the Crocodiles' sermon: the fiendishly patient Disease — "Old emphysemic Francis G. in particular…"
Old emphysemic Francis G. in particular likes to slow his LeSabre down at a corner in front of some jack-legged loose-faced homeless fuck who’d once been in AA and drifted cockily out and roll down his window and yell ‘Live it up!’
Context
The doctrine of relapse, delivered from the front seat of a Crocodile's sedan: the Disease never leaves and never hurries, so the greatest danger is the sober person who decides he's gotten "Well" and drifts away. Recovery is therefore not an achievement you complete but a vigilance you never get to stop — the old-timers "go every time, dependable as death" precisely because they know the alternative is waiting patiently for them. Ferocious Francis's cruel-tender "Live it up!" yelled at a drifted-out relapsed man is the sermon's whole thesis in two words: this is what stopping the vigilance looks like.