Some of Your Blood (12 page)

A. Hm?

Q. What was in the letter you wrote Anna overseas?

A.—

Q. George?

A.—

Q. George, I thought you were going to help.

A. Well I just don’t remember. (Very surly.)

Q. Okay, we’ll forget that. George, when you go hunting—

A. Ah-h-h … not that again.

Q. (After a long pause.) You see how something makes you clam up? George, that something’s no friend of yours. That something doesn’t want you to leave here.

A. (Plaintive.) Well I just can’t
help
it.

Q. (Warmly as possible.) I know you can’t, George …
I
can, though.

A. You can what?

Q. I know a way to help you remember better so you can talk better.

A. How? (Warily.)

Q. Take off your shoes.

A. My
shoes?
(But takes them off.)

Q. Attaboy. Now lie down on the cot. No, on your back.

A. (Reluctantly.) Well—all right.

Q. Close your eyes … You’re all tensed up. Relax your hands. That’s it. Make your feet go limp.

A. You going to make me go to sleep?

Q. No. That’s a promise. You’ll be awake the whole time and every minute you’ll know you can get right up and stop it if you want to. Close your eyes again. That’s it. Now the hands, the feet. You are not sleepy, you’re just relaxed, limp all over. Feel how limp your toes are, your ankles. No, don’t move ’em! Just let them go limp; feel how limp. Now that same limpness is in the calves of your legs and your knees, they’re like oiled they’re so limp. Unwind that fist, there, feel your fingers—no, don’t move ’em. The thumb is One, the pointer is Two; now feel each one go limp as I count them, One Two Three Four Five. One Two Three Four Five. One Two—how do you feel?

A. (Subdued.) Pretty good. Very good. Like on my aunt’s farm.

Q. Now I’m going to show you just how well you can remember. I bet I can make you remember something you forgot and didn’t even know you’d forgotten … George, can you remember a happy time when you were a little boy? Say when you were four years old. Four years old. Four years old. Remember a quiet time in the kitchen at home, maybe? Before your mother was very sick?

A. (Contentedly.) Mmm….

Q. You are four years old. In the kitchen at home. Four years old. Does your head come up to the top of the table?

A. (Wonderingly) N-no….

Q. Is it warm in the kitchen when you are four years old?

A. Warm.

Q. Now look around you. Slowly. Look on the shelves. Look at the chair. Look at the cracks in the floor. Look around you, four years old. Look at what you forgot all these years. Look along the window sill. Look around your….

A. (Quiet, absolute astonishment.) There’s…my …
plate!
(Leaps off the cot, bolt upright, face inflamed, mouth open. Laughing. Shouts:) I seen my goddamn
plate!

Q. You did?

A. Look, when I was a little kid I had a plate, it was blue around the edge and white inside, down in the bottom was a blue picture of a cow. Why, I didn’t think of that goddamn plate now since the whale puked up Jonah!

Q. Well,
good!
Now get back on the cot.

A. I seen it so good I seen the craze around the edge near the top.

Q. Shh. Relax now and close your eyes. This is a kind of game, and one of the rules is that if I put you back to four years old I have to bring you out again. Shh now…. Now you are four years old, in the kitchen. Feel how warm it is in the kitchen. Four years old. You’re just a little boy four years old. Now stand there in the kitchen but don’t look for anything. Just feel warm. Now in a minute I’m going to clap my hands. As soon as you hear the handclap you will be twenty-three. You will be twenty-three right here and now in the room with me. I’m going to count backwards from five to one and then clap my hands. Understand?

A. Mmm….

Q. Five, Four, Three, Two, One. (Clap.) Okay. You can open your eyes. How do you feel?

A. Like I slept two hours. Phil, what did you do?

Q. It’s just a remembering trick. You do it just fine.

A. That is the damndest thing I seen yet. My plate, you imagine?

Q. I’m glad…. Close your eyes.

A. You going to do it again?

Q. Not right away. But you are so comfortable now. Take it easy, like the feller says. You’re taking it easy. Easy.

A. Yeah.

Q. They feed you all right?

A. Feed good. I had worse and paid for it.

Q. You take it easy, easy like that, you can talk real good to me, you know that?

A. I guess.

Q. You like the movies?

A. I didn’t see no movies in a long time. Yes, I like movies.

Q. What kind you like best?

A. Western movies.

Q. So do I…. George, you know how you can always tell the good guy from the bad guy?

A. Sure. If the good guy gets shot it’s always in the chest or shoulder and if the bad guy gets shot it’s always in the belly.

Q. (Laughs. A lot.) By God George. I never knew that! And you know, now I think of it, you’re right! I was going to say about moustaches.

A. Oh yeah, that.

Q. George, close your eyes. Take it easy, easy now. I want you to remember a bad time you had, but I want to see if you can remember it easy, easy.

A. Oh…. Okay.

Q. Close your eyes. Take it easy. I want you to remember when they sent for you and you went to see the major, the one had your letter. George, you’ve got a frown right there over your nose. Iron it out. You can’t take it easy with a frown over your nose. Good. Oh,
real
good. Now I just want you to remember that time, and how it was. How you felt. How mad you were. When you took the glass. When you broke the glass.

A. (Suddenly raises and clenches right hand. Muscles knot under the shirt. Face twists. Breath hisses.)

Q. You never got the chance, George. What did you want to do then? Suppose you’d had the chance, nobody around but you and him?

A. Kill ’im. I’d ’a killed ’m.

Q. How? What would you do? What would he do?

A. I’d take that broken glass or a knife, I’d let ’im have it. He—

Q. Go on.

A. He’d back off but I’d go after him. I’d cut a big hole and the blood would jump out all over the place.

Q. Mm-hm. And then….

A. And then the old man would look at me like he didn’t know what hit him. He’d go nuts. His eyes pop out, scared to death…. It wouldn’t do him no good if he was mad at me now. He’s so weak. He can’t stand up no longer. Before you know it he’s on the floor, choking, like he can’t breathe. He shakes his head back and forth a minute…. That’s it. He finally got his!

Q. (!) And what then, George?

A. I guess that’s all. He wouldn’t bother me no more. He’d leave my mother alone now, too.

Q. Yeah.

A. Yeah.

Q. George … Did you ever see a man die that way, with the blood jumping out all over the place?

A. (Without hesitation.) That old watchman. By the paper box factory.

Q. Was it an accident?

A. Hell no. I hit him over the head with a pipe first. I must have knocked him cold because he didn’t put up no fight. Or maybe he was too drunk. Then I cut his chest like a damn rabbit. The old bum didn’t have much blood.

Q. George, where did you cut him? Show me exactly where you put the knife.

A. Right here. (Grasps his chest with his right hand between the right nipple and the armpit.)

Q. What did you do after the old man died?

A. I pushed him behind the big tank.

Q. And then what did you do?

A. I went back into the woods. But it was too dark to do anything. I got lost a while, I guess. (He pushes his hands flat under his belt and down inside his trousers.) Get hot thinking about it.

Q. Hot? You mean for a woman?

A. (Snorts.) O God no! Here—
here!
(He is clutching his lower belly.)

Q. What happens when you get hot like that, George?

A. I like to hunt. Rabbit, look out.

Q. Like hungry.

A. It’s different.

Q. (Looks at watch.) Which reminds me, I better cut out of here or I won’t get any lunch. Missed the first two shifts already.

A. Me too, I wish I had a horse let alone rabbit.

Q. (Knocks on door for guard.)

A. Hongry hongry hongry!

Q. Take it easy; easy now.

A. You got me all churned up, Phil.

Q. (Pounds on door.)

A. They all gone to lunch. Nobody but you and me here now.

Q. (Pounds on door.)

A. (Kneading lower belly.) Turble to feel like this, you cain’t kill yourself a possum or a rabbit.

Q. You just take it easy, George … here’s Gus now. Gus, I thought you’d never get here!

Comments:
This is the day, the breakthrough, and man, man, man, the number of times I almost blew it. (Later) Had to go for a walk and come back. Too excited to write for a while. Now let’s see where we suddenly are.

First of all, George’s suggestibility. I don’t know why, but I am always surprised when some shingle-bundled busted-hinge ego turns out to be a good hypnotic subject. Clinical data bear it out and I should not be amazed, but I always am. You always think the integrated phlegmatic type is going to go under easiest. Why, George slips under like a saucer in a dishpan. And he regressed, at least in light trance, to four years old as if he had a head start.

Next was the experiment to see if the trance episode had increased rapport between us in the waking state. That was another time I almost tipped everything over with one wild whoop of joy. He chatters like a lil ole jaybird.

And then there was the test of Ferenczi’s “forced fantasies”—catching up a wish, no matter how casual or ardent, and leading the patient to the next step and the next until, like any good natural function, the wish-fantasy is achieved and peace settles in. Peace would have settled in if it hadn’t been for that undignified scramble for lunch. For a while I thought it was going to be the peace you rest in.

But of course the most important achievement today was the watchman episode. What a perfectly beautiful (clinically speaking, of course!) slide that was, effortlessly from the major to the father image to the old watchman … come to think of it, it’s right there in George’s autobiography. Will look that up. I bet it’s there to be read. I bet there are other things to be read in it now that we know the language … and George will fill in the gaps for us.

Got to write to Al.

A letter.

Cuckoo Cavern                       O-R

Glandular, Ore.                       April 16

Well, Phil!

If you say I told you so I’ll punch you right in the—on the other hand I haven’t the heart. I’ll say it for you; you told me so; you told me and told me. And God, when I think of the pressure I put on you: throw the bum out, I said. Give him to the waiting world, I said.

In all seriousness, congratulations, Philip. You did a superb job at wicked odds, and for as much as I was in your way I apologize.

I’ve contacted Lucy Quigley. Ever meet her? She was for a long time with the Regional Red Cross. She’s on her own and available for a little job for us, and is willing, damned able, and almost ready.

I’ve asked her to go down to George’s hometown and root around in the newspaper files for information about that watchman’s death.

If any. Now don’t get mad, Phil; but you know better than I that this could be a fantasy. If there was such a death, and if it checks with what he says, it’s a feather in your cap, of course. If there was no such death, or if it doesn’t check out according to George’s description, then it’s something he heard about and appropriated. So hold your breath, kid; this is the big checkout.

Meanwhile she’s going to interview Anna too. She’s capable as all git-out, as I’ve said, and tactful and kind as well. She’ll be leaving in a couple of days, so if there’s anything you want asked of anyone in the area, or checked up on, fire it up here.

You know what you are, you’re a detective, that’s what.

Al

Base Hospital #2                     O-R

Smithton Township, Cal.        April 18

(I don’t feel funny this afternoon.)

Dear Al:

A little weary and shook up as I write this: I think the enclosure will explain why. It was fascinating to do and I never want to do it again. My warmest regards and thanks to Miss Quigley; tell her I will be waiting, like the cat that ate the cheese and sat down by the mousehole, with baited breath.

yrs.

Phil

Enclosure:

Therapy, April 16. (Light trance induced at the outset. Achieved without resistance and rapidly.)

Q. Quite comfortable, George?

A. Oh yeh.

Q. Feel good this morning?

A. Mm.

Q. Remember what I once said about this work we’re doing, it’s like bricks, and the more we get and lay, the sooner we’ll be finished?

A. I never forgot that.

Q. Well, George, this is going to be it. This will be the biggest load of bricks so far. What I hope for when we are through is to know you so well that anything else we do will be clear and straight and easy, right to the end of the road. That means out of here for you.

A. I hear you.

Q. You know the story of your life you wrote. You said it had in it everything you can remember.

A. It does.

Q. You know now you can remember things you didn’t even know you had forgotten.

A. Oh gosh yes. My plate.

Q. That’s right. Well, I have your story here and there’re a couple of holes in it. You’ll plug ’m for me, won’t you?

A. If I can.

Q. No matter what?

A. Mm-hm.

Q. When did you start drinking blood?

A.—

Q. George?

A.—

Q. (Quietly and as kindly as possible.) Ah, George, George. Do you know that I understand how you feel? That I know what I have just done to you? … That was your big secret, wasn’t it, George? You told yourself that somehow, if anyone ever found out it would be the end of you. You kept that secret like keeping a life. And now it’s out. And you’re so scared you don’t know what to do … But you’re not dying. This isn’t the end of the world. That secret has dragged you down so much that … well, someday you’ll know. Someday you’ll know. You’ll know when you get up there, how far down you’ve been dragged. But you can’t know until you get up higher than you are…. Now you are getting mad, hey George? Go ahead if you want to. It’s a little like the major who had your letter, isn’t it? But you know who you were mad at then, you were mad at old George because you thought you’d let your secret slip out. You didn’t really; and George, the letter’s lost. Nobody has ever seen it but the major and one censor and they got killed, George…. And you didn’t tell anyone this time either. I guessed it, and then I started figuring, and it added up. But I’ll bet there’s nobody else in the world could’ve guessed it. You didn’t tell.
You didn’t tell.
Get mad if you want but don’t get mad at George. (Long pause. Finding, filling pipe. Lighting.) Now let me tell you something about secrets. There were some people a while back used to hang on to money, bury it, worry about it, even shoot people who accidentally came near it. And it was Confederate money the whole time! They forgot what it was, even. Hiding it was more important than what it was. Your secret is like that. It got to be part of you, you were hiding it even when you didn’t know you were. That’s why you found it so hard to talk to people, you were afraid it would slip out…. Well it’s out now, George, and nobody’s going to hurt you about it. What we’re going to do is find out
why
you like to drink blood. Not
if
you do. And do you know what good it’s going to do to find that out? It’s so
you
will know why. Helping you find out, I’ll get to know too, but I know lots of things. I’m a doctor. I keep things to myself. I wouldn’t use it to hurt you…. I’m going to make
you
tell
you
why you drink blood. Then once you understand about it, you and I together are going to pick up all the pieces and make a new life for you. Are you asleep?