Windwhistle Bone

by Richard Trainor

  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 ho
w 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 so
meone. 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.