Fourth Step: Running to Dream Big

By Al Lucas

Paul is resurrected from the sands of Book Three, the Smoking Gun and is running in the Boston Marathon for the girl of his dreams, Paula, in book four. So exerted is he, he falls into a prolonged slumber that takes damn near half the book. He awakens to the stark fact that Paula is nowhere to be found..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312046139

Al Lucas

This is the original 1st person version called High Steppin' off da Crack, first submitted as a 3rd person account under the name of simply Hi' Steppin' years ago. This 1st person version is more in keeping with an autobiographical style while still using fictional names as characters and was created before the 3rd person version, but lost, only to be found later after the 3rd person publication. It opens with an emaciated man standing on the day of 9/11 in the VA lobby, awaiting hospitalization for crack usage. One bizarre incident after another occurs leaving his sanity no longer in question. Being a Vietnam-era vet, he is screened and then followed up by two psychiatrists of Oriental persuasion who treat him rather realistically, to his chagrin. He is discharged with a nursing plan to attend Avon Park, a renowned dual diagnosis center in Sebring, FL, but first must go to SafePlace, a transitional housing facility in Tampa to protect him from the dealers while he awaits an opening in Avon. First, however, Paul decides to go home and have one more bout with crack, to get the high he never had, using his car as leverage. It doesn't work out so well. He thus attends SafePlace without a car. It should be noted, he has read to one of the psychiatrists his ongoing novel and continues to read or have read to any and all its contents. One person, a roommate, at SafePlace is so moved, he blows his brains out. At Avon, he is assigned a class coordinator, Manfred Mundane, an ex-military pilot, who is unsympathetic about Paul's writing skills. Getting kicked out for bumming cigarettes, Paul comes home with new verve. He will in fact attend AA and does. He fights his way out of bankruptcy and foreclosure blindly with no help from family or friends and miraculously incurs twelve years of clean time. The book ends with a surprise, reserved for the reader. It should also be noted, the narrative weaves between Paul's acid days in Morocco and his current plight. His journal is in the past tense; the book's outcome, in the present with both coming to an end in Paul's bedroom where reality merges in a sexual farce.

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Problem Defined

Paul had died in the Third Step. By all appearance his face was covered in the sand, his brains all over the place. How could he piece it together? Everyone thought he was dead, but he fooled them all. By some virtue of God, he came together again. Everyone at the wedding was shocked. His slatternly bride to be, exclaimed, Lordie.

He argued, debatably, that existence was a farce. It was more than a farce though. It was a persistent farce. The fantasy carried him far, far into the reaches where he returned to this world because of the rejection by God.

He didn’t like his thinking of himself and as a consequence of his actions, but it was at that moment he became rid of the obsession. He never touched a cigarette again. He was a prophet foreseeing his own demise should he indulge again.

Bent on the destruction of all living things, he marveled not as to why God had rejected him, but alas, it was the thought behind it. He had considered himself unfit. Was he meant to destroy everything in the name of God? He didn’t really care. He was not the working man. Many anarchists feel that way, but they are blind to the purity of the working man, those that relied on physical labor. Realistically life, no matter how hateful, is the school of hard knocks. Paul had learned his lesson about giving in, now to apply it. The nagging thought of the debt owned taxpayer, however, prevailed. He lived off of them all and somehow had now come clean, but to what avail?

He was at it again. Philosophizing wistfully. Anarchists simply want to create chaos, while he wanted to annihilate the job market and gain free access to the wealth of the world. He wanted to undo the system from within. He belonged to a strange cult whose ideology was based on nuclear fusion. The particles of the universe, radioactive in nature, exploded in people’s minds, creating all sorts of unexpected turns.

His mind was still exploding, He had read recently of an emerging anti-Semitism movement in Europe and wondered if among the beleaguered Jews there was a Jewish maiden to rescue. A marriage of such significance could alter everything. He would find solace in her, a physically attractive sex object, who was part of the chosen few.

He had nothing to offer in the form of dowry but that was the woman’s domain anyway. In frustration, he called Carmine, an old flame.

"Carmine, this is Paul. I miss you, you gypsy.’

You’re not supposed to use this line.

I was kinda lonesome.

You’ll get us all killed.

I thought that was the idea.

You’re a weak link, Paul. It’s the Arabs we’re after. You’re in the States, use your contacts.

We are supposed to go up together, Carmine.

Wrong.

You lied to me then, you are no comrade.

I told you things that made you happy at the time, she said.

Like feel for the movement?

That is antiestablishment bullshit, Paul. I’m proactive now.

I’m trying to get 100% VA compensation. I’ll be set for life and can sponsor you.

Call me when it happens. But when did you ever think out of the box?

You are the box. I did the 2000 Census and the 2010 Census. I am management material. That counts for something, Carmine. You are the one who’s broke. Your country and the euro are totally out of control.

That’s why you're calling isn’t it? To hack the European Central Bank.

I’m not a hacker. I’m a stoic. I wait patiently.

Well, wait then.

Are you implying I give up easily? If you are, you are dead wrong. I’m in recovery through the famous Twelve Steps.

She abruptly changed her tone. You want to sponsor me?

Yes. When I get the hundred percent, I’ll sponsor you.

Will you lavish me with trinkets, oh prophet?

A wrist band to follow me.

From the psyche ward?

Carmine, allow me some latitude. I believe we must develop an algorithm that ensures welfare until the end and make it an app for everyone to download.

We do quite well here in our socialist country of Holland.

An algorithm that Google can’t unravel. Credo first, Carmine, then code. I want a slogan that sells and a system that buys it.

You are the marketer of thought.

Exactly.

Well, what’s the slogan, then?

Market for the Meager.

She hung up on him.

Chapter 2: The Mistress

Carmine was heated. She didn’t need the likes of an American beneficiary butting his nose into her affairs, beleaguering her, and not bequeathing. She had been around the block. She decided to go to the student theater down on Likenstratt where she and Paul had hung out forty years ago.

You won’t believe this, Carl.

Yes, sis.

Paul just called on the line.

What did he want?

"He wants to get into the European Central Bank.

Really. Is it an offshore account he’s stumbled onto?

He’ll expose us all.

We can’t let him see our sources. He’ll absorb them into his account.

He’s manic and paranoid. Choose your bipolarity. He used to be a programmer. He worked for IBM for two weeks. Carl, he almost proposed.

Paul has hit a nerve, hasn’t he?

You’re my brother, you’re the one I love. He’s so crude. When he was here forty years ago, it was kiss kiss. He was so head over heels. He loved my gypsy. All he could do was eat the French fries in the park with loads of mayonnaise. Now because Americans use ketchup, he misses our culture. I think he wants to import me.

That’s ugly.

Rural.

He’s applying the same pressure points he used years ago, namely the fallout of radioactivity with an ongoing criticism of the over-civilized nature of our world. Carl, you are so smart. I love you.

I’m your brother.

I guess that’s it.

Call Paul back. Tell him you’re willing to text him.

"Remember when he did Living Theatre as a play of his own? He typed the fucking thing on the balcony of our place here. Hosing Amsterdam he entitled it. He had billows of smoke coming from Hoover vacuum cleaners down the aisles while banana yogurt was served to the patrons by the ushers."

I remember.

He was amateurish then, as he is now.

Is he incontinent too?

No, he’s still a pisser.

Love?

Yes Carl?

Let’s put this to bed.

Together?

Naturally.

Chapter 3: Running for Life

Paul couldn’t put up with incest. Carmine and her brother would have to wait. The Boston Marathon was about to start. Paul had boned up with repeated spin classes at the Y. He knew he blew smoke with Carmine and Carl so he concentrated on his associates here in Tampa. He told everyone he would go the distance. Carmine had rejected him. Why not run with the strong-willed crowd in America?