And then came August
[A short Story of Growing up]
In 1981, when Christopher Wright was thirty-four years old, with two years to go before he was sober, the Holy Spirit would descend on him and he would never drink again. However, at the beginning of this story, he has still gone through this sobriety process, he is in a semi-conscious state. When you first see him, he’s thinking, pondering, falling asleep, often thinking he can actually get by without drinking, a bit maddening and embarrassing for not trying, but his world is a fog, and he’s aware of it, and he’s getting tired of it. He is happy with most of the people he meets on the surface, but inside he is inertly crazy, he feels dirty: this feeling varies of course, sometimes he also considers himself quite an exceptional person; however, unsophisticated (which he isn’t), hard to adjust to his surroundings, and he feels he still has more goals to accomplish, but death is better than living an unhealthy life: a life that comes and goes to the bar every night ; in an unhealthy state all the time, hard for him to be cheerful, nice most of the time; and he’s attractive to women, he always has been, particularly one right now. He thinks that somehow he can achieve something great, but his options seem to be diminishing as time goes by and his alcohol consumption increases. He sees heaven as a way home (if there is indeed a heaven, and drunks go to heaven, he’s not sure, maybe that could be the unforgivable sin, but he feels it isn’t); yes, heaven would give him immortality and a safe distance from the bottle; and death is always just around the corner, in a corner of his mind. But being stubborn and still functioning quite well, he might have a chance if he can change, if only he could have the courage to face his alcoholism, where most of his demons come from.
Now Christopher Wright, known more familiarly as “Chick,” left his home in St. Paul, Minnesota at a young age and spent eleven years in the military. He now came home from the war as a Staff Sergeant (Vietnam War). And in the years that followed, five years to be exact, he collected for himself one million three hundred thousand dollars, from real estate transactions. He had created some ill will from his family members, neighbors, and was known for a time as “The King of Landlords.”
This occupied his energies for a time, and during this time, he had become sober, but had a heart attack, stroke, and contracted a neurological disease, then decided to devote the rest of his life to the honorable rejuvenation of the world’s poetry. ; trying to be like all the great poets before him. He refined himself, without liquor, mostly literature; bodybuilding, Sunday walks in the part, medicines, patience, rest. From an armchair he read hundreds of books, theories, concepts, he got rid of his hypothetical enemy, ignorance, he became a scholar, with titles and all those good things. A campaign, which took him around the world several times, during the next fifteen years, during which he showed himself infinitesimally equal to any living scholar. The year this story begins finds him tired, he has become discouraged; His thoughts are largely focused on his past war experiences, his illness, his wife, and the children who have left him.
Early in his life, Mr. Wright had married a woman several years his junior, who brought him into the circles he now so admires (he married in 1972, after returning home from the Vietnam War and had a son), and enjoy, an impeccable entry of scholars.
His ex-wife had given him a son and, after the magnificence of this performance, she had left him, due to her imminent illnesses. The boy, Cody G. Wright, became a great soldier in his own right, in the United States Army, Captain, and a connoisseur of good form in all military duties, setting a fine example to others.
Cody had written his memoirs under the title, “And Then Came August,” about the war he had been in, the war in Bosnia. [1997]. Faced with gossip of his formation, this work was quickly bid among publishers, it got a private printing, but only one, it was not powerful enough for the public to demand a second printing.
Young Cody had a picture of his father, he was on a seesaw, and his father was behind him, they were in a park together. It was such a common image that he kept in his house, now in Columbus, Ohio, that it was as if it were part of the furniture. He showed the background of a park in the 1970s, he had long light brown locks, dressed in a jean jacket, in the city of Dieburg, West Germany, where he was stationed for a short time. This was Cody at four years old.
His memories of Dieburg, scant as they were, were unformulated and pleasant. He was very young, but he remembered guests arriving at the apartment, meeting his father in a boarding house with him following, his friends holding him up in the air at bars, his father showing him off, his father gasping at the edge in case someone dropped it; from time to time whispering to his wife and friends to be more careful with him, and sang his songs on the guitar and the strange dialect of the Germans. He remembered some of these things, and his father told him about these things, and so he thought they were part of his memory.
It was years later, when Cody grew up, when he was ready to go into the army, he moved in with his father, just his father. He continually went out at night, on his drinking trips. It wasn’t like the trip he once took with his father, a fishing trip to Gull Lake, and there, in the cabin by the lake, he and his father swatted mosquitoes half the night, laughed the other half, and began to speak. vacant cabin door so they could get a good night’s sleep; he went fishing in the morning. It wasn’t like the picnics he took him on, either. His father was desperate for this miserable and unclear life his son had taken: a path he had once taken.
So, for Cody, life was a struggle against youth, and he waited for a decision, and he made one and the Army made one: in six months, impressionable months, he left his father’s house and faded into the imperceptible life of the Army. . It was August 1991, he was nineteen years old. It was for him a concession to his boring life, accommodating his hyperactivity, his lack of money and perhaps refinancing his nightlife, bodybuilding. He told his father in a letter: “It has nothing to do with us, as for me entering the army, it’s time for me to consider a more adventurous life, so please don’t take this any other way.” Therefore, he didn’t want to hurt his father, but he was almost exhausted with the dull life of it. His father understood him, she had given him patient frowns, interrupted his game, devoured his months when he entered the Army, and tirelessly, gave him variety of splendor; therefore, he would do the same for Cody, he was sure.
As a young man, before adolescence, he had lived almost entirely within himself, seemed like an inarticulate boy, always thinking, rarely angry with anyone, an all-American boy, you might say. Educated, full of spirit and who loved animals, nature. Shy and sensitive as a youth,
7/6/06
