the deep-shit mess that turns a life around
who was, through no will to energy-consuming violence on his part, in the sort of a hell of a deep-shit mess that can turn a man’s life right around.
Context
The chapter's last clause is quietly the whole arc: "turn a man's life right around" is played for gallows comedy — he's facing a homicide he never intended — but it is also literal foreshadowing. This is the crime that will eventually deposit Gately, sober and on staff, inside Ennet House; the bottom and the burglary are the same event seen from opposite ends.