YOUR HIGHER POWER WILL SMITE YOU Nora Pierce I go to AA meetings in search of my father. I sit in a mismatched chair in the basement of First Baptist, drinking inky coffee from a sagging foam cup that collapses in my hand. A naked fluorescent light flicks and buzzes overhead. At the front of the room, in the "sharing" seat, Old-Ron is reading in a hypnotizing monotone from Recovering Our Spiritual Selves. Old-Ron is Old-Ron, because now we've got a New-Ron, who sleeps through every meeting. I look around for any fresh faces. My dad could be the black-haired guy, the skinny one who's new this week. He left us when I was six, but for the next few years he called us on Christmas day to say he was laying off the alcohol, he was getting clean, making a new life for himself, hell, he'd already been sober for a week. "I'm coming to see you," he'd say, "and I'll bring you anything you want, nothing's too good for my boy." I'd come up with some lame thing, a matchbox car or something that didn't take too much trouble, but he and his presents never showed.     I figure he'll turn up here some time. There's only one Indian-friendly AA meeting in the city, and no one's seen him in the bars. He'll be heady with the promise of his new life, the twelve simple steps that will lead him to redemption, and he'll try to call me from that greasy pay phone behind the pulpit. Then I'll get to see what he looks like. I just want to know if he matches up with my memories of him.     I'm in my usual seat by the coffee maker. In the seat next to me, Charisma is slouched over her needles, knitting a g-string. Charisma is her stage name. She goes straight from these meetings to her job at X-Scape Gentlemen's Club, so at every meeting, she's wearing these four- inch high platform stilettos that make her legs look like the skinny, pointy-bottomed perches of a bird. My sponsor, Mannie, is late. He scoots in at the last minute, trying not to interrupt Old-Ron's sermon. But it doesn't matter; no one can hear over New-Ron's eruptive snoring.     "It's good to see you," Mannie whispers. He pours a cup of coffee and leads me out to the hallway. From a cheap plastic frame, Christ looks down on our huddle. "Listen," Mannie says, "you know you can talk to me, right? You can tell me anything. It's the first step."     "Right," I say. "What's up?"     "It's you," he says. "I'm worried about you. To tell you the truth, Nathan, I saw you outside Miss Irene's last night."     Miss I's is the bar where I work. Mannie's the last person I'd expect to see there. Though it has crossed my mind that one day my father will walk in. He'll confess his story, tell me what a mess he's made of his life, and I'll help him find the light, without letting on that I'm his long lost son.     Poor Mannie is tugging nervously on his beard. I've really disappointed him. "Look, Mannie," I say. "There is something I ought to tell you."     "Anything. Go ahead. Shoot."	"...her legs look like the skinny, pointy-bottomed perches of a bird."
	I lower my voice to a whisper. "I'm not really an alcoholic."     "Buddy, it ain't just a river in Egypt."     "I don't even like the taste of beer," I say.     He looks at me skeptically.     "The truth is I'm looking for my father."     "In a Freudian sense?"     "No, no. In an actual sense. I mean—"     "Literally," Mannie suggests.     "He's a drunk," I say, "and sometimes a recovering fool. I just want to see him. I'm sure he won't recognize me."     "You think he's going to show up at one of these meetings?"     "Sure."     "You don't drink?"     "No."     "Drugs?"     "Nope."     He narrows his eyes. "Why do you drink so much coffee?"     "I'm the bartender at Miss Irene's. I'm up late."     "You're a bartender!" Mannie's voice has gone up an octave. I see Charisma and Old-Ron, followed by the new guy, beginning to gather in the hallway. They linger over cups of coffee, pretending to talk to each other, while they sneak looks at us and eavesdrop.     "Jesus Christ, Mannie, would you keep it down? You act like I'm a meter-reader. It's a perfectly respectable profession." Even Christ's eyes seem to have narrowed on us. I take Mannie by the shoulder and scoot us out of sight.     "So for two months," Mannie whispers, "basically the whole time I've known you, you've been coming here looking for your father?"     "Well." I do feel bad for lying to him.     "Aw, Nathan."     "What?"     "What are you going to do if you see him?"     "Nothing."     "You're not even going to introduce yourself?" He tugs on the Harley logo peeling off the breast pocket of his leather vest. "I think it's time for you to share tonight."     "Did you hear anything I just said?"     "Listen, you'll be surprised at how much it helps you figure things out, see yourself and your actions clearly."     "I'm leaving." But people have started to inch closer to us, forming a loose circle, intervention style. Even New-Ron perks up.     "What's going on, Nathan?" someone says.     "Is it true you're a bartender?"     "A bartender!"     Mannie turns on me. "He's been coming here this whole time looking for his father."     "Fuck off, Mannie."     "Just sit in the chair and say it," Mannie says.     "Say what?" I ask.     "Say you're basing your entire life around the possibility of running into your father."     "I have other hobbies," I say.     Mannie shakes his head as if what I've said is not even worth considering. "You're addicted," he says.     "Very funny."     "Listen, I can't help you till you admit it."     Old-Ron is getting excited. "You're hooked," he says. "Your old man's your hooch, buddy. There ain't no difference."     "Would you stop calling me buddy, man? You're making me nervous." I look to Mannie: This is ridiculous. But Mannie goes on drinking his coffee, while Old-Ron delivers a lecture straight out of one of his New Age books. "You're addicted to your father who is clearly bad for you, both running and destroying your life, and until you realize this you will be a willing partner to your own destruction. Buddy."     "Are you kidding me?"     "I am perfectly serious."     Charisma takes off one of her bird-feet heels and points it at me. "If you were to find him, what good would it do you? He's already ruined your life."     "But I just want a peek."     "You clearly want more than that."     "Fine, fine," I say. "I'll sit in the chair."     It's surprisingly cold in the chair, the only metal one in the bunch, and when I lean back, it reclines so quickly I have to catch myself to keep the chair from rolling into the circle on it's creaky wheels. "You ain't been in the chair before," Charisma observes. "You've got to steady it."     I stare at the nubby lint on my sweat pants. "I'm Nathan," I say, "I'm. uh. I'm not an alcoholic."     "Hi, Nathan!"     "I guess I had ulterior motives in coming here. For the past two months I have been searching for my father. But I'm beginning to realize that I no longer need to let him run my life." I tug my ball cap lower on my forehead. "Listen, you guys have been great." When I try to get out of the seat, Mannie shoves a coffee in my face. "Go on."     "When I was little," I say, "I used to wait for him. He was always promising and he was never coming. So that's what I learned to do best. Wait for him. It's what I'm still doing."     "Amen, buddy."     "Why don't you lead the prayer, Nathan," Mannie says.     I close my eyes, hold tight to the hands of the circle. "I just want to say that if any of you bastards have kids, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You've undoubtedly fucked them up. You're all a bunch of lying sacks a shit and I hope you rot in hell."     "That's good, Nathan." Mannie sends a reassuring palm-squeeze around the circle. "We're proud of you, really proud of you."     "Go to hell."     I bust out of the circle and take off down the hall. I'm going for twelve equal steps out of there, and with each one I imagine the weight of my father being slowly hauled off my back. But it doesn't last long—the humid night hits me like that six-year-old summer and I'm out there on the trailer steps again with my suitcase and my sleeping bag as it turns from day to night and my mother says come in, come in, he ain't coming and I'm watching the dust kick up and fall on the places in the dirt where my father's tires made dents and following that swollen dirt with my eyes as far as his tracks go, out past the place where the reservation stops and the highway finally begins.     I hear voices through the church door behind me. By now, they're raising their hands in the circle. "Keep coming," they chant like fools. "It works!"