebum. Boozer. Not a hardworking hobo. (Weed your garden for a meal mister?) No King of the Road. Not a tramp, tramping over the next rise to find, what?—I didn’t know. He was a God damn lush. A lousy drunkard who’d pick the frozen pint from the pocket of a dead friend. Call him a dipsomaniac if you want to be formal about it. A toper. Or maybe a break-your-heart, back-alley wino like Kerouac before he went on the harder stuff and became a whiskey-drinking bhikku. 

But after all the words he was still Harry. And Harry was in a bad way, a really bad way.