Visions, Voices & Violence: A Fictional Memoir

By Zahn Pesh

As a fictional memoir, Zahn Pesh tells the
true story of a mentally disabled young man
Billy, known affectionately as Vaney and
Billys run-in with the San Francisco police. Often using
Billy speak, the youths arcane lingo, the author reveals
societys neglect and injustices toward such individuals.
Wrongly, Billy is accused of making terrorist threats
against a paramedic, but few other than Pesh believe
the disabled kids story. Avoiding the blame game, Pesh
shows how each from personal perspective does his duty,
indiscriminately, but nonetheless Billy, or Vaney, suffers
because the system fails. Billy is treated like a criminal,
not as a patient, which Pesh insists he is. Try as he might,
Pesh only meagerly reforms that system, before . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477158876

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Zahn Pesh.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4771-5886-9

      Ebook         978-1-4771-5887-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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Contents

First Words Sham Of Justice

Chapter 1      Smoke Break

Chapter 2      Boss Dawg

Chapter 3      Bandit Family

Chapter 4      Florabelle

Chapter 5      Mayor Leslie

Chapter 6      Peshkom

Chapter 7      Guns And Roses

Chapter 8      Stalkers

Chapter 9      Marybeth Mom’s Day

Chapter 10    Matrix

Chapter 11    Conspiracy Theories

Madness in great ones must not unwatchèd go!

from Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

To James Floyd McKinney,

who allowed me into his world.

FIRST WORDS

Sham of Justice

It’s insanity to deny therapy till he’s truly psychotic. That policy’s crazier than he is, the fatherly Zahn said to the gimpy social worker intern.

Zahn was typically hush-mouthed about medical problems in front of Billy, who physically was a young adult, but mentally a youngster. Always avoiding those conversations was all right with the intern, whose agency for the disabled preferred to do nothing. What more could the intern do? He had his own problems. Who was helping him? Probably this pretense of a job was the agency’s assistance for him.

Smoldering with rage, Zahn listened as the intern played the Pretend-I’m-a-Cop game. The disbelieving Billy stood loosy-goosy, slack jawed, dumb. The patient did not fathom it. Gimpy was not a cop. No way. Besides, the cops’ game had no rules; they badgered without fair play. During the game, Billy remained catatonic, unresponsive, uncooperative: the same tactics he often employed with real cops. Zahn appreciated Billy’s quandary, understood the dilemma: --Who’s crazy here, Billy wondered about the intern, you or me?

Stymied, gimpy suggested to his client that they ride public transit.

Billy showed no enthusiasm.

Exasperated, Zahn became more agitated. Billy needed psychiatric care, not pretense. Zahn had tried, but according to a treatment facility William James Mulvaney, whom Zahn had nicknamed Vaney, was not dumb enough nor crazy enough to receive its care. Instead, the facility had suggested the disability center. Then, when dismissing a minor offense, a municipal judge -- Billy called her the lady in the orange hair like Garfield’s and the black dress -- had insisted that the center provide services.

Billy was not a retard nor a nut, but the unstable young man, who suffered from epilepsy, had had horrible fits since he was in diapers. His afflictions did make him, at times, seem both stupid and goofy. These kooky peculiarities, in turn, caused various other disturbances, both emotional and mental. And the disturbances caused run-ins with the cops.

Those were just facts of life, Billy’s life.

Vaney needs psychiatric care, said Zahn, interrupting the intern’s session. "But you play games and offer to teach him how to ride the underground! Again! And again! Not once, but several times. Is that all you know how to do?

"Go back and tell your agency that the judge gave it one directive: Teach Vaney how to deal sensibly with cops. All you do is play those phony games, ‘Pretend I’m a San Francisco cop . . . ‘ If that worked, I’d have done it myself.

"True, his father was mean to him, but that does not explain it all. Hell, my father was mean to me! I don’t assault cops; neither should he. Even though, those ignorant sonsabitches call themselves policemen. To Billy, they’re actually predatory stalkers. If Billy can’t get along with them, teach them to leave him alone.

"But I tell you this: you better get Vaney to curb his fury, and me mine.

Now, get out of here and don’t come back till you’ve gotten Vaney an appointment at Langley-Porter or someplace like that where they can truly help him! Or I’ll go back to the judge and get an injunction forcing you to do it.

Escaping Zahn’s outrage, the intern jerked sideways out the door and peg-legged down the concrete stairs to the sidewalk. In a spring mist, he unfurled a black umbrella and limped away beneath the budding acacia trees and the grey skies. A boy himself, barely Billy’s age in every way -- physically and mentally, gimpy just never came back.

Eventually, when Zahn phoned to notify the agency Billy had, metaphorically, mowed them all down, like pigeons in the park, gimpy conceded, Perhaps we underestimated his needs.

Downright character assassination! They are calling him ‘criminally insane,’ protested Zahn. Blatant lies! Lies! --Indeed, thought Zahn, Vaney is very sane. In William James Mulvaney’s mind, he had jist git-tèd even.

Before it was over, the agency became just another pawn in a joust of witches.

CHAPTER 1

Smoke Break

It’s the economy, stupid! had been a Bill Clinton sound byte that year in his first term campaign for President. On his coattails, in Northern California, as had occurred for Democrats in so many other regions of the country, the vote had been overwhelming for Leslie Kannes in her initial run for state senator. Following that election, as her community relations and political consultant in San Francisco, a part of her district, Zahn Pesh had opened a downtown office, just south of Market, across from the Palace Hotel, and Zahn and William James Mulvaney, whom all except Zahn called Billy, had moved to an apartment beneath the tower in Sutro Heights.

Their rented, lower five-room flat, including a back yard and garage, was in a two-unit building in a homeowner’s neighborhood. A family with two young children rented the upper unit. At the housewarming three years ago, Zahn’s Aunt Sophia, visiting from Tulsa, had said Zahn should buy the house because it felt unquestionably like real people lived there. The streets had little nonresident traffic, were very quiet except for children walking to and from elementary school mornings and afternoons, and were lined with curbside trees. Zahn parked his late brother’s car, a vintage Mustang Billy called Ol Blue, in the garage. For Zahn’s dead brother, Billy had build-dèd a keepin-rock memorial over a tablespoon of Louie’s ashes in the back yard, which Billy mostly cared for. Around the yard, for his pureblood hound, called Boss when it was good and Dawg when bad, Billy had made the fences beagle tight. Inside, Zahn’s computer and home office occupied most of the large paneled living room; coal burning fireplace, made of stone and Mexican tiles, dominated the dining room; a center island and breakfast bar for cooking and eating filled the spacious kitchen; a small dressing area served as Billy’s crowded rumpus room and glass doors led to the back yard from Zahn’s larger back bedroom. The front of the apartment, which had only one window and that one draped, and Billy’s room, which had none, were dark and gloomy; the kitchen and the back of the apartment, ablaze with windows, were always bright and sunny. In this refuge, Boss Dawg was definitely not homeless: the feisty mutt had gnawed a willow basket to its own architecture, so it could hop in and out easily and elsewhere, it had scent-branded every closet and cranny, except where were the couches and beds. Beneath what Billy called his three-pointed tower, this flat was indeed Boss’s dog run, Billy’s sanctuary, aptly so described as if Billy were a monk, a fugitive and an endangered beast, and Zahn’s crash pad.

Other than the writer Matilda Street, whom Zahn had known for ages, and Billy’s brother, Oscar, who crusaded for gays and people with AIDs, they had few visitors, although they had occasional gatherings of invited friends. Zahn and Billy seldom argued, perhaps because Billy, who was really incapable of working, lived in more than Zahn, who was usually out working days, tending to the senator’s business evenings and, Billy guessed, pursuing his own pleasures at other times. Billy, on the other hand, alone with Boss Dawg in the sanctuary, was often at a loss for things to do.

Twenty-five years old when Mayor Leslie had been elected a state senator and when Zahn and Billy had moved there, Billy was now in his late 20’s. Zahn had quasi-adopted the disabled young man as his son. Years ago, now almost ten years ago to be more precise, Zahn had found the teenager in a grand mal seizure on Octavia Street in San Rambow, a village north of San Francisco, where Senator Leslie had at that time been mayor. Zahn, then a fiftyish has-been and hack poet, known for his activism, had served then as Mayor Leslie’s homeless coordinator. That’s when Zahn found Billy. The official social service agencies said they could not assist a youth, who could not read to fill out forms, nor write to sign his name, did not know the facts to put in blanks, nor even understand why he needed to. Simply put: a person who most needed public care could not navigate the system to get it. So Zahn said, Fuck you! If you won’t do it, just because he’s not smart enough to kiss your butt, I will. In that way, God had given him Billy.

Why Zahn nicknamed him Vaney, as in Vaney Mulvaney, is a story too long to tell. Basically, early on William James Mulvaney did not want to be called Bill or Billy, James or Jimmy, because he had hated his father, Victor James Mulvaney. Billy even claimed to have killed Victor James, Ah shoot-tèd him dead with a shot gun. Ah had a right to do it, cuz Victor James was rapin Raw-wee, though Zahn later learned if Billy shot him, he did not kill him. Billy’s father died of lung cancer long after that alleged incident. But it’s enough to say Billy thought he had, hoped he had, and, indeed, with tortuous mixed feelings, he was even proud he had; he was damn’d proud of it. But to wipe away those torturous memories, Zahn created an entirely new character, Vaney, who had only the snippets from an absurd childhood as its past. Even those snippets were a tangle of sights and sounds and scenes, often without names and locations, that fell together as a jumble, not matched in sharp pictures and patterns like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Zahn himself had to arrange the patterns and paint the pictures. To compensate for this debilitating tangle, Billy had other talents and skills, like intuition, that justifiably often took the form of paranoia, and like seeing the past and the future as if they were holograms that existed together in meticulous detail in the here and now. While others considered Billy simple, Zahn thought his Vaney was a very complex, complicated and gifted individual. Worth saving and caring for.

To accomplish this Zahn and Billy, like so many people who love each other dearly, had developed a special way of communicating, a private language. Most important in this communication was that Zahn listened to Billy closely and then supplied words that Billy forgit-tèd or added syntax that Billy had never learned. For example, if Billy said, Ah go’d to the whatchamacallit, Zahn substituted bank if they were talking about money, grocery store, if about food, smoke shop, if about cigarettes, or tavern, if about drinking or meeting somebody. God only knows what misconceptions Zahn conceived for his Vaney when he supplied the wrong word! Or when asking Billy something, Zahn typically asked questions that were answered with yes or no. For more complicated questions, Zahn supplied suggestions. For example, Vaney, do you want breakfast? When he answered, Yehyes, Zahn asked, An omelet or pancakes? If the answer was neither yes nor no, or neither omelet nor pancakes, there was typically a long pause or no reply at all, as if Billy were responding from half way across the universe via satellite. At those times, Zahn often assumed his own assumptions. Again, God only knows what false history or endearing qualities Zahn attributed to his Vaney in error. So, after a seizure, when a paramedic would ask, What year?, or month?, or day is this? Zahn would necessarily intercede and interpret, as if translating from a language from outer space, even just to determine whether Billy was cognizant or not.

To add to Billy’s difficulties, Billy did not cotton to strangers easily, and to authorities, not at all. This particular morning, Zahn had stayed home from the office to take Billy to the dentist to repair the scraggly incisors and bicuspids that remained after the upper two front canines had been knocked out. Cops knocked them out one time when Billy was nonresponsive when they hassled him. He had been in a daze: they thought from drugs or booze, since the San Francisco cops paid no mind to Billy’s med-alert jewelry. To get Billy’s attention, they smashed his face into the trunk deck of their black and white. Over that incident, Billy, of course, had a full-blown grand mal seizure and the bewildered cops sent him to the emergency room. But the broken teeth had to be pulled. Now, through the University of California’s dental clinic, the city was offering to repair the teeth that remained.

You want eggs and bacon? asked Zahn, trying to encourage Billy to hurry. But Billy did not answer. What Billy really wanted was a cigarette. Billy’s slow response was excruciating. They were already running late. When Zahn deduced Billy’s predicament, Zahn was furious. He hated Billy’s smoking. At times, quite irrationally, Zahn even blamed Billy’s habit for Zahn’s throat cancer, that, though for now arrested, would one day probably kill him as the cigarettes would undoubtedly kill Vaney. When rational about the cancer, Zahn blamed his own former bad habits, in a word alcoholism, in several words, his years of carousing, bar hopping and night clubbing. The latter made more sense, because the cancer had been diagnosed, removed and radiated shortly after he first met Billy, not after years of inhaling the kid’s secondhand smoke.

Take this and go buy some, said Zahn. He gave Billy money. But hurry right back. I’ll finish breakfast while you’re away. You can eat and then we’ll leave. Zahn finished cooking, set the breakfast on the kitchen counter, and went to get himself ready. But Billy did not come back.

Billy had dressed in his week-old, soiled t-shirt, levis, leather coat and boots, his usual getup, not in the clean togs Zahn had set out for the dental appointment. Billy had to be encouraged to bathe, change his underwear and socks, brush his teeth, comb his hair and wash his face, but without this encouragement, in his usual disarray, that marked him as a victim of unseemly neglect, he left for the neighborhood market. He looked like the mussed and cluttered thicket hideout he might have just crawled out of. He carried a swagger stick, similar to a policeman’s night stick but wrapped with black electrical tape like the handle of a tennis racket. He swing’d it at the low hanging branches of the elm, catalpa and acacia trees that grew along their street. He mumbled and fretted in an unearthly language, one with a lot of hissing and spitting.

A police cruiser came driving by slowly. Seeing the youth clubbing the branches, the police officer pulled his car to the curb. Hey, kid, stop swinging that stick. You’re ruining those trees. Destroying private property!

Billy went right on swingin. He hear’d the rustle and outcry of the limbs, as the club swished through the hanging leaves. He even hear’d the cracking and the outbursts of the limbs falling to the curb. He see’d the bruised and crushed leaves, shredded into green strips where the club had ripped through them. He was satisfied that he had a right, because of the dentist and cuz ah need a cigarette, goddammit.

What do you think you’re doing? asked the officer.

Goin for a smoke, answered Billy.

Billy was now pulling at his clothing. He glared hateful at the policeman.

What’s your name? Where do you live?

William James Mulvaney, said the young man. He know’d he was in trouble.

Always was when they wanted his name. He tried to show the officer his med-alert bracelet and the pendant around his neck. --What says ah don’t have to know all that stuff, think’t Billy. He reached for the Harley Davi’son wallet and the card Zahn say’d give ’em. --What has all the numbers and medicines and shit. He pulled at the wallet, stuck in his pocket.

What’re you doing? asked the policeman. Just stand there quiet and tell me where you live. You homeless?

What I’m sposed to, said Billy. How quiet? Right here! In that one. No-ooh! The no was two long syllables.

All Billy’s answers were now blunt and staccato.

What’s your address? Phone number? How old are you?

Billy reached for the wallet and his identification cards, again.

I said just stand there, quietly, damn it! The policeman, who had been writing down on a pad, jerked Billy’s hand away from his pocket.

What you got in there? A gun or something?

You bastard! hissed Billy, pulling his hand away. He stared a killer stare at the cop. The lady in the black dress, like a preacher, with orange hair like Garfield’s, say’d you had to leave me alone! Yes she did. And this, he slapped the chained wallet, Smack!, across his thigh, it’s just my Harley Davi’son.

Shut up, kid. I’m about to run you in . . . You been drinking? Any drugs -- speed or crack, or anything?

Opi does. Ah don’t do that shit! Jist let me git my cigarette and go back home. Zahn’uhl git real mad! Yes he will. Goin to the teeth shop. They jist want to jerk ’em out, like these two here. Billy bared his front teeth, like a Halloween mask, to show the gaps. Two cops did it. The bastards! This cop thought it some kind of threat.

Billy was now in a dither, out of control. A lot of nasty, hateful stuff flooded his thoughts. The policeman had pulled him apart, shredded him like the bruised, green strips of tree leaves lying there. Billy bent over to git his cudgel and that’s when it happened. The policeman jumped him, hit him across the shoulders with that big stick and forced Billy to the ground. Billy started screaming. He raised his hand, cocked his thumb, and, pointing a finger at the cop, say’d, Bang! Bang! The policeman put Billy’s hands in cuffs behind his back. Then, as if the cop had hit Billy again in the back of his head, Billy collapsed into a swoon. His body started writhing and twisting. His arms and legs stiffened. His eyes bulged, he groaned and wretched, and his mouth bubbled frothy. Then Billy just lay there, jerking with small spasms. Grand mal seizures can be real scary. The policeman was alarmed and called for backup.

In a moment, another cop car pulled up.

"We know this guy. He’s