Old Things Have Passed Away

The hum of the polisher echoed off the chrome like a hymn in a cathedral of diesel and dust. Peter moved with a quiet rhythm, the same way he had for nearly two decades—sleeves rolled up, sun cutting through the high garage windows, sweat mixing with wax and steel. The big Kenworth sat like a king in the bay, its chrome already catching the late-morning light.

“Pete, you’re a miracle worker,” said Daryl, one of the old-timers, leaning on the doorway with a toothpick hanging from his mouth. He was a long-haul driver from Louisiana, face like worn leather, eyes kind and a little sad. “I swear, you oughta teach my wife how to make things shine like that.”

Peter smiled as he pulled off his gloves and clapped Daryl on the shoulder. “Tell her I’m booked solid. But I might could make an exception.”

They laughed. It was easy with Daryl. Most of the regulars were like that: hard men with calloused hands and soft voices, thankful for someone who didn’t look down on them. Peter knew how to read customers, and he felt at home with the truckers. He knew when to joke, when to listen, and when to offer a free wash without saying why.

To them, Peter was steady. They respected him. He was a guy who’d built something real from the ground up.

They didn’t see the man who climbed the narrow stairwell each night with half a case of beer under one arm and a fifth of Scotch in the other. Upstairs, the door opened on an apartment that smelled of old carpet and solitary meals. Empty bottles lined the kitchen counter from the night before, waiting for their turn to be replaced—same ritual, night after night.

He told himself he didn’t drink that much. Just enough to take the edge off. Just enough to sleep. But most nights, he didn’t even make it to bed. He’d pass out on the couch in the same clothes he worked in, the television flashing quietly in the background, an empty glass still in his hand.

There were pictures on the walls—dusty frames with photos of him beside big rigs, employees at Christmas parties, and even one of him with his first wife, Cheryl, back when they still smiled together. That one was cracked in the corner. He’d meant to fix it for years.

Cheryl had been patient for a while. She’d believed in him more than he believed in himself. They met when he was still scrubbing truck tires by hand, living out of a borrowed trailer, and working three jobs. She saw the ambition in him, the grit, and married hi,m thinking she could be his balance. But as the business grew, so did the pressure. The late nights. The invisible weight he never spoke about. The bottle had crept in like a thief and never left.

She’d written him letters. Long, pleading letters. Cheryl told him how his silence hurt more than the drinking. She told him she missed the man who used to pray with her in the mornings. The man who dreamed of their future together.

The last letter was left on the kitchen table. It was folded carefully in thirds and sealed with a lipstick kiss. Peter never opened it. He still can’t remember where he had put it. Maybe it was better that way.

Robin came a couple of years later. She was like fire. Laughter and light. A mechanic’s daughter who loved adventure and thought she could outshine the darkness in him. And for a while, she did. They rode motorcycles through the Sierra Nevada, took spontaneous road trips to Montana, camped under the stars, and talked about kids.

But she didn’t understand Peter’s quiet, gnawing fear that he wasn’t good enough; that he couldn’t keep anyone safe—not her, not

himself. And when the bottle called, it wasn’t loud, just… familiar.

And Peter had begun to drink daily. A large amount of drinking. Pete became what doctors called a maintenance alcoholic, relatively functional while constantly intoxicated.

Robin had screamed at him, once, smashing the bottle against the wall, the whiskey bleeding into the carpet like a wound. “Pete, you’re killing us!” she said, eyes wide with rage and sorrow. “And you don’t even care.”

But he did care. He just didn’t know how to stop drinking.

After Robin left, Peter buried himself in work, expanded the shop, hired two more techs, and opened a second location down in Oxnard. People called him driven, disciplined. Even kind. He donated the use of trucks for food drives and gave Christmas bonuses even in tight years. People thought he was a saint.

But every night, he drank alone. Never drunk enough to be dangerous. Just enough to blur the edges. Enough to fall asleep without thinking too hard.

The thing was, Peter didn’t feel sorry for himself. Not really. He’d accepted the split screen of his life. Public success. Private ruin. He even talked to God sometimes, when the nights got too quiet. Not in eloquent prayers, but short ones. Honest ones.

“Help me,” he’d whisper, staring at the ceiling. “Please… help.”

The cross his grandmother gave him still hung above the table. He couldn’t take it down. Couldn’t quite look at it directly, either. It reminded him of what he used to believe. Back when he thought grace was for people who didn’t know better. Back before he burned every bridge that might’ve led him home.

Sometimes, when Peter wasn’t drinking, he’d fish his old Bible out from under the couch cushions and run his fingers over the worn leather. He never got past the first few verses in John. He always stopped at: The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.

It sounded like a lie. But something in him hoped it wasn’t.

That night, after closing up, Peter climbed the stairs with a weariness that didn’t come from the hours; it came from the years. He poured a drink in silence, his eyes lingering on the city lights blinking in the distance. He wondered if Daryl made it to Memphis and if Cheryl had found peace. Peter wondered if God really listened to prayers from men like him.

He drank to quench a craving that would never be satisfied.

Tomorrow, he would clean trucks again. Smile for the customers. Crack jokes. Pretend he was okay.

That was the deal. And he’d kept it so long that Peter didn’t know who he was without it.

The fall came slowly. Like rust eating through steel. Silent and almost invisible at first. Peter didn’t crash; he corroded.

It started with a slip in payroll. A missed invoice. Then a bounced vendor check. He blamed it on the bank’s new system, promised he’d fix it. And he did. But not before the shop foreman, a wiry guy named Marcus with a sharp tongue and a soft heart, pulled him aside.

“You all right, boss?”

Peter forced a laugh. “Yeah. Just too many irons in the fire.”

Marcus didn’t push, but he didn’t buy it either.

Customers started noticing too. Peter was still kind, still smiling, but thinner, scattered, and worn around the eyes. The shine in his voice dulled, and he stopped coming down to the bays unless something broke.

He thought he was hiding it. He always thought that.

The truth came out when one of his techs found a fifth of whiskey under the seat of the company van. Peter had forgotten he’d stashed it there after a delivery run. By then, word had already spread. The guy who cleaned chrome like a preacher polishing silver was drunk most nights and barely hanging on during the day.

Then came the Department of Labor audit, the missed forms, and unpaid overtime. Nothing malicious, just neglectful. Careless neglect. But the fines were enough to rattle his savings, and his accountant told him plainly over coffee at Palermo on Main Street, “You keep bleeding like this, Peter, and you’re going to flatline.”

Peter tried to joke about it. He tried to say the business had grown too fast, that he needed to reorganize. But when he got back to his apartment above the shop, he sat on the edge of his bed for hours, bottle in hand, television off. The wind from the ocean carried through the open window, brushing the curtains like breath. He felt hollow. Not panicked—just exhausted.

He didn’t want to die. But he couldn’t picture anything beyond this fading shell of a life.

It was a Sunday morning when he walked into the little church on Telegraph Road. Not because someone invited him. Not because he wanted to make a scene. He just couldn’t drink anymore—not that day, anyway. His hands were shaking. His stomach churned. And for some reason, the white sign outside the church caught his eye: You are not too far gone. Come home.

Inside, the sanctuary was small and plain—wooden pews, faded carpet, a cross made of driftwood at the altar. A sense of peace filled the church. It reminded him of childhood.

The pastor, a middle-aged man with a kind face and an accent Peter couldn’t quite place, preached on the Prodigal Son. Of course he did. Every line hit Peter like a rock thrown through a window.

“When the son came to his senses,” the pastor said, “he said, ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ That’s all it took. Not perfection. Not a cleaned-up story. Just the decision to go home.”

Peter sat in the back row, staring at the stained-glass panel of Jesus carrying a lamb. His eyes welled, hot and uninvited. He didn’t know how to be spiritual. But something broke open in him right then, and it was deeper than shame. It was grief. For all the years he had wasted. For the marriages he couldn’t save. For the good man he pretended to be, and the real man who couldn’t get out of his own way.

After the service, a woman named Mrs. McClure handed him a cup of coffee and asked his name.

“Peter,” he said.

She smiled like she knew something. “You picked a good day to come, Peter.”

He met the pastor afterward. His name was Chinedu—Nigerian-

born, longtime Ventura resident. His handshake was firm, his eyes clear. “Jesus isn’t afraid of your mess,” he smiled. The Pastor rested a hand on Peter’s shoulder and whispered, “Neither are we.”

Peter nodded. Said he wanted to believe. That he was tired. That he was ready.

They prayed right there in the fellowship hall, between the row of folding chairs. Peter bowed his head, repeated the words of salvation with cracked lips and shaking hands. Something inside him lit up—small, flickering, but real.

He left with a Bible, a promise to return, and the pastor’s number in his phone.

For a few weeks, things got better. Peter poured out the whiskey. He took long walks on the beach in the early morning. He even stayed after service one Sunday to help stack chairs and wipe down tables. He read the Gospels late into the night and wept when he got to the story of the thief on the cross.

But addiction isn’t a one-time prayer. It’s a war.

And Peter had secrets. He didn’t tell Pastor Chinedu about the way his hands still trembled, about the dreams, about how the silence of sobriety was almost louder than the chaos of drinking. He kept showing up to church, smiling, carrying his new Bible like a badge. But in the privacy of his apartment, the loneliness returned with a vengeance.

Peter slipped again. A beer at first. Just one. Then whiskey. Then nights lost in blackouts, followed by days of guilt and hiding. Peter stopped answering Pastor’s calls and told Marcus to run the shop without him for a while. He shut the blinds and turned off the phone.

It became a cycle. Two weeks sober. A month lost. A stretch of mornings full of resolve, followed by nights full of regret.

Each time, Peter swore it was the last.

Each time, he meant it.

Read the rest of “Old Things Have Passed Away” in

A Clown for Orphans & Other Short Stories, now available on Amazon and in Christian bookstores.