Five: He was not getting from me what he needed
From Some Stones Don’t Roll
In Stockbridge, Massachusetts, during the 1970s, the author befriends a young man, unaware that this newcomer is a paranoid-schizophrenic who depends on medication to keep him from suicidal and homicidal behavior.
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2014
My chest itches. I wonder if that consciousness I had will return. I hope not. I am in no mood for panic now. There is a change afoot I know. I feel it. The itch is gone. Now another one. And another. Sweet mother of mentality! Did Bill have a sister? Did Bill speak once of a sister? Does she hold the key? Each one of us is different. Each one of us a destiny? No, that’s too easy. I hear noise in my head a higher pitch than what rises from below, the traffic punctuated by the workers. Always there are workers moving things about. We had a woman named Mrs. Detchen who came each week to clean. I never knew one thing about her. She came in and she went out. The only thing left now is a smell. But I can see her. Or perhaps some celebration beyond the rub-a-dub of cloth on shelf and cabinet doors closing. I shall Google her perhaps. Find a vampish great grandchild somewhere who knows the granddaughter of Bill’s sister. Only four degrees of separation this AM. When I write, the sound is still here. I multitask. It’s all reality. We contribute to reality with every scratch. Bill became a giant. That is what a winter’s bloat will do. He lay inert on a hospital bed in Pittsfield.
Woof woof woof woof went the doggie. I do not know what the dog said. I do know when winter breaks, smells return and that Stockbridge still has woody areas ascending and descending and adjacent to its structures including the odd structure of that building just down the hill toward the railroad tracks where Bill went after being at the Red Lion Inn, or rather the Lion’s Den. The very place where Bill and I sang songs I can’t remember. The doggie found Bill in the forest as the spring began to stretch from a long winter’s sleep. Make that woods. Forests are for books. They got him moved from where he lay in clothesless innocence, the ice preserving him, and yet he grew out there to twice his size it seemed. I did not recognize him on the slab. I lied when they asked is it him. It was and it wasn’t. Woof.
She is taking a shower. It is 7:34 AM. A detective came during those months Bill lay frozen in the woods near Blue Hill Road. No one knew he was not still off somewhere wielding the knife. But as time passed we thought it likely he had done what he did. Wandered off. No one went so far as to suggest he would have plunged that serrated knife straight into his heart. With all the force he used playing pool at Mundy’s. When we knew he had stabbed George within a few centimeters of an artery life hangs upon, that is all we knew, save Bill was gone. We figured we might be next. We spent a night up on Yale Hill and then returned sheepishly, survivors. Charley Pride went through my head. I began questioning my ex about the ethics of not telling me that Bill might become violent without his daily pills. I became a fundamentalist committer. Lock them away. Did I say I had empathy? No I did not. Shower is over, No drip. No itch. I think I saw a pigeon moving toward 33rd Street.
There are no dogs here in the old McAlpin. A block from where Charles Sanders Peirce used to amble from the Century Club downtown to the Brevoort. Did Peirce have dogs? We did. The recumbent pooch that graced the three albums I made, after the time under consideration, was our Persephone, a diarrhea-prone chocolate Lab we rescued from the pound during those guilt-free days. Always a thought of RCA. Now 30 Rock. The Victor dog on old 78s. There is one dog here in this building. A tiny one, one you can slip under your jacket. Must have been allowed during lean times. Lean times come ambiently to Herald Towers. That is the name of the old McAlpin Hotel, the one that balanced the Waldorf when it occupied the site of the Empire State Building, down the block. My angel is the ultimate lover of the furry things, She keeps a veritable menagerie on the couch. They sing and speak and say goodnight. They are the icons of our private life. And no they are not dogs. They’re people. Only C. S. Peirce did not see that much difference between us and them, consciousness-wise.
We drove to Pittsfield in the dark of a March evening almost a year from the time Bill wandered off and we entered the building where he lay. I do not remember if it was a hospital or what. It must have been, since he was in a room with glass in the door. I stood at the head. The cloth was drawn back. There was no smell. I looked down, my head inclined to his, about the same distance as when we sat together in the car the night I heard Charley Pride singing in my head. Everything will be alright. Since Bill died. we have locked away those we suspect of violent proclivities. We have locked everyone away, one way or another. This is Bill’s father’s world. Yes, that’s Bill, I said. I lied. It was him by inference. By formality. But I had no knowledge of Bill. I did not recognize him even when he was alive. Or I did not acknowledge him. He was right. He was not getting from me what he needed in a relationship.
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Stephen C. Rose has written a number of books (Fiction/Non-fiction). You can tweet him here.
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