INTRODUCTORY NOTE: This is the tenth installment of the novel "Times Fool". The first installment was published here on February 18th.
As much as I faced the task of breaking up this project into installments with a certain amount of trepidation, sure enough it quickly became clear that copying it into Compendium: The Kitchen Sink in this manner would be more beneficial than not. Already I see ways to prune and shape the story lines and clean up any bullshit that needs cleaning up just through the act of copying and pasting and re-reading. It won’t be perfect, but…
There are five story lines here, and while I hesitate to go into too much detail, preferring to let the stories tell the story, the ways they connect and braid together will probably gain clarity quite a bit further down the line, so stick with it.
I hope I’ll get some interest here, but also, more than anything perhaps, I am excited to be able to another draft to the evolution of the novel through this process. It’s fun and feels right.I’ll present installments of varying lengths every other Tuesday. Your email program may truncate these installments due to their length. Clicking on the title of the email will take you directly to the substack site where the installments can be seen in full.
Thanks for reading.
Cresh told Jerome stories of those they met who never die as they paddled through the Forest of Ghosts:
Prescat.
Here is what remains of Prescat. He is hung head down. He must never walk. His feet are gone. His ribs are the nests for flesh eaters. His eyes are empty and his brain was long ago cleaned by crows. He once lived along a river. It is now a river that is under this sea, but it was once the river that fed the people in his family and his family of families.
Prescat loved his river and he loved the water that flowed there. It was the thing that kept him and his family of families living. Even when times of emptiness and hungry little ones came, Prescat’s river ran past them all and kept them free of thirst. Prescat was sure to share his water and the other riches from his river with the people and the family of families that lived all the way down the river to where it ran into big water. We will see the big water soon Naked Man Jerome. He had no reason not to share. Because the water flowed past him, past his house, to where it was going. He never thought to stop the river and did not know how he would even if he wished it. But one year, before the great changes, a drought dried everything and even the river shrank to a tiny stream. Still people down the water and the family of families could drink when many others could not.
Then Prescat was asked by a great devil to block the river and sell it to the great devil. Prescat did not know how to do this. The great devil instructed him and soon it was done and Prescat became powerful and wealthy man. The people down the water and the family of families and their small ones began to die and were too poor and sick to move to someplace that still had water. Prescat offered to sell them water, but none had enough to buy it. Many died. The suffering was great, though Prescat lived well and turned his back on the cries of those who had once thought of him as family with whom they shared the water.
Some years later there was a great storm, it overpowered Prescat’s blocked river and swept over the house of Prescat. He lived but his wife and his many children and grandchildren were drowned. Prescat saw what he had done and one day he stepped in the river, filled his pockets with gold he had earned and walked into the rushing water and thought he would die. But he never died. Prescat is here. His story lives as he lives, forever.
*
This is where Mashuul lives.
Her arms are lifted over her eyes. Her ribs are falling. Her womb is empty though she had many children. Even those who were not born from her were her children. See? She cries out... forever. When the wind rises, when the storms come from the big water and burn over this forest of Ghosts, her bones scream. They will always scream. In spite of how loved she had been. In spite of how she cared for her children.
It is not known how she became so changed. She fed those who needed food and gave shelter to those who were without home. The people sang to her. Many came just to be near her. She was beautiful and had great vision. Now her eyes never close and only look into the sky. The crows have eaten her eyelids. She betrayed her vision; she took away what she saw from those she led.
I know.
I know. You know nothing of what a leader must do. All of this. All around us. There were great hives of business. Then the wind came... and the great waters swept it all away. Mashuul said she would come back for the people.
It is said she was changed by promises the pilots of the great sky beasts made to her. She said she would make bargain for the people with the pilots of the great beasts of the sky, but she only made bargain for her own self. She said she was given no choice. But the great storms that came gave her choice. If she had stayed with those who loved her, everyone helps everyone. But no. The sky drowned her and tied her to this great death, this death with no death. There she is. Mashuul.
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 24, 1905
McKeon continues to become more relaxed today and talkative. It seems the episode the other night with his friend has had a positive outcome on his overall mental status, despite his friend being moved to another unit on the ward. He continues relating his family stories… the distant past. He likes to talk about his experiences prior to meeting his wife. How he was taken in by a man who trained him in landscaping and gardening. He enjoyed that. He would like to find a job in that field again and thinks he might look for one after he is discharged. I tell him I would like to talk to him about his wife and that it is necessary to do so. He is silent. I tell him I will take his silence as affirmation. He is still silent. For quite some time. I sit with him in spite of it. (so much of this process is one of intuition… of sensing that presence is more important than interaction, Matthias would tell me this. I don’t think I understood until now)
Then McKeon launched into a humorous story about his father and a grocer who sold potatoes. After his mother died his father was not around much. McKeon offered that he thought his father might have been drinking. He was surly when drunk so McKeon stayed out of his way and found other ways to provide for himself. The grocer offered to give Billy and his father old or imperfect produce from time to time; it was known in the neighborhood that the family was having bad times. Most of what the grocer was able to give were bags of potatoes that were more often than not turning, inedible. McKeon reported that after one of the bags had proven to be particularly rotten and bug infested, his father went to the grocer and dumped the potatoes in the middle of his stall and said that he’d just as soon go back to Ireland if he wanted to get sick on bad potatoes.
The grocer, who was busy and irritated at this show of ingratitude, particularly in front of his other customers, muttered something like “Beggars can’t be choosers” to which McKeon’s father began pummeling him with the rotten potatoes. Somehow the entire episode turned around and McKeon’s father ended up with a job buying produce from farmers who brought it into town and taking it to various stalls the grocer operated. McKeon stated: “he could’ve been arrested, but my Dad was good like that. He could have an argument with someone one minute… I mean a knock down drag out fistfight, and the next minute the guy would be giving him his watch.” He laughed for a while and then became very introspective and quiet again. I asked him if he’d care to tell me what he was thinking about. Did he like his father? He went on to say he thought his father was a first-rate son of a bitch, a real Mick. And then he laughed. “But he could get things done. At least he could until my mother died. My mother’s death changed him in a big way.” Tears started flowing then. McKeon wiped at his face. “My mother was his strength, I think. He loved my mother even if he treated her like shit sometimes. But she could dish it right back, she could. And when she was gone… he just wasn’t right. Nothing was.” the silence returned between us. “Y’know doc, people die all the time. People die by the handfuls even in good times. Everywhere. And then something like war or sickness waltzes into town and no one can escape… you’re either dead or bereft. You’re either getting ready to die or getting ready to watch everyone die around you. Sometimes I wonder how we stand it, here, this terrible life…. this goddamned hellacious slime pit existence”
I asked him why he thought people stayed alive. Why his father stayed alive even after his mother died. He wiped at his eyes and looked at me, rather startled actually. For a moment I was concerned about catalyst for regression. But then he stood and said, very matter-of-factly… flatly… “my mother was the reason he lived… after she died I think he had to decide if there was anything else to live for. I think he decided that Mother would have wanted him to live for us… and for her, to make sure we were cared for. He was a lousy father most of the time. But I think that’s the best he could do after she died… just stay alive.”
I would have hazarded a connection between his father and himself but I was, frankly, unsure about timing. I am a mental stutterer… I ruminate over action. McKeon is something of the opposite though, and he made the connection for me, stood and said “I guess that’s what got me all tangled up in my head” I was so bowled over by his willingness to consider this at that moment I stayed silent, could think of nothing to say. “Is that what it is? I have to decide why I am still alive? “
Short of going into any detail about his wife’s death (he was still unable to say her name) without regression or terrible keening… and I intuitively held him back from going there, for a reason I am unable to fathom, though it was right I believe… we agreed if that was in fact his job, this decision to go on living, we were making the right progress and were faced with an appropriate decision about where he would go from St. Christophers. He repeated that he wanted to do nothing to harm his children. I assured him he would not and at any rate we would be sure not to put them in harm’s way. We parted, agreeing we had more to discuss. I thanked him for sharing the story about his mother and father. He reminded me that it was his story too. That he was talking about his own life.
I was energized and hopeful as I walked away from what appeared to be a genuine breakthrough.
Back at the office I received a note that had been dropped off that asked me to make a visit to St. Michael’s to see Father Mike. It was a matter of utmost urgency. I will go tomorrow after morning rounds.
Treatment: In preparation for Supervisory Case Review I feel enough progress has been made to forestall any premature discharge
***
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 24, 1905
Dr Breath was waiting for me when I arrived for morning reports. He said he would like to have a case review the day Matthias visits, the 30th. Would I prepare a case or two? Dr. Breath has apparently been in touch with Matthias about this and it has been arranged.
I was also told in passing by other staff about a disturbance near St. Michael’s church, in the colored section of the neighborhood. Some houses were burned down. Something about a young woman in the Irish neighborhood nearby being accosted by a colored man, who was now dead in the ensuing mob violence. This alarmed me.
I got to the church as quickly as I could. The day was rainy and the roads muddy. Streetcars into the neighborhood were being stopped. You could see the smoke rising into the sky several blocks before coming to the church. There was much chatter in the street and some of the papers already carried stories on their front pages about the disturbance. I could see the front pages. Even from the distance I could see the colored man was being vilified.
At the church there was a crowd. A group of angry people, mostly men, milling around near the entrance of the building. More were gawking. Some spontaneous speechifying about the need to rid the city of “coloreds”, though many were much less polite in their choice of words. I had difficulty getting to the door. I had to insist that I had business with Father Mike that had nothing to do with the situation in Black town. Someone yelled through the ruckus “Father Mike better stop protecting those black bastards”
The inside of the church, in the fellowship hall, looked more like a hospital than a place of worship. People, most colored, were lying on pads on the floor. Some were bleeding. A small group of men were talking angrily about retribution and were arguing the various ways they could protect their families and homes. Apparently several homes had been burned.
I saw Father Mike in the distance. Pale and stricken. He was with Molly. Clearly, she had been beaten. Fella was sitting near her. Listless but attentive.
Once I got to Father Mike, I tried to get him to sit with me, but he would not. I followed him from person to person as he offered words of comfort and advice and prayers. He repeated how he was unsure what he could do, what he should do. I suggested maybe he was doing what he should be doing. He appeared to appreciate that. He felt hopeless. He explained he had opened the doors to the church when it became clear that the Irish mob meant to kill anyone, any colored, they could get their hands on. Early, as the riot built in intensity, he took Molly in when she came to the church doors after the mob broke into her home and took Clarence out of the house. She attempted to stop them, but they beat her to the ground while they took Clarence and dragged him into the street. No one was able to say why this happened. The allegation was that Clarence had accosted a young white woman on her way from the factory where she worked. I asked who the young woman was. Father Mike said it was Pearl McKeon. Evidently, she and her sister and brother came to the church some time before Molly did and were currently hiding in another part of the church. The child was completely traumatized. She said she had approached Clarence on the street when she saw him on her way home from work and suddenly a gang of white men intervened, threatening Clarence who shooed Pearl away, sending her home. Pearl looked back and saw Clarence running too, followed in pursuit by the gang of thugs. One thing led to another and soon gangs of Irish roamed Black town, breaking into homes, looking for Clarence and beating men, women, and children. Molly was among the first of the group that found refuge in the church, though a mob found out that she and others were there and demanded that they be given over to the mob.
I went to Molly. She was quiet but recognized me. I tried to give her words of comfort. The others looking after her were sullen, protective. Molly said it might be best if I left. One of her caregivers added “things were happening” Molly quietly advised it would be best if I got out of the neighborhood. The caregiver said “what we protecting them for? what they ever done for us?” I offered my apologies. Molly said “We been through worse Doctor. There’s been worse.”
I found Father Mike and he encouraged me to go home as well. I did. The mob was quieter when I left, but still menacing.
Back at the hospital McKeon had a rough night and morning. He began tearing at his hair again and the skin of his forearms. I did not approach him to talk. He was given a sedative. I am concerned that our talk catalyzed a regression. This bizarre protective mechanism that prevents him from allowing what must be allowed to surface! Restraints were avoided. He was incoherent for much of the day. Back talking to the angels.
Treatment: resume low level comfort care,
***
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 25, 1905
Dream last night. A mob follows me to the hospital. They are walking, marching really. I am able to run, but as soon as I get away from them, the roads I choose lead me back and they march after me… silently but clearly, they mean to kill me. A child appears and shows me the way. He laughs as I climb over fences and walls and then fall… and the mob re appears.
Certainly, the child is McKeon.
I slept little. I hear little of substance about the disturbance at St. Michael’s
Halfway through the afternoon, I hear a little knock on my door and a little voice asking for me. At the door is Pearl, McKeon’s daughter. She has her brother in tow. I have her come in and she immediately weeps. In much the same way her father weeps. She apologizes profusely for weeping. She explains that she came here after asking to be relieved of her shift early (she reports at 5am every morning and works until 5pm.). She told her boss she needed to pick up her brother from school at the church. He had gone to school against his uncle’s wishes. She lied about the reason she had to go. Her uncle watches over her very closely at the shop. She didn’t know what to do with her brother. She was afraid he would be beaten by her uncle. She stated she and her siblings were grateful that he was watching over them since their mother’s death, but that he was a very rough man sometimes.
I had some buns from the commissary and offered them to her and to little Donald and they both ate ravenously. I advised her to take her brother back to Father Mike and see if he would keep the boy, at least for a few nights. She thought that might be a good idea, as Father Mike has been so good to Donald. Most of the coloreds were back at their homes and the riots seemed to have passed, though everyone is staying in their own homes and neighborhoods. There were more police patrolling the streets. There had been several arrests, mostly of colored men who had taken to standing in front of their homes with shovels and rakes.
She asked if she could see her father. I wished at that moment it was a few days previous. I would have taken them both in, maybe had the boy sing for his father who took such pride in his son’s voice. But I explained that he was not well today and that maybe she could come back in a week or so if she wanted to visit him. She said, “He’s so scared he will hurt us”. I asked her if she thought he would, or if she was afraid. She denied this, saying she knew things just happen sometimes and that her mother and sister’s deaths were the workings of the devil and not something her father did. He loved them so.
She was thoughtful then and asked carefully what I thought about the trouble in the neighborhood. I said that I never understood the way poor white people, and even rich well-educated ones, could behave so ignorantly toward colored people. She said that she thought it didn’t make any sense. She apparently had a friend at the factory, a janitor woman there who cleaned the place, who was colored and who she was friends with. They laugh and send each other notes. She didn’t know why people were so mean.
At that moment Dr. Breath came into the office. I introduced the children. He was clearly not very happy, and his face changed into a stiff mask when I told him who they were. He was curt and pointed as he directed them to go home. Pearl was apologetic as she left, though I invited her back… to Breath’s obvious dismay. Little Donald, who had been listening quietly the entire time, quite unexpectedly ran to me and embraced me. He thanked me for taking care of his daddy. I asked him if he would sing for me. He said he certainly would, and said Father Mike had been so kind to him… he missed his mother and sister so much. Father Mike often gave him extra scones when he visited him in the office. I said he could sing to his father soon too if he liked. That seemed to make him happy and he ran from the room.
After they left, Doctor Breath shut the door. He did not withhold the intensity or degree to which he felt I was being unprofessional and had crossed almost every line of professional propriety with McKeon and his family. He said the incident in which I invited colored people into the ward to feed him should have clued him in on the nature of my weaknesses as a physician for the insane. I asked him if he had said everything he needed to. I said I had no regrets. He left my office.
Treatment: Resume attempts to discuss particulars of the circumstances that led to his institutionalization
***
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 26, 1905
Breath’s discontent with me continued to be expressed this morning. There was a note from his assistant when I arrived, directing me to the intake unit to assist with some new admissions “a duty aptly described in your employment contract with us”. This would take all day. I told him I was at a very crucial place with several of my patients. When I approached him, he assured me my patients would fare quite well without me for a day or two. He had the foresight to assign an intern to my patients on the unit who would do a good job with them. He added: “didn’t I think my patients would benefit from a fresh perspective?”
I hear nothing from the church or Father Mike and did not see McKeon though it was relayed to me that his night had been unremarkable. Unremarkable for a man who sees and talks to angels and tries to scratch out his eyes whenever anyone talks to him about his dead wife.
Treatment: Monitor through chart
The sun has been so perfect today. Back in Florida one took shelter from the sun. People huddled in their darkened homes even when there was air conditioning. Since the fograin I doubt I’ll ever hide from the sun again.
These little apple trees, too. I could imagine being in a new world today. And sleep in a copse of apple trees with the sweet-smelling grass, and the lovely wildflowers… just Queen Anne’s lace and St Johnswort… completely common, once, not considered pretty. Today they make the world almost normal.
But perhaps it is, normal… as normal as it can be. Now. We are merely in its thrall. Its palm.
Why didn’t we understand that? We believed we could master it. We believed that our gods wanted that for us.
A slight wind rose. The sun was lower and threw shadows of the trees across the waters. The fish were plentiful. Jerome was pleased that he was able to learn to catch them though Cresh was not happy with many of his fish and threw them back into the water. “We must not take bad fish back to the people”. She was very gifted at catching the fish she wished to keep and even better at taking them off the lines so that they would be unhurt and stay alive in the kreels that hung over the sides of the boat so the water would be continually refreshed.
They passed through the trees, turning golden and orange with the lowering sun. The skeletons bleaching as well.
This is Koncat. You see he was a great man. One time he was the richest. His jaw is gone now. Gone forever. He has lost his tongue. He will never speak and always see. So much of his bones are shattered. They must be anchored every year and still they fall away. But not his skull or his empty eyes. His story always lives and will always be remembered... because he forgot. Because he was a man of lies with no heart. He made great things and became very rich because the things he made were wanted and so he sold them. He made it impossible for anyone to live without those things. He filled great buildings with people who made the things that everyone bought and could not live without. They had lost the way.
Koncat held great conference, great meetings, and he said the world will get better and better because of the things he made and new things made because of the first things he made. He turned into a kind of god... even to those who died making the things. Even to those whose homes were buried by the materials and the poison left over from making those things. Koncat had many talkers near him, and the talkers talked about how great he was and how great the things he made were and how people could not live without them, even though, even then, many were beginning to die because of what was taken to make those things. Animals. Food. Water. Everything turned bad. Koncat and all the speakers around him knew this but they kept talking to make him feel like a god, though even the land around him was sinking and the waters were flooding the people’s homes.
He moved to an island with his talkers. But then the great sick came and the air and rain poison. He was forced to return but by then there was nothing left of what he remembered. One of his talkers was sickened. It is still not known if the sickness was one from the floods and the poison rains, or just from the lies and the death all around. That talker was dying but he took Koncat’s heart first. Tore it from his ribs and here he is. Losing what is left of his body. Everything but eyes always seeing. He will never die, and we will always remember him.
Jerome stayed silent through these stories. He didn’t know what to say. Cresh turned to him as they drifted away from the jumble of bones on the tree. “You know this Koncat... you know of his kin..” Jerome had nothing to say. His hand was in the water. He could see they were skimming above a jumble of unintelligible things: wreckages, algae covered rocks that he could not distinguish from ruins or natural features that had been drowned. “I free you from them. I free you”
Jerome was not sure what she meant. It was unfamiliar but he was not familiar with anything but accepting what was. The sun approached the horizon behind them. A great sand ridge rose up before them and stretched across the entire horizon. The waters here were still calm, but there were fewer trees that breached the surface of the waters and clearly some had fallen over. The trees with bones fixed to them were also fewer and further apart and they did not pass closely enough for Cresh to tell their stories.
Cresh stopped fishing, the currents and wind were stronger here and she was forced to attend to steering and moving the boat forward. Clearly the long strand ahead was somewhat further than it appeared. She said “we will stay there tonight. We have enough to eat and enough to share when we return” They came close to another, the last, great tree. Its skin was shining and silver and the bones that were attached were absent legs. The ribs wrapped around the trunk and the hands were tied together on other side of the trunk from where the pelvis appeared to be lodged, as if it grew there. One arm was hanging down, dislodged from the shoulder. The eye sockets were pierced by thinner branches, and they stared toward the setting sun, back in the direction from which Cresh and Jerome had come... the only skeleton they had seen that faced that way... though this one was twisted torturously to accomplish the direction of its gaze.
In the lowering light, the heightened wind and the sound of some faraway roar that Jerome did not understand, this skeleton frightened him. He did not know why. He had not been frightened by the others. He simply observed them with the acceptance that had been ingrained in him. Cresh did not stop but paddled close to the tree and pushed the boat past.
“Who is that” Jerome asked
That? He was a priest in the old times. That is his story. That is the one we are told. We do not stop there. He will never die but his story continues to wound us. It is not understood why this is so. One cannot always know how one has been wounded or how the wound will look so many years after it happened. He was a priest in one of the old churches. We will call him Fawder. It is not his name. His name was taken from him. Even then. He was said to be kind. It was said that he was kind to children without family, without kin. His temple instructed him to take these children in. To care for them. We know he will never die. We know his story lives, like a snake, in us but we still do not know how to call it... how it can be recognized before it bites. Fawder was kind and Fawder fed and sheltered these children. He loved them. They loved him. He taught them to be wary of the bad, but then... but then... ( Cresh was paddling very strong now and the bones of Fawder were shrinking in the distance while the great long sand bar became even more pronounced, closer, larger, as they approached it.) He hurt them in ways they could not remember the same time they could not forget. He hurt them in ways that grew into their own bones and into their eyes and tongues. Some gained some strength from this, even some great gift, but it came at great cost. Some could not live at all. Some grew into monsters that had to be caged and killed. This was why Fawder could not be allowed to die. There were others like him... many in his own temples. Fawder’s great wound lives too.
“We must be watchful” Cresh said and then she let loose with her great ululation once again. Once... twice... three times into the darkening day. But by then it became a part of the great roar they were wrapped in. The wind was stiff and had a smell of old things living and older things dying.
It was nearly dark when the boat slid up what turned out to be a sand bar. Cresh scurried out of the boat and pulled it up instructing Jerome to do the same. They left the Kreels full of fish strung to the boat but rocking in the water they had just pulled the boat from.
“We will stay here” shouted Cresh above the roar.
Jerome shouted back “What is that?” and Cresh smiled broadly shouting “It is the sea!” and she took him by the hand as she climbed the great hill of sand. He had never seen such a thing before. He was frightened. When they got to the top of the dune the wind pushed at them even harder. As far as he could see the waters were boiling and turning with great arcs of white foam that turned and fell onto themselves and then rolled up to the sand itself and smashed into it with such an amazing sound. “It is the sea!” yelled Cresh and then let loose with another great chanting sound unlike any of the other ululations: joyous, full of great strength and great sorrows all at once.
It was the sea.
Jerome pronounced it over and over.
Odysseus Star Cluster 508
Odysseus Star Cluster 508
Odysseus Star Cluster 508
Odysseus Star Cluster 508
Odysseus
Star
Cluster
5
0
8
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 27, 1905
News from Matthias: wants to have supper with me the day before the case review and conference to which he’s been invited. I nearly wept. I surprised and embarrassed myself. Only two days. I can only hope his visit will give me the rejuvenation I need so much. I wonder if he looks forward to his visit with me as much I as do.
Once again, I am diverted from my duties with McKeon. He remains in a stage of increased observation. I must consider keeping this record at home, away from my office. It has become more a journal of my own study vs a record of progress for the purposes of discharge. I am confused by my own attachments and the nature and degree of devastating wreckage the unlucky episodes in McKeon’s life leaves in their wake.
Father Mike was able to get a message to me: “Children back with Uncle. Clarence body found, Molly taken in by relatives. Neighborhood quiet but tense. I would like Donald to sing at Clarence funeral. Not sure that can happen. Stop when you can”
Treatment: Continue to try to integrate community supports and hospital approach, if possible, gather pertinent information and documentation re: progress of care in preparation for care conference
I do not even know or recognize if I am myself or some other.
I remember my mother I remember my mother I am my mother her hand her breast I remember as if she is here now but where is she where
am I?
Patient Note
Pt 4357 William “Billy” McKeon
approx. 30 years old
diagnostic origin, hysterical conversion due to family trauma
current diagnosis, dementia praecox secondary to complicated grief and trauma
prognosis: guarded if adequate discharge is not devised
admit date March 9, 1905
April 28, 1905
Found McKeon nearly comatose with sedatives and cocaine today. Intern felt he was doing well. Sedation appears to be the preferred state... no matter how much those practitioners of the drugging cure smell fecal matter and the puddles of urine at their feet. Intern conveyed proudly that he hadn’t had to re-restrain Billy. Billy recognized me and reached out. The intern pushed me back as if to save me from a possible assault. I asked him to leave.
Discontinued Bromide and Chloral hydrate as prescribed. Maintain cocaine as needed and/or requested. Requested that one of the female assistants, a woman who had been quite helpful early on and had been trained by James early in McKeon’s treatment, be reinstated to his care. There was some resistance, but it was done.
I sat with McKeon at his bedside for a time. Quietly. I remembered an early lesson when I felt so much had been lost in his progress and that I was doing little now to improve his situation: presence and transference is more healing than talk. I worked with the female assistant in caring for some of his basic care needs. She is very tender, but also quite professional so that there is no mistaking her touch for anything but chaste care… a kind of loving attention in which there is no threat of sexualization: safe. She stated he reminded her of her brother whom she had cared for after his return, wounded, from the Spanish American War. The connection between battlefield exhaustion and delirium and what our McKeon is going through is inescapable. I asked her what worked best in helping her brother heal. She stated that she and her family weren’t trained but they did know what he liked and what had made his life bearable prior to his war experience, and so they played the songs and told the stories he loved. When he was well enough, they brought in card games he liked. She was quiet and I asked how he was doing now. She did not answer but came around to me and whispered in my ear “He’s done himself in… two months ago”, and then she said loudly enough for McKeon to hear ,“Oh he’s back to work and is courting a young lady”. I was lost for words for so many reasons. I squeezed her hand.
I squeezed Billy’s hand too. He is starting to come out of the chemical fog he has been subjected too. His drooling has decreased, and he responds to the assistant’s kindnesses with gratitude, even verbally at times.
Treatment: McKeon is to be taken to solarium tomorrow immediately after breakfast. I’ll see about family visits. Overall improvement with discontinuation of sedatives.
Dreams.
Angela’s death was a huge loss for the community that had spontaneously surrounded her and her dreams.
And they weren’t so unusual as dreams go. Some were even so simple and direct they were more like parables.
I often wondered if she made them up out of whole cloth merely to soothe and comfort. Perhaps her real gift was an ability to withstand her own great losses and put them in a framework of what everyone around her was feeling.
In the end it never really mattered, did it? If there was a real visionary process at work or mere… not so “mere”… empathy, or a little of everything? It worked for a time, for me and all the others who gathered around her. And there was great mourning for her when she was gone.
And then the inevitable power struggle. It was not in my dream, it frightened the children and we left. This was before Judith was killed. Before Jacob.
John was impatient. He wanted to get home. The twins kept each other occupied and if there was any laughter they were the source. Perhaps that is a greater gift than dreams and visions.
I had a dream then too. The day before we finalized the plan to leave. Angela’s niece Robyn had approached me to try to convince me to support her. She felt that she was next in line. I never knew what that was supposed to mean. Next in line for what? I never asked her. But I felt something like violence rising up against her from others in the community, and the same loss, which was really only deferred grief, brewing in those closest to her. What had never been a kingdom, a political entity, was suddenly threatening to tear itself apart to become one.
I had a dream. We were in the cold. The ground crunching underfoot in the way Grandpa described it did after the first frost, before the big snows up north where he lived, where we were hoping to go. It was foggy. Icy foggy. And silent of human presence. Unfamiliar birds crackled the blur. I was carrying Rebecca, urging Jonah and John along. Judith was sure of our direction. She was dressed in a black cape… like the witch in snow white. She led us along this winding woody path. We could see nothing. No wind. The little ones were silent. John began to whimper. Then Judith faced me and I could see it was her.
“This way… this way” and we went, unsure but having no other way to go.
Suddenly we arrived at the crest of a great bluff… or a mesa. We knew it was a huge drop, from there. But the fog became icier and wetter… fograin, though we knew nothing of fograin then.
My dream knew.
Judith lifted her arms to the sky and turned into a huge condor like bird.
That’s when the wind started. Leaves and dust and birds being torn apart. We clung to the edge of the cliff and it began to move. It was animate. It was a huge animal. The earth. The land. And Judith’s cape billowed out and suddenly everything was dark.
Then I was in the sun. With the children. Under the apple tree. Maybe it was this apple tree. Lovely warm grassy spot under the apple tree… the apples in the grass. Ripening.
Judith wasn’t there.
It was the sea.
The light went out behind them and the dimness of night crept up from the horizon. Cresh stayed busy collecting pieces of wood and other detritus the waves and higher waters had washed up.
Jerome was hypnotized by the turning and falling of the waves. He had never seen such a thing, never imagined it. The word “sea”, the word “shore” meant little to him. Any pictures were infrequent, and it was not considered stylish among his community to spend too much time engaged in the act of viewing pictures of such things as they were assumed to be pictures from the past and such preoccupations were unfashionable, somewhat taboo. Everything, every person, was perfect as they went about the business of procuring, organizing and preparing the material delivered to the complex and while everyone took roles to make sure the leadership was sated... that great, distant and largely invisible power that kept them all fed and happy and engaged in the rituals. Healthy too. Though he wondered about that now as he was enthralled by the sight and sound of what was called the sea. The beach. What was this really? The beach. The long stretch of sand, as far as the eye could see with its variable curls of thundering water that shook the ground and made any other sound hard to hear. Why had this not been allowed?
He started to cry. It was soft, inward weeping, though tears were there. Another unfamiliar thing. An unfashionable thing. There was so much in him of presumed happiness. How could it be any other way? The sea took all that, finally, from him, or what remained of it since he had been with Cresh and experienced the great garden of the eternal skeletons and the people in the remains of the great dome.
The sea was a miracle. For the first time in a while he thought of David and wished he was there with him. No. It could not be. David would not be so far from the community. Never. What did that mean? What could their love actually mean then if they could not share such astounding newness with one another? Jerome wanted to feel the waves. He thought he could at least tell David and the others about this.
Where were they? Where had they gone? Where does anyone go?
The sky glowed with the last light of day, a kind of purple and aquamarine he had never seen before... the white ridges of the breaking waves turning almost turquois white... infused with their own light. He walked to touch the water as it reached up in arcs on the sand.
Cresh hurried away from the fire she had started on the first dune and caught up with him just as he was to step into the rapidly expanding wash. She caught him by his arm and pulled him away. He did not resist.
“No. No good” Cresh led him up to the fire.
“Why... how is it no good? It is so beautiful”
“No” She was determined, and he had no reason to disagree and disobey. It was not his way. “No good for you. Bad water. It eats you when you swim here”
“It eats you?”
“Poison”
“Poison?”
“From long ago” Cresh waved her hands across the sky, and they stopped before the growing fire. “We will eat fish we caught. You will eat? Come now... sit. You can look at the sea and eat”
‘How did so much water get poisoned?”
Cresh arranged a way to cook the fish in coals from the edge of the fire. She split the gut of several of the fish and pulled out the innards with two fingers and washed the fish in a kind of bladder that she had filled with the water from the other side of the dune that separated it from the sea. “You take this.” She instructed Jerome, handing him one of the rigs that held one of the gutted fish. “Hold over the fires there” He followed directions, and she smiled. It was the first time he had seen her smile. It was a small smile. “You do well” she said, then she brushed the palm of her hand across his forehead and head. “You like the sea. I believe there was a time when the people could swim in those waves. I was told this”
“Swim?” Jerome was focused on his fish. It began to sputter some over the coals.
“Not you” Cresh laughed a bit as she prepared her own fish skewer, “No... you don’t swim—”
“Am I doing this right?”
Cresh stood very close behind him, with her own skewer just above his. “Oh yes. This is very good. You will like this fish” Jerome could smell her that close to him. There was a wind off the waves and it had its own smell. The two smells together were good. He could smell the roasting fish too.
Cresh gave him more instructions. Softly, or as softly as allowed to be heard over the surf. “That’s right... turn it now...”
“Should I cook its eyes?”
Cresh laughed again. Something about this made Jerome feel as if he belonged to her. It was not a bad feeling, but different. He wasn’t sure what he should do with it. At one point as they knelt and stood and moved together near the fire, he felt his penis engorge. Though he was not sure she had noticed, both were loosely covered in the rough parka-like coverings. She did lay her free hand on his upper arm as he continued to roast the fish. “You will know how to do this now! Good.”
The fish was very good. Cresh taught Jerome how to strip the little bones from the white flesh and he ate every bit he could. She ate hers too and they proceeded to prepare two other fish in the same manner. Jerome even cut the belly of the beast and pulled out the guts as he had seen Cresh do.
It was good he wore the parka, the one he had all day. The wind off the water was quite cool. Jerome was unused to this kind of feeling, and he was grateful for the fire. He fed it wood that Cresh had collected earlier. He found this action, this fire keeping, almost as amazing as the sea. All this newness. Cresh was a good teacher. She accomplished these tasks effortlessly and took less than half the time Jerome took to do them. She was kind when she redirected his urge to put more of the white, bleached beach wood on the fire than was necessary to keep a hot but not roaring fire going.
At one point, after they had eaten the fish and they sat so they could watch and feed the fire and the sea at the same time (though it was quite dark, the white of the falling waves glowed through the night) Cresh closely examined Jerome’s face and back and exclaimed that he was burned. He was unsure what she meant by this, though he felt a tightening of his skin he had never felt before and when Cresh brushed his back as she had several times, it stung some. She must have felt his slight recoil because that was when she decided to take a close look at him.
She had him turn his back to the fire and she ran her fingertips over his lower back, his neck and then turned his face so she could look closely at him. “You have been burned. You are so pale in the skin. The sun has eaten you even though we put the medicine on you.” Jerome remembered the greasy ointment she had spread on him early in the day. “We need more” Cresh took off over the dune to where they had left the boat and supplies. Suddenly he was alone with the sea.
He was confused by his body’s response to Cresh’s ministrations. His organ rose in a kind of desire that was unfamiliar. His sudden aloneness there, his smallness in this place, the endless shoreline that disappeared into a purple darkness that sang and boomed just as endlessly, made him feel strong and insignificant at the same time. He was not accustomed to being alone and he was especially not accustomed to being alone in such a huge roaring place. He had seen pictures, old pictures, of such places but had never thought much about them and never thought he’d ever be anywhere near any place like this. He never wanted to be anywhere other than where he was. He wondered about that. How could it be that he would not wish to see such a place? How had that want been excised from him? Apparently Cresh... maybe her entire clan... was not so limited about what they allowed themselves to desire.
He felt alone there and missed David and his community. He missed their rituals and their scheduled satisfied way of living. Their mass rituals that catapulted them all into such a state of elevated spiritualized unity. He missed knowing what the Leaders wished from him. He missed not having any questions. None. He missed being important as a recorder in a community of people who looked like him and acted like him. The pounding sea seemed to bring this out in him... perhaps that was its poison. And yet he had odd stirrings of desire for this person, this Cresh... even thought he had been long been assigned to be a same-sex oriented man. She made him want her. Her touch and closeness. How was this happening?
He felt tears again. He tried to lay back in the sand. It was warmer than the wind, as if it had stored some of the daylight, but still felt like it burned and scratched his back. He just wanted to feel the sea. Something told him it could take him home, if he could just walk into it. How could it be poison? What were these feelings?
I didn’t really “see” the dreams until now. Until I woke from this dream. Under this tree. By myself. With my bag of apples.
What could I have done? If would have seen it?
But this dream, this most recent dream, the dream today, took me back to the beach… the long undisturbed beach of my childhood. With my grandfather and Nana.
Another glorious day in the sun. The waves rolling in so far. As they slide back into the ocean, the sheen leaves a mirror. The sky in the shining sand.
Grandpa and Nana are suddenly there. I cannot be much older than 5. They are urging me to dive in. One last time.
We have to go, they say, we must go. It’s time. Jump in again.
And there he is. Grandpa. He was a big man and he made me feel safe. Safer than I felt with almost anyone.
I jumped in.
But the seas began to roil around me. “Swim Celia! You have to swim now!” I could hear grandpa and Nana calling. “Swim away from the current! You can do it”
And so I did. But it was much more like flying and suddenly a huge tarpon was lifting me out of the water and skimming across the waves. Thrilling dream. I was so happy I was crying in the dream. Grandpa and Nana stood and clapped for me as I flew.
But suddenly a dark look came over their faces. “Come down now! Come down! It’s time to go. Don’t go so high!”
And the sky turned turbulent and green. I was on the sand again. I ran toward them down the beach as the waves rose higher and higher. The waves became metallic, sounding like huge rolling machines. Clanking ever closer to me.
They swallowed Grandpa and Nana. I yelled “Don’t! Don’t go!” and ran toward where they were, but they were gone. Devoured. The clanking metallic teeth of the great machine of the ocean chewed up the beach and front dune toward me. Louder… unmistakable machinery…
I wake. Here. There is a wind but it is later in the afternoon.
The sound of the machinery is still there. I have a hard time shaking off the dream. I think. That sound.
That sound.
I jump up and run. I forget my apples. I run toward the intersection. I get to a hill where there is a full view of the cluster of crumbling hotels and restaurants and all the signs of the new community.
I fall on my belly to the ground.
The machinery. New machines. Gathering workers. I can hear them shouting. Ineffective resistance. Smoke rising. Great flying tankers with grated dumpsters. Filled with people.
Who could dream something so terrible? Who would?
Oh no.
The children.
