The Fifth Step: The Last Job, To Sweep the Heavens

By Al Lucas

Here we have Paul Undres, defending himself against creditors, be it men or women, as he vainly tries to compete for his share in the Big Pie. His last job is to sweep the heavens. It's a night time position.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312133310

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 Fear Factor

Paul had it down now. Fear was the motivation of all things, little or big, small or large, minute or gargantuan.  No matter how you attributed it, the mind is a muck in fear.  What philosopher would disagree?  And what is the worst fear of all fears? Fear of self or fear of world detonation—or just plain death? All are invasive. One ego-less, the other, contemporary—the last, dirty.

Paul checked history. Phobos was the god of fear. He was begot by Aphrodite and was quite scary, mostly bravado, though, both to himself and others. He was a noxious sort.

Fear is only a feeling concomitant with a thought which corrodes the spirit. It eats away at the soul.

Being a staunch AA’er, an Alcoholic Anonymous devotee, succumbing to fear was mental laxity.

He made a phone call. Constance, this is Paul.

I don’t believe it.

Yes, we had quite an affair, didn’t we?

I guess.

Are you afraid of me, Constance? You have nothing to fear, you know.

I’m afraid you’ll go off on one of your manic episodes."

Then you are afraid, he said.

Yes.

You just think I’m a demagogue, spouting nonsense, not devoted to anyone or anything.

You said it.

I’m milking you, aren’t I?

I must admit I don’t like being your mother.

I ball myself and cry about it, don’t I?

Pretty much.

I wanted to be that man for you which is why I’m calling. I’m not content with the way things are.

I don’t need a man.

You’ve worked your way out of this mire by yourself, hey?

I’m still stuck quite frankly.

Let me sink with you. I’m lightweight.

No thanks.

Paul leaned back on his couch. This conversation was going nowhere. Need I remind you I was the best lay you ever had?

Yes, remind me.

Can’t you see the difference? The old and the new?

Get a job, Paul, like the rest of us.

I’ve managed to squeeze myself out of the job market. I’m going to have to go to school again.

You’re too old to learn.

There are dozens of non-skilled jobs out there. I’m still writing, though.

Forget your novels, they haven’t caught on.

Can you believe I’m thinking TABE, Test for Adult Basic Education? I’m getting a scholarship for learning a new language, GUI, graphical user interface.

English hasn’t served you very well, why get buried in computers?

Code, Connie, code. The basic foundation of modern life.

Leave it alone, it’s not in your genes. Let the kids play with it.

Seniors have something to say.

It takes five years to become a good software engineer. You’ll be seventy-three by then.

I’m out of the loop, out of the channel, out of the cloud, out of this hemisphere, in a new world it appears, he said agreeably.

Take up tap dancing. Play a banjo.

I have a future.

Everyone has a future.

I mean feature.

Everyone has features.

I mean appearance.

Look at yourself, Paul.

Silence.

What do you see?

I try not to sculpt a study of my bust.

I’m working three fucking jobs just to make ends meet and you call me just to have a laugh. I have a kid from a vagrant husband I’m taking care of. Care to code that?

It’s a violation of code!

You’re damn right it is.

What’s the kid like?

He’s a confused, bewildered lad. Seeks a father figure, same as you.

What’s his name?

Paul.

Chapter 2:  Father Figures

That pretty much did it. Paul had some thinking to do. Had he fathered the child? He never did marry Connie, but that didn’t mean anything. They had copious sex during their Moroccan days. They both got sick at the same time, hepatitis A, from water contamination. Connie could have carried the child home and had it in Santa Fe.

Paul. What a bland appellation! Undres, what a sickening surname! Life, what a disappointment! God, what an illusion! Sound, how deceiving! Sight, how misleading! The brain, how malleable!

Learning is like a gift; it comes from using your head. He was ready for some learning. He had to prepare himself for the day of qualification. It was for the highly touted computer course, a one-month study of ACRONYMS. An IT boot camp, it was called. Certification for a help desk person. It would remain pertinent for about two weeks considering the fast growth and change in IT.

An anxiety-ridden life had been his lot, but the esoteric world of computer and network repair that focused on physics was about to really make him nervous.

Nutty, his mom, had been the founder of his personality. Without the support of a father, he had gotten the skill of reading from pictures and bubble dialogue in comic books. He grew up on Nancy Drew over the Hardy Boys. His father, Bud, a drunk, divorced from Nutty, was a vivid loss.

Para was his first girl. She had seduced a very innocent lad, into an insecure teenager. She plucked his ego with delicious bites, making a bite into a crumb. The night she baby-sat and took him remains the only memory of a sorry childhood.

Now 64 years later and a decade of sobriety, he wished to repeat the experience. At sixty-eight, he longed for some woman to take the last bite.

He got the scholarship. The screening exam was tough, but he passed. Would he, after countless bouts of memorization, commit to the tedium of a help desk job? The paycheck…yes, the paycheck. He could pay off the car. He could market his books. He could go out on a date. And would give child support to Connie without a DNA test.

And he passed the course. Somehow.

Chapter 3:  First Day at Work

Moffitt came up, the renowned cancer center. A help desk position was his for the taking.

The first day was reason enough to quit. Filling out the W-2, the direct deposit slip and a thousand other forms was boring and reiterative. He