I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive Paperback - 2012

Summary

From the jacket flap

"If Jesus were to return tomorrow to twenty-first century America and do some street preaching on the gritty South Presa Strip of San Antonio, he'd love Earle's magnificently human, bighearted drifters." --Howard Frank Mosher "Colorful, cool, and downright gripping." --Robert Earl Keen Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams--not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him. In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is racked by addiction. Since he lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, comes in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela bears a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except maybe for Hank's angry ghost--who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well. A brilliant exploration of an obscure piece of music history, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive "is also a wonderful novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

Excerpt

 

One

Doc woke up sick, every cell in his body screaming for morphine
— head pounding — eyes, nose, and throat burning. His
back and legs ached deep down inside and when he tried to sit up
he immediately doubled over, racked with abdominal cramps. He
barely managed to make it to the toilet down the hall before his
guts turned inside out.
 Just like every day. Day in, day out. No pardon, no parole. Until
he got a shot of dope in him, it wasn’t going to get any better.
Doc knew well that the physical withdrawal symptoms were
nothing compared with the deeper demons, the mind-numbing
fear and heart-crushing despair that awaited him if he didn’t get
his ass moving and out on the street. The worst part was that
three quarters of a mile of semi-molten asphalt and humiliation
lay between him and his first fix, and every inch would be an insistent
reminder of just how far he had fallen in the last ten years.
 In the old days, back in Bossier City, all Doc had to do was sit
up and swing his needle-ravaged legs over the edge of the bed
and his wake-up shot was always right there on the nightstand,
loaded up and ready to go.
 Well, almost always. Sometimes he would wake in the middle
of the night swearing that someone was calling his name.
When morning came he was never sure that it wasn’t a dream
until he reached for his rig and found it was empty. Even then, he
had only to make his way to the medication cabinet in his office
downstairs to get what he needed — pure, sterile morphine sulfate
measured out in precise doses in row after tidy row of little glass
bottles. And he was a physician, after all, and there was always
more where that came from.
 “But that was then,” sighed Doc. The sad truth was that, these
days, he had to hustle like any other hophead on the street, trading
his services for milk-sugar– and quinine-contaminated heroin
that may very well have made its way across the border up
somebody’s ass.
 San Antonio, Texas, was less than a day’s drive from New Orleans
but Doc had come there via the long, hard route, slipping
and sliding downhill every inch of the way. Consequences of his
own lack of discretion and intemperance had driven him from his
rightful place in Crescent City society before his thirtieth birthday.
In one desperate attempt after another to escape his not-sodistant
past he had completed a circuit of the Gulf Coast in a little
over a decade, taking in the seamier sides of Mobile, Gulfport,
and Baton Rouge. But when he landed in Bossier City, Shreveport’s
black-sheep sister across the Red River, he reckoned that
he had finally hit bottom.
 But he was wrong.
 The South Presa Strip on the south side of San Antonio was
a shadow world, even in broad daylight. Squares drove up and
down it every day, never noticing this transaction taking place in
that doorway or even wondering what the girls down on the corner
were up to. The pimps and the pushers were just as invisible
to the solid citizens of San Antonio as the undercover cops who
parked in the side streets and alleyways and watched it all come
down more or less the same way, day after day, were.
 Doc stepped out into the street. The block and a half between
the Yellow Rose Guest Home and the nearest shot of dope was
an obstacle course, and every step was excruciating; nothing but
paper-thin shoe leather separating broken pavement and raw
nerve. The sun seemed to focus on the point on the back of his
neck that was unprotected by the narrow brim of his Panama hat
and burn through his brain to the roof of his mouth. He spat every
few feet but could not expel the taste of decay as he ran the
gauntlet of junkies and working girls out early or up all night and
every bit as sick as he was.
 There was a rumor on the street that Doc had a quantity of
good pharmaceutical dope secreted away somewhere in the dilapidated
boarding house. The other residents had torn the place
apart several times, even prying up the floorboards, and found
nothing. Of course, that didn’t stop some of the more gullible
among the girls from trying to charm the location out of him
from time to time.
 Doc never emphatically denied the stories, especially when he
was lonely.
 He turned leftat the liquor store, slipping around to the parking
lot in back where Big Manny the Dope Man lounged against
the fender of his car every morning serving the wake-up trade.
 “Manny, my friend, can you carry me until about lunchtime?
Just a taste so I can get straight.”
 Big Manny was his handle, but in fact, big was simply too
small a word to do the six-foot-five, two-hundred-and-eighty-
odd-pound Mexican justice. Gargantuan would have been more
accurate if anybody on South Presa besides Doc could have pronounced
it, but everyone just called Manny Castro Big Manny.
Doc shivered in the pusher’s immense shadow but Manny was
shaking his head before Doc got the first word out.
 “I don’ know, Doc. You still ain’t paid me for yesterday. ¡Me
lleva la chingada! Fuckin’ Hugo!” He snatched a small paper sack
from beneath the bumper of his car and lateraled it to a rangy
youth loitering nearby. “¡Vamanos!” Manny coughed, and the kid
took off like a shot across the parking lot and vanished over the
fence.
 The portly plainclothes cop never broke his stride, barely acknowledging
the runner and producing no ID or warrant as he
crossed the lot in a more or less direct line to where Manny, Doc,
and a handful of loiterers were already turning around and placing
their hands on the hood of Manny’s car.
 Detective Hugo Ackerman rarely hurried even when attempting
to catch a fleeing offender. He had worked narcotics for over a
decade, and in his experience neither the junkies nor the pushers
were going far. He caught up with everybody eventually.
“That’s right, gentlemen, you know how the dance goes. Hands
flat, legs spread. Anybody got any needles or knives, best you tell
me now!”
 He started with Manny, haphazardly frisking him from just
below his knees up, about as far as Hugo could comfortably bend
over. His three-hundred-pound mass was all the authority he
needed to hold even a big man like Manny in place, leaving his
chubby hands free to roam at will.
 “How’s business, Manny. You know, I just come from Junior
Trevino’s spot. He looked like he was doing pretty good to me.”
 “Junior!” Manny snorted. “¡Pendejo! That shit he sells wouldn’t
get a fly high, he steps on it so hard! Anybody that gets their dope
from Junior’s either a baboso or they owe me money. Hey! You
see Bobby Menchaca down there? I want to talk to that maricón.”
When Hugo shoved his hand down the back of Manny’s slacks,
the big man winced.
 “Chingada madre, Hugo! Careful down there. My pistol’s in
the glove box if that’s what you’re lookin’ for. Your envelope’s
where it always is.”
 “That’s Detective Ackerman to you, asshole!” Hugo continued
to grope around, emptying Manny’s pockets onto the hood of the
Ford and intentionally saving the inside of his sport coat for last
and then pocketing the envelope he found there.
 “Ain’t you heard? Bobby’s in the county. Been there since last
Saturday. Fell through the roof of an auto-parts store he was
breakin’ into over on the east side. I guess the doors were in better
shape than the roof was ’cause he was still inside jackin’ with
the latch when the radio car rolled up.” He patted the envelope
he’d put into the breast pocket of his own sport coat.
 “It all here?”
 “Every fuckin’ dime.”
 Doc was next.
 “How about you, Doc? Got anything for me?”
Doc half grinned. “As a matter of fact, Detective Ackerman,
I regret that you catch me temporarily financially embarrassed.
You usually don’t come around to see me until Sunday so I reckoned
I had a day or two. Fact is I’m flat broke. Hell, I haven’t even
had my wake-up yet.”
 “He ain’t lyin’, Detective.” Manny intervened. “I was just getting
ready to send his broke ass down to Bobby.”
 “Relax, relax, Doc. Just thought I’d ask while I had you, so to
speak. I’ll see you Sunday, but damn, Manny! That’s cold! I reckoned
Doc’s credit was better than that around here!” He patted
Doc on the buttand turned and ambled back toward the street.
“All right, then.” Halfway there, he turned around.
 “Was that the Reyes kid? The one that took off with the pack?”
 Manny shrugged. “Maybe.”
 “Well, I’d count it twice when it comes back. He was showin’
tracks the last time I rousted him.”
 “Yeah, right,” Manny muttered, but he made a mental note to
check the kid’s arms when he got back. He and the others replaced
their effects in their pockets, and as soon as Hugo was out
of sight Manny stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud
enough that there could be no doubt that the runner would hear
him.
 “Pinche Hugo! ¡Cabrón!” Manny grumbled. “He leaves me
alone ’cause I pay him but then he sits across the street in an
unmarked car and picks off half my customers when they leave
the spot. That shit’s bad for business!” He spat on the ground and
threw in an extra ¡cabrón! for good measure.
 “Yeah,” Doc agreed. “The fat son of a bitch takes a fair bite out
of my ass every week as well, not to mention the odd course of
penicillin on the cuff. Then again, I guess he needs to make it
look good . . . Hey, speakin’ of on the cuff, Manny, I know I owe
you but . . .”
 At that moment the kid rounded the corner, huffing and puff-
ing, and handed off the pack. Manny didn’t even look inside
before grabbing the kid by the wrist and peeling his shirtsleeve
back, up above his elbow, to reveal that Hugo hadn’t been lying.
“¡Maricón!” he snarled as he backhanded the kid across the face
with such ferocity that blood spurted instantly from both his nose
and his mouth and he tumbled backward in an awkward somersault.
He skidded on the seat of his pants but he hadn’t even come
to a full stop before he was up and gone.
 “Don’t come back, Ramón!” Manny shouted after him. “And
I’m gonna tell your mama!” He turned back to Doc, shaking his
head. “I told you, Doc. I can’t carry every junkie on the south side
that comes up short . . .”
 “Oh, ferchrissake, Manny. Tell me, have I ever let you down?
When did I ever fail to pay a debt, to you or anybody you know!
I can’t work in this condition. Besides, amigo, I wasn’t worryin’
about money when I was diggin’ that twenty-two slug out of your
ass last year, now was I?”
 “Oh, so that’s how it is, huh, Doc? All right, then. See how you
do . . .”
 The bickering continued until the ritual was completed with
an unintelligible grunt and a secret handshake, Manny pressing
the little red balloon into the palm of Doc’s hand. Manny had
known he was good for it all along. All the hemming and hawing
was just for show, an oft-repeated performance for the benefit of
any deadbeats standing within earshot. A businessman had his
reputation to consider, after all.
 The hardest part of the whole ordeal was the long haul back up
the block, retracing the same steps on even heavier, shakier legs.
He never carried his wake-up shot back to the boarding house in
his pocket or his hatband anymore. Instead, he cupped the dope
in the hollow of a clenched fist as if it were some magical winged
creature that would vanish into thin air if allowed to escape. He
could feel the balloon against his sweaty palm and sometimes he
swore that he could taste the dope inside. By the time he got back
to his room and cooked it up he had to fight back a wave of nausea,
a Pavlovian response to the smell of sulfur and heated morphine.
Tie the tourniquet, find the vein, pull the trigger . . .

Burnt sugar on the back of the tongue, tingling scalp, aches and
pains evaporate, leaving only a whisper behind:
 “Say, hey there, Doc, my old back’s actin’ up somethin’ awful . . .”

“Not now, Hank,” Doc said out loud and the sound of his own
voice was all that was needed to weigh him back down to earth
and the business at hand.
 Oh, well. It was only a taste to get him straight enough to work.
The beer joint was dark, if not cool, inside, and this time of day
it was quiet because only the most hard-core alcoholics came in
this early and they never wasted their money on the jukebox or
the pool table in the back. Doc ordered a draft, and Teresa, the
barmaid, dutifully drew it and took his money, though they both
knew good and well he couldn’t choke it down on a bet, at least
not until he got a little more dope in his system. The two bits was
more like a rental fee on the little table in the back of the joint
where everybody on South Presa knew Doc could be found every
day between eleven and five.
 Business had been slow lately and there were days that Doc resorted
to petty theft and short-change scams to support his habit,
vocations that he considered beneath him and that he was never
very good at. By noon that day he was beginning to get more than
a little discouraged. No one had so much as looked in his direction
all morning long and it was only Tuesday; the week ahead loomed
like a long, dark tunnel. Then the screen door creaked open, announcing
a new arrival, a stranger, and things started looking up.
 The tough-looking pachuco clicked and clacked noisily across
the room, the metal taps on his brilliantly polished tangerine
shoes announcing that he was a big man in his barrio and not
afraid of anyone in this one. A sad-eyed young girl followed a few
tentative steps behind. He ordered a bottle of Falstaff, and when
Teresa reached for the dollar bill he laid on the bar, he covered it
with a cross-tattooed hand and leaned over to whisper in her ear.
She nodded in Doc’s direction, and the youth clattered across the
room to stand threateningly over Doc, a dark little cloud ringed
in fluorescent light. The girl waited by the bar.
 “This girl” — the boy motioned behind him with a cock of his
head — “is in trouble.”
Up close the chico didn’t look so tough. All the hair grease and
attitude couldn’t hide the fact that he was just a kid, at most nineteen
or twenty. Doc gripped the edge of the table to steady himself
and leaned sideways to peer around him at the girl, who was
even younger.
 “You the daddy?”
 The boy only stared coldly back.
 “Well, Slick, where I come from a gentleman never leaves a
lady who’s in the family way standing around on a hard concrete
floor.” Doc waved at the girl. “Honey, why don’t you come on over
here and take a load off your feet?”
 The kid’s fierce features instantly darkened but he still said
nothing, and the girl didn’t move.
 “Okay, Slick, it’s up to you. But if you want me to help you,
then I need to ask your gal some questions, or maybe you can tell
me what I need to know. When did she have her last menstrual
period?”
 That did it. The boy motioned the girl over to the table. Doc
pulled out a chair for her and began talking directly to the girl in
low, reassuring tones, though he knew she couldn’t understand
a word. He eyeballed the boy, who grudgingly interpreted the
girl’s obvious terror into impatient, condescending English. A big
tear that suddenly escaped her eye, trailing down one cheek, confirmed
Doc’s suspicions that his bedside manner was being lost in
the translation.
 Doc stood up, and the boy suddenly shrank beside him as Doc
threw a surprisingly strong arm around him and escorted him
toward the door…

Media reviews

"A deft, big-spirited novel about sin, faith, redemption, and the family of man ... You keep reading and you keep believing."
—Entertainment Weekly

“Steve Earle brings to his prose the same authenticity, poetic spirit, and cinematic energy he projects in his music. I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is like a dream you can’t shake, offering beauty and remorse, redemption in spades.”
—Patti Smith

“Shot through with humor and insight and ... enough action and intriguing characters in it to keep readers turning pages.”
—Boston Globe

“Earle’s writing never lacks heart.”
—New York Times Book Review

“As he does in his songs, Earle finds the tenuous points of emotional connection between characters who are living not only on the edges of their own ability to cope, but often on the very margins of society itself.”
—Rolling Stone

"This subtle and dramatic book is the work of a brilliant songwriter who has moved from song to orchestral ballad with astonishing ease."
—Michael Ondaatje

"Earle has delivered plenty of potent messages during his turbulent career, but he has never pricked the public’s conscience in as many different ways ... The renegade troubadour-turned-renaissance man ... challenge[s] audiences to think about mortality, redemption, addiction, artistic commitment and other soul-searing questions."
—USA Today

"Raw, honest and unafraid, this novel veers in and out of the lives of its many memorable characters with flawless pitch. Steve Earle has given us dozens of remarkable songs, he has given us a dazzling collection of short stories, and now here’s his first novel, a doozy from a great American storyteller."
—Tom Franklin

"Earle is pointing out that in fiction reality can merge with myth in the service of a larger truth　.　.　. [I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive] aspires to a certain gritty transcendence . . . [and] comes with a mythic underpinning, a touch of the mysteries."
—Los Angeles Times

"Iconic country-rocker Earle’s imaginative first novel follows the troubled life of Doc Ebersole, who may have supplied the shot of morphine that killed country legend Hank Williams . . . Earle draws on the rough-and-tumble tenderness in his music to create a witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness, and redemption."
—Booklist "This is an impressive debut novel. The characters are unforgettable, and the plot moves like a fast train. A fantastic mixture of hard reality and dark imagination."
—Thomas Cobb

"Earle has created a potent blend of realism and mysticism in this compelling, morally complex story of troubled souls striving for a last chance at redemption. Musician, actor, and now novelist—is there another artist in America with such wide-ranging talent?"
—Ron Rash "In this spruce debut novel . . . hard-core troubadour Earle ponders miracles, morphine, and mortality . . .With its Charles Portis vibe and the author’s immense cred as a musician and actor, this should have no problem finding the wide audience it deserves."
—Publishers Weekly

"This richly imagined novel not only takes its title from a Hank Williams classic, it audaciously employs Hank’s ghost as a combination of morphine demon and guardian angel . . . Already well-respected for both his music and his acting, Earle can now add novelist to an impressive résumé."
—Kirkus, starred review

"What a delight to read this novel and find so many elements I’ve admired in Steve Earle’s songwriting for nearly twenty-five years. It is a rich, raw mix of American myth and hard social reality, of faith and doubt, always firmly rooted in a strong sense of character."
—Charles Frazier

"Steve Earle writes like a shimmering neon angel."
—Kinky Friedman

"Earle’s first novel provides a haunting and haunted bookend to Irving’s Cider House Rules. The ghost of Hank Williams walks through this abortionist’s tale that has much to do with grace and aging and death—and the power of the feminine. Gritty and transcendent, Earle has successfully created his own potion of Texas, twang, and dope-tinged magic-realism."
—Alice Randall

"Everyone knows that Steve Earle ranks among the very best, and most authentic, songwriters in the history of America. With his first novel, Earle has established himself as one of our most knowledgeable and sympathetic writers period. He is a natural-born storyteller. If Jesus were to return tomorrow to 21st-century America, and do some street preaching on the gritty South Presa Strip of San Antonio, he’d love Earle’s magnificently human, big-hearted drifters. Only the man who wrote "Copperhead Road" could have authored I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive."
—Howard Frank Mosher

"A poignant story of madness and redemption woven into a tapestry of real world desperation and old world magic. It’s colorful, cool, and downright gripping."
—Robert Earl Keen

"The best book I’ve read since The Road. With the lure of Hank Williams’ ghost, a touch of the Kennedy assassination, a little Castaneda and a few miracles, he takes on the underworld and organized religion, and reality as it’s generally supposed, with great certainty and research and style."
—R. B. Morris

"Steve Earle astonishes us yet again. Country Rock’s outlaw legend brings the ghost of Hank Williams to life in a gloriously gritty first novel that soars like a song. And echoes in the heart."
—Terry Bisson

"I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive reads like the best of Steve Earle’s story songs, which means real good. The tale of a more charmingly haunted, trying-to-do-the-right-thing dope fiend you won’t easily find."
—Mark Jacobson

"Outsider artists like Steve Earle bring a breath of fresh air to the literary world. I just wish they’d come around more often. Richly imagined and handily crafted—a mighty fine piece of storytelling."
—Madison Smartt Bell

"Perhaps only another great country singer would have the courage to cast [country singer Hank] Williams in the guise of a malignant hillbilly harpy, whose presence inevitably heralds imminent doom .　.　. And though the novel comes no closer to establishing the facts of Hank Williams’s death, it certainly reveals a good deal of the truth behind it."
—Guardian (UK)