Windwhistle Bone

By Richard Trainor

Richard Trainor's Windwhistle Bone is a novel of time and place as we follow the protagonist, Ram Le Doir, on a journey tracing his rise as a celebrated poet and reporter, which comes to a tragic conclusion as he is unlocking a series of dangerous stories that nearly costs him his life, and destroys his marriage and career. Ram's fall and eventual redemption concern the double murder of his wife, actress Vera Dubeck, and her lover. Trainor's prose was cited by the late Luther Nichols, Doubleday's former West Coast Bureau Chief, as "reminiscent of Faulkner (the Snopes-like nature of the Le Doirs), Thomas Wolfe, J. P. Dunleavy (the scapegrace of Ram), Dylan Thomas, and Bukowski. There's a great California feel to your novel which is one of the finest first novels I have ever read." Nichols gave testimony for Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books during the obscenity trial held over Allen Ginsburg's poem, Howl, in 1960.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645366720

Richard Trainor

Richard Trainor began writing Windwhistle Bone at the start of his publishing career in the early 1980s. Trainor has published four non-fiction books and over 100 feature stories for national and international publications including The Sacramento Bee, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, American Film, and Sight & Sound. Trainor is now working on the second volume of his California trilogy, the prequel of Windwhistle Bone, titled Fran's Nocturne; a collection of short stories, Valley Fever and Other Stories; and a new non-fiction book titled Final Say.

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Epilogue

About the Author

Richard Trainor began writing Windwhistle Bone at the start of his publishing career in the early 1980s. Trainor has published four non-fiction books and over 100 feature stories for national and international publications including The Sacramento Bee, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, American Film, and Sight & Sound.

Trainor is now working on the second volume of his California trilogy, the prequel of Windwhistle Bone, titled Fran’s Nocturne; a collection of short stories, Valley Fever and Other Stories; and a new non-fiction book titled Final Say.

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Richard Trainor (2019)

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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Trainor, Richard

Windwhistle Bone

ISBN 9781643780122 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781645754701 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645366720 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 2019942826 

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

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If ever, in days to come, you shall see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and partly through love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand with the world and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin to yourself, then will you do as one I dream of once did, and like him will you suffer, but how fortunate and grateful should you be, if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy again.

– Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

If ever, in days to come, you shall see ruin at hand, and, thinking you understand mankind, shall tremble for your friendships, and tremble for your pride; and partly through love for the one and fear for the other, shall resolve to be beforehand with the world and save it from a sin by prospectively taking that sin to yourself, then will you do as one I dream of once did, and like him will you suffer, but how fortunate and grateful should you be, if like him, after all that had happened, you could be a little happy again.

– Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

Book I

The Hour of Not Quite Rain

Authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse.

– Albert Camus, The Fall

Chapter One

Shapes, just shapes. Different sizes, colors, attitudes. Shapes. That’s the way things seem to me these days. Shapes. Motley shapes. I like that word; motley. I just learned it and now everything’s motley. I like the sound of it. It sounds like a parade or a carnival. I see the parade pass by every now and then on the street that runs by the park and I imagine myself out there being as motley as the rest of them. But anyway, I was talking about shapes, and I know I used to have names for all these things, but now, I have to learn them again—piano, candle, philodendron. And I learn the names of all these things that I’m finding out about, but they’re still shapes, shapes that either move or grow or change colors or speak or even just stay the same. If they mean anything, I don’t know about it, and I try and do like I’m told and not worry about the things that I can’t understand yet. I guess I forgot the names of these things not long after I got here. Maybe it was before I got here. Maybe I never knew them, I don’t have much memory.

Barry showed me an instrument the other day and even though I recognized it, I couldn’t find a name for it. I asked him what’s that silver shape, and he said it was a hemostat. I’ve seen them before but I can’t remember when. Anyway, it was interesting and at the same time, a kind of mystery seeing this silver hemostat and knowing that I knew it but couldn’t name it. And that’s the way things are for me these days: Naming shapes. But after something like that hemostat thing, I usually either get tired or depressed, and if I get depressed, I just sit there at lunch or dinner and cry as quietly as I can while I play with my applesauce or stewed prunes. I don’t understand it. Hemostat. Just a harmless little silver shape and I wound up crying on my bed almost all night long.

I’m afraid I’ll have to leave here soon, and I hope that’s not true because I’ve gotten used to the routine, and I know how to play the game pretty well without winding up in the hot seat. Katz and Bardens—they’re the head guys on this unit—came to visit me the other day, and along with the usual tests and instruments that are part of the routine, they also had this big yellow thing with a red sticker on it. My file, they told me, and they said that they’d gotten back the report from the board and things were looking promising is how they put it. Promising for whom? Promising for what? They talk to me fairly straight these days—just a little of their old style left. They used to talk to me real slow with their eyes opened up real wide. It used to make me feel like I was four years old or like I’d just landed from outer space. It was like they were creeping around me and didn’t want me to know if—that’s what I told them.

So anyway, they said—Katz and Bardens, that is—that I had made real progress and they were going to schedule me for something they were sure I’d like and that it would help me get better. I didn’t say much. I was looking down at the desk and picking at the plastic strip that was peeling on the edge, and they looked at each other and nodded, probably because I was smiling. I was thinking that they told me the same thing right before they started giving me the shocks. I like this time of year the best—Fall. Especially from up here on the sixth floor, where I can look down on everything, and it all seems to move in a nice little order. People crossing the wet streets and buses stopping and pulling up to the curb where some get on and some get off. In the dayroom, there’s this huge window, and below it is a park with thousands of trees—big green, gray, red, and yellow shapes—and they still have their leaves on, but they don’t seem as busy as they are in the summertime. They seem to be thinking or resting, and I usually spend part of the afternoon looking down on that park, and the leaves are so thick that you can barely see the grass and paths that I know go through there. It’s something that I’ve really come to like and look forward to—looking down into that park and the thousands of trees whose names I used to know. It’s a whole lot different than walking up to a tree and looking up through it. Sometimes, looking down into that park, I can imagine how God feels.

When I think of what it would be like to leave here, I’m both thrilled and scared. I’ve been here a long time—long enough to get over being nervous—because that’s one of the things that I can still remember. When I arrived here, I was in quite a state. That’s what Bardens says, and although I don’t remember exactly clear that time, I do recall that I was all worked up. A lot happened when I first arrived—it was a much busier time for me then—maybe because I was new, and they have to do that to everyone when they first arrive. But then again, I don’t think so. When Barry first showed up, he didn’t get nearly as much attention as I did. I look at the calendar every now and then and try to figure out how long I’ve been here—I think it was sixteen months the last time I checked, but I’m not really sure. They—the staff—are pretty quiet about these things and tell me not to trouble myself about such matters. Sometimes, I feel like they’re keeping something from me, but maybe it’s just their way to ask questions and not answer them.

I’ve been here this long—from when I was nervous and in quite a state and took lots of shots and pills and was always busy with tests and experiments until now when I can talk and write again and am pretty calm. I don’t worry anymore, and I sometimes wonder how that felt. Maybe it’s because I know that I have no control and figure that worrying about things won’t do me any good. I just leave it up to the staff and hope they know what’s good for me. They tell me to trust them and that they’re only trying to help me, so I do.

This is the way things are—just shapes—mostly, sixteen months here on Six East, last time I checked, looking promising and not worrying too much. It’s really not such a bad life, now that I think of it.

I sometimes can’t help from thinking though. Are worry and wonder the same things? The other night, I was playing bones—dominoes, that is, but we call it bones up here—with Corvo, an old guy in a chair, and I remember thinking to myself—his face is as white as the white cliffs of Dover—and I had no idea where it came from. I wondered about it or worried about it—whatever the difference is. I can make no connection to ‘white cliffs of Dover’—it came from out of nowhere and shocked me so hard that I couldn’t think about the game of bones and had to quit right in the middle. What it is, is that I don’t remember a thing that happened before I came here, and that phrase—white cliffs of Dover—was like a shock or charge that snapped something inside me. It was like a ghost walking around in my head and turning on a light switch that gave me a glimpse of something that another part of me recognized, but the light was too bright, and I felt better afterward when we were able to shut it off.

They’ve asked me to do this—writing I mean. The other day when they—Katz and Bardens—came to interview me, they said, We’d like you to do something for us that we feel might be helpful.

When they say that, it makes me nervous because I still remember them saying the same thing before I got the shocks—but I went along. What’s that? I said.

We’d like you to do some writing for us, said Katz.

Oh, I said. What kind of writing?

Nothing in particular, said Katz. Just write about whatever comes into your mind. How you’re feeling, what you’ve been doing, how you’re getting along here, you know.

Just write about anything? I said.

That’s right, said Bardens.

And then what? I said. What’s this for?

They looked at each other, and then Katz said, We would like to see what you think about when you’re alone. How you see things these days. We feel it could be of value in gauging what kind of progress you’re making.

Alright, I said. Do I get to keep the stuff I write?

Well, we’ll give it back to you later, said Katz.

When? I wanted to know.

After we’re through with it, said Bardens.

And so, this is a new thing for me. I haven’t done any writing since I’ve been here, other than writing in the tests they’ve given me, but they don’t test me as often as they used to.

I think I said that when I got here, it was a real busy time for me. Here is what I remember. They talked with me a lot, asking me questions about everything. Now, I don’t remember what all the questions were, but I do remember that they’d interview me for a long time—from after breakfast until lunch. Then I had a lot of electric tests—they’d take these little caps and put grease on them and tape them to my head after they’d scrubbed my head with some scratchy soap that itched. Then they would run wires from these caps to a giant machine with green screens that dots and lines ran across and they’d sit me in a chair and show me movies and play sounds through plugs over my ears—it wasn’t sounds of anything you could make any sense out of—just whirs and buzzes and beeps—Barry said it was a code—and that would go on for hours until I couldn’t see the pictures clear anymore and my ears buzzed from the sounds that were going on at the same time.

Then I had tests with blindfolds on, where they made me stand on a board and made me walk down it, and tests that checked my reactions to things, where I had to stick my head in a box and press a button when certain things happened. There was a cat in that box that I was supposed to press a button at when it jumped out, but it always scared me when it did that, and I could never do that one right. About every other day, they’d stick a needle in my wrist with a twisted tube coming out of it and, every half hour, they’d come along with a bigger tube that they’d screw on to it and fill with blood, so that by the end of the day, I’d be very dizzy and seeing spots and needed someone to help me walk. They had me writing in these tests that had hundreds of questions, where they’d ask stuff like whether or not I’d flown across the Atlantic Ocean 10 times and if I’d been on the cover of magazines and if I’d like to be an explorer and all sorts of other confusing stuff that I can’t remember. They’d show me pictures and tell me to make up stories about them. They’d show me different colored spots and ask me what was in them. They’d have other people come in and interview me. They had me taking all kinds of different pills and shots and a couple of times, they put me on special diets. I remember that happening, but it was like it was happening to a different person because I remember them asking me once, How do you expect us to help you when you won’t cooperate? We laugh—me, Katz, and Bardens—about those times now. I laugh with them but I really don’t know what I’m laughing at. They tell me my attitude is much brighter and more positive now. That changed about the time we started the shocks.

Life sometimes can go by pretty slowly up here on Six East, although I don’t really think that I’m bored by it. Just used to it, I guess. Still, I can tell that it’s pretty slow because whenever I look down at life in the street from the dayroom window, everybody seems to be in a big hurry and I get to wondering why that is. I guess they’ve all got to be somewhere and they’re running late. At times, I imagine I’m missing something by not having somewhere to hurry off to but I can’t see their faces from up here and can’t tell if they’re happy or angry that they’re in such a rush, and so, I’m not sure if I feel left out or not. I’ve talked about this with Katz and Bardens, and they give me their usual answer whenever I bring up stuff like this—you need not concern yourself with such matters—so okay, I leave it alone. It can get confusing sometimes, and when I get confused, I sometimes get angry.

Like I said, life is pretty slow up here now and, at one time, it wasn’t. I guess that’s because of the progress I’ve made. This is my routine lately—I wake up at 6 and after the meds are passed out, I go to breakfast with the rest of the residents—I usually sit with Barry at the table that’s closest to the stairs so that I can be the first one onto the roof for exercises and recreation. That’s what we do after breakfast—go up on the roof and exercise and play ball games. The roof has a big fence around it, I guess so nobody will fall or jump off. There’s an exercise routine that everybody has to do—jumping jacks, knee bends, windmills, hamstring stretchers, and pushups. After that, it’s recreation, and I get a big laugh every morning after the exercises when I yell, —Alright, residents, let’s recreate. It just kills them every time. It’s an old joke, but nobody minds because I think we’ve all come to count on it. We have volleyball, handball, foursquare, and basketball courts, and after a while, all you can hear are loud whumps as the games go on.

Basketball is my sport and I’m pretty good at it. I’ve played before. It’s funny, but I can remember that. I guess I quit because I lost interest. Anyway, a few of us have a game of basketball every morning and although I usually make the most baskets, my team usually winds up losing because Barry—he’s always the captain of the other team—chooses the sides. One time, he even stuck me with Corvo—the old Italian guy in the chair I talked about earlier—but that one backfired on him. Corvo just wheeled himself to a spot by the half-court line and when he wanted the ball, he’d clap, a hook shot, swish—about five in a row. Nobody would even guard him—I guess they couldn’t believe he’d do it again—but he’d clap, get the ball, take a second to look at the basket, and swish, just net. Some people are more than what they seem and those are the ones you gotta watch out for.

So, alright, morning is exercise and recreation, and at 11, we’ve got to come down off the roof. Why? I don’t know, because lunch isn’t until 12:30. I usually watch TV or play solitaire. I don’t much like the shows that are on TV at that time—mostly doctor shows or shows with a whole bunch of people that live in a small town and don’t seem to do much except talk about each other. They never seem to laugh or smile. I guess life treats some people pretty rough. After lunch, they pass out more meds. I used to have to take afternoon meds, but that stopped a while ago—another sign of the progress I’ve made.

At 2, I go to the group counseling over on the west wing. A guy by the name of Leroy Chaney runs the show. There are usually six of us that are there regularly—me, Barry, Peters, Monroe, Nalley, and Edgar—a little guy who’s always polishing his glasses. He never puts them on, so I can’t see how they get so dirty. I asked him about that once, and he looked up from his polishing and gave me this weird look like I didn’t know what I was talking about. Anyway, we sit around on couches, and Chaney asks if anyone has anything that they’d like to share with the group, and, usually, somebody will have something that they want to say—and it might be a complaint about the food or how they’re being treated or an argument that they had with somebody in the group or one of the staff—and then we all talk about whatever this thing might be, and Chaney doesn’t say much, but he looks real interested and makes notes while we talk. But if things start to get out of hand, then he might tell us to calm down and relax. I don’t usually say too much at these sessions, and every now and then he—Chaney that is—will ask me, How are things with you, Ram?

And I always say, Just fine.

One time though, I wound up in the hot seat and it was over this incident that I didn’t understand at the time. They have this facility divided up into men’s and women’s wings, and I never could understand why until the incident happened to me. Anyway, this incident was about this girl who escaped from the women’s wing and somehow got into my room. How she got there, I have no idea. I was playing bones with Corvo and when I went back to my room, there was this woman lying on my bed with her dress up around her belly. She had her legs opened up and was going unhh, unhh in this real low voice. She had her hands up inside of her, and, at first, I thought she was trying to grab whatever it was that was hurting her. I had no idea what to do—I was about to call a doctor—when those lights started to come on inside me, like the time I thought of Corvo’s white cliffs of Dover face, and I felt there was something that I should be remembering, but it wouldn’t come. I couldn’t tell how much time passed, but, pretty soon, she started screaming and a whole crowd of people came piling into the room, and I was surprised as the rest of them when I looked down and saw that I was doing myself like she was. I wound up in a lot of trouble over that, and nobody would believe me when I said that I didn’t know what was going on. It was like I dreamed the whole thing but was awake at the same time. Katz and Bardens came around and straightened me out about it and took me out of general circulation for a few days and that helped because the incident confused me and made me nervous for a while. We—Katz and Bardens and me—call that incident my minor setback.

Group lasts for an hour and a half, and then I’m free to do what I want until dinner at 5:30. Sometimes, I’ll play bones or cribbage with Barry or Corvo, and, other times, I’ll go to the dayroom and look down at the park below. I’ve been doing more of that lately—imagining myself out there and what I would do because I don’t think it will be very long before they ship me out of here. Maybe, pretty soon, I’ll be able to find out why everybody’s in such a hurry, maybe not. I’m not sure if it makes any difference.

In the evenings, I go to school. I’ve forgotten so much that everything seems new to me—I know I’ve learned most of this stuff before. Stuff like geography, history, English, etc. I think maybe when they did the shocks, they might have given me too much because even though I can faintly remember some of this stuff and can do it without too much effort, it seems like I’ve forgotten the rules and have to learn them all over again. I’ve been working with the instructor—Mr. Priddis—on improving my vocabulary, and he tells me I’m a good student and quick to learn. Motley’s my most recent discovery, and I talked about that earlier. I saw a new word in a magazine today that I want to find out about because it had a nice ring to it—it’s conflagration.

Last Wednesday, I started the new treatment that Katz and Bardens were talking about—hypnotism. I was standing in the dayroom, looking down as usual, when this nurse came up to me and said, —Mr. Le Doir? I turned around and looked at her tag that said Ms. Haig. She told me that she’d been sent to escort me to my appointment with Dr. Aragon. His office—Aragon’s is different than Katz and Bardens’—it’s more like a room in a house. He’s got plants all over the place and an old red desk that he sits behind. I sit next to the desk in a big, black chair that has a machine attached to it that makes the seat and back buzz. The first time I sat in it, I thought they were going to give me more shocks and got scared and jumped up right away. I must’ve looked funny doing that because Aragon laughed and told me not to worry—the buzzing was going to relax me. I didn’t sit back down right away, but after he talked to me for a while, I calmed down. What clinched it was when he sat down in the chair himself and turned up the buzzing to show me that it was safe. After that, I figured I could trust him. You never can tell about some of these treatments.

I remember Sweeney—he was the first guy I got to know when I arrived at Six East—going off for some treatment one afternoon, and he never came back. I asked about him, but nobody seemed to know where he’d gone to—all they’d say was Mr. Sweeney was no longer with us. But anyway, after a while, I got used to the chair and the buzzing started to feel good. Maybe it’s because he’s a hypnotizing doctor, but Aragon is a lot different than Katz and Bardens—they always wear the white coats with the gold snake tags and carry around clipboards or files. They don’t like to answer questions, but Aragon doesn’t seem to mind, and when I ask him certain things that he answers, I believe him. Aragon doesn’t look like the other doctors either—he usually just wears jeans and a t-shirt and has a beautiful silver beard that’s yellow around his mouth from the pipes or cigarettes that he’s always smoking. I was sent here because they thought he might be able to help me remember. They—Katz and Bardens—say that I’ve had a big shock—not the electric kind, but a traumatic shock was what they called it, and this traumatic shock has blocked up my memory. They think that Aragon can remove the block by hypnotizing me. I know what they’re talking about—I mean my being blocked up—because I can sometimes feel this thing inside me trying to come out. Like a voice that I’m keeping quiet. It’s like a giant bubble that’s stuck in my throat. So that’s what we’re doing with the hypnotism—trying to get to that thing that keeps me blocked up. Aragon says that—how does he put it?—that we’re trying to find the key to the lock on my memory.

Here’s how the hypnotism works. Aragon makes me sit back in the buzzing chair, and then he takes out a box from his desk that sounds like a clock, except you can make it go fast or slow—a metronome I think he said—and with the buzzing and the ticking going on, Aragon starts to talk to me in this very slow and calm voice. He tells me to relax and concentrate. Relax and concentrate. Over and over again. He tells me to relax my feet, then my legs, and so on until I’ve relaxed my whole body. Relax and concentrate. Relax and concentrate, all the time he’s saying this until it sounds like he’s very far away. I have my eyes closed and the only thing I can see is black, and the more he tells me to relax and concentrate, the blacker it gets.

After a while, it changes color from the black to a deep blue, like the sky at night in the summertime, and then he tells me to imagine myself climbing some stairs, and I can—I’m on these stairs in a dark house with a red rug, and there’s a handrail, and the walls have beautiful wood going halfway up, and I’m climbing the stairs—5, 4, 3—and every time I reach the third stair, it creaks—then 2 and 1. And then he tells me to imagine a door—and I do—and then he tells me to open the door, and when I turn the handle and open it, I see that the stairs have led me into the sky, and there’s nothing out there but a light blue sky with fat white clouds, and when I look down, there are clouds and a blue sky below me. Then, Aragon tells me to breathe slowly and deeply. Relax and concentrate. Relax and concentrate. Then, he tells me to put everything that I’m worrying about on one of those clouds, and so I do that—I put worrying about having to leave here, worrying about how I got here, worrying about what Katz and Bardens are planning for me, etc.—and when I’ve put all my worries on that cloud, I watch the wind pick up and carry my worry cloud over some mountains that I can see in the distance.

Then Aragon asks me if I’m totally relaxed and comfortable, and I say yes, and I can hear myself answer him, but it sounds like a different voice. Like I’m underwater—and when I answer yes, then he starts to ask me questions.

What is your name?

Ram Le Doir, I say.

How old are you?

Forty-five.

What did you do before you came here?

I was a writer.

Where did you live?

Refugio, California.

Are you married or single?

I’m married.

Where is your wife?

I don’t remember.

Why were you sent here?

I don’t remember.

And then he’ll ask me to concentrate harder, try and remember, but so far, nothing more has come. And then he tells me that when I awake from the trance, I’ll remember everything that I told him, and then he’ll tell me to relax and go back to the door and go back inside and close it, and when I do, I’m back in the staircase with the red rug and wooden walls. Then Aragon tells me to start going back down the stairs, 5, 4, 3, 2 and when we get close to 1, I can see a big room that the stairs empty into, and in that room, they’re having a big party with music going on and lots of people standing around with glasses in their hands, and right before he gets to 1, a woman with dark hair turns around to look at me and she always seems a little surprised and shocked when she sees it’s me.

My friend Barry left today. I guess they cured him. I was coming back from my weekly hypnotism and when I looked around for him, he was gone. I asked Monroe—who’s black and plays the piano—Where’s Barry? And he told me they—meaning Katz and Bardens—discharged him. It’s funny, him—Barry I mean—getting cured. He didn’t seem any different to me from when I first started knowing him, but I guess the staff knows what they’re doing and who’s been cured and who’s still sick. Me? I just go along with my positive attitude and do as the doctors say—not worry about it. I’m making more progress. Priddis says that I’m showing improvement overcoming—what was it?—my impediment. And I’m discovering new words every day. Penumbra is the latest. It’s strange how some of these words that I’ll come across have this special kind of power. Almost like the buzzing chair, which I’ve learned is a vibrating chair. They set something off inside me like I swallowed something that was still burning. Aragon also says that I’ve come along nicely, is how he says it, and when he says that, he always says we.

Today we made progress—a major breakthrough—according to Aragon. We went through the usual routine with the vibrating chair and metronome and so on—relax and concentrate, relax and concentrate—which is what I did and I went right off into a deep trance. The blackest one I can remember, and when I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door, it wasn’t into the blue sky with white clouds, it was just dark space like at night with hundreds of stars that I floated through, and Aragon asked me what I saw, and when I told him, he said that it was good and his voice was coming from somewhere out in that blackness. And he kept telling me to relax more and concentrate on that black space, and then he told me to put my worries on a star, and when I did that, the star just dropped away through space and disappeared, but there was a glow where it had been and a sparkly dust that showed where it had fallen, that reminded me of snow. And when I told Aragon that, he asked me where I had seen snow before, and I said when I was in England. And then he asked me when was that? And I told him in 1971. Then he began asking me the usual questions: What is your name?, How old are you?, What did you do before you came here? etc. And we went through the list of questions, and then I got to those ones I can’t remember, and the same thing happened during this session, but when he told me to open the door and go back inside, I did, but it wasn’t the same house that I came out of—the walls were different—they were all white, and there were tiny lights in the ceiling that were turned toward different pictures and paintings, and when Aragon asked me to describe one, I did. And then he asked me, —Do you know the name of the painting?

And I said, Of course—In The Land of Cockaigne.

And when he asked me, Do you know who painted it?

I said, Certainly, it’s Brueghel, the Elder.

And then he told me to relax more and concentrate on going down those stairs as slowly as I could, and so I started coming down them, and when one of those tiny lights would shine on a picture that I knew, I would tell Aragon what it was—Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Dali, Electric Pope by Bacon, etc.—and all this was happening while I was coming down the stairs, 5, 4, 3, 2, and when we got down to 1, it was a different room than the one with the party. There were only two people—someone in the back of the room who I couldn’t see and that woman with dark hair who’s always there when I come down, and she looked at me with that look like she’s surprised and shocked, but this time it was different—I knew her. And then Aragon asked me who it was, and I said, It’s my wife, Vera.

I know this much now, my name, my age, my former occupation, and the name of my wife. That name—Vera—keeps turning around inside of me, and I wind up saying it out loud at times—just to feel the sound of it. I’ll be standing at the picture window in the dayroom looking down at the trees in the park that have all lost their leaves now—winter is coming—and that word will come out of me—Vera—and sometimes say—my wife Vera—and there’s a strange feeling to it—warm but mysterious. And sometimes, I’ll say her name and I’ll get a feeling that starts off like a light shock to my legs that moves up my back and shakes my shoulders hard when it reaches the top of me. The kind of wonder that it makes me feel isn’t the kind that makes me angry when I can’t understand it. It’s different—more like something calling to me that I want to answer because—whatever it is—it has something to do with why I’m here. I know that you just don’t wind up in a place like this all of a sudden for no reason. I can see that we’re different people from the ones who work here. There was a time in my life when these shapes had a meaning to them instead of just being things to name. I’m trying to understand all of this—to give names and meanings to the things I don’t know and hope that we—the doctors, Aragon, myself—can discover what’s behind it all. I don’t know all that much other than my name, age, etc. But at times, during the day, when I’m trying to read, or play bones, or watch T.V., that name—Vera—will sneak up on me and walk into my head and distract me from whatever I’m doing. The other night, the nurse came into my room late at night and woke me up and asked me, —What is it? What is it?—and I was confused because I was still asleep, and she asked me, —Weren’t you calling me?—and I looked at her tag, and it said Vera Sanchez, so I must’ve been calling her in my sleep.

Something has started to happen to me, and I’m a little scared by it. I’ve made progress and I can speak better and I’m starting to remember more—the lights that go on inside of me, I don’t try and turn off any more, I want to know whatever it was that happened to me and how I got here. I’ve talked with Aragon about this, and he tells me to be patient, that I’ve suffered a severe traumatic shock and that I nearly died. He tells me that these things take time and that it’s critical that we go about this with caution.

I didn’t sleep well last night and became very tired this morning after exercise and recreation. I was sitting in the dayroom watching T.V. with this young, black orderly—Le Von’s his name—when I guess I started falling asleep, and I was feeling very warm and peaceful, like you do just before you’re ready to drop off to sleep, and a picture flashed across my mind of me standing on a rainy street, dressed in black, and I had my hand stretched out behind me, waiting for someone. In my dream, I looked over my shoulder, and she came walking down the stairs of an old building with her hand reaching out for mine. I woke up and said, Vera. I sat there for a minute with my mouth open, looking straight ahead, and Le Von must’ve been watching me because he asked me if I was OK. But as hard as I tried to concentrate on that picture, I couldn’t hold it. I couldn’t remember anything more than what I’ve just written down.

How long have I been here now? How long was I here before I started talking? It must’ve been awhile. I know that I had a bad attitude then—at least that’s what Katz and Bardens tell me. I remember that—the time of the bad attitude—but I don’t think I was really angry at anybody. Maybe I was just scared. I think I’ve been here about 18 months. Things have changed for me recently. I’m used to the routine but my life has begun to mean more than just going through the routine. I’m aware of the seasons changing and I know from watching the clouds when it’s going to rain. I can feel the time of day, when the light changes, that lets me know that the day is ending and the night’s beginning. That has become my favorite part of the day. It seems like everything starts to get gray and the shadows disappear, and then there’s a brief flash of light where everything—all the shapes in the room—stand out clearly. And it only lasts a few seconds, but during that time that it’s bright, it’s almost like everything is frozen and glowing from the inside, and you can see everything as it is but real peaceful, before the darkness moves in and swallows it.

It’s coming—in the last few days, I can feel it coming. But not knowing what it is, I don’t know how I feel about it. Sometimes, I want it to come and, at those times, I can feel it in my stomach, and it’s like a balloon getting bigger that rises up into my throat, and it always seems to have something to do with her—Vera, my wife. I wonder where she is and if she knows what happened to me and where I am. I haven’t asked about it because I don’t think they’d tell me.

I go to see Aragon three times a week now and I don’t go to the groups anymore with the rest of the residents. Maybe they figured that I wasn’t making as much progress in the groups as I’m making with Aragon. The routine with Aragon is the same but the sessions last longer and he asks me a lot more questions—mostly about her, Vera. I go on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after lunch, and I’m usually there until right before dinner. I sit down in the chair and turn on the vibrating machine, and then I take the lid off the metronome and set it at a medium slow beat—tick… tock… tick… tock. Aragon showed me how to set up the apparatus—that’s my latest word discovery, apparatus. Last Wednesday Aragon asked me to set up while he went to the bathroom, and when he got back, I already had my finger up in the air—my sign that I’m ready to go into a deep trance. I didn’t know it at the time, but he told me about it afterward and said it was a good sign because it shows that I’m willing to break through the block.

We still go through the relax and concentrate business, but after a couple of times, I can’t hear the words clearly anymore—they’re just a dull sound that’s like a machine spinning slowly in the distance, and it starts to get real black, and I feel like I’m floating until Aragon calls my name and tells me to begin climbing those stairs, and it’s always the same staircase with the wooden walls and the creaking third step, and when I get to the top and open the door, sometimes, it’ll be the blue sky with white clouds, but lately, it’s been the black space more and more, the night sky with a hundred stars and no bottom. And the worries go on a star that falls away and vanishes with that silver shower that shows where it was and the direction that it’s heading, and after that, I’m ready for the questions. My name, my age, what I did, where I’m from.

Are you married?

Yes, I’m married to Vera.

What does she do?

She makes movies.

How old is she?

She’s forty-five too.

Where did you meet her?

In Refugio.

When was that?

Eighteen years ago, I think.

When were you married?

Fifteen years ago.

Do you have any children?

No.

Where is Vera now?

I don’t know.

And then Aragon will tell me to relax and concentrate on Vera—where is she? And I try, but it won’t come—I can’t remember that part. And then we’ll leave that part alone and maybe he’ll ask me if I have any family and I’ll tell him yes—I have two brothers—and when he asks me their names, I know them, and then he’ll ask me questions about them, and if I can answer them, I do. They’re both older and my mother used to live in Sagrada where I grew up. And then we’ll go back to Vera, and Aragon asks if I loved her, and I’ll tell him that yes, I loved her, but I hated her almost as much, and when he asks me why, I tell him that I don’t know—it was the way things were between us. And then he might ask me if I was happy with her and I’ll tell him no, but I loved her. And as I write this, that word love means nothing to me—a feeling that I can’t place—another word that walks around in my head without a meaning.

The last time I went, Aragon asked me when was the last good time I had with Vera before we moved to Paris, and I told him on her birthday when she turned thirty-seven, some years ago in June. And he asked me to describe what we did, and I told him that we had a big party at our house in Refugio, and there were lots of people there playing music and dancing, and there was a table with a giant cake and hundreds of bottles of champagne that we were drinking. And he asked me if we had a good time, and I answered that we did have for a while, but then things got out of hand when Vera got too drunk. Aragon asked what that was like, and I told him that it was ugly and that something happened that made everybody leave. He asked what that was, and I guess I must not have answered for a while because he told me to just relax—nothing is going to happen to you—but I still remember. But then when he was taking me out of the trance and I was coming down the stairs, I realized that I was coming down the stairs in that house where the party was going on, and then the picture of that moment came back to me. I was coming down the stairs, and when I got to the bottom, I could see Vera dancing with some man, and Aragon asked me to describe that and I told him that they were dancing, but there wasn’t any music going and Vera was rubbing up against this man, and Aragon asked me how that made me feel, and I said angry, and then he asked what happened next, and I told him that I grabbed her and knocked her down. He asked what happened after that, and I told him that I went over to the table and turned it upside down and screamed at everybody, —Get out, get out, get the fuck out of my house,—and that’s when everybody left, and when Aragon asked me what happened after that, I tried to think, but I couldn’t remember. I had that picture in my mind of Vera lying on the floor with blood coming out of her mouth and everybody hurrying up to get out of there. I was still focusing on that picture and I could see her looking up at me, and at first, she looked like she was scared and shocked, but then she started laughing.

For the past two days, there’s been only that sound, the sound of my voice saying those words in Aragon’s office when we finally broke the lock on my memory. I don’t know what to feel other than some shock and confusion. I can’t begin to connect it with any feeling and now, with the lock opened and my memory spinning out, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m able to feel anything anymore. Those words that I finally was able to bring up when the bubble in my throat exploded and those words that recalled the whole scene in that house. When I think of it now, they—the words, the scene, the act—just seem to float there in space like a leaf in a shifting breeze. There’s just the sound of my voice saying those words, making that admission, a numb feeling, and nothing more.

I’ve been out of circulation for the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to write about it since it happened. I’ve spent that time in the isolation room on a bed with restraints—for my own protection, according to Katz and Bardens. In that time, I’ve played the last session with Aragon over and over in my head so many times that I’m sure that I know it by heart. Here’s what I remember—Nurse Haig came up to get me Friday after lunch and I was in the dayroom at my usual spot looking down at the park. There aren’t too many people who go there these days because it’s winter now and, as I remember, this town can get pretty cold. Here’s something funny—this place, this facility, or whatever you want to call it—is located in the town where I grew up. I’ve been in Sagrada for the past year and a half and never knew it until two days ago. When I was a kid, we used to pass this place and make jokes and point at the patients looking out the same window where I’ve been spending so much time. But that’s another story. There are a million stories that are ready to roll out of me now that my memory’s been unlocked, but I’ll get back to the one about the last session first. Where was I? Oh yeah, Nurse Haig came for me like she usually does and escorted me down to Aragon’s office where he was waiting for me, sitting behind his desk, chewing on an unlit pipe. We began the usual routine. The vibrating chair, the metronome, relax and concentrate, relax and concentrate, blackness, the stairs leading to the door with the creaking third step, stars, the door opening up into a black night filled with a million stars, the worry star that vanishes in a vapor trail, the black becoming the deepest blue imaginable and the questions coming from Aragon that sound like he’s speaking from the top of a hole that I’ve fallen into.

What is your name?

Ram Le Doir.

How old are you?

Forty-five.

Where are you from?

Refugio.

What did you do there?

I was a writer.

Were you married?

Yes.

What was your wife’s name?

Vera.

What did she do?

She made movies.

After those questions, Aragon told me to relax more and concentrate harder, and he asked me if I remembered where we left off the last time we met, and when I answered yes, he asked me if I could remember what happened after I left Los Angeles, and I sat there quiet for a minute, and Aragon asked me to concentrate harder, and then the scene began to roll. Aragon asked me some questions about what I was thinking about, but I told him that I couldn’t remember.

Alright, said Aragon, just relax and concentrate… relax and concentrate. And I began to feel more peaceful and the blueness of that sky washed over me and he told me to tell him what happened after I left Los Angeles.

Were you alone?

I think so.

Okay, Ram, now I want you to tell me what happened next.

I got into the car and drove.

Where did you drive to?

I was going to Refugio.

Did you? I guess a couple of moments passed because he asked me the same question again, Did you drive to Refugio, Ram?

Yes.

What happened there?

I parked the car in front of the house and walked up to it.

Did you go in?

Not at first, I was just listening.

What did you hear?

I heard her, Vera.

Was she alone?

No, she was with a man.

Who was this man, Ram, can you remember his name?

I think it was Jimmy, Jimmy Shivers.

What did you do then, Ram?

I went around to the side of the house and climbed a tree.

What did you do that for?

So I could climb in through the window.

Could you describe the window for me?

There was a window on the side of the house at the landing on the stairs.

Are you inside the house now, Ram?

Yes.

Alright, can you tell me what happened after you got inside the house?

I went down the stairs.

What did you see?

I saw them.

Describe what you saw, Ram.

They were on the floor, and he was on top of Vera. They were fucking.

Did you say anything to them?

Not then.

What did you do, Ram?

I went back upstairs and got my gun.

What happened next?

I went back down to where they were downstairs.

Alright, you’ve got your gun and you’ve gone downstairs, what did you do when you got there?

I said something to them.

What did you say to them, Ram?

I told them not to move or I’d shoot them.

Did they say anything when you told them that?

They laughed.

What were they laughing at?

Me. They thought I was joking.

What happened after that?

I got some tape and tennis balls.

What did you do with that?

I put the balls in their mouths, and then I put tape over them.

Why did you do that?

I don’t know, to stop them from laughing, I think.

Alright, Ram, now just relax, relax and concentrate. Can you tell me what Vera and Jimmy are doing now?

They’re still on the floor, like they were before. They tried to get up, but I wouldn’t let them.

Okay, what happened after that?

I taped them together.

Describe that for me.

I just taped them together like they were, him on top of her. I had this silver tape and kept wrapping it around them until I ran out of tape.

So they were all covered in this silver tape?

Yes, all but their eyes.

What did you do after that?

I went out to the chapel.

Why did you go to the chapel?

I had to get something.

What happened next?

I came back into the house.

Tell me what happened when you got back into the house.

I asked them a question.

What was it you asked them?

I asked them if they were aware that they were going to be dead in five minutes.

Now, Ram, I want you to concentrate and tell me what happened after you asked them this question.

They started to squirm and tried to struggle against the tape, but they couldn’t do anything because I had wrapped it tight. They were looking at me, and I could see the fear in their faces. They were trying to talk, but they couldn’t say anything because of the balls in their mouths.

What did you do after that?

I laughed and said some things to them.

What did you say?

I don’t remember, crazy things.

Try to remember what you said.

I can’t remember all of it, crazy things, I think I said that they had received the final notice and it was now my duty to collect payment, other things, I don’t remember.

Alright, Ram, now tell me what happened after that.

I walked over to the bar and poured myself a drink.

Go on, said Aragon.

I proposed a toast to their memory.

What was the toast?

I said, Here’s to us, may we meet again in hell.

What did you do after the toast, Ram?

I drank the drink and threw the glass in the fireplace.

What happened after that?

I poured the gas over them.

Describe that for me, Ram.

I was looking right at them when I poured the gas on them, and they were struggling, and I could tell they were trying to scream but nothing would come out because of the balls and tape.

Alright, Ram, what happened after that?

A minute must have passed before I said those words, and in that minute, I was living through that moment again, the smell of the gas, them looking at me with expressions of horror, the taste of the whiskey, the entire scene clear and frozen like the trees in the park get when the lightning flashes. And those words that I said, those eight words that have been going off in my head since that moment that unlocked the memory of that scene. The words they broke loose, came up my throat, and pushed the stuck bubble out of my mouth. I said, I struck a match and watched them burn.

Chapter Two

I was blowing breath on the dayroom window to make another world that made more sense to me, leaning my head against the fogged over glass and tracing the rivers around the islands my hair clumps made with my finger, and I felt it before I saw it. It was an old white station wagon and its wheels were shredding the damp leaves. Smoke was huffing from its exhaust pipes and mixing with the outside tulé, winding toward me along the levee, slithering almost—a huffmonster coming to take me away. And maybe I should have known it beforehand or at least suspected it because I’d been so low-dosed for the past couple of weeks that I could feel old sports injuries and the ache of unhealed organs. But then again, you think it’s a movie even though Barry had been telling me that they only start scaling you down so you can feel it only when it’s sure that they mean to move you.

The speaker coughed twice, calling me to Katz and Bardens’ office where the people in the dirty white wagon were waiting with a uniformed officer. This is David and Judy, said Stella Durang, Katz’s chief nurse. Katz was there standing behind his desk, smiling that silly smile of his that’s like he’s your baseball umpire uncle who had to call you out at home plate. And Katz said, Well, congratulations, Ram, you’re leaving here. You’ve graduated to the next stop on your way back. Bardens, the younger less bushy half of the team looked up from his clipboard to note my reaction which I tried to make blank. These people, said Katz, (big official gesture to David and Judy) will be taking you to their facility. Katz was smiling a bit wider now and folding his arms across his chest paternal as Carl Betz in the old Donna Reed show, me not having a clue as to how that thought came into my head. And maybe it was the confused look I had that came with that connection that made Katz suddenly lean forward like gotcha and ask me, How do you feel about that?

Sounds fine to me, was what I think I said. It took me an hour or so to get what little possessions I had and to sign all the millions of forms they pushed at me. And they all had to be read out loud first and I was asked did I understand everything, and did I give my full consent and all. And I was willing, being a cooperative partner in my rehabilitation and all that. Then all of us—me, Katz, Bardens, David, Judy, and the cop who was anywhere but here—signed where we were told to by Stella Durang who Barry said was the true top dog of Six East. I listened to the first couple of readings—court sentence modification, radical vocational retraining—but it was just too much to take in all in one shot ’cause they’d given me a heavy spansule that morning that I was just starting to feel and I was too blue-zoned to follow. And what was I going to