Sedrick's Outstanding Warrants
A Recovery Travelogue
Sedrick reached an important milestone in his recovery—the point where he was ready to face the warrants that he’d racked up for various petty crimes committed during his addiction. He asked me to drive him up North to a small town just outside his Reservation where the crimes were committed.
I am always down for a road trip. And a road trip with this particular friend is probably about as close as I can get to real adventure at my advanced age. So, I was hyped!
This post is part travelogue, part bro-mance road trip, and partly the poignant story of a man facing the consequences of his addiction with grace and determination.
Going up north
“Sedrick” has been sober for almost three years, which, as he likes to point out, has left the position of Village Idiot in his hometown open to other applicants. In the deepest throes of his addiction, his booking photo was in the local newspaper so often for various escapades that he had taken to making comical faces to brighten up the day of the paper’s local readership.
Things are different now. He is a valued communicant member of our church and a constant source of amazement to me. The best word to describe his recovery approach is “ambitious.” This guy is going after the sober life like a junior member of a corporation who is aiming to become CEO by 30. He attends AA often, working that system and soaking up mentoring from people with long-term sobriety. He takes the same approach to other opportunities for learning and growing. He attends Resilient Recovery, has formed relationships with men at church, and consumes hours of YouTube, where he soaks up content on Christian apologetics, conservative commentators, and podcasts about finances and starting a business. He doesn’t just want to be sober—he wants to grab hold of the American dream by working hard and doing right by his family and community.
But his old warrants are lurking in the background, causing anxiety and preventing some critical next steps in his recovery, such as driving, getting a promotion at work, and gaining custody of his kids. These things are at a standstill until the warrants are dealt with.
On the road again
We left Phoenix on a Monday at midday. It was a day off for me. My friend had taken a week off from work because he was pretty sure that once he presented himself to the authorities, he would be taken into custody for a week before having a court appearance and being released with a later sentencing date.
He showed me some lovely vistas on the way. I had driven by these places without knowing they were just a short jog off the main road.
We arrived at our destination in the early evening and checked into a hotel. [Thanks, Subscribers and supporters!! I took care of gas and food, but you got us a room.] We were both hungry, so we stopped at a Mexican restaurant just down the street from the hotel and got a meal. My carne asada was excellent. Most places “grill” their carne on a metal griddle, but as the name implies, carne asada, should be grilled over coals, which this was.
My friend’s fajitas were less impressive. Not tender. Not picante enough.
This was no small trip
As we left the building, I got my first sense that this trip wasn’t just about the warrants. It was more than a reckoning, too. There was something primal and mythic about this trip for Sedrick. A return to the place where it all happened. An attempt to integrate what he learned in recovery with his past.
I looked for the word to describe this trip, and I found "nostos" and "katabasis." Nostos is the root of our word “nostalgia,” and it refers to coming home after a war. Homer’s Odyssey is an example of a whole branch of Greek literature called Nostoi. Apparently, hundreds of epic poems about people returning from the Trojan War were written.
Katabasis is an ancient Greek term that means "going down" or "descent." Dante’s Inferno and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are both examples of stories where a hero descends. Jesus’ descent into our broken and fallen world is probably the ultimate example.
As we stepped out of the restaurant into the cool northern night, my friend held on to the door. He looked back in. He seemed to be caught between two options. And then he said, “Hang on a second. I gotta take care of something” before walking back into the eatery.
He walked into the kitchen and thanked the cooks for giving him free burritos back in his drunken, homeless years. He had been exhausted and hungry, and they fed him; he was thirsty, and they gave him something to drink. He told them he was doing well and had a job now, and he would never forget their kindness. “I just want you to know I’m thankful for your help.”
Oh, the things we find in Laveen
That’s the kind of stuff that happens all the time when you hang out with Sedrick. I remember one time I took him and some other recovery friends to my favorite fishing hole at night after a meeting. I was hoping we could return some morning for a recovery fishing trip.
Much to our surprise, a completely naked man was drunkenly stumbling around on the river rock along the bank. I was paralyzed. I had no previous experience with encountering completely naked men. And there was a woman in the truck, which made me even more uncomfortable. So I just kind of went uselessly blank.
Sedrick, on the other hand, got out of the truck and approached the man who was staggeringly drunk, and had dead eyes, sloppy speech, and signs his face had taken a beating. Turns out the naked man had been jumped, and not content to merely steal his cash, his robbers had stolen his clothing and shoes. Stripping him completely naked was the final act of humiliation—a deathblow to the man’s dignity, and probably a source of sadistic laughter for the thieves.
Sedrick reached into his gym bag and gave the man some shorts and a shirt. He then took off his own shoes and gave them to the man. “I got another pair at home.”
I was still slightly frozen when Sedrick suggested we put the newly clothed and shod man in the bed of the truck and head back toward the city center, which we did, leaving him at a drugstore on the infamous corner of 51st Avenue and Baseline in Laveen. It’s a place that looks nice enough, but where dozens of homeless addicts congregate. Maybe he’d find some friends, or at least he’d be in a public place where he’d not be at risk of further assault. I would have loved to find him a recovery home, but he wasn’t ready.
Stalling before court
The next morning, we had some time to kill. The court didn’t open until 1:15 PM, and my friend needed to wait until then to present himself before the judge.
We ate breakfast at a diner. On the way out, we passed a man at the counter who looked like an extra in a lesser John Wayne film. Handlebar mustache. Yellow 1800s leather trapper coat with fringes. Crumpled up wide-brimed cowboy hat. I nudged Sedrick and pointed with my eyes to the coffee-drinking cowboy. I was planning on waiting until the parking lot to comment on the local color you can find in these small Arizona towns.
Sedrick was less shy. He walked up to the man and asked if he could take a picture with him. I can see where Sedrick’s children are going to find him to be an embarrassing dad when they reach their teenage years.
To my amazement, the crumpled cowboy was happy to have his picture taken.
We still had some time to kill, so Sedrick and I stopped by a couple of small lakes, and I snapped this picture of some horses. Unlike faux cowboys, I felt no concerns about embarrassing the horses with my picture snapping.
Fancy running into you here
Biding time was turning out to be a challenge, and we were running out of things to do. At a loss for new ideas, we stopped by a local fast-food restaurant. We sat and chatted for a while. He sipped a Coke. I had an unsweetened iced tea, which combined with the coffee from breakfast, put me just over my preferred state of caffination.
Sedrick wanted to hit the bathroom on his way out. As he walked to the back of the McDonald’s, he noticed a man sitting in a booth doing some paperwork, obviously a manager. It was one of Sedrick’s former associates. The manager had gotten sober after a stint in prison. The two friends hugged and spent a few minutes catching up before we left.
It started to dawn on me how nervous my friend was. The unexpected meeting with the manager was just the encouragement my friend needed to face the judge. He got in the truck with the vigor of a man pumping himself up for his first parachute jump. But as I pulled out of the parking lot, taking a left-hand turn onto the five-lane road, my truck blew a fuse. We coasted to the suicide lane, and I began yanking and checking fuses until we found the culprit. It set us back 15 minutes, which turned out to be a costly delay. It almost derailed the entire trip.
This has been part one of a series. Stay tuned. Next week, I’ll share another installment of the story.
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